17 (DSV Nautica) Incursion Part 2
Lyn nearly groaned when Ash relayed her new orders. Now it was hard enough getting out of the ship, but now she had to sneak a peek at the AI core of the ship? This was turning to hell fast. The other team members were busy mapping a route to the bridge, and she appeared closest. It was precisely at that moment that the power went out. Lyn took no time in jumping up and opening the door, squeezing out and running full sprint down the hallway. She decided she would let them live with the mystery of the power outage and oddly opening door."Lyn, 45 meters straight, then to your right. Left. Then right. There will be a lift that will take you up 35 levels."Lyn groaned. The lift could be one pain in the ass to get past."Of course there's a lift..""what was that?""Nothing."She followed his instructions to the letter, finding the lift in use. She quickly darted in, waiting for the door to shut. At this point she could either wait for it to randomly take her to the bridge level, or she could go the easy way. She popped the maintenance hatch off the top, resealing it with ease. She pulled the board off her back and mounted it. The board charged, and lifted the cloaked Ayr'een up 35 levels in mere minutes.
Stopping at the correct level, she had Ash check the security to make sure no one was coming. Once confirmed, she pried the doors open with her Rapier, groaning as she squeezed herself between the doors. She didn't have to worry about alarms. Ash would suppress them from outside.Lyn ran down the corridors as fast as she could. It was a long way to the bridge. She had to find another way."Ash, weren't there trams leading through the ship?""Yes...stand by. I'm sending you the location of the nearest one."She knew where it was now. She hurried to the tram, pulling her board out and hovering over the ground, several hundred meters in the air. Following the rail, she dodged the trams bustling with people, lazily weaving through the giant ship. She couldn't lie. As primitive as the technology behind the design was, it was a great achievement. If only they had more time they could get a team in here and do recon for a few weeks, get a wealth of information...Lyn arrived at a security checkpoint that lead to the officer areas. This was it. Ash worked his magic and created a glitch in the paging system, calling an officer outside. As soon as the paged officer came out after a few minutes, the doors slid open, and Lyn coasted through.
She was in the command areas. She just had to find the AI core. The Intel wasn't flowing as quickly as before. There was a rattle from behind her as two of her team members came up the elevator shaft behind her. They silently spread out, looking for a data terminal they could use. Nothing.Lyn moved quickly down the hall, and took notice of a word written
on the wall. She frowned and submitted it back to the Erebus for translation. While waiting she began tapping on a nearby keypad, sticking another polymer patch to it. The translation came back, reading as "Bridge". She noticed the word also had an arrow. Ha...Lyn moved quickly up to the mentioned bridge. It so happened to open as an officer came running out. She vaulted into the air and as quietly as she could, pressed her feet into the walls, hands on the ceiling. The officer ran under her as Lyn vaulted into the bridge, bumping into a console. It drew a few looks, but luckily no suspicions yet. She saw the AI. Or at least a hologram of it. He was engaged in what appeared to me a hostile face on a monitor. It looked like either the captain or an officer on the Black Spot. Hm. She dressed funny. Lyn tried not to chuckle as she crept over to a console, attaching another patch to a data port and letting it harden, searching for the AI core.
Ash began his search through the database, while pulling most of the team out it was a mess of a database. It wasn't hash-table searching. It was linear stored data. This could take awhile. He growled and sent an assistance request back to the Erebus so he could get another pair or eyes on this.Ka'ya was taking all the notes she could, including something rather golden. AI core access. Apparently the code was required for any kind of access, period. Including this station, which relayed orders to other parts of the ship. No No No! Damn...the crewman was walking away...Ka'ya briefly considered doing a flat out body swap, but that was only done when there was no choice in a situation. This was just Ka'yas curiosity.Lyn finally found the core. It was in an auxiliary room in the data center. Thank god it wasn't far. Now she had to get off...the bridge. Lyn let out a groan. A couple officers looked around, confused. Lyn covered her mouth, eyes wide. She very well may have blown her cover, despite being cloaked.Aki paced the bridge, going over the data they were getting. Apparently the Nautica had gotten the acting captain Kial after their last captain, Neesah, went missing.
Their last captain had gone down planet side to a recently terraformed planet......recently terraformed.Aki did some cross-checking with the coordinates in the Nautica's database, hashing them to the Erebus' navigational equivalent. Damn. Right on. Their captain had disappeared from the planet that they had left Flare's team on. The will aura...Aki pulled up more data, the cross reference with known Draconid signatures. She compared the residual will energy signature from the planet with the detection sign of a Draconid creating a wormhole to transverse large distances in space. A damn close match, but there were subtle differences enough to make Aki furrow a brow, if she had eyebrows. The residual
match was definitely some kind of transport. But who and where? She fed it into the Erebus' keystones for further processing. The Ayr'een had long sought a liner teleportation solution. Had the Draconids found it? Was that the signal they detected? If so, they were so screwed.