Chapter 16
Date: 12/15/269 IG
Location: Unknown
Time: Unknown
MrDevus opens a vent behind some crates and crawls out with Iron Mouse following closely behind. He gets up to look over them. He sees an old hangar, covered in traces of pink dust and rusty steel with about 10 ships able to carry a squad of 8 each. He also sees the hangar door is on the roof, closed shut, and the control center for it is on the other side of the room.
"Dammit, this is going to be harder than I thought. There's a lot of them between us and our way out." he said. Iron Mouse looks ahead of them and says, "What if we split up? One of us opens the doors and the other grabs a ship." Mr Devus turns to her, "Are you sure about that plan? It'll raise the alarm and the person that opens the doors might not be able to get to the ship." "I could do it." she said.
"You can grab the closest ship to shorten the distance and there's an open window on the control center. I can jump out of that and get to the ship if you leave the door open. Unless you have a better plan?"
MrDevus processes the plan for a moment. "You really don't want to be in that desert do you?" He says. Iron Mouse Shakes her head. "Fine, but if you don't make it remember this was your idea." said MrDevus. She chuckles.
They sneak off towards their goals avoiding the guards and cloaked men along the way. Half way they split off, MrDevus, taking their supplies, towards a ship and Iron Mouse to the control center. MrDevus takes the closest ship to the control center and begins to turn it on. As he does so he turns on the navigation system and discovers their location in the galaxy. "That's…not right, why aren't we on the map?"
he thinks for a couple of seconds, CLANG. He suddenly hears a loud sound, and looks out of the cockpit. The hanger door is slowly opening and he sees Iron Mouse running from the control center towards the ship being followed by two guards.
"STOP HER!" one of them shouts. Everyone else in the hanger turns their attention to her, and begins to try and chase after her. MrDevus quickly starts up the engine and prepares to take off. Just as the ship lifts off of the ground Iron Mouse jumps and grabs onto the ship and climbs inside. MrDevus closes the door from the cockpit and takes the ship out of the hangar.
"Are you okay?" he asks. "Yeah, I'm fine. I don't know why but for some reason I'd thought that'd be har-"BOOM, the ship shakes and IronMouse falls over.
"What the fuck was that!?!" she shouts.
MrDevus pulls up the ship interface to look with the ship's rear camera. The feed shows a man in a mask flying behind them just as he blasts a beam of energy from his hand knocking out the camera.
"Shit, they're following us. We need to break the atmosphere before it hits the engines." he said Iron mouse Get's up "How do we do that?"
"I'm gonna have to make a jump. It's risky since we're in the atmosphere but we don't have much choice. You're gonna want to strap in." MrDevus responds As Iron Mouse hooks herself into a harness another blast hits them. MrDevus plots a course for Rose and charges up the jump drive. Just as the masked man fires off a shot the ship zips off into space. The ship suddenly stops just above the planet's gravity. A warning flashes across the screen.
"GOD FUCKING..PIECE OF RUSTY SPACE SHIT!" MrDevus rants in the cockpit. "What's wrong?" asked Iron Mouse. "The ship's not able to locate a path out of the system." he said as Iron Mouse reels back her head and groans.
Date: 12/16/269 IG
Location: Rose, Capital of the Astronian-Devlorian Empire; The Bastion, Astronomus's office
Time: 10:00 am
Zentreya sits with Astronomus at his desk looking over the files he pulled from the Library. "How are we supposed to find an entire platoon of soldiers that haven't been seen since the war ended?" she said.
"We start with their last assignment. They were last sent on a recon mission to investigate a disturbance that seemed to be from a remnant of a human empire in the Xiir System" declared Astro
A few seconds pass by
"They never came back and all ships sent after them reported no signs of both the ship nor any signs of the suspected human empires. What do you think could have happened?" Said Astronomus.
"I think that it was some sort of trap. But I can't tell why they would side against us. It just doesn't add up."
Zentreya gets up from her chair and walks over to the window. She stares out into the city and tries to come up with a plan. Then an idea hits,
"What, about the satellites?" she said. "What about them?" asked Astronomus.
"The satellite grid is constantly monitoring all ships that travel in our space. These soldiers won't have the ability to survive in space on only a cruiser. A ship that big needs a steady supply of fuel to run. So they have to have settled down on some planet. We can use the satellite arrays to map the ships movements between stars and find where they stop." she said.
"That could take hours, even days." said Astronomus. "It would if they didn't use a jump-ship, the straight, unobstructed jump-paths that all ships capable of slip-space travel have to take are easy to follow using, say, a military grade supercomputer?" Astronomus thinks to himself for a minute.
"That could work, I'll give you temporary clearance to use mine." An excited Zentreya hugs him.
"You're the best!" she said as she ran off. A minute goes by before Astronomus shoots up from his chair,
"SHIT, I forgot to clear my history!" He sprints out of the room after Zentreya. After the door closes, Melody uncloaks by Astronomus desk's with a wide grin on her face.
"What an excellent idea. I do hope you find them."