Playing with Crystals

The third generation power supply was phenomenal. A single unit supplied enough power to keep Nasero going without solar panels, however we kept them in place as a backup anyway. With multiple units we would have enough power to work on the next generation of engines, hopefully coming up with some that allowed for faster travel and would let us leave the current system and begin pursuing the original ship, though we would have to have some very good engines to keep up with it. Evan didn't stop his work on the power supply, he insisted on continuing until he had reached the output of the original or exceeded it. Nasero had done a wonderful job constructing the new forward control room and apartments, the security on them was much better than the complex that could be surrounded. Ambri quickly got to work customizing her apartment and I spent some time getting furnishings constructed for mine. Nasero worked on deconstructing the old facility as well as moving other buildings from the ground to the ceiling of the habitat, an area that would be inaccessible to most creatures but far enough away from the apartments to prevent any experiments from threatening our living quarters. In between the apartments, at the suggestion of Ambri, there was constructed a couryard with plants and an area to have the garden, making it so that we didn't need to go out into the main habitat for food or recreation. I also had an extra room constructed for the purpose of training, it would be much safer to control the environment we trained our various forces in, this room was also constructed away from the main rooms but not too near to the research labs. In order to allow us to move quickly between the areas in the ship a transport system was designed, it would take some more resources to complete but the planet we were orbiting was rich in what we needed, the system consisted of tubes and pods to run through them, each pod would be able to seat all three of us if it needed to but there would be enough constructed for each of us to go alone anywhere we needed.

Once my apartment was set up the way I desired I got to work refining a few of the crystals and testing their functionality in technology. I knew that unrefined they simply replicated and amplified the last force energy they encountered but I needed to know how it worked once it was in a more refined state. To start with I refined it into smaller pieces, each one faceted like any other gem would be. These gems when given a little bit of force energy and did like the larger one except not all of them changed at once, which meant that each gem could hold a different type of force. I powered one gem for each type of force I currently had access to, the trickiest being the one for translocation and placed them in controlled domes to prevent their effects from making research difficult. These I left as my controls, I needed to see how long they could hold a particular force and if it intensified or died off after time.

As the experiments progressed the refined crystals held their charge without change and I had refined a few circuits out of some of the remaining crystals. The circuits I integrated with a few different types of weapons, on their own these changes did nothing, but when force energy was put through the weapon in place of standard cells the weapons shot elemental damage at the target or took on the aspect of the element in the case of blades. I then tried a refined crystal in the place of the weapon cells, charged with the element force of fire. When I shot with that in the slot it fired just like it had when I sent force energy into it, however after a few shots the charge was depleted. I then tried to fill the crystal with more energy than the last time, however it only seemed to take the small amount each time and the rest was wasted energy. At this point I was joined by Ambri who was curious what I had been up to all day in this room. I showed her my progress with the crystals and how they could be used to make elemental type weapons. She then checked out the test crystals I had going and asked about the types of energy that changed them to the colors they were and I shared all that I knew so far about them. After she was satisfied she went to leave and mentioned that the next generation of power had been developed and that Evan had showed it to her, she mentioned it was much smaller than the last one. This gave me an idea for my next set of experiments and so I went with her to the control room.