The Edge Of Space

Chapter 17 - A new arm for A new member!

Their trip had taken several hours, and in that time Vontaine had decked out several ships with the Viper switch, making haulier class vessels a lot faster for the base.

In return, Yida had given 30'000 credits to Vontaine and once Merca was back he added the funds to their account.

He now started working on the new arm for Fritz. Since the planet they were on was completely uninhabited, Vontaine found an untouched cave with raw minerals that he used to build the arm.

For several weeks, Merca and Fritz helped him mine pure materials from this cave.

Once there he used a forge at the base to melt down and shape the various elements he found.

Two elements they found stood out from the rest.

The first one was a common metal. In its purest form, it was a dark grey colour. He identified it as Velst. This metal was usually used to make engines as it was incredibly strong and had a melting point of 8'000 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, it was quite heavy so Vontaine had some work to do.

The other was, weird. He had never seen it before. His techniques were advancing rather quickly now that he knew his race. One of these new techniques was a drill arm.

As he drilled through rock and earth, his drill bit made a hideous grinding sound so he stopped.

He had his helmet on, using the face plate to screen his eyes from stray sparks and debris and shield his ears from the loud reverberating sound inside the cave.

As his drill skipped across the bright silver metal he stopped and reabsorbed his helmet.

"Merca!" He yelled making her stop working. She had been clawing out giant rocks using elongated finger claws.

"What's up?" She said peeling off a pair of welding goggles.

"Come check this out, you ever seen it before?" He asked getting out of the way for her to look.

She moved in closer and squinted.

"Umm. Maybe Kethian?" She guessed.

"Nope. Pure Kethian is darker,".

He drilled out the small chunk, holding it in his hands it was light. After exchanging some guesses they took it back to Yida and Grem who couldn't identify it either.

Eventually, Yida allowed Vontaine to use his science lab, so the two of them got to work analyzing and running tests on this interesting element.

What they found eventually shocked them...

"Run the charge again," Vontaine said looking down at a small chunk of the metal they had shaped into a ring.

Yida pulled down on a giant lever sending a charge of electricity into it.

After the charge, Vontaine removed the cables and the metal still held a charge. To their surprise, the electricity inside the metal grew stronger and started accelerating.

"The electricity... which is already the speed of light... is getting faster," Vontaine said analysing the metal.

As seconds went on the charge grew stronger, and electricity started to arch out from it.

They watched on for several more seconds as the arks grew stronger and brighter, the metal starting to glow a bright blue.

"Oh dear," Yida said watching it charge up, almost like a bomb.

Without a second thought, Vontaine activated his gauntlets, grabbed it then dashed outside. He moved far away from the base and pegged it into the sky as hard as he could.