Before they could ask any questions, Mike and Emily had them walking towards the tunnel. Mitch looked questioningly at Mike and Mike shook his head Yes. With that they all went down into the tunnel, moving at a fairly good pace, tripping every once in a while on some loose stones. When they arrived at the ship both Jack and Mitch looked like kids in a candy store. Their excitement soared when they met Sam. They agreed to whatever Mike and Emily had to say. Three hours later, both Jack and Mitch were brought up to speed and were willing to help repair the ship. Jack was now Chief Engineer and Mitch was now Science Officer. Jack and Mitch made their way to main engineering and asked Sam for a detailed scan of all the ships' systems.
Sam brought up a three dimensional image of the ship and all the damage was outlined in red. Both Jack and Mitch agreed that main power was their first priority. Jack looked at the image. Power circuits that were damaged or fried from sabotage had to be replaced immediately. Jack went to a storage area and found replacement circuits, cables, tools, and a few maintenance droids. Mitch was inspecting the damaged circuits and found the device causing the power drain. A small black square device was hidden behind a junction station. Mitch disabled the device and solved one of their many problems. Now they could replace the power that was lost, without fear of a power drain. Jack and Mitch would work together trying to solve the power problem, but would need help from Sam on what kind of power they could use.
Sam could use solar energy, but it would be very slow to get to full power. Since becoming active Sam had been scanning for alternative power sources. Sam told them of a nearby factory that had processed silicon circuits that could be used to covert solar energy into the power they needed. Jack knew about the factory. It had been shutdown two months back, because of lawsuits by environmentalists. Jack told them there were piles of silicon circuits lying behind the building. Sam said the more they could get the better. Mike said he could borrow a friends' trailer and they could haul the circuits back for Sam to convert for his use. Emily, Jack, and Mitch waited with Sam while Mike went to his friend to barrow his trailer. An hour later Mike walks back in and said they could go now. They all piled into Mikes' car with the trailer already attached. The trailer was eight feet long, six feet wide, and had a safety rails on all of the sides with a ramp on the back. Five minutes later on a deserted factory driveway they checked to see if anyone was watching the factory. They made their way to the back of the factory. No one was around to disturb them. Sam hadn't been kidding; there were several piles of silicon circuits stretching for about a quarter of a mile. Each circuit weighed about ten pounds, so they all did multiple trips from the piles to the trailer. After half an hour the trailer, as well, as Mike's trunk was full of silicon circuits. As they headed back to the ship, everyone was abuzz with excitement.
When they arrived back at the tunnel there was a lone maintenance droid waiting for them. The small group looked at the droid questioningly, until Sam announced that the droid was there to help them unload the circuits. It took little over an hour to unload the trailer and Mike's trunk. Sam was very pleased with how many silicon circuits they had brought back with them. He said that the circuits would take at least five hours to convert and then install the solar panels. So with that they called it a night, when they had emerged from the tunnel it was dark out and it was well past midnight. They agreed to meet back here tomorrow nice and early to work on the ship. Around nine the next morning they all met at the tunnel, all prepared for a long day's work. Mitch was the odd-man-out, because he was the only one who brought a medium size red cooler.
"Mitch, why do you have a cooler?" asked Emily.
"Well, if we're going to be working all day on the ship, I thought I might as well bring some food and drinks for lunch."
"Oh. Ok." replied Emily.
They set off down the tunnel and when they arrived at the ship Sam informed them that the circuits were installed and were producing a significant increase in power. At the current levels of power intake, it would take nine weeks to reach full power. Sam could take himself off of backup power when the power level reached ten percent. At the moment the power level was at four percent, and would take two more days before Sam could go off of backup power. Everyone said that was good news. Sam also informed them that he had now reactivated five more maintenance droids to help with the repairs. Mitch and Sam were working for four hours on finding more powerful resources to use for the ship. While Sam worked scanning for additional power sources, Mitch was in la la-land; he was accessing the ships main computer core and the information stored was thousands of years more advanced than anything on the planet.
Mitch thought, "The beings that created this ship and all of its technology were more advanced, but couldn't fix their own ship when it was damaged." They seemed to lack creative thinking that Mitch and the others possessed naturally. Mitch routed through the files for the rest of the day, finding surprising little tidbits of information. The beings from this ship had over seven hundred elements on the periodic table. This ship had shields, particle weapons, a cloaking device, and fighters with the same capabilities. Mitch also found a small treasure trove of top-secret information stored deep within the computer core, some were experimental upgrades for the ship that didn't quite work or just seemed impractical at the time. From these upgrades Mitch was getting all sort of ideas for the ship and for Sam, the only problem was getting them to work. Mitch felt sure he could do it, he had a very creative imagination.
Jack wasn't having as a great of a time as Mitch was, though he was very productive with the time he spent in Main Engineering. As soon as Jack arrived in Main Engineering there were six maintenance droids waiting for orders on what to repair first. Jack had three droids head towards the engine room to repair the engines and their sub-light drives on the back end of the ship. The damage done to these areas was minimal, so it wouldn't take long to repair them. Jack had the other three droids replace or repair the remaining circuits on the ship and anything else that needed to be done. Jack on the other hand wanted to explore the ship searching for anything interesting and repairing any damage he came across. Jack was exploring for over an hour, this ship could hold a crew of three hundred. He found several storage closets, some with replacement circuits, others with strange crystals the lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
Later he found the main Security Center. Inside he found both defensive and offensive weapons. Surprisingly the weapons looked very similar to what they were using currently. Each of the weapons had labels underneath them. There are plasma rifles, stun batons, pulse grenades, fragmentation grenades, and what seemed to be blade weapons that run on a small power pack. These were called Breaker blades, which look like twisted Japanese katanas. Each blade was different in design and shape, but the metal used in the design of the blade-looked onyx in appearance. Jack looked at the rows of blades and spotted one that caught his fancy. It was at the far end of the row and gleamed coolly in the artificial light. The blade of the sword was three feet long, which curved slightly in the middle of the blade.
The handgrip of the sword was eight inches long and had two reptiles twisting down the handle snake-like to merge at the pommel. Each was made of a different metal, one that looked like platinum and the other look like bronze. Jack reached out and picked up the sword. For some reason it felt right in his hands, though it felt too warm to be made of metal. Suddenly the blade of the sword began to glow a faint blue, and pulsate in his hands. Jack was slammed to floor like he was hit with a Mac truck and intense pain racked his body. It seemed like it lasted for hours, when in truth it was only a couple of minutes. As soon as it started it stopped, Jack was covered in sweat and stars filtered across his vision. When his vision cleared, the sword was still in his hand, but it had stopped glowing. Instead his skin was covered in bright blue symbols he couldn't read, Jack was starting to panic, but the symbols faded away and left no marks behind. Jack got up off the floor feeling better every second. The sword felt like it was apart of him now, an extension of himself. Jack wondered what in the world had happened, when a voice spoke in his head.
"Hello Jack, you have passed my test and we have been bonded together. Breaker blades were created thousands of years ago as simple weapons, but an incident on a sentient planet, created a unique reaction to the planet environment. The planet passed some of its consciousness into the Breaker blades, creating a form of techno-life. Since then Breaker blades had given the knowledge of how to create more blades, like myself, to those who deserve such precious knowledge. Over the centuries very few have earned that kind of trust from us."
