"You heard the man, we are finished here in the empty stasis quarters, let's go explore the engine compartments." Nico declared, far too happily for Max's peace of mind.

He didn't need to be a mind reader to know that she was intending to find a way to get the engines of the Colony ship back online so that they could travel through space in style.

"You're thinking of something strange aren't you?" Major Miller asked, thinking the same thing as Max.

"Define strange? It just occurred to me that if we are still on this mission and haven't officially turned in the Colony ship when our tour of duty ends, legally we are allowed to keep it." Nico suggested with a slight giggle.

"See, now that's what most people would call odd. A proper soldier of the Empire is not supposed to make plans to inhabit a captured Colony Ship and explore the Galaxy selling trade goods to species that most of the Kepler territory doesn't even know exist." Major Miller pointed out.

"So you're in?" Nico joked.

"Fair shares for the whole crew though. I have heard some of the work contracts are pretty brutal." He told her, leading the way to the aft of the ship with his X109 Crusader.

Max watched the Mecha leave and decided that they really needed a proper name for the new Mecha. It was distinct from the standard Crusaders, both in mobility and firepower, despite sharing most of the same basic chassis, so it certainly should be defined as a distinct pattern.

[While you lot are waiting outside for the hackers to do their work, why don't you come up with a new name for the X109 Fast Attack Crusaders? I will be accepting suggestions until we come up with a good enough one for all the Battalion Commanders to agree on it.] Max suggested over the radio.

[Now we're talking. The new patterns have earned something after taking out a pair of fething spaceships.] Ivanov replied.

[Yeah, and we should likely stop using the official designation in communications, just in case.] Pippin agreed.

It only took them a few minutes to get to the aft of the ship and find the Engineering bay where all the Engine controls were. The problem that forced the crew to abandon the ship was immediately obvious as soon as they entered the bay.

The engines used a Crystal Matrix to generate the Warp Field that allowed faster-than-light travel. Something had overloaded the engine, most likely the asteroid impacts and the Captain maximizing shielding output to avoid having the entire vessel destroyed.

Without the Crystals, they were dead in the water, and Max didn't recognize the structure as anything from this Galaxy.

"What do you see Nico? My System Optimization says to replace the Crystals before proceeding, which isn't useful when I have no idea what they're made of or where they come from."

"They are just cracked, and it destabilized the Matrix that let the energy to shape the Warp Field flow through them. My sensors say that there is another set in the radiation-shielded storage room over there, so they must have destroyed both their main propulsion matrix and the backup set.

Give me a little while and I think I can do something with this. My function allows the Nanobots to attempt repairs if they can determine what they are working with. Since they are all broken in different spots, I have all the data that I need." Nico confirmed.

"So what you're saying is..." Major Miller asked.

"I am totally stealing a Colony ship," Nico confirmed, making Max constrain the urge to smack her on the head and tell her to focus.

She stuck both hands of her Mobile Suit into the containment field around the crystals, grabbing them in her hands and standing stock still for ten whole minutes before backing up.

"This is where Max comes in. I have the repairs done, but this system is stupidly finicky, and I'm not sure that I can get it to actually work properly with the Functions that I have. But Max can optimize them, so as soon as I bring them online, he should be able to tweak the positioning using this control panel here and make them functional." Nico explained.

Max spared a thought about how ironic the situation was. The ship was battered but holding together, but it was stopped dead by something that was a fifteen-minute repair for the Nanomachines that the entire population of Kepler had.

Of course, at the time, they hadn't been deliberately spread through the population yet and were still confined to only Kepler Terminus, but on a galactic scale, they were very close to a location that could have actually fixed their ship and gotten them going again.

Assuming that the humans didn't just kill and rob them, that is.

The array began to glow as Nico interacted with the computer, and Max moved to the control panel, activating his [Unit Optimization] Skill.

[Make the following changes to bring the engines to optimal performance]

[Make the following changes to bring the control system online]

Make the following changes to bring the power systems online]

...

There were hundreds of lines of directives from the system for things that needed to be done to make the ship's systems optimized, but he started with the engines, tweaking them until the System told him he had it right. Then he brought the control systems back online, as they had only been manually disabled.

Max suspected that was the equivalent of a mechanic's lockout so that nobody messed with the settings or powered anything up while they were working.

"Nico, bring the main power back online and run a system diagnostic. I want to know if there are any holes in my ship?" Max ordered.

"Your ship?" She asked.

"I outrank you, therefore when we retire with the Colony ship, it is totally going to be my ship." Max laughed, seeing the mental image of Nico sticking out her tongue at him.