Whatever it takes ...

[T'aral 0]

"... no more than one hour, and the ship's primary systems must remain dormant."

 

T'Aral nodded to the guardian. "Understood."

 

With an escort of two armed troopers, the Vulcan engineer made her way into the Qob and immediately began work. With her was a small cannister with cryptic markings on either side. With troopers on either side of her, she opened a small access panel and proceeded to twine her legs about a crossbar, allowing her to drop headfirst into a deep, narrow accessway. Hidden from the troopers were three large machines, each about ten feet long. The first and third were three-foot diameter cylinders, while the middle one was a rather large egg.

 

Within minutes of T'Aral's first action, the first cylinder began to light up. The guard became nervous; "Hey - what's down there, anyway?"

 

"It is called galu-dahshau-folayek, and is simply a maintenance device." Rising up from the accessway, T'Aral closed the panel and cleaned up her tools. "That is all that was necessary - I am ready to leave."

 

As the contingent left and sealed the Qob, lights continued to shine in the dark bowels of the obsolete vessel. It had taken T'Aral three days of continuous work to obtain two liters of isbad-tukh, and she was concerned that one day the work she did for those who aided her would someday come back to bite her. Yet it was the only way: the first cylinder was a portable converter, working and shaping the elements into fuel cylinders that could be fed to the reactor it was tied to. Once prepared, the reactor could could-start the Qob within ten minutes.

 

All they would need was to get on board; that, and the captain's permission to initiate a fission reaction. T'Aral wondered briefly if he would be suprised to find his vessel running on converted atomic weapons, but it provided so much more power than the fusion reactors most starships had - even if it was a thousand times more dangerous.