He’d pretty much ignored the rest of the fighting, stopping only for a moment to let off a derisive little snort at Gaz’s antics; like anything fungai did they were too loud, overly messy and wildly inefficient. Ignoring the rest of the brief firefight, he concentrated on gathering the components and raw materials he wanted.
”Works f’r me.” Gerad added as Cyne informed them of the change in goals.
”Ah c’n do what’s needed just ‘bout anywhere.” As he spoke he began thinking of the best way to accomplish the total destruction of the infested cruiser. Eventually he decided to go with a tried-and-true method, a subspace tunneller charge.
During their rather uneventful trip to meet Silas and Macklyn at the ship’s armoury, Gerad spent his time producing a whole host of components from his nano-assembler, fitting those components together, and assembling a device roughly 30 cm square by half a meter long. Arriving with the others at the Armoury, he noticed the lack of Macklyn, but Silas quickly brought them up to speed on what’d happened.
”Damn stupe move,” Gerad muttered.
”Though would’a bet cred tha’ the ‘shroomi woulda been th’ firs’ one ta’ try an’ flip.” He shrugged, there was little use in worrying about things like that at this moment.
”Oi Boss,” He called out heading towards Silas.
”Gots a plan on ‘ow we skrag this tub.” He patted the device in his secondary arms and bared his teeth in a rough mockery of a human smile.
”You an’ Cyne keep me clear, I rig dis an’ a few bit an’ bobs, an’ den we make like a young blood inna sliverback lodge.” Not waiting for Silas’ answer Gerad set to work, placing his device on a nearby workbench before diving into another Armoury terminal.
His more agile secondary hands flew across the keyboard, calling what was left of the ships computers to bring him what he needed; the drive sections of two T-875n ’Sledgehammer’ ship-to-ship missiles, the seeker head of an AIM-4010 ‘Tackhammer’ point defence missile, several large capacitors and a lot of power cable. With the help of reprogramed remotes from the ship, Gerad tore both missile drives a part and reassembled them, incorporating his device as he did, in such a way that
anyone no matter how limited their knowledge was, would say was a bad idea; to that he wired in the seeker head and the capacitors. Then he used his torch to hack a hole in the decking, to expose part of the
Balrog’s primary power run.
There was a brilliant arc of electricity as he connected the power cable to what was left of the ship power, and then the contraption Gerad had been working on began to hum ominously. The first, smaller, device that he’d built earlier began to flash a series of lights and a small screen began displaying a readout in Tekthlan, the common Garundin ‘trade’ language. Gerad looked over the display with a grunt of satisfaction before turning to Silas once more.
”Right, dats all set. Let’s be on t’ bounce th’n. ‘S gotta QE det’nator so we don’ got timer t’ out run.” He rumbled with amusement as he patted the deliberately unstable collection of gear.
”Gonna make right pop wennit goes.”