Re: Dust Runner Engineering
As the best qualified engineer, firing up the J-drive fell to Roland.
08:18, Today: Roland Steen rolled 13 using 2d6+2 ((6,5)).
With a course laid in from the bridge, Roland checked all the gauges one last time and as they all showed green, he simply just pushed the jump button. It was more involved than that, but it always got down to pushing a button to activate it. He'd bled energy into the lanthanum grid, monitored the gauges to make sure everything was balanced, and when the grid was finally saturated, THEN he pressed the button, and the ship shifted into j-space.
It wasn't instantaneous, but it wasn't a long drawn out affair either. As the lights dimmed from the power drain, there was a slight tingle as the ship transitioned into the non-existent realm known as j-space.
There were only three ways to tell that you'd shifted to j-space: 1. look out the window; 2. check that the gauges all showed zero; 3. just stop for moment and 'feel' it. The last was a very faint effect, and as long as you were doing something, you didn't really notice.