Chapter 8 Finding the problem

It took them days to translate everything but with patience they did it.

The tablet turned out to be just a shipping manifest but at least now they knew.

The fighter took longer but when it was charged to full Simon knew already how to turn it on.

Later they found out that its engines and life support were off line and its landing gear was crushed.

It didn't matter to them how badly damaged it was,what mattered was that their experiment worked.

Simon also explored his own ship and thanks to the translations he did it was way easier to find his way around.

There were many languages to learn but they had the time, not to mention that they found some good materials in the ships on the dropzone thanks to the translations.

-We hit a jackpot with these books.

Mikael once said when they were returning from another successful material hunt.

-We sure did,but it will take us years to learn all of them.

-We have nothing but time and it's a great feeling to learn something new.

Just think about it,I spent over half a century here and did not accomplish even half of what we did in the few weeks that you are here.

-That may be so but you learned how to survive here and that is also important knowledge.

Simon said not wanting the old man to think less of himself.

-Ok so which ship do you want to power up next?

Mikael asked, changing the topic.

-I was thinking of a shuttle that is close to my place.

Simon answered.

-We have enough cable to do it so why not ,it should be interesting.

-I chose it because it has the same markings as the fighter so it would be easier to decipher it.

They kept chatting all the way back.

After some rest they disconnected the power supply from the fighter and added more cable so that it could reach the shuttle.

Simon spent a few hours deciphering the alien writing and finally connected the cable.

It was too late to try and power it up now and they decided to do it the next day.

After another day of collecting materials which was getting harder because they already gathered most of the electronics that were easily accessible.

Simon went to the shuttle and Mikael waited by the switch .

-Ok Connect it.

Simon said to his communicator.

The moment the power went through the whole ship started to shake and there was some noise from its reactor,

The shaking soon stopped but the sound didn't.

Mikael came a few minutes later and was in shock hearing the noise from inside the vessel.

-What happened here?

He asked Simon who was looking dumbfounded.

-I think we just jump started the reactor.

-Didnt you want to power up just the cockpit?

-I did but i think i messed up the translation and by accident connected the power to the reactor and it jump started.

This shuttle must still have some fuel left.

After a moment they went to the cockpit and saw that the system had started up.

Immediately they started to write down everything onto their tablets.

It will take some time but they will eventually translate it .

Right now they were doing all they could to write it all down because there was no way to know how much of the fuel was left.

After two hours the ship was off line once again and their best guess was that it ran out of fuel.

But they managed to get some of the texts from the displays to translate and that was worth something.

Simon later tried connecting the cables in different configurations but it didn't work.

-My guess is that 20 chargers aren't enough to power it up again.

He said to Mikeal after the last try.

-We had some luck with the fighter but this thing is around 6 times the size.

-Yes and if i'm not mistaken it's set up so that it takes all the power from the generator and you have to power it up all at once.

-So we need more chargers to power it back up.

-That won't work,we would need hundreds of them just to power it up and I still don't know how to connect the power to bypass the generator.

We would need more fuel to start it up again.

-Don't worry kid, we will figure something out.

For now let's translate what we have and see if it helps.

The next few days they translated everything and were shocked to find out that there was no fuel gauge or any mention of fuel anywhere.

And that meant one of two things: either they missed it or this shuttle did not use fuel.

They went back into the cockpit and found that they didn't miss any screens and that meant that there might be something wrong with the generator itself if it even was a generator.

-Well i think that we should take it apart and see if we can figure out what the problem is.

If we can fix it then that's good and if we can't then we will just sell it.

Mikael proposed a plan.

-We can try,we have nothing to lose by doing it.

Simon agreed.

They went to work and wrote down every piece they removed so they could put it back together.

They spent three days trying to find what was wrong with it but they had no luck,the technology was so much over their heads that it took them a full day just to dismantle it and they didn't recognise any of the parts.

The next day they managed to put it back together thanks to their notes but it changed nothing.

On the third day they decided to sell it because there was no way that they could figure it out.

However when they were pulling it out to load it onto the sled the damn thing was heavy. It weighed around 180 kilograms, Simon Spotted a small container placed under it.

When he got it out after a few minutes of trying he saw that it looked like a jar with three crystals inside and one of the crystals was cracked and charred.

-I think i found our problem.

He said to Mikael and showed him the device.

-This thing looks like a fuse,this may indeed be our problem especially when one of the crystals looks fried.

-Then all we need to do is to find a new crystal or even better a new device just like this one.

There are some shuttles around here so we might get lucky.

-Lets do it.

Said Mikael with a smile.