Time was running out and Ballas knew it. Round the clock efforts on the part of the select techs to bring the crashed TALON Medical Transport back to life were paying off it was true,but the fact remained that somewhere out in the black a courier ship belonging to the Pan Galactic Mining Consortium was missing with a cargo that was priceless.

Sitting on the plateau outside of Central as the sun set it was almost peaceful. The wind which buffeted the plateau constantly was more pleasant than irrititating. As he surveyed the site below the wave relay station, his gaze turned to the approach of Vasily Chernikov. Vaz, as he was known, had turned out to be an incredible asset. There was nothing he didn't know about the engineering systems on the crippled transport. In particular his knowledge of the ships Cassandra drive system excelled that of the two so called experts that PGee had brought in at considerable expense. From his knowledge of Vasilys' dossier he knew he was a crewchief in the war and as such a certain amount of knowledge about reaction mass, avionics and life support was to be expected but Vasily went beyond that.

"How is it going Vaz?"

"Goes well it does", he replied, "I reconfigured standard surveying torps to function as seeker drone, should help in search".

"You WHAT!?" asked an incredulous Ballas.

"Reconfigured standard Mark 8 expendable survey drone to search for drive , emission and magnetic signatures" replied a non plussed Vasily.

" Do you realize you just increased our search capability three fold on this mission?".

"I confident your people would have thought this eventually", responded Vasily, " I go now to take a shower, oil leak finally fixed with hammer and bond seal after dripping all over mechanic" he said with an impish grin moving on.

Incredible thought Ballas, PGee has no clue about the quality of people they have hired for this mission. Walking a short distance off the wind buffetted ridgeline, he entered the small temp shelter that was serving as a com