Chapter 4: Infiltration!

"Why where they here, on the Mantis? What was she doing? Infiltrating the best kept secret, the best protected thing in the known Universe!? How could she ever agreed to that?! She only had little experience in spying and infiltrating!" These thoughts ran through Rhani's head while she was searching for the location of the Radar sensors to disable them so she and her friends could get away from this huge, incredibly strong ship. Rhani wondered if the Alpha Cruiser was still being chased, but she expected it to be like that, as it would probably be noticable if not, because the 'inhabitants' of the Mantis, consisting of about 22 million people, would most certainly let at least SOMETHING show of their victory on TAG's prime Cruiser! She walked through like a million corridors and hallways, when she finally reached a large hall with a map-board in the middle. Taking a look at that board, Rhani also noticed that she had been walking for nearly two hours! She decided to get a move on, and as soon as she found out where the radar's prime sensors were, she almost ran to that place.

"Dammit, what's taking her so long?" asked Hawke to Dako, both hiding under the walkways of the HOLS-traveller, the same place they were hiding in earlier that day. "I don't know. I just hope she's allright, and that Toren and Rose are OK too. If only we could take a look around this ship! It's huge, i'd really love to see all of it!" Dako replied it whispering, which was quite unnecessary as the ship was abandoned. Nevertheless, they WERE hiding, but that was only as a precautionary measure for when Chari investigators would suddenly appear and enter the ship. Toren decided this, he decided most things in his time with Rhani on the former Delta-2, so he was pretty much used to this.
"Yeah, and get blasted the minute we exit this ship. No thanks, I'll just stick around here! Besides, this ship is so huge, there's probably nothing of real interest to see except if you walk ten kilometres first!" "Yeah well, I wouldn't mind it if we were Chari! I mean, we wouldn't get killed then..." Dako, being a Voran, always wanted to explore and learn things. Vorans became the great trading race because of acts like these. It's logical too; if one would know a lot about the other person, and not vice-versa, he would have the benefit amongst them if they were trading with eachother. Hawke discovered this little fact about Dako after about two years in their friendship, and took it for normal after that. He never bothered himself with it, even in such occasions. "I just hope they can't blast the Alpha, we really need to contact someone from our side. If Rhani disables the radar, will the Alpha escape?" "Probably, they must notice that the radars are off, so they'll probably try something to escape. That is, if they're still alive..." "Don't talk like that, it takes my courage away. Thinking about the possible fact that we could be all by ourselves against 22 million hostile Chari really makes me feel like a worm." Dako laughed quietly at this, but Hawke silenced him by covering his mouth. "I heard something, the door!" Indeed, the door was opening, and three Chari investigators, accompanied by five soldiers, entered the HOLS. Dako and Hawke held their breaths once again, afraid to make a sound. It was terrible, one soldier waited directly above them, and Dako and Hawke heard another soldier tell him that he should stay here, at exactly that point. This wasn't good...

"Hey, someone's coming! Keep quiet!" Toren whispered to Rose, who was next to him. They were both hiding under a walkway too, this one just being further away from the entrance/exit. "Ok..." She whispered back, but Toren didn't hear it. AN investigator walked above them, looked around the corridor to see anything 'unusual' and then headed to the showers. "*sigh* That was close!" whispered Rose to Toren, who hissed at her to be quiet again. Rose immediately shut up again, and tried to lie as flat as possible, to not get seen. In just a few seconds the investigator who supposedly went to the bathrooms, returned and stood at the same place as just before. Apparently, he had seen something he didn't like, or maybe he heard something. A soldier came walking by too, and the two Chari were discussing something, but neither Toren or Rose understood anything they said. After three minutes, which looked like three hours to Toren and Rose, the two men walked in different directions away from Toren and Rose. "Can I talk?" asked Rose so quietly that Toren didn't hear her. She repeated her question a little louder, but then Toren clamped his hand over Rose' mouth. He used his eyes to tell Rose to be quiet. He gave her such a look which made Rose immeadiately understand what he meant, and so she kep quiet again. She was getting annoyed by this, even though Toren had been right the first time. "Why is he always bossing around like that? I sure hope he doesn't think he's in charge of us all, he may be the oldest, but he's certainly not the type who should lead our fugitive gang." Rose thought to herself. All her feelings for Hawke were put aside for the time being, she only thought of Hawke as a member of their 'fugitive' group. She and Hawke had become quite close lately, in just a couple of days! Nevertheless, Hawke was just a 'party-member' now, not her close friend. She had to think clearly, she had to find a way out of here without being noticed. Rhani hopefully would disable the radars, but even then, there were like thousands of Chari fighter ships flying around! How could they possibly escape those? SubSpace took too much time to enter, and just flying away as fast as possible would also be useless. She had the feeling she was the only one aware of this problem, so she alone would have to solve it. Dammit, why did she get into this mess?! Dammit again, as she was starting to look like Hawke, cursing like this! "I think it's clear now, you can talk, but keep it down!" said Toren softly. He had been listening to the footsteps of the Chari, and now he reckoned that it would be safe enough to talk softly. Toren had an above adequate hearing, which came in handy lots of times, such as now. "Good. Now, Rhani is disabling the radars, but what when we shoot out of this bay? There're thousands of fighters waiting for us outside! How can we possibly-" She was raising her voice, and Toren raised his hand to tell her to be more quiet. She continued softly "How can we possibly escape from that?" "I don't know, I have been thinking about that too..." "Well, at least I'm not the only one who's thinking about this anymore" she said to herself. Toren also had no idea on how to escape completely, and both started thinking about it intensively, as there was not much to do else. At lesat not much they wanted to do anyway.

"When is that creep going? Why isn't the other one coming back? Why do I suddenly ask myself all these questions? What is happening!?!?" Hawke thought to himself. He looked at Dako, who seemd to be thinking similar things. It was mow more then ten minutes that this soldier stood above them. Hawke was still trying to hold his breath as long as he could, and everytime he gasped for new air, he tried to do it as silently as he could. Dako noticed it, and wanted to tell him that he shouldn't do that anymore, as breathing normally was making less noise, but he didn't dare to say, or even whisper anything with that soldier standing directly above them. Dako thought to himself about Toren, Rose, Rhani, and about what they all were into. It seemed more than just unbelievable, it seemed unreal. He still couldn't completely comprehend all that had happened in the past three days. The assignment which was strange, the party on the Delta-2, the computer and their little adventure, the trip and mission to and on the Alpha, the party on the Alpha... all this was still quite normal, and could've happened to anyone, or could happen to them again! But after that, the return to the destroyed Delta-2, the escape pod with Toren and Rhani, the flight to the Alpha and the arrival of them in front of the Mantis, the Mantis itself... those were the things that made no sense, or weren't feeling real, more like a dream. He scratched his head, thinking about all this. Then, he was scared to death by an unexpected sound: Hawke snoze, quite loudly even. This was even more terrible than thinking about the fact that they were on a ship containing 22 million hostile Chari! Had the soldier above them heard anything?

"Ahh, there it is, finally!" said Rhani to herself as she reached the maintenance section of the Mantis. From here it would be easy to the radar sensors. There's the sign already. She quickly walked to the large doors of the radar-sensor system operations centre. How long had she been away by now? She forgot when she left, but it just had to be long. She entered the centre, and was shocked: it was huge, and filled with engineers, technicians, etc. She couldn't even discover the location of the sensor control system! This was definitely going to take much longer than she had anticipated! She wandered around searching for the sensor control system, but even if she would find it, what should she do? She never actually thought about how to disable the system. Her only possibility seemed like simply blasting it into pieces, but she knew it would only get her killed. There didn't seem to be another option, she wasn't really ingenious with technical things, so disabling it without damaging was most certainly impossible. Wait a minute, what if she could make sure that it would blast into little bits, but that it wouldn't be HER fault, or at least that no one would think of her for the cause of it? Yeah, that was an idea. She found the system panel, and investigated it. Yes, it would be possible, if only she could be alone with the machine for just a minute or so... She needed a diversion, one which would cause all the technicians and people to leave here. While Rhani was thinking about a way to create a successful diversion, a red light turned on, it was a security light. "Oh no, they found the others?! Please, don't let them find me!!" Rhani mumbled to herself, while a whole bunch of soldiers and security guys entered the room. Rhani took cover behind the panel, which wasn't quite big enough to hide a person, but she tried to look like she was fixing something.
A soldier started shouting. "Everybody out!! There's a reporting of a spy! Everybody walk to the exit slowly!" Rhani pretended as if she hadn't heard the man, and stayed put. "Hey you!!" Rhani shivered, her body trimbled, and she thought it was all over now. "Hurry up in fixing that, we have to exit this place, there's supposedly a spy somewhere!" Phew, that was a relief! Rhani nodded to the man, it was a technician. She took some tools and opened the control panel and stuck her head a bit in it, to make it look like she was really busy fixing it. Apparently, it worked: the soldiers walked past her, and she put a detonater and a 'bomb' she took from the cargo hold of the HOLS. It wasn't really a bomb, it was more like an emergency flashlight, if activated, it would cause an enormously bright light, and burn up. It was hopefully goign to be hot enough to burn the system wires of the control panel. Suddenly someone put a hand on her shoulder. Rhani was seized with fear, she pulled her head out the panel, but hit the upper side. "Ouch!" She shouted. "Sorry, but you kinda seemed a bit suspicious hanging in that board so deeply." It was a soldier, he looked friendly, but serious. "Who, me? Yeah, I was fixing that thing. It keeps braking down, I am beginning to hate it!" Did it work? Would he think she was a real technician of some sort? "Well, I'm sorry I guess. For a second there I thought you were the spy we were looking for. Sorry to scare you like that, bye." He continued his search for the spy, and Rhani sighed in relief. Well, that definitely was almost too close. Luckily, she was finished now, so she could head back to the HOLS and her friends, if they were still there...

"What was that?" The soldier who stood above Hawke and Dako heard the sound of Hawke sneezing, and looked around. "Sergeant? Was that you?" Another guy, a soldier, came running to him. "Was I what?" the guy asked. "I heard a sound, it looked like someone was sneezing..." The other guy didn't say anything, but started to inspect the walls and the ceiling. After that, he looked at the floor, and bowed. Dako thought to himself. "Now or never, if we don't do something now, we're toast!" Dako waited for the guy to have his face directly above Hawke's walkway part, and then he kicked it with his feet in such a way that it hit the sergeant in his face. The other soldier, who was standing behind the sergeant, took his gun and looked in the hole. Hawke was lying there, almost paralyzed by what Dako had done, and the soldier aimed his gun at him. "Who are you?!" said the soldier, hesitating. The sergeant was hit pretty badly by the walkway part, and fell on his knees. "Don't wait, shoot him!" Dako heard this and kicked the part above himself up too. It was next to the soldier, and the soldier was scared by the sudden appearance of Dako jumping out the floor right next to him. Dako punched him in his face as loud as he could. The soldier was pushed back a little, and accidentally fired his gun in the ceiling. "TOREN! WE GOT TROUBLE!!!" Dako shouted as loud as he could. He knew that Toren was the only one who could save them all. The sergeant took his own gun, but before he could fire it at Dako, Hawke had snapped out of his paralyzed status and pushed the sergeant down again. "Dammit, not again?!" Toren said to Rose. A soldier came running up their corridor. Toren kicked the walkway part above him up at the moment the soldier was walking above. It hit the soldier on his legs, and the soldier thudded on the floor. Toren quickly jumped out and told Rose to stay hid. He ran to where the others were. He saw Dako struggle with the soldier, and Hawke was punching the sergeant as hard as he could with only his left arm, as his right arm had been shot earlier. A third soldier walked around the corner, and prepared his gun to shoot Hawke. Toren ran to Hawke, and just before he would've been shot, he pulled him down. Hawke said "Take him!" and kept punching the sergeant. Toren jumped up again and lunged at the soldier. He gave him a roundhouse and swept his feet under him away. The soldier didn't even know what happened to him, and collapsed on the floor. Toren obviously had done that before! However, he didn't notice the fourth soldier, the one he tripped earlier with the walkway part, who was aiming his ion gun at Toren's head. Luckily for Toren, Rose didn't listen to him, as she hit the soldier on his head with an iron pipe she found somewhere. Toren turned around, and was surprised to see the soldier with his ion gun ready, but lying on the floor, and Rose, with an iron pipe in her hands. "What did just happen here?" he asked. "I uh, I hit him!" Rose answered him, as if it was the most usual thing to do. "Heh, well done! You saved me there I think, thanks!" Toren smiled to her. Meanwhile, Hawke had managed to punch the sergeant's lights out, but Dako was still struggling with the soldier. Toren waited for them to turn so that the soldier's head was towards Toren, and then he smacked it with the pipe he got from Rose. She didn't want to have it anymore, so she gave it to Toren. "Phew, safe again..." Dako started when the soldier he was struggling with fell on the floor. "...wait a minute, weren't there FIVE soldiers?? And what happened to the investigators?" "Dammit that's right, there were five..." Hawke answered him. Toren interrupted them. "The investigators are all upstairs, I saw them go there. About that fifth soldier..." He stopped, as he saw something reflect the light directly into his eyes. "DUCK!!" He screamed, and all ducked after just one second. It was right in time, as a blast was heard, and a pipe just above Toren's head was hit by an ion pulse. Rose saw a soldier at the upper walkway, well, she saw his feet, as that was the only thing you could see on the upper walkways. "How did he..." Toren didn't finish his sentence, realising he had to do something about the soldier, otherwise he would shoot again, and this time he wouldn't miss! He thought of pushing the upper walkway for a second, but the upper walkways weren't able to move, as that was useless because there isn't anything below them that you couldn't reach otherwise. He suddenly remembered he still had a fake grenade he used to fool Rhani sometimes, and he powered it on and put the clock at three seconds. Then he jumped up and rolled the fake-grenade towards the soldier's feet. It was a good idea, as the soldier screamed and ran away as fast as he could, seeing the last three seconds tick away. Toren used this oppurtunity to take a gun from one of the soldiers, and ran in the direction of the stairs. "You take cover, I'll take him out!" he shouted to the others, and then ran away out of their sight. "Take cover? Where?" Rose asked the others, who were staring after Toren. "Back under the walkway a the entrance. Hurry!" Dako said, and they ran back to the 'hide-out' near the entrance.
Toren walked slowly up the stairs, making sure that the soldier didn't notice him. The soldier went back to where he shot at Toren after noticing the grenade didn't explode, and tried to find out where the others had gone to. Toren saw him standing there, looking at some sort of camera screen. It showed the lower walkway where he just had been standing. He thought by himself how that could show the lower walkway, as there were definitely no cameras down there. There weren't even much cameras on the whole ship! Only two: one above the control room entrance which was aimed at the stairs leading towards it, and one at the entrance of the ship. Both were to alarm the people in the walkway of any intruders. He charged the gun he took from one of the soldiers, and was ready to shoot. Just as he wanted to blast the last soldier, four hands grabbed him and another two hands gagged him. It were the investigators' hands, who noticed all the commotion, but didn't do anything, until now. He tried to resist, but failed, as even those investigators were quite strong. They took him away, one called the soldier and he joined them too. The soldier knocked Toren unconscious first, for insurance. They dragged him to the entrance of the ship. "Shall we take him to the prisoners bay?" asked one of the investigators. "Yes, I'll stay here. There are still some more hiding somewhere, I'll find them. You just go back before you get killed or something." "Yes sir!" they all said in unison. After that, they exited the HOLS, dragging Toren by his arms. The soldier went back to where the fight had been, to see if his companions were still alive.

"Now, I must hurry back and detonate that 'bomb' thing from the docking bay. I just hope it still detonates even at such distance." Rhani was thinking to herself while walking back to the docking bay the HOLS was in. Even though her 'bomb' was using a radar-pulse which could reach at a distance of over twenty kilometres, she still thought it wouldn't work at this distance. There were ofcourse lots of objects in the way, but nevertheless, it would work. She was just thinking about how lucky she was that she escaped from the soldiers in the sensor control centre, when she saw Toren. He was being dragged by three men, probably investigators because they wore the standard investigator's grey-blue suit. Rhani knew quite a lot of stuff like this, it was part of her training for a soldier planet-class. She wondered how he could've been caught, but most important was ofcourse how to take him back. Without real thinking, she pushed the button on the detonator, and after just a few seconds the master alarm was heard. "YES!" she thought to herself. "It worked! But now what?" She had to do something right now, as the investigators stopped for the alarm. Again, without thinking, she ran up to them and simply said that she knew this guy. She said that he was a spy, and that she would take care of him. The investigators didn't give Toren to her ofcourse, but they asked her why she wanted him in the first place. She answered that she already caught his friend, and that she would take him to his friend. It wasn't a good answer, but she couldn't think of anything else! After hesitating for a second, the investigators decided to let Rhani lead the way to that friend while THEY dragged Toren. Rhani said OK and walked back to the HOLS. One of the investigators asked why she was going back, and she told him that that friend was at the same docking bay the HOLS was, she had put him in a container somewhere near the ship. The three investigators looked at eachother, but didn't argue with Rhani about anything. They all walked back to the HOLS, and Rhani asked them how they caught Toren. One answered that it was a close call, and that they all were lucky, as four of the soldiers were caught by some other spies. Another one said that the fifth one was still trying to find out where those other spies had hidden themselves, and Rhani started thinking again. "Fifth? Dammit, how can I get past that one when I drag Toren back in? How can I get Toren from those guys anyway?" They reached the docking bay of the HOLS. SHe said that the container was next to the HOLS, and that they should hurry up, as that friend might've regained consciousness already. She stopped walking when she stood in front of a high container. "He's in here, just wait for a second here ok?" The investigators dropped Toren and sat on the floor. "OK, but why?" asked one. "I'll go in the ship to help that other guy with finding the other spies, maybe I'll come back with another one!" She smiled as she said this, but it was an obvious fake smile. She opened the door from the HOLS and entered. She heard ome noises of things falling and such, and ran to where the others were hiding, or at least where they were hiding when Rhani left them. When she got there, she was greeted by Rose and Hawke, who were standing there like nothing special was happening, and Dako was just whiping some dust off his clothes after struggling with the last soldier. "We're safe, they're all unconscious." He said to her when he saw her. "There are three guys holding Toren outside, what should we do?" She said, and looked around at the five soldiers on the floor. "Jeez, what did you guys do while I was gone? Had a little party?" "If only..." Hawke immediately said. "...we got discovered and then..." Dako interrupted him. "Discovered by his sneezing, but that's not important now. How did Toren got caught?" "Well, I don't know exactly, but apparently those investigators grabbed him. We really should go back out and kick their asses now! Wait, I got it! You must pretend to be my prisoner Dako, you can still fight right?" "Uhh, yes. Ah, I got it, we walk up to them and then we suddenly grab them!" "Yes, but we must hurry." Rhani said, and walked quickly to the exit. "See you in a few..." said Dako to Hawke and Rose, and then he ran after Rhani. They both exited the ship, Dako pretending to be captured. They walked to the three investigators. "Hey, look! I got him. That other guy is coming, he got the last spy!" "Well done, jus put him here with the other." The words left his lips, and immediately Dako jumped at him and knocked him out. Rhani took the other two, and with her fighting skills it was quite easy. She easily punched out one, while kicking the other one. Without saying anything, Dako and Rhani grabbed Toren and dragged him as quyickly as possible back to the HOLS. One investigator tried to attack them, but Rhani expected this and evaded his punch, grabbed his arm and broke it. As the guy was screaming of pain, they dragged Toren inside and locked the doors. "Hawke! Get us out of here ASAP!!!" Hawke heard this, and ran to the control room. Rose followed him and they both jumped in their seats. Dako and Rhani joined them shortly after, and Hawke started the takeoff procedure. "Did you disable the radars?" he asked to Rhani. "Yes, it was that Master alarm you heard..." she noticed the surprised looks on their faces, and figured that they didn't hear the alarm go off. "Anyway, I hope it's still not working, it was almost ten minutes ago!" The ship was now starting to move, and Hawke prepped the ship for space flight. They felt a little pressure drop due to the pressurization of the ship for space flight, and then they flew out the Mantis. "Wait, how will we get past all those fighters?" shouted Rose, already fearing for her life again. "Don't worry, they'll see us, but as they can't contact the Mantis about locations of other fighters, they won't follow us for safety measures. The only thing we should worry about is to stay alive long enough for me to get us into SubSpace. And for that, Rhani must shoot any missiles or ships who make a threat!" Hawke said. Rhani, hearing that, was beginning to glow with pride: not Toren, no, SHE had to use the weapons/defense system and protect them all! She was so proud! She jumped in the appropriate seat and initiated the system. They were already encountering the radio-threats made by lots of fighters. Dako simply turned off the communicator, as it was getting boring and useless. He only focused on Rose's screen, to spot anything dangerous. Rose saw a missile flying towards them, and shouted to Rhani about it. "No problem, I see it!" Rhani answered. She fired a couple of shots, and it exploded. "How long now, Hawke?" she asked to Hawke. "Just a few more seconds, I'm opening an entrance...dammit!" "What?!" asked all three. "The Alpha just entered SubSpace! Dammit, we can't find them anymore now, they'll go lightyears away now!" Rose told Dako to take over, and walked to Hawke. She put he arms around his neck, and told him that everything would be fine. She thought to herself about what she just said, as she was even more scared than Hawke herself. She kissed him on his cheek, and walked back to her seat, as Dako was calling her. "I'm not really good at this, but isn't that a missile again?" he asked. "MISSILE!!!" shouted Rose to Rhani. "Thank you, spot it!" rhani fired a couple more shots, but she missed. She hastily powered the anti-missile defense system and shot an interceptor missile. It barely missed its target too, but it hit, and the missile exploded in midspace. "Ready, hold tight!" screamed Hawke to all. They strapped themselves in tightly, and Hawke began to enter SubSpace. "Oh my god, thousands of missiles are coming from everywhere! Quick, hurry!!" Rose slowly started, but she accelerated her voice. Just before one of the missiles would hit them, as Rhani couldn't hold them all off ofcourse, they entered SubSpace again...

Haha, yet another chapter done! Hmm, I think this is the best chapter so far, but if you think otherwise, or if you have any comments about my book, just E-mail me at safe.fire@worldonline.nl and I will enjoy whatever it is you send me. Also, if you have any ability to make a beautiful image of the Mantis (or just a normal image) please Email it to me. I have a picture in my mind of the Mantis already, but I can't make cool images myself, and I would like to know how you people picture it. I really do! Anyways, until next time, live on!

Faruk.

You can E-mail me your comments at safe.fire@worldonline.nl!