[title suggestions needed]

Part II - Chapter II

S'ai banged out a gigantic piece of metal plating. At the forge nearby, D'kal fired small metallic pieces of varying size and shape for the inner workings of one of the most recently made space fighters. It had become so stiflingly cold that S'ai could just start to see his breath. Suddenly, a cry sounded from far off in the Underground, and soon after the lights completely went out. Only the forge gave any sort of light to see by. Cries of frightened inhabitants rose up from everywhere in the large cavern. S'ai could hear Q'renn yelling to some of his fellows some way off, probably trying to figure out what had caused the lights to go out. He could see D'kal looking grimly at him from the forge. This event meant one of two things: the Kesh had arrived earlier than expected, or the generators that supplied the Underground with power had malfunctioned or blown out completely. Either way, they were vastly unprepared as far as tools and resources went.

"L'taea?" S'ai called. She had been talking to him only a few moments ago.  A crash followed by a cry and a muffled curse told him that L'taea was indeed nearby; she had probably walked into the pile of plating S'ai and D'kal were working on.

"Do you think it was the generators?" L'taea asked.

"Most likely," S'ai answered, " there doesn't seem to be anything happening in the Above. We probably would be hearing gun fire if the Kesh had come. "

"I hope youre right."

"Me too. "

S'ai turned and looked to the master metal smith. With a look, D'kal told him all he needed to know: the Kesh hadn't come, but that didn't mean they could slack anymore. They had to work and work hard for that day when the lights did go out and it was the fearsome Kesh. S'ai called out for Q'renn and the young engineer answered soon after.

"I'm going to need an extra pair of hands," he called to them.

"What about two-pair?" L'taea asked.

"Superb. This way," he led them through the small tunnels that ran beneath the hanger. After some time of searching, they came to a darkened alcove as large as two men standing together. They had seen many other alcoves with power generators in them, but all of those glowed. The two young men pulled the heavy hunk of metal out of its hole to inspect it. It was one if twenty or so scattered around the Underground's tunnels. All of them were heavily worn and most of the parts that made them up were scavenged from the Above, but they worked fine for the Underground's use. They removed the outer shell and Q'renn tampered with so many of the inner workings with his wide variety of tools hanging on his leather engineers' belt.

"The main core is completely blown. Thankfully it's the only part that has been damaged beyond repair," Q'renn concluded after investigating multiple angles of the generator. The situation could have been a lot worse.

"So what do you want us to do?" S'ai asked.

"Well," Q'renn thought aloud, " the Above discards these kinds of cores quite often, and with a few modifications we can make one of them work."

"But if it didn't work for the Above, what makes you think that you'll be able to make it work?" L'taea asked.

"The Above's people discard what they think is broken only because there is an abundance of replacements; there is no need to fix something that is easily replaced," S'ai spoke from pure experience, " the simple solution to the problem is found when resources are few."

"Usually it's just the conductors coming loose. An easy fix," Q'renn shrugged.

"I'll go to the Above then, and find a new core," L'taea volunteered.

"It would be a wise decision if S'ai went to the Above, L'taea ," Q'renn looked to her, " he knows his way around up there better than we do. He used to live there after all. Besides, he knows what to look for and where to find it."