“Did you break him?” He asked in a deadpan voice
“I believe that I must have, either that or my previous diagnosis was dead right, and this is his way of celebrating success.” Seo-yun answered in the same deadpan voice which only served to throw Tomas in another fit of laughter where he needed to reach out and grab the nearby wall for support or risk falling down.
Elias watched his boss for a few seconds before returning to his conversation with Seo-yun
“I’m guessing that means you accepted the job?”
“Yes, though now I wonder what exactly did I let myself be drawn into?”
“Don’t worry you will learn to ignore these kind of moments, welcome aboard by the way.” He said shaking her hand.
“Thanks, and you mean this kind of thing is a regular occurrence?”
“It has been known to happen from time to time.”
While they were chatting as if they were lifetime colleagues Tomas managed to get himself under control, he quickly righted himself straightened his clothing and turned his eyes to Elias and Seo-yun.
“I haven’t had such a good laugh in decades; it seems that your employment has already paid off.” Tomas looked around to the other employees in the hangar, all of which turned their heads away when they saw him looking their way, he knew that word would spread about his outburst, and that a new rumor about him would start circulating, Tomas didn’t care about them and let them go wild, usually the rumors died down on their own, if only his employees knew how close most of them were to the truth.
Chapter Four
“Is your team ready?” Tomas asked.
“Yes, this is Laura our computer expert, Greg who is studying dead languages, Mel our demolition expert, and Johan engineering expert.” Elias said indicating each person in turn, all of them had their helmets on so their faces were hidden. They looked impressive and menacing in their dark blue-black light armor, combat suit which was covered in light alloy plates on critical areas, chest, thighs, back, shins and forearms. Helmet was a full faceplate, made of unbreakable tinted glass.
“Alright, how are we doing this?” Tomas asked.
“Laura and I will take point, Greg and Mel will be in the rear, with Johan, you and the Professor in the center. You don’t touch anything until we secure the room we are in. Any sign of trouble Greg and Mel will escort you out while we cover your retreat.” Elias said. He and Elias had spoken briefly about the operation before; the explanation was mostly for Seo-yun’s benefit.
“Very well, let’s go.”
“Wait.” Seo-yun said “We aren’t going to put armor like them?” She asked.
Elias look at her “There is no point, light armor won’t save you if you run into trouble when you don’t know how to move in it, and you aren’t trained in the use of heavy armor, we will cover you, and if we run into something that we can’t deal with then we are all already dead. But there is no need for worry, if there was someone inside they would have already gotten out, at most we will need to deal with automated defenses but even that is unlikely, and armor is only a precaution.” Elias finished and then put his helmet on.
Tomas saw that Seo-yun wasn’t all that much reassured with Elias’s words, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him.
“It will be fine; Elias and his team know what they are doing.” He tried to make his words as convincing as he could.
Seo-yun look him in the eyes, he could see something there but wasn’t able to identify it before she shook herself and her usual confident self-reappeared, she nodded gravely and they turned and went down the stairs to the level of the ships entrance.
Elias and Laura entered first disappearing inside the ship, a few seconds’ later lights inside turned on, eerie blue light shone on the two figures inside, Elias and Laura who had lowered to their knees and were scanning the interior with their scopes, The rest of the team moved quickly to the entrance and took positions a moment later Elias turned his helms speakers on and yelled. “Clear!”
Tomas and Seo-yun moved carefully inside while the rest of the team moved further inside towards the doorway that lead further inside. Once they entered they could see that they were inside a kind of a hangar, the room was 15 meters wide from wall to wall and maybe 20 meters deep, with the ceiling being around 5 meter high. The room was mostly empty save for a few strange looking crates pilled on the right side.
Elias approached them his face hidden behind his faceplate. “The lights seem to be automated, they turned on when we entered a few meters inside. As we thought there doesn’t seem to be anyone home. We can stay here for a few minutes or continue inside.”
Seo-yun looked around and shook her head “I think we should continue, there doesn’t seem to be much here, and the next team can look through this room more closely later. Unless there is something you want to look at?” She said to Tomas.
“No, those crates might warrant a closer look but nothing that can’t wait.”
They continued making their way inside, as they entered the doorway from hangar to the next corridor the lights again turned on, with the same eerie blue washing over the metallic walls, the light intensity was low, like the light was covered with a blanket.
“The lighting might suggest that whoever used this ship had delicate eyesight.” Seo-yun said.
Tomas nodded, that had occurred to him as well. The corridor wasn’t long, a few meters at the most, with four doors on the left and right wall, two on one side and two on the other opposite each other. The doors were closed and didn’t open when they came close, there was a panel of some kind beside each door but apparently it wasn’t under power. The celling was around two and a half meters tall perhaps judging by the gap between the top of Elias’s head and the celling, since he was the tallest in their party at two meters and ten centimeters, the doors themselves were about two meters high, so that Elias needed to lower his head when he went through. They continued down the corridor to the next doorway, the hallway was at an angle upwards which then turned by 360° so that they rose above the hangar and the corridor they were previously in. The purpose of next chamber they entered was clear immediately it was the ships control center. The team quickly moved thought the room and cleared it. It was shaped as a half sphere, so that the center of the room was in fact the center of the sphere, the round walls had no devices or instruments on them, they were smooth and made of a different kind of material than the metallic walls in the corridors or the hangar, the room was around 7 meters across, in the center there were two small chairs, with no handholds, and some kind of consoles, the chairs were turned towards the back of the ship, which seemed odd at first, before it dawned to Tomas that they probably didn’t need to see the outside to pilot the ship, and if they did the vision of the outside was most likely generated on the consoles, there were two more consoles one to the left and one to the right of the center ones, with some kind of plate placed on the floor further inside the room behind the center consoles.
“Well this seems a bit—”
“Anticlimactic” Tomas finished for Seo-yun
“Yes…”
Tomas approached the middle console the one with two chairs, he looked down and saw a series of levers on the edges on the right and left side, with the middle being smooth and of a strange light silver color.
“The ship is obviously under power, yet these consoles show no sign of being active.” Seo-yun said.
Laura approached with her helmet removed; she had close cropped black hair and was Caucasian with maybe just a bit of Asian ancestry thrown in. She peered down. “There doesn’t seem to be an on switch, maybe the ship doesn’t have enough power, or maybe it was damaged, we don’t know why it was at the bottom of the ocean.”