Space Odyssey: Spectre-Chapter 525: Unlucky Thirteen VIII

A green ball of light unraveled and then General Ariel appeared and fell to her knees. {Damn that human. We need to-} She stopped as she stood and saw the occupants of the ship she appeared inside of. They looked like some of her trusted guards. But she could tell they were not. {What they hell are all of you? What have you done to my subordinates?}

"Hehehe... you are a hunter. You managed to trick and trap the predator. I am Prey." A dark form appeared, stepping out from behind one of the Mortella. "My thanks but I must say... Your blindness to my presence was a benefit to watching your plan in action. Without the Predator, I can act freely."

{You... What the hell are you?} General Ariel looked around. Thankfully she sent Gabriel and the rest of her guards ahead to the scouting base ahead of time. Whatever this thing was, it seems to have killed the three six winged subordinates she left here.

"I... am Prey and she wishes to speak to you." Prey explained.

{She?} General Ariel suddenly felt a shiver down to her core despite her armor heating up and helping her movement. She turned and stared in horror. {You! A dark elf! No! They are extinct! Every race agreed to drive them to extinction!}

"Hehehe..." The woman giggled as she pulled down her hood. "Indeed. But we are managing to claw our way back. But more importantly." She looked in a particular direction as her eyes flashed purple for a second. "I must thank you. I could not act if the Origin of Spectres was still in the galaxy. Now I can freely manipulate to my whim." The woman announced in excitement.

{You... you can already see the future.} General Ariel was despairing. If she had an expression it would be one of terror.

"Your subordinates will believe you stayed on the ship to the end and then this system will fall into endless war. While that happens, I will take the few Dark Elves that have grown and hide out. As for you..." She walked forward and ran a hand along General Ariel’s chin. "You will be a useful subordinate."

{No-} Her voice was cut off as her body glowed purple.

The dark elf chuckled manically as she moved toward the front of the ship and the rest of the Mortella kneeled. Prey bowed, "I will go prepare for your departure. But to think you would abandon the master who rediscovered you."

The dark elf scoffed as she waved off Prey. "He did not rediscover us. We let him find us. There is a difference. Now then, are you sure you would not like to watch the show? As soon as he leaves, the fun will really kick off. I can’t wait until the Mortella arrive. Of all the species, they are the easiest to control."

"No. I do not care. We have our own preparations to make." Prey declared before he slowly spun and then disappeared into the ground of the transport ship.

"Hmm... how impatient." She remarked before she spun around in the pilots chair and watched the Mortella command ship in the distance. "General Ariel, how long before your trap triggers?"

{Ten minutes, maybe sooner, depending on how much damage they did to the core.} General Ariel explained. {Then they will be destroyed.} 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"No they won’t but it was a good attempt." The dark elf chuckled. "They will survive by the skin of their teeth."

{How?} General Ariel asked.

"Hehehe..." The dark elf chuckled in excitement. "You see..."

—------------------------

The door slid open and they found Shilla and Colvert working on a device that seemed to have been put together within the last few minutes. Cain glanced at the hobbled together device and could already tell what it was.

It was a transmitter. Designed to send a single secure packet of code in a single burst transmission. Fortunately their people were expecting something like a transmission. So they should be able to pick all of it up.

"That should work. We need to condense the data as much as possible." Cain informed them as Jamal and Valkyrie carried in K and Shinobi who were both injured.

"Glad you agree I thought-" Colvert started but stopped when a siren began blaring in the room. But the tone of the siren was strange. It was beeping infrequently and seemingly inconsistently. "What is that?"

"That is-" Cain stopped himself as he started translating. "Morse Code, it is something from Ancient Terra. It says ’The ship is a trap. General Ariel teleported off ship. The portal core of the ship is drawing power.’" Cain explained.

"A trap? Why is he contacting us like that?" Valkyrie asked.

"Because he is trapped or can’t make it there in a manageable time." Victor grunted out. "We need to get to the core."

"I also need some help with building this." Colvert explained. "You know, in case we fail."

"Then what should we-" Jamal started.

"All of you work on Colvert’s transmission device. I will go to the core. It will be faster if I go alone. Colvert, I just sent you my portion of the data." Cain informed him before turning and running back down the hallway. It was doubtful they managed to slip a program by him.

But there was one way they could have set up a trap without him noticing. That was if the program had a delayed activation. But a self destruct program was not present when he checked. Even if it was delayed he would have noticed. But there could be another way, crashing the ship. It would not be difficult to program the ship to crash.

Actually that might be exactly what is going on.

—-------------------------

The triple layered door was bad. He could not open it up even with his control and command over electricity. He was truly locked inside. But it was clearly not made with him in mind. There must be a number of creatures out there that can do something similar to his abilities.

Fortunately, his powers were not something he overly relied on. Which was why he was slowly moving through the room to find the opening he was searching for. The vents were too small for him to slip through in his armor. But there was an opening large enough for him to move through.

The opening is a maintenance shaft that runs along the bottom of the floor. But the entrance which opened to the room was hidden from this side. Which was why he was struggling to find it. Especially with the layer of ice that was covering the ground. It was too late to undo that. So he would just have to force his way inside.

Which would be easier than forcing the door open since it was not reinforced by metals that are on par with Chemi-metal. "Found it." Jace ran his gloved hand along a break in the metal floor where the ice seemed to seep into the ground.

He pulled his vibro-laser sword off his back and ran electricity through it. It hummed loudly in the cold as he cut through the ground. As soon as the initial four cuts were down he materialized his spectre knife and used his knife to leverage the opening open. Once it was up he sheathed his sword and tossed the piece of ground to the side before jumping into the hole.

Once he was inside he began crouch-walking through the corridor. The cold continued for a few minutes until he arrived at another maintenance entrance that was not covered in ice. It slid open easily enough and he jumped down into the hall.

A quick check of the ship schematic showed he was a few minutes away from the portal core. That just gave him just enough time to arrive but not to stop it. He had to hope Cain or someone else would be able to stop whatever the trap was.

He ran through the corridors past plenty of Mortella bodies and destroyed drones until he arrived at the portal core room. The portal core room was the Mortella’s main power source room. Just from his rough analysis of the situation he was sure that the Mortella utilized some type of portal technology mixed with an energy source to power the ship. He was not completely sure how it worked since it was still the first time he had seen it and was not focused on solving that particular mystery.

The door to the room opened up as he found the room was glowing blue from the light coming off the core. Near it was Cain who looked back at Jace. "I could not stop it. So I just had to enter in some random coordinates and hope for the best."

"What happened?" Jace asked through gritted teeth as he could feel an incredible weight on his body almost like he was moving through space. "What is the trap?"

"Was, it just triggered. It would portal jump us into a star. But now the coordinates should be somewhere safer. At least I hope it is." Cain admitted as his claws cut into the ground as the ship moved them through space.