Mission Orion: The Travel through Time

Chapter 20 | The First Step

I watched as Leo stuffed the food down his throat without a seconds' gap. Poor kid was really hungry I suppose. "I don't know what this is but it is delicious, boss!" He said, with his mouth full. It indeed was tasty. We didn't know what this was. Of course, how could we? This was alien food. We munched on the food for about half an hour until we could eat no more. We drank a lot of water so as to not get dehydrated during our stay in this room. We did not know if we would get water anytime before the next meal. We then collected the leftovers and carried them over to the table like structure which stooped down from the ceiling. The structure then retracted itself and disappeared into the ceiling again. "That was satisfactory." Leo said. Leo and I sat together after this and he told me stories of what life was like aboard Orion Three. He told me that the crew never saw the end coming and had their hopes up until the very end. He told me about the rest of the crew as well, especially someone named Sarah Collins, who was the medic onboard Orion Three. Leo seemed to be pretty attached to Sarah and I could see that he was trying hard to fight back tears when he was speaking about his last moments with Sarah. Leo then got lost in his own thoughts, probably about Sarah and the rest of the crew. I was thinking about Anna when I suddenly remembered something. "Leo." I started. "You said you decrypted half the data, right?" "That's right." He replied. "Did you have time to decrypt the other half?" I asked. "One file. Just one file." He replied. "Then why didn't you tell me what was in the file?" I asked, surprised that he hadn't even brought the topic around. "It wasn't that important. I think all of us pretty much knew about it by then." He replied. "Just that these aliens have a lot of information on Earth and humans." "What kind of information?" I asked back. "Everything. Our history. Our languages. Even our goddamn nuclear codes." He replied. "That pretty much sums it up. They've been spying on us for a long long time." I said. "That's right, boss." He replied.

We spent a few hours walking around the room. We were bored. We had absolutely nothing to do. We talked. We slept. We walked around the room. We had three meals a day. And occasionally some water. Except that, we had absolutely no communication from the people who had put us here.

Two days had passed according to my watch. This planet more or less had the same number of hours per day as Earth did according to the information provided to us back at USRA, but given the recent happenings, we could not trust anyone with information. This civilization had mastered the art of deception.

On the third day, I was awakened by the sound of the door opening. Leo and I immediately jumped to our feet. Schrotanic walked into the room royally with two guards on either side. "Oh captain, today is your lucky day. We have received orders from the higher powers. They say that you should be briefed on the whole issue. That means that you'll be out of our holding cells for a day or two." He started. He then gestured towards the door. "Follow me. You'll be taken to your rooms in the other block where you'll be staying for another day or two." He continued.

We followed Schrotanic and we were joined by the rest of our crew who were led by Bolius. Schrotanic and Bolius seemed to be in charge of this facility.

We took a long walk around the base to reach the other block. From what I could see, Schrotanic was right. There was one way in and one way out. The base was heavily guarded and heavily armed. An external attack would have been certain suicide. Reneesh and I exchanged looks and something in his eyes told me that he now approved of my decision of not attacking their ships. A group of soldiers passed by us, marching. It was so.. Human. It was just like how things worked back on Earth. "This is a military base?" I asked Schrotanic. He glared at me through his glasses. "You'll be told everything later. For now, as usual, not another sound out of your body." He replied. We welcomed a lot of curious glares from many of the soldiers. But to their defence, it is not every day you get to see aliens walking down your base.

We walked for about ten minutes before coming to stop in front of a huge building with absolutely no windows. It had hundreds of guards on rounds around the building, probably on Patrol. Schrotanic led us to the entrance and held up his ID to be scanned and the scanner then scanned his iris. The doors opened with a hissing sound and we stepped in and the doors closed almost immediately. "Welcome to the Research and Development wing of our base." Schrotanic said, with a smile on his face. "This is where the magic happens." He said, gesturing us again to follow him. We were led to a series of doors. We then ended up in another long corridor, with rooms on either side. It reminded all of us about the cells we were kept in until today. Schrotanic seemed to read our minds and immediately said, "These rooms would be like the ones you've been kept till now. They'll be just like the ones you have back on Earth. Regular old rooms. We'll start our session later this evening. Till then, have fun in your rooms." He said, walking away after he had completed it. We were allowed rooms again and yet again, I was placed with Leo.

"Phew! Man! At least these rooms aren't like those weird rooms where we had been kept." He said, soon as we entered our rooms. One of the guards had told that we were free to roam around the corridor between the two doors. There were about ten rooms, five on each side, in which only four rooms were occupied by us. All of us were now free to talk with each other and there were no guards around us. "Why'd they become so nice to us all of a sudden?" Konrad asked. "As usual, I have no idea, Kon." I replied. "How have you guys been?" I asked them. "All good?" All of them nodded their heads. It turned out that all of them had three meals and water, just like us. No surprise. The aliens needed us for their big event. We had to be alive.

Breakfast and lunch were served to us and I'll admit that they were damn tasty! But then, we had to wait till the evening to hear what the aliens had to say to us. And that wait was probably the longest I had in my life. It was about 3:00 PM when the door hissed open and a woman with blonde hair entered the corridor. She rushed over to me very quickly. "Listen." She said in a hushed tone. "I don't have much time but remember this very carefully. They're going to kill you. But not the usual way. They're going to tear you apart, from the inside."

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