Sigma/Star

Chapter 56: Grimsley-Rogue

"Came included with the head unit when I scrapped the thing. Didn't wanna use it, no no, thought it was kinda useless but good ol' lil Jimmy, he says to me you never know sir, you never know. Now I know. Should've never left it in there." Ronald did comply though, flipping on various switches and beginning to cast out the different invisible nets into the surrounding area.

The two ended up sitting there for a couple hours, two more than they thought they would when first stopping. Part of the reason was the ineptitude with the machinery, botching the first couple of scans and losing the results and other times searching for the wrong things by mistake. After a few fiery arguments, they had resolved everything and finally had the correct procedures underway.

"Report coming sir," Ronald snidely remarked, trying his best to venomously pronounce sir and instead ending up whistling through the empty spaces in his mouth where teeth once were.

"And?"

"Oh."

"What's oh?"

"It uhm...it looks like we actually got something," Ronald admitted dejectedly.

* * * * *

Marian wound his way through the harsh metal corridors of the warship. As a commander he had ventured through every little crack and crevice a person could find on each ship in the armada. He was expected to have it all memorized and understood, as if this were his ship to be captain of.

Of course, it was not. The ship had a complete crew that did nothing but fly, day in and day out during war times, and they knew the ship just as well as Marian did. After all, it was their home for many.

Much of the hallways were plain and indistinguishable from the next; steam vents and fluid pipes interlacing electrical cables that bunched together on the ceiling, mingling with the light fixtures. Sometimes they covered up parts of the bulbs, creating oddly shaped shadows on the hard floor but there otherwise wasn't a dark part of the ship. It had been built that way. They all had. Were an enemy to infiltrate the place, why give them shadows to work with? Complete illumination was common practice in most modern vessels in any country's armada.

Marian took another turn down one more path. To the casual observer, it would seem as though he should be lost without windows or guidance, without a map or point of reference. But his memory served well and the Brigadier General eventually stopped in front of a door where a few of his other generals were held.

Inside was a rather well-decorated room, filled with military paraphernalia hanging from the four box walls. Different pilot uniforms from the Enian Federation, scraps from Goliaths, and various weapons were boxed, framed, or pinned, while the outer edge of the floor had one long bench that wrapped around the three walls to face the door.

Adorning the plush pillows of the bench were a handful of generals, who were dressed in different versions of the standard pilot uniform. Some had simply acquired the different variants over their years of service while others had personalized theirs with a multitude of adornments and alterations until they became something unique. As generals they were the only class of soldier capable of doing something like this, though they weren't nearly as flamboyant as the Artisan generals' outfits.

Marian immediately commanded their attention as he entered the room and surveyed each of them. However he gave a curt nod towards the centerpiece of the room, a metal circle that rose up out of the ground and had steel tendrils that snaked out and sunk into the floor, collecting power from the hidden lines in the ship, and each of the generals turned their gaze towards it. It wasn't unusual for Marian to avoid pleasantries and greetings; they knew who he was, he knew them, and every second was precious in war.