Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 6.2

Day 125

Euphrat was an odd-looking space station, now that I had it on the video feed before my eyes.

If you watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, great movie, can't recommend it enough, you recognized the circular design. Much like the Dragonfly's habitat module, the white ring spun to provide its inhabitants with gravity. Thanks to its greater size, nausea wasn't as much of an issue as here.

At the ring's center lay a docking station. It was a white circle perforated by holes for the ships to enter. The Firefly already occupied one dock. The docking station's one-and-a-half-mile length equaled a mere tenth of the Euphrat's diameter.

A network of electrodynamic tethers connected the station to various solar panels and particle accelerators surrounding it.

Further exterior to it circled trees growing in zero gravity capsules, crafts too distant for me to tell if they were ships or stations.

Crick eyed the trees, intent on figuring out how they even functioned. Eventually, their eyes darted to the space station where they belonged.

"I think it's best to show us where the ship is, Professor," Helix transmitted.

On Crick's order, the space station turned red and yellow. In the upper-right portion of the thermal video, I spotted the ship we had been searching for. An egg-shaped body glowing in yellowish orange with a red ring at its equator. Starsnatcher.

Incredible, how I always forgot about its invisibility. I once asked Crick about this. According to the explanation I got, Starsnatcher utilized a technique named metamaterial cloaking. The ship's hull was made of optical materials that somehow controlled the way electromagnetic radiation passed the ship. By carefully bending electromagnetic radiation around the hull's molecules, no light got reflected and we couldn't see anything. It was like having a bunch of mirrors around the ship, only that these mirrors cast no reflection. Instead, they let the light pass through.

Naturally, being under an invisibility cloak meant Ay and co. couldn't see either, so they used highly advanced sensors to perceive their surroundings.

Helix and Crick eyed Starsnatcher in fascination.

Only Tesla and Kira ignored the screen. Tesla focused on the panels, as usual, while Kira searched for computers in whose reflections she could comb her hair out of boredom.

"Besides Pilot, I would like everyone present to turn towards the camera screen," Crick transmitted.

Naturally, "everyone present" meant me and Helix. Both because Kira couldn't understand our transmissions and because Crick tried to ignore her as much as possible.

Starsnatcher grew an inch on our screen. Not because it was coming for us. It merely moved closer to the camera to tell us that it knew we were here. It also knew that, if a space battle broke off, Starsnatcher could atomize us in milliseconds.

"Our enemies are close, but so are our reinforcements," Crick transmitted. "If they fire, we fire back. Our enemies understand. They might dominate us individually, but we have superior numbers. An all-out war is undesirable for either side."

Nothing in their mindwaves gave away if Crick genuinely believed in their speech or if it was a pep talk for us. Even a whole fleet of ours had a hard time against Starsnatcher.

"Both enemy ships already sent crafts into the space station," Crick continued. "It is more than likely that we will encounter beings with access to singularity stones. Only Human and transhuman are equipped to deal with such threats. Thus, the two will go alone only accompanied by combat robots. At Human's suggestion, they shall be equipped with virtual reality cables."