When he had mastered a bit of the language, he picked a name for himself that the Humans would be able to use easily. He called himself Niko, because he liked the way it sounded.
Niko eventually told them of the Protector, the individual responsible for their incarceration on his planet. The Protector was responsible for keeping his race "pure", which he accomplished by destroying anything and everything from off-planet. He and his firend had resisted the Protector publicly, which wasn't tolerated.
Mark wondered what would happen when they met a
more powerful race that didn't like being shot at and
happened to have a temper.
Niko liked these people. He had agreed to stay when
they asked him to, not because he couln't go home
again, although that would be unwise at this point,
to say the least, but because he really liked
these people. And they didn't have an engineer; he
was good at that.
Niko puttered about happily in the engine room, fixing everything he could fix and teaching his new friends how to do some of the easier things.
The ship in it's entirety was too complex for them
to rewire by themselves, and a lot of it
needed to be rewired. With a lot of effort, and a
little interference, run primarily by Zan and Mark,
They managed to get just the main functions of the
bridge connected to Moriah's little control box.
Moriah was positioned resolutely in the engineering
section giving instructions to Mark. Zan, sneaking up
from behind, threw a heavy cloth over the computer.
She grinned as the computer began shouting muffled
invectives at her.
Mark snatched up the computer and carried to the bridge, ignoring demands to be told where he thought he was taking her.
On the bridge, Mark shifted the cloth enough to remove the side panels from the computer again, and Zan re-connected her to the bridge controls. Mark placed her where she belonged, and activated console.
Moriah shut up abruptly. She began exploring each circuit carefully, discovering that she had access to most of the bridge contorls, but very little else. She could feel the damaged circuits, but she had no access to them.
Moriah tentatively accessed navigations, reassured by the steady flow of information into her memory banks.
The others discreetly left the bridge as she tested every access panel and console on the ship to determine exactly waht she had access to, still without saying a word.
Moriah realised that she would be in control of the Black Fire again, and her spirits lightened correspondingly.
She ordered the back-up computer to issue a shipwide alert, and over the sirens a request could be heard for her friends to report to the bridge and help her celebrate.
If she could, she'd have smiled.