“Understood.” Aaen sat upright in his chair. The line closed with a trio of low beeps.
New orders came in. Aaen was expecting something along the lines of search-and-destroy—but no, he got a pleasant surprise. As odd as it would seem, Aaen silently relished the thought of what this crew had been asked to do. There was a new sense of benevolent ‘sinister’ excitement swelling within him. No innocents were going to get hurt, that much was an assurance to him. His gut tingled somewhat at the fact the objective was so close—
“Crestax’s ship is docking with that larger alien carrier ship to port,” Jones declared. The ship gradually entered one of the seemingly numerous ports along the port-ventral side of the dark, daunting hull—it looked like a giant metal monster that, from the crew’s perspective, was pretending not to know Odyssey was there. And there was no telling if they had managed to break the communications encryption. . . There was no time to think about that now, Aaen told himself. Finding the Olyphium was not going to be easy. Aaen wasn’t going to kid himself about what was going to have to happen—and to be done. Then there was a silent question about how to get out of this . . . wherever this is, Aaen smirked. Accomplish the objective, then—out. For an instant, he wanted to know what their next assignment would be but chose to focus on the objective at hand. He guessed the escape plan was probably going to present itself—maybe.
Aaen scanned the viewscreen and winced, focusing on the lower-left-hand corner of the unbelievably clear picture. “You’re on thrusters, Commander. Bring us up and under that thing’s ventral hull. Prepare to soft-dock.”
“Their hull is—jeez!—polarized, somehow. We won’t be able to soft-dock. Not without turning Odyssey into a lightning rod.”
Aaen made a fist as another decision surfaced—“Wilson, bring us within five meters of their hull. Connors! Prepare to interface with their main computer and then download their database. We’re going to transmit that data to New Horizon as soon as possible.”
“Understood! Standing by!”
The closer they got, the more overwhelmingly massive their destination became. Wilson maneuvered Odyssey around 180 degrees and then used the up thrusters to inch them into position. He turned his head and asked, “Is that good?”
“Good! Hold position here!” Connors was rapidly busy working to break through firewalls and other security measures that had, at least for an instant, had her stunned . . . and then—
“GOT IT!”
“Find out where the Olyphium is,” Aaen commanded.
Smith ran to Connors’ computer to oversee her work—an unnecessary measure, but he was curious about the progress. Smith scanned the screen and then looked at Aaen, “We’ve got access to their main computer mainframe! I’m downloading everything they’ve got in their mainframe.” She knew what she needed to do after that. The thought lingered in the back of her mind as she worked—constantly fretting the concept of being detected.
“There’s an ultra-high-intensity scanning beam being generated by some kind of an array. I’m trying to find the array’s location . . . The beam will be passing through this area in fifteen minutes!”
“Is the stealth field enough to protect us from it?” Smith asked.
“Unknown. I’d say it’s possible, considering the amplitude of the beam. . . Oh gosh! There’s a fleet of cruisers heading in this direction. No identification, yet, but on their current course, they’ll be close enough to read our hull markings by the time that beam hits us . . .” she worked the controls on her station. “Shoot. The team’s amplitude is so high it could potentially cause a disruption in the main power systems.”
“That’s probably the reason why there aren’t other comparably-sized ships out there. They’re being shielded somehow by being docked with those larger ships.” Smith suggested, turned around, “There’s gotta be a way to protect ourselves.”
“Jones?” Aaen asked directly.
“Working on it,” and working she was, Smith noted. He hadn’t seen anyone type that fast since year two at the academy. She started turning her head subtly, a gesture that Smith drew concern from.
“Alien database is twenty-five percent copied.” Connors declared.
Jones’ screen flashed thrice. She was immediately silent at whatever data had come through. Smith leaned over her shoulder—Jones was oblivious to his being there for the moment because she was so focused on her work—and eyed the data . . . He gasped heavy, processing the data in his head, albeit not as expertly as Jones would have, reading the data as quickly as comprehension enabled him to. . . He stood upright and looked at Aaen with a look of shock and alarm with the realization burning in the back of his mind: ten minutes until that beam hits us.
*****
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