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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Angcuru" data-source="post: 2289295" data-attributes="member: 10948">10 - It does WHAT now?Kia sighs and nods. The girl narrows her eyes, and then lashes out at the stone with a sweeping diagonal upward cut that she hoped would do it, followed by horizontal slash that centers the blade in front of her, parallel to the ground. "I rely more on the force then the blade because I'm better with it, but when practicing I guess I should avoid it." she says.She keeps up the saber strokes for as long as it takes, thrusting out once with the point, and then thrusting out and up, followed by a quick downward swipe that brought the blade back perpendicular to the ground in the stance the girl had started with."Since you already have some ability with the Force, it would be wise to learn skills to complement your ability. As I'm sure you know, drawing upon the Force is draining. To rely on it too much when other methods would suffice is wasteful. Besides, there are times when a blade would be more useful."The stone dodged back and forth, evading each of Kia's strikes. Although this was due more to Miera's manipulation of the stone than pure inability on Kia's part, it was still frustrating. Little by little, each of her strikes became more precise than the last. After fifteen minutes of this, Kia was just about to burst with frustration when her blade finally caught the stone and clove it neatly in half."Very good Kia, you are learning quickly. You seem to have grasped some of the fundamentals of wielding a lightsaber." Miera smiled. "Wield the lightsaber itself, not the blade you see. Because the blade is immaterial, it can be disorienting to use, but eventually you will find that intangibility to be to your advantage. This may not take as long as I had thought, though it will still be some time before you are fully proficient with your blade.""Miera is right; you are a fast learner, Kia." Arias nodded, and looked about. "Now that we have eaten and this bought of practice is concluded, we should see to your ship. Has anyone seen Nikama, or Aasan for that matter?""Master Arias, I think they went over to Nikama's workshop to look at something." Adrial spoke up.***Aasan stared, a confused and slightly worried look on his features. Not that they could be seen, of course, but they were there anyway. After a moment of thinking, he calmed himself and then looked to Nikama, "I assume it is not ray shielded...otherwise I...I am not sure. I've not seen anything like that before. That could cause a problem in repairs...""Well, that's what I was thinking, but there may be another explanation." Nikama said. "The navicomputer was intact after the crash, so I examined it for any useful information before I broke it down for parts. According to residual data, the pilot plotted the course correctly, but some sort of ion storm interfered and sent us off course. If the computer is to be believed, we skipped off of the Endor system's gravity well and somehow ended up here.Normally, that would cause us to disintegrate or at least come out of hyperspace. Y'see, a hyperdrive doesn't really make a ship go fast fast, as some children put it. It shifts the ship into subspace, more commonly known as hyperspace because of the drive's name. Time moves slower in subspace, so a journey that would take eons with our sublight drives takes a day or two. Not light speed at all, just going on ion engines in a sort of time crunch dimension. Celestial bodies such as stars produce a distortion in subspace that we call a singularity or gravity well, which is why hyperspace travel ends at or near the borders of most systems, and going on ions in normal time from there.Now, my theory is that considering the temporal effects of subspace, a living being should shrivel up in an instant. If there weren't a sort of time shifting field surrounding the ship, everything would start to decay. Y'know, the whole entropy thing. Thermodynamics and all that fancy stuff.This may be a wild guess but...maybe when we skipped off the gravity well and ended up in whatever system this planet is in, the hyperdrive quickly ceased to function and then the time protection field...thing...went inside out, so now...umm. I suppose you could say that this thing is in a stasis field of sorts." Nikama finally took a deep breath after speaking for so long. "Anyways, that's just my theory." He stared at the hyperdrive, and shot it a few more times for effect.Aasan listened for a moment and then shrugged, "That's all well and good to have a theory and such, but it still doesn't answer the important question. Is this...whatever it is going to cause problems with actually using this thing and getting it installed? I've got a feeling the answer to that is going to be 'yes', if only to keep things consistent..."He sighed, the same scratchy noise sounding through his breath mask before inspecting the thing a little closer, "This is probably going to take a while...thankfully, it looks like you've got enough junk that we can fix up parts we'll need to get this at least connected to the ship.""Well," Nikama said to Aasan, "that's the trouble. I can't figure out how to turn off the darned thing. If my theory is correct, then it is more or less a paperweight until we can turn the field off.""Have you tried hitting it with a rock? You'd be amazed how useful simple violence can be when it comes to technology..." Aasan said with a slight grin on his masked features. As he did so, he moved to the object and tried to see if he could figure out anyway to get it into workable condition again.***Jorran got up from the log, apparently rested."Well, since we aren't doing anything else, maybe we could go help Aasan and Nikama."He paused for a moment, remembering the last time he had tried to fix his own ship...before paying a trained mechanic to replace the bent hydraulic lift on the ramp, then fix the damage he had done to the surrounding components when he tried to 'weld' the hydraulic arm back to the ship with his lightsaber."Or maybe just watch.""Aasan is better at fixing things then I am, I'd probably just get in his way, and I'd rather have it fixed then not just because I tried to help, they'll probably ask if they need help." Kia offers, clipping the saber back on her belt. "We can go watch though, I suppose." The girl wipes off her brow as she waits to see what the Sethi Masters were planning on doing."Getting your ship back to full working order is priority, so by all means aid them if you can." Miera said. "If there is a problem, it would be best to have as many viewpoints as possible to find a way to fix it." She and Arias got up and went over to Nikama's work hut to see what progress had been made."Hit it with a rock? As if blasting it isn't enough." Nikama said to Aasan. "What seems to be the trouble, Nikama?" Arias asked as he pushed aside the cloth flap that served as a door to the hut."Ah, Arias. Well, the trouble is not that we can't find a hyperdrive, since we have one right here. The problem is that we can't seem to get rid of this crazy field surrounding it." Nikama indicated the silvery-white sheen on the old hyperdrive.Jorran puzzled at the strange sheen."My first thought would be to see how it responds to the force, or a lightsaber, but I'm probably not the one to listen to when it comes to complex machinery. Have you tried, you know, poking it with a stick?"Nikama gave Jorran a blank look. "Poke it with a stick, you say. Genius. Surely the space-time altering field will disperse when prodded with a simple rod." The middle-aged man picked up a stone from a workbench. "See this rock?" He then picked up a piece of scrap metal. "See this junk?"Nikama ground the stone against the edge of the metal for a moment, and when he was finished the previously sharp edge was dull and rounded. "Abrasive, rough-surfaced, similar to what ancient builders used to call sandstone."Nikama then placed the stone on the sheet of metal and tilted at at a 45 degree angle, but the stone did not slide off. He then carefully placed it on top of the hyperdrive and flicked it with his finger. The stone quickly slid off like ice from glass. Nikama picked it up and repeatedly slammed it against the hyperdrive, chipping the rock but having no effect on the silvery-white sheen."There's some sticks outside the hut if you still want to poke it." He grunted, before turning back to the hyperdrive.Jorran seemed even more intrigued by the hyperdrive's strange properties."Well, I think your demonstration showed me more than a stick could have...but now I'm eager to see how it would react to the force..."Jorran put the fingers of his right hand to his temple and closed his eyes, looking at the hyperdrive with the force, and then (assuming it doesn't have any strange aura) attempting to shift its position a bit.Jorran's attempt to detect the Force within the Hyperdrive yields a complete blank. He can feel objects surrounding the hyperdrive, but once he starts to feel past the strange field, it's as if there is nothing there. He tries to use the force to move it, but it is as if it is slippery even in his attempts with the force. Jorran finds that he can budge it slightly by moving other objects against it, but he simple cannot get a hold on the hyperdrive itself.Miera walked in behind Arias, and did a double take when she saw the Hyperdrive. "Nikama, why didn't you tell us that you have a working stasis field?!"Arias and Nikama looked at her and simultaneously asked, "Working Stasis Field?"Miera poked Arias on the nose and pointed. "Shiny field around hyperdrive."Nikama twitched. "How do you know it's really a stasis field? They're just speculation and whatnot, only theory! No one has ever gotten one to work in this manner! This thing is probably just a fluke, something different.""Shortly before Arias and I...left...the Jedi, there was a report that the Techno Union, a faction within the separatists, had managed to develop a containment field that slowed the progression of time on its contents to approximately one millisecond per trillion standard years. In other words the contents are completely invulnerable while the field is active." Miera said. "Not that that helps us get it working." She frowned.Aasan looked to Miera with a curious expression on his hidden features before looking back down to the well protected item, "In other words, you know what it is, but not how it works or how to get rid of it. Wonderfully helpful. I've got a bad feeling it might be easier to build a new one from scratch rather than try to figure this thing out.""Great, we'll be getting off this rock about the time, I'm free floating carbon." Kia offers sarcastically. "At least I can take the ship up to space and leave a distress signal at the center of the hyperlanes that head through the system. Then anyone stopping here will at least know we're here. Space is big, but hyperjumps are always plotted to the center of a system, so arrival points should be within a relatively small area, theoretically.  She should be airtight, I mean the diagnostic would let us know if something was that wrong, but double checking it shouldn't hurt us either.""I know what it is, yes. But even though I have no clue how to deactivate it, there must be some way to do so. Techno Union engineers were paranoid about safety. There must be a way to disable that field on the hyperdrive itself." Miera stated. "Nikama, see what you can do. Aasan, please help him with this.""I would have rather kept this planetary system a secret, but there seems to be no other choice." Arias sighed. "Kia, this buoy that you mentioned, go ahead and set it up. If you can, try and block the signal from the Imperials. If not, then we may have an opportunity to capture and additional ship. I'll go along with you just in case. Kal, Adrial, you two should come as well. We will be doing a lot of space travel in the near future, you should start getting used to it." With that said, Arias left the hut and headed towards the Dawnsprinter."Jorran, your ship had a working hyperdrive, right?" Miera asked him. "While Kia sets up the buoy, you could do a scan and see if you can find it. Even if the ship was damaged beyond repair, you may be able to salvage the hyperdrive."Jorran stroked his beard."Good idea...I'll get right on it...but, uh, where would I be scanning from, exactly?""Scan from the Dawnsprinter, sensors are working just fine, and with the ship, we can actually go wherever if you find it, especially if it’s still in space." Kia tells Jorran. "I am not a fan of piracy in any form, the imperials do help crashed ships, no reason to expect them to be hostile right off the bat Arias." the CorSec hopeful told the master reproachfully. The red head led the other force users to the ship, and through it, up into the cockpit."Strap yourselves in."</blockquote>

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