Chapter 4

Over the next couple of days repairs were moving along smoothly, Mike was in awe at what had occurred in his life recently. Mike was sitting in his room on a warm day, just relaxing and enjoying his private time. Crimson his partner was leaning idly against the door, a cool gleam radiated off of the blade. Mike wondered if Crimson resented being partner with him.

"Now stop that foolish nonsense right now Michael. I choose you as much as you choose me. So deal with the hand you've been dealt," Crimson said offhanded.

Mike was silent with astonishment. Crimson had heard his thoughts, Mike was still getting used to that. Still he thought it was pretty cool to have a sword. Sam had informed him earlier that morning that main power was up to fourteen percent, and Sam had gone off reserve power late last night. Sam had decided that he would wait to inform Mike about that, seeing that he was fast asleep when he went off reserve power. Mike didn't mind one bit, he was exhausted from training with Crimson. Crimson had him running ragged all day yesterday and informed Mike that he was processing nicely. Mike was going to meet the others later to talk about finding a more powerful source of power for the ship. He decided he had enough of lying around and got dressed for a long day's work. Fifteen minutes later Mike was walking towards the tunnel with Crimson and waited at the entrance for the others to arrive. The others arrived with looks of utter exhaustion on their faces, though eager to begin anew today. They all had their swords with them. It seemed only natural. They went into the tunnel and headed for the ship. Sam was already busy with repairs when they made it to the ship.

"Good morning everyone," Sam said. "Captain, can we hold a staff meeting in fifteen minutes? I have some good news to tell everyone."

"Yeah Sam. We'll have it in the galley today if nobody minds. I need a morning pick-me-up badly."

There was a chorus of agreement from the rest of the crew. Everyone headed straight to the galley and poured hot steaming cups of coffee. Mitch had finally gotten Sam to fabricate coffee properly, only after five tries. Mike had asked Mitch to download some Earth style cuisine and beverages for them to eat and drink. The previous menu selection was, well, raunchy at best. Tasted kind of like boiled chicken that had been sitting for five days in the high noon sun. Only one of them was brave enough to try the food (Jack), and ended in the med-bay vomiting and seeing weird colors for the rest of the day. It looked like Mitch's programming was finally paying off. Once everyone was settled in, Sam brought the meeting to order.

"Well, main power is up to twenty percent and the solar panels are running at ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-eight percent efficiency. At the current rate, the ship will be fully operational in nine days. Give or take a day for any last minute complications."

Everyone was silent for a few moments. Mike hadn't expected for the ship to be ready this far ahead of schedule and apparently everyone else was thinking along those lines too. Mike had some questions for Sam.

"Sam, can you activate some more maintenance droids? Cause if you can, we can have them start to unearth the ship."

"Certainly Mike. I have just activated eight more maintenance droids. I have instructed them to attach digging equipment to themselves and proceed to the surface. Captain, I believe that the droids should start at the hole where you first fell in. At that point, is relatively easy to unearth the ship using the hole as a point of reference. The ship is only twenty feet down and about mile long by half a mile wide. It is a good thing that we are in a secluded area or else someone might have seen our activity."

"Wow, I didn't realize the ship was that big," said Mike.

"Well, yes, the design of the ship was supposed to be imposing, against pirates and other such riff-raft," Sam stated.

"Ok, Mitch please report on your end," said Mike.

"I found some very interesting material in the computer core. I've decrypted most of the files with just a few still to go. But what I've found so far is far beyond anything this planet could hope to come up with."

"Really?"

"Yeah, there were also some secret prototype files and upgrades hidden deep within the computer core. I doubt that even Sam was aware of these files."

"Sam, can you confirm what Mitch is saying?"

"After Mitch discovered this hidden information and decrypted them I was able to access them without difficulty."

"So, what's inside of these files and upgrades?" Jack asked.

Mitch decided to field this question, because Sam apparently didn't know what to make of them.

"Well, there appear to be upgrades for the ship and it fighters. Our ancestors and their people couldn't figure out the mechanics of these upgrades for them to use them. So they stored the basic principals of the upgrades in the computer cores of all their ships for safe keeping until the day they finally figured them out. These upgrades include: metaphasic armor, singularity weapons, hyperspace drive, a frequency rotating shield modulator, and some other cool applications that got scrapped at the drawing board."

Everyone in the galley was quiet, some didn't understand some of the things Mitch had just said and some didn't have a clue at anything Mitch had said. Mike was first to ask a question.

"So what does that mean to us at the moment? Can you figure out how to make any of those things work?"

"Well to be honest, I've already solved them and created a few more surprises from the other files found along with the upgrades."

Everyone was in a complete state of shock, even Sam was astonished at what Mitch had said.

"Unfortunately the upgrades for the ship will have to wait until we get to space before we can implement them. The problem with the upgrades in the first place, was a pretty basic mistake done in the calculations. After I over came that it was pretty easy to get them to work. Of course, these new upgrades are going to take up a lot of power to use them at all, but I figure we could find a more powerful source of energy for the ship."