"Nice. Now we have the evidence of what that Big Shot was trying to do." Billy said as we began to go deeper into the mothership in a quick pace. "Good job on luring that man to your trap, Travis…"
"You do not seem to be too happy about it, Travis…" Jessica said to me.
"Because I am currently thinking that right after I said those words, that man could have just pushed the trigger or the button for the weapon, right?" I responded to her by a question. "So, why did not he do it?"
"He might be just bluffing about striking us with that Direct Energy Weapon from the start." Billy stated his opinion.
"Maybe, but then again what are the chances, Bill?" I replied to him. "If I were him, I would be really careful if I was going to bluff about such technology to someone who has a direct experience against it in the past."
"Are you saying that somehow that guy changed his mind or something?" he asked again.
"That or something else beyond my knowledge is going on inside the Pentagon itself right now…" I sighed as I kept on leading the three of us proceeded deeper. "But whatever it is, it must be of extreme importance."
That statement of mine perhaps made both Billy and Jessica no longer know on what else to respond, and thus put them into deep silence right afterwards. I actually did not wish to make the atmosphere around us became tense again, but I suppose none of us would let down our guard that way. After a few moments of walking straight in a quick pace, I came across what seemed to be the access to go up and down the mothership.
First of all, unlike the one back in three years earlier, there was not any stairs whatsoever that spiraled down or up. Instead, there was only one single wide sloping spiral lane leading to both higher and lower levels. Also, instead of a hole in the center of the spiral lane like the one inside the previous mothership, it was a solid concrete-like pillar standing straight from perhaps the very bottom of the level to the top of the mothership.
"So, where should we go next?" Jessica asked me. "Up or down?"
The last time I had found the leader of an alien mothership was when I went up, while another group led by Jonathan had been going down. To be honest, I also wanted to go to the lower levels first since I had not have done so before. However, since we were definitely racing against a tight time, I must decide to go up since that would most likely the place where the leader was stationed on. And besides, we had yet to know the overall features of the current mothership and that would also mean a whole different configuration inside was very possible.
"Let us go up." I answered her, after a little moment of decision making. "The last time we were on a mothership and went up the stairs, we ended up finding the leader in its dormant state…"
"So they also have the need to sleep, huh?" Billy said as he chuckled and began to follow me ascending the spiral lane. "Well, that is assuring, especially since we have the chance to wipe them out silently in their sleep…"
What Billy said was very true indeed, and that was also what I had in mind just when I took the first step in ascending the spiral lane. I had not had the chance to witness through my own eyes if the other aliens beside the leader itself would actually have the need to sleep, and therefore I was very curious to see how they would be when they were resting to see if it was indeed looked possible if we could take them out in their sleep.
So far from what I had seen, there were still no doors, or even some sort of an opening that would lead us somewhere as we kept on ascending the lane. It was at that moment when I tried to compare the interior of the current mothership thus far with the one from three years earlier, since that would at least made my mind refreshed of the past.
If the corridor in the previous mothership had the height of around thirty feet, than the corridor that we had just passed earlier before we ascended the spiral lane would most probably had the height of less than twenty five feet, since I could see the ceiling of the corridor more clearly compared to the one in the previous mothership despite the dimmer purple light. The width of the current corridor was also slightly narrower compared to the previous one – perhaps about two or three feet narrower.
I did not think about it as something unusual though, especially since I had recognized that all of the aliens that we had encountered so far were indeed smaller in size, although also a little more agile compared to the ones I had encountered back in Chicago. That being said, I began to wonder if the current alien leader would also had a smaller size compared to the one from before, especially since I believed that the size of the corridor would somehow represent the overall sizes of the aliens inside the mothership.
As I still had my mind thinking about it, we finally came across an opening leading to another corridor. The size of the corridor was exactly the same as the one from where we had made our way in just earlier, and there seemed to be another opening on the other end of the current corridor. There did not seem to be any imminent threat before us, but just to be sure, I told both Billy and Jessica to have their firearms at the ready. They did not question anything and proceeded to raise their alerts, as they lined up right behind me just before we made our way inside the room on the other side of the corridor.
At first, I had expected the room to be either a weapons storage room, information center room, or a resting area room. To the least of my expectation, the room was in fact, most likely the garage or rather the hangar of the mothership since I saw no less than six Beetle Hovering Objects waiting there idly. I immediately told both Billy and Jessica to quickly follow me and hide on a nearest spot, since I definitely did not want any unnecessary attention from any nearby aliens, especially since the hangar was completely illuminated by the same purple light on both the floor and the ceiling.
However, after a few moments of recon, Billy confirmed that he could not find any single signs of aliens' activities on the hangar. With that in mind, I was a little relieved since that would mean we could take a closer look on the objects in much more detail, especially since they were not in stealth mode. But before I did that, I first took a quick glance at the general features of the hangar.
Just like the corridor, the hangar also seemed to be smaller in size compared to the one from three years earlier. I figured out that I would be wasting my time if I took a rough guess on the possible size of the hangar, however I could be quite sure that the current hanger maybe had about three quarters size of the one from three years earlier. When I had done with it, I immediately put my focus on the idle hovering objects.
It never occurred to my mind, that the object would be able to stand still without any sort of supports when the invisible wheels were not activated, especially since it had a hull shaped bottom. Either that the whole hull surface had been made out a material with some sort of a gravity balancer function, or that the tips of the hull would somehow just stick to the surface of the hangar floor by itself. Whatever it was, it definitely was not magnet since it would make all of our firearms stuck to the floor too.
When I looked at them again, they might also actually resemble a gunboat with a very good aerodynamic design like a beetle, but with its rear part opened and installed with three mounted auto-beams. It was really tempting to board the hovering objects, but there was no smaller objects whatsoever around us that could be used as footholds for us to get up there. Aside from that, even if there were some objects around us, I would also hesitate to touch them directly with my own hands in the first place since it might give me some sort of a bad side-effect.
"Are you thinking of getting inside this thing?" Billy asked me as he looked up towards the head of the object.
"Honestly, yes. But then again, there is nothing around us that can be used as a foothold to get up there." I answered to him, a little disappointed.
"Give me a boost." Billy immediately responded.
"What? Are you sure that you can-" I was about to ask him if he could really get inside one of the objects without any use of footholds.
"I can try…" he cut my words off, and was already set for the jump.
I gave out a sigh as I then crouched and prepared both my hands to lift him up, before he then make the leap upwards to the rear part of the hovering object. At first, I really had a serious doubt in myself that he could make such a high jump, even for someone in an elite force. However, to the least of my expectation I was indeed mistaken as he could indeed leapt high enough for one of his hands to reach the rear part of the object. It also did not take him that long to climb up and before long, could actually get inside it.
I then proceeded to tell Jessica to prepare herself for the boost, since she could then reach Billy's hand before he would then lift her up to get up to the object. When she also had gotten inside the object, I prepared myself first by taking a deep breath before I then jumped and tried to reach Billy's hand, to which I nearly failed since apparently I could not make the jump as high as Billy did. Nevertheless, after a brief struggle of trying not to lose his grip, I made it on board of the hovering object.
"I told you I can make it up here." Billy said to me and smiled.
"Yeah, I owe you one." I responded to him as I patted his back.
The first thing that I noticed right away was that the hovering object had indeed an extremely similar resemblance like that of a gunboat when I looked at it at such a close distance. The opened rear part of the object perhaps served a very similar purpose like that of the main deck of a gunboat, and with that in mind, the head part of the object would serve a very similar purpose like the bridge of a gunboat. The main deck cover, which had the cover resembling the hard shell of a beetle's wings, would most probably able to be activated only when the whole object was on stealth mode.
Then, I made my way inside the head part of the object, and just like what I had thought earlier, I had no more doubts that it functioned the same way as a gunboat bridge when I noticed that there were numerous controls inside. Since it was entirely different compared to the narwhal flying object from three years earlier, I immediately shrugged away the thought of hijacking the hovering object and to make some serious damage inside the mothership before escaping out together with it.
There were only three faintly familiar features to me in that bridge – a standing stick connected to something below the floor on the left side of the bridge, a large screen right next to the stick, and another stick with a half-circular yoke like object on top of it on the right side of the bridge. There was also a more complex panel on the right corner of the bridge, which I suspected to be the controls for the tusk or pincer-like part of the object. Whatever the function of that part was for however, was still yet to be known.
Just then, the whole hangar suddenly let out very loud repeating sounds, as if they indicated some sort of an alarm. Almost instantly after that, I could see at least two dozens of aliens rushing inside the hangar facing directly to the direction of the main deck, all seemed without any illness caused by the volcanic ashes from outside and quickly aimed their very familiar beam rifles towards us.
"What the-?!" Billy said in a low voice, as he immediately had his submachine gun aimed towards the group of the aliens.
"Great… now we are the ones who get trapped…" I muttered as I suddenly felt chills down my spine upon the groups of armed aliens…