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I finish writing in my journal and look up to see Asya finishing her shower.
She smiles and says, "It's all yours."
I head into the showering area and clean the dirt and sweat from the mission we had just finished. About an hour later I leave the wash room just as Nyquist enters the main room from the corridor.
"Ah, Aquarii, I trust I haven't caught you at a bad time?" Nyquist apologizes
"No, this isn't a bad time, I just got out," I reply.
"Really? Ok, as you recall I told you that after you retrieved our statue for us I would give you some options. I have four different options for you. One, we will return you to your planet, but you've been gone for about four months now. Two, you can join our crew and be our secondary planetfall explorers. Three, we would be willing to give you one of our atmosphere ships which you could explore the galaxy with. We would give you all the knowledge necessary to run and maintain the ship. But again the universe is extremely dangerous. We could not guarantee your safety. I'll give you a week. Then you must decide."
After Nyquist leaves I look at Asya. "What do you think?"
"I don't know, going home sounds great but four months is a long time to be gone and then suddenly appear again. I'd also rather explore and visit planets on my own prerogative instead of the aliens," Asya explains her thoughts.
"I agree, we probably shouldn't go home, and I'd also rather control where I visit instead of being told where to go. I'll ask questions about the options with other crew members for the next few days.
About a 6 days later Nyquist returns.
"Have you made a decision?" Nyquist queries as we sit down.
"Yes we have. We'd prefer to have the ship and explore the galaxy. We couldn't think of anything to pay you back with, though," I respond with conviction.
"You have more than paid us back for the ship," Nyquist replies, "The statue you retrieved for us is worth the ship and a full load of supplies for it. The supplies will last you about six months. It also has starcharts that are updated automatically when you enter a port. The charts show the ownership of different regions of space as well as places of rebellion and of places where this ship will be attacked on sight. Our race isn't necessarily liked by everyone."
"Understood, I still feel like we should pay you something, back," Aquarii nods.
"Maybe you'll find a way to pay us back in your own way. I still tell you you've already paid us enough for the ship. As well as all the information you've gathered for us," Nyquist insists. "Head down to the library and present these passes so the attendants can download the correct information."
Nyquist hands Asya and I each a plasti-steel card and leaves us to our thoughts.
"We've never needed cards like this before, I wonder if this information isn't open to general populace?" Asya examines the card, slowly turning it over in her hands.
"Would you put technical information like the design and use of a government spacecraft open to anybody?" I pocket my card, "Com'on lets get jacked in."
We head down toward the library when suddenly I find myself flung toward the wall. A split-second later Asya crashes into me. We're under attack! I steady myself and help Asya to her feet just as another shockwave hits us, sending us flying to the other wall across the corridor. We stumble into the library section and strap ourselves into the linkup seats. The seats provided amazing protection against buffeting. I yell to Asya over the warning claxons that we should probably collect our information and attempt to get to our ship. She nods and starts digging in her pockets. I pull my card out and slip it into the slot between attacks. I feel the plug connect with my neck and glance over to see Asya slip her card into the slot. I realized right before she slipped the card into the slot that it was cracked on the one side. I prayed it didn't damage her, right before the transfer protocols knocked me out.
When I awoke the first thing I noticed was the ship was quiet. I glanced over at Asya to see she was still unconscious. I unstrapped myself and slipped quietly to the floor, I was worried. The normal attendants of the library hadn't moved us to the restoration room, and weren't in sight. I heard a strange voice in a language I couldn't recognize and quickly unstraped Asya and half carried/half dragged her under one of the library consoles out of sight unless someone actually bent down and looked. I saw the doors open and two pairs of green scaly feet walk into the room. "Wow! I wonder how many other species are human in shape?" I thought suddenly.
"There aren't any Sinas in here. What's next?" My internal translator tells me.
The lizardmen leave closing the door behind them. I look as Asya suddenly as she shifts position. I carefully pick her up and move her to a restoration bed and then pull our cards from the chairs. I glance at my log file and then delete it. I move to Asya's and realize the she hasn't woken up yet because her damaged card caused an additional hour of data to be uploaded into her memory. I erase her log after copying it to my datachip. I move to the central computer and erase every record I can find relating to us our planet or the existence of humanity from their computers.
What great timing Asya must have! As soon as I finish erasing humanity from the computer system, I hear Asya waking up. I quickly move over to her and whisper quickly, "Shhh, Asya, the ship has been taken over by the Lizardmen. How in the world did I know they were called that?"
"Silly, didn't you realize that the last upload gave us the ability to identify all species in the known galaxy?" she whispered back. "We should probably try to get to the shuttle bays. We may be able to go and get some help for the Sina."
She stands up and heads toward the back of the room.
"Asya, whatever are you doing? The exit is in the other direction."
"Arii, I don't want to be caught. We're going to use the airduct system."
"Ok, I wouldn't of though of that."
"That's why we make a good team, we can think of something to do in any situation between us. Come on, lets get moving," Asya carefully pulls the air exchange cover away and slips in.
I follow and quickly pull the panel back into place as I hear the door to the library opening. I look around the 'small' airduct. It would easily allow Asya and I to walk side-by-side down it. Asya motions me down one passage. We wander through the air transportation system for about an hour. A few times we had to stop because a guard was near the access panel. I peek out the grid work and see the three atmosphere ships in their docks.
"Ok, now that we're here how do we get into the A-ship and then it out into freespace?" Asya quietly peeks out the grid work.
"Well, the ships aren't guarded that I can see but I don't know the exact layout of the docks in relation to the vent system. Wait, I thought I saw a datalink in the last passage, wait here a sec." I quietly dash back up the corridor to the ajoining passage and see the dataport. I glance around for a utilities compartment and pull out a datalinkup cable. I plug myself into the computer and have the ship show the positions of all lifeforms on the ship. I notice all the Sina had been moved to the cargo hold on level two. I also count around fifty lizardmen throughout the ship, mostly in the bridge, engineering section, and outside the cargo hold. I lock all the doors on the ship under a encryption program I had memorized from home that Nyquist's best crackers couldn't break. I then unlocked and opened the cargobay's doors releasing the Sina from captivity I also quickly sent release permissions for our ship. I unplugged and keeping the cable headed back toward the docking bay.
"Asya, lets go, I released the Sina and want to get off this ship to try and help by attacking the Lizardman ship," I pant as I reach her.
She struggles with the door and we head toward the ship Nyquist gave to us. We enter the ship and I head down into the engineering section while Asya heads toward the bridge. I reach engineering and trigger the emergency start system. As the ship heads toward the launch platform I trigger the remote manual door releases. I'm surprised as the doors disappear in a dazzle of blaster stems blowing. I also grab a handle as the atmosphere in the dock rushes out into space. The ship is launched into space at what must be rather fast considering the mothership shrunk to the size of a drek on my vid screen. I hear Asya scream through the comm system and then notice that behind the Sina ship there aren't any stars. I release the zoom from the imager and watch the ship shrink to the size of a single pixel. I then see why Asya had screamed. A huge black ship that could easily have swallowed a thousand of the Sina's ship as if it were pixie dust!
"Asya! Get this ship out of here fast!" I call through the comm.
I felt the ship lurch at the sudden increase in speed and started adjusting the main reactor to get more speed. On the monitor I notice the Lizardman ship starting toward us pulling the Sina ship along.
"I wonder why they don't just bring the Sina ship inside?" I wonder aloud.
"Maybe they don't have any space left." Asya replies startling me.
"Hu? On a ship that size? How can they not have any space?"
"Maybe its all personnel or troop space. Or maybe its used for the engine. Oh, No, They're gaining!"
"Lets try the hyperspace booster." I suddenly yell.
"You don't have to yell. Are you ready?"
"Go for it!"
I brace myself just as the ship lunges into the hyperspace fields. I look at the gauges and notice one entering the red.
"Would you raise the harmonics by point three?" I ask.
"Sure thing. Any destination?" Comes the reply.
"Any idea where we can collect some ship upgrades real cheap?" I ponder.
"Not anywhere this ship is welcome. Do you know of anyway to change our transponder? Anyway, we aren't moving till we set a destination. We are perfectly safe here and time has stopped for us. We may run out of food though. Hungry?" Asya appears at the entrance to engineering caring a plate with two bowls of steaming, alphabet soup.
"Yea, I'll go get us some soup and bring it up," I say as I turn to see her standing there with the soup. "Ok, how'd you do that?"
She giggles and hands me on of the bowls. We sit on the only table in Engineering.
"You even brought alphabet soup. How did you know I was going to get that?" I looked in to my soup.
"Lucky guess, I guess," she breaks out laughing.
We both laugh for a while and finish our soup. I then start working on modifying our transponder to give off a no-id signal. Asya leaves the engine room. After about five hours of work I hit the call button. "Asya, where are you?"
"Rec room, come join me." The speaker in the wall replies.
"Rec room, I didn't think this ship had one." I mumble. "Contact, how do I get to the recreation room?"
"THE REC ROOM IS ON DECK TEN SECTOR FIVE." Contact drones.
"Thanks." I head toward one of the lifts.
When I enter the Rec room, I'm surprised to see Asya soaking in a hottub.
"Asya, You aren't supposed to spend more than half an hour in one of those you know." I comment as I look around.
The room was almost twice the size of the bridge. There's a swimming area, a wrestling mat, some different table games, (ping-pong, foosball, air hockey) and of course the hot tub.
"Don't worry, I just got in right before you came in. Come on and join me. The waters great!" Asya smiles and holds up a Strawberry Smoothie.
"Sorry, but I need to find a place to get additional fuel or maybe find someway to make some money. Dreks don't translate well into galactic credits." My seriousness seems wasted on her.
"What about Darkover? That place is where a ship crashed about a century ago. There should be lots of metals and things we could use. Get in the hot tub, It'll relax your nerves." Asya urges.
"You've really thought this through, haven't you?" I ask astonished she knows so much about the planet.
"Not really it just came to me. I can give you the coordonants." Asya takes a sip of her smoothie.
"Ok, what are they?" I ask quickly.
"Only if you join me in the hot tub. Come on the waters great! The computer can provide you any type of swimwear you want. Just plug yourself in." Asya splashes some water toward me and motions toward the area labeled 'Changing'.
"Asya, you know I could always look the cords up in the computer." I figured she'd break down and tell me.
"You could but it would take about two hours to go through all the planets even with the speed the computer could calculate at. Then it would take another hour to find where it would be at this time." Asya confidently points toward the changing area.
Suddenly I find myself in the water as the ship shudders violently.
"WARNING! WARNING! SHIP IS UNDER ATTACK! WARNING! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS." Contact blares.
"How it that possible?" Asya asks as she climbs quickly from the water.
"Beats me." I splash around in the water trying to get my feet under myself.
Asya charges through the door toward the bridge as I climb out of the pool and start to follow. I turn off toward the engineering section while Asya attempts to figure out who is attacking them. I hit the wall hard as the ship shudders again.
As I enter Engineering Asya calls over the comm, "Some odd ship that is almost constantly phasing in and out. They must have figured out how to launch missles through the hyperspace ether."
"Well pull us out of the ether and return fire!" I quickly check the shield strength noting it was still about 99.5% of full strength.