The next few days were quite similar.
Every morning they went to the drop zone and collected materials,mostly electronics but sometimes they found some precious metals.
Simon was happy watching the balance on his account rise day by day.
-How often do they do drops in this area?
Simon asked one day when they were resting in front of Mikael's house.
-That depends, sometimes there are four drops a month and sometimes it's just one.
The old man answered ,smoking his pipe.
-This one will easily last us both for more than three months and that's just cowering the electronics.
he continued.
-It's a shame that there were no dollar signs in there because I could start figuring out where to connect them.
-Oh and what happened to looking for information?
-I thought about it for a while and there is no way to find any useful information if we can't translate it and I seriously doubt that we can find something here written in english or polish.
-You might be the right kid but that only leaves us with a trial and error approach.
- I also don't see any other way.
-Then we just need to find a power source and try to connect it to a ship.
-Actually I was thinking about our chargers ,they generate power by using a smaller version of a solar panel.
-But they are meant for charging small devices like power tools and our computers so i don't think that they will have enough energy to power up a ship.
-One of them might not be enough but what about putting 20 of them together and they don't need to power up the whole ship just one system at a time. That's enough for us to figure out which kabel powers what.
Mikael was lost in thought for a while.
-You might be onto something kid.
He finally spoke.
-We can buy more chargers tomorrow and then build a solar array with the scrap that's around here but we will need to find some cable to connect it with the ship.
-And which ship do you plan to use?
-I think that this fighter will be a good ship to start with.
Simon pointed at a small vessel about 300 meters away.
-I already looked at it and it looks like it's in good shape so i want to use it for a trial run.
-That looks like a good idea, well at most it will cost us some credits but it's also a good opportunity to learn how to do it .
Ok tomorrow we will buy more chargers and then try to figure out how to use them to activate some systems.
They discussed the idea and how to make it work for some time until it was time to go to sleep.
The next day they went to the drop zone again and collected more materials and then went to sell them.
At the shop both of them bought 10 chargers each and loaded them on the sled to take them home.
On the way back Simon found some good metal pieces to build a frame for their solar chargers.
In the next two days they went to gather materials in the morning and worked on their project in the afternoon.
The young man finally managed to figure out how to connect all the chargers together so that he could send all of their power at once.
He also bought a tablet from the shop to make notes and sketches.
It took them an additional day to charge their device and to find some place to connect it to the fighter craft.
The fourth day was the day they wanted to try and power up the ship.
Simon was sitting in the cockpit to see if some systems would get powered.
They managed to find the main power source for the craft and it turned out to be a battery pack or at least something similar.
The young man tried his best to connect the cables and now was the moment they worked so hard for.
-Ok lod man this is it , are all the chargers at full?
He spoke to his communicator.
-Yes they are ready and so am I.
came the answer.
-Then flip the switch and let's see if it works.
-Flipping the switch in 3,2,1…
Some sparks flew when all the power from 20 chargers hit the ship.
There was no reaction in the cockpit for a few seconds and Simon started thinking that they failed.
But then, one of the monitors came to life and was displaying some alien writings and a bar that, if he was right, was the charge indicator.
-It worked !He yelled into his communication device.
The excitement he felt was overwhelming.
Mikael rushed to the ship and was speechless that they managed to get something to work on their first try.
He was ready to wait for a few days for the results but this kid did it on the first try.
He was indeed lucky and knew way more about electricity then he did.
Something caught the eye of the old man.
It was the display, he recognised the symbols even if he couldn't read them.
-Kid, I need to apologize to you.
-For what? It went better than I even predicted.
- There are some texts, something like a book's in the shop that I once saw.
I just forgot about them and I think they can help us to decipher this language.
-Really? Then you have nothing to apologize for, we should get them tomorrow and if they really can help us with the language then it will save us a lot of time.
-We will see tomorrow for now let's write down the alien writing on the display so that we have some reference about which book to buy.
It took a few minutes to copy the writing and after that they left the ship connected so that it could recharge.
The next day they went to work as usual and they even filled up the sled and cart faster than usual, not to mention their backpacks which they still used.
More materials equals more credits, and as Mikael said More money won't prick your hand.
After selling their materials, the next destination was the shop.
There Mikael found the books that he mentioned before and to their total surprise, there were many dictionaries and language courses listed among them.
Simon was elated because now they could translate not only the fighter display but also the tablet he found earlier.