But before his voice made it up to the bridge, before the pit-boy could scramble back to the captain, Before Braunotee's instincts finally confirmed something was wrong, his world imploded.
Protocol was there for a reason and following it seemed to work against them. But in the end, it's what saved them, in two different ways. Pon-shea Sedona saw Ketty running towards them and became overly excited to the point of ordering her guard detail to double time to the loading ramp. She imagined it clearly enough in her mind, the ship's door open and ramp hanging down midair. Her standing there half way down waving to Ketty as they landed. Then she would greet Ketty with the warmest of welcomes even before the engines had cooled or Maratock could interfere. It was an impressive plan, except one thing...
It backfired.
When the inner airlock opened, Braunotee was blinded with white reflected light from the robot floor. The entire facility was ablaze now that Lindy had activated the control cab. He tried to focus on the task at hand , but two girls were running towards him and he was distracted. Behind them a man cowered under the blaster of a solitary bot, but it meant nothing to Braun, he was mesmerized by Ketty. Even at this distance, she was more striking than he had imagined.
"Mouthpiece, dead ahead," he called out. "I mean it's Ketty Mc'kee!"
"Block the airlock door, if you please, Mr. Braunotee," ordered the captain.
"Aye-aye, Sir!" he said with pleasure. His captain was a genius. The military would be unable to enter until the door closed.
There was shouting from the weapons deck and the pit-boy slid across the floor, landing at Maratock's feet. Braunotee followed protocol and pulled the nose of the ship up just before landing. The other mistake was the shields should have been engaged, but a small piece of wire broke and the lever back in the reactor room never moved. These two circumstances saved their lives.
Braun flinched instinctively at the shadow materializing above him. The sky dome shattered in a thousand pieces and fire erupted on the bridge. A small spring slipped into place as intended and triggered the air ram to reverse eject the perch down, which saved his head from getting crushed, but beyond that he only knew one thing.
"We're under attack!"
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