[color=00AEFF]”Yes, I can understand you.”[/color] She fiddled with the mic settings a bit to clear up some minor oddities, [color=00AEFF]”We’ve come to an agreement on what is safe to share with you and what isn’t, and now that we can talk to each other normally, I figured we all had a lot of questions.
First, I’d like to apologize for my reaction to Gar’Tan’s magic. Since he was escorted by the Inquisitors, I assume mind magic is as worrying to you as it is to us, but still, I could have been calmer about it.
Second, as a result I haven’t properly introduced myself yet. My name is Vigdis Jonsdottir, although I just go by ‘Vigdis’. I’m one of the builders of the Jotunheim, so I can answer questions about engineering and some sciences in addition to common knowledge about our history and cultures.”[/color]

[color=00AEFF]”I can ask, but they might be busy.”[/color] She told Kechak and keyed up her radio, leaving the translator running. [color=00AEFF]”Jotunheim, Vigdis. Kerchak wants to learn about anatomy. Refresh my memory, was that on the allowed list?”[/color] Truth be told she hadn’t been paying attention when that was discussed, that wasn’t her field. She’d been too busy trying to figure out how long they could run on the batteries salvaged from the shuttle if they could find it. [color=00AEFF]”If so, should I arrange a meeting here or tell him to go over when one of the medical staff is free, over?”[/color]

She was about to continue her conversation with the locals when she was interrupted by an incoming radio call she wasn’t expecting. Why was the machinist messing with power control? This was a particularly sore point for her, as technical personnel doing things on their own or things they weren’t supposed to be doing was the cause of all three of her lasting injuries from military service, resulting in her tone being more hostile than the situation warranted. [color=00AEFF]”Fuck are you doing messing with the reactors? Backups don’t have enough power for relight even at full capacity, nevermind after a week, and they can’t release power quickly enough to do it even if they did, that’s why there’s a separate battery for it, which I used up restarting Number 2 after it died during the jump.”[/color] It’s almost as if they would’ve done it already if it was that easy. Frankly, having two reactors was seen as enough of a safety net by interplanetary standards. A double reactor failure was simply deemed too unlikely under normal circumstances. Of course these were everything but normal circumstances, but no ship Vigdis ever worked with, even military ones, was designed to restart by itself after something like this, that’s when salvage crews were called. [color=00AEFF]”Stop poking around critical systems unsupervised before the Chief bites your head off.”[/color]

She waited a moment for the agitated facial tic to subside before returning to the interspecies conversation. [color=00AEFF]”Apologies, technical difficulties.”[/color] If nothing else it was a good way to start her little experiment. She started driving the grounding stake into the ground, speaking in between hammer strikes. [color=00AEFF]”We have a… Small problem with… Some of our machines - bastard!”[/color] She cursed as the stake hit a buried rock and refused to budge further, requiring her to start over half a meter away.. [color=00AEFF]”Nellara, you’ve… Demonstrated the ability to… Create lightning. I’d like to ask… you to hit this… stake as hard as you can. Don’t worry about damaging it, it’s a solid chunk of high grade steel.”[/color] Finally, it was in. Attaching the reactor-grade multimeter to the stake with a reinforced cable, she carried the machine some fifteen meters away, beckoning the locals to follow. [color=00AEFF]”A lot of our technology is driven by the same natural phenomenon that is responsible for lightning. We call it ‘electricity’. Electric current flows between two places of different electric potential. A naturally occurring lightning bolt is such a flow between the storm cloud and the ground. This device will let me measure the electric potential - or voltage, as it’s commonly called - of the lightning you create, and because I know the electric resistance of this grounding stake, I will be able to calculate the strength of the current generated, which will tell me if you can help us with your abilities and how long we’d need to charge a device we call ‘a battery’, which stores electric energy to be used later.”[/color]  It wasn’t a sophisticated experiment, but it would be a launching pad. Or it’d crush their hopes.