In Leviathan form, Lea’s serpentine body stretched roughly 12 meters long, taking up most of the hangar. When she telepathically let us know she was ready, we all climbed up on her back and fixed ourselves in place. Falling off would mean being set adrift in the cold darkness of space, which was something we all wanted to avoid. Once we were all prepared, Fam gave her crew a signal and the pirates from earlier opened the hatch in the rear of the hangar. There was immediately a blast of what felt like strong wind, but it only lasted for a few moments. It didn’t take long for all the air to be sucked out of the room. Lea waited for things to calm down, then took off.
“Ealim Nekram!”
Harissa then cast her invisibility spell on the seven of us, Lea included. Once Fam’s crew was sure we were out of the hangar, they closed up and fled the scene. That was partly for their safety, and partly for ours. If they stayed in range and continued to volley with Iris’s fleet, we might get caught in the crossfire. We were small enough that, out in open space, we were practically undetectable by radar. And thanks to Harissa’s magic, we couldn’t be seen either. That was a dangerous situation to be in on the battlefield when we were completely undefended.
Once Fam’s ship had taken off and we were safely on our way to the fleet, Lea telepathically asked for further direction.
“Which one is Iris’s ship?”
It was Fam that answered her.
“It’s the giant battleship with the extra-large cannons installed on the front.”
A giant battleship with big cannons, huh? With that hint, I began scanning for it too. Using the equipped enhancement functions in the helmet of the space suit that someone had shown me how to use earlier, I zoomed in on the fleet. And hey, there it was! It was easy enough to spot the battleship with the huge guns on the front... Like Fam had said, it really was massive. If something like that fired a beam at Earth, it would turn the planet into a donut. That’s just how big this thing was.
And Iris is in there somewhere...
I tightened my grip on Lea’s back as we flew towards the flagship. The rest of the fleet was still firing here and there, but only at the fleeing pirate ship. They hadn’t noticed us. High-powered battleship radars just weren’t made to detect small living beings, it seemed.
“This sure would look stupid to any third-party observer!”
“Damn right!”
L agreed with me with a sigh. Nobody else ever would have come up with such a foolish plan. The six of us were clinging to the back of a legendary beast, charging into what was basically a suicide attack... But as foolish as it was, we were slowly getting closer to Iris.
“Almost there.”
No sooner had Lea said something than Iris’s flagship came into plain view. It was close enough to see without the zoom function in the helmet anymore.
“Search for any boarding hatch you can find.”
“Got it.”
Lea flew around the flagship and found a passenger boarding door.
“All right, just give me a quick moment.”
The doctor untethered herself from Lea and floated over to the door. She secured herself in place and took a small tablet out of the backpack she was carrying. She then ran a small cable from the tablet to the console beside the door.
“Could you give me a hand, L?”
“What? For hacking? You can do that much yourself.”
Despite her griping, L floated over to the doctor and pulled a cable from her sleeve that she plugged into the same console to assist the doctor. Between the two of them, it took about a minute for the red light on the console to turn green.
“It’s open now, but the door itself is quite heavy. Would you mind opening it, Lea?”
“Certainly. The rest of you should hop off first, though.”
Lea pulled up next to the door, and we all switched out tethers over from her to the uneven exterior of the ship the same way the doctor had. Once we were all in place, Lea returned to her human form and approached the door. She put one hand on the handle and wrenched the whole thing open with her superhuman strength, unleashing an incredible torrent of air that came flooding out from the ship’s interior.
“Get inside! Quick!”
“Easier said than done!”
The force of the wind was so strong, it was hard to move through it.
“I’ll help.”
Lea gave each of us a hand, basically pushing us into the ship one by one. There were a few close calls with a couple of us almost getting sucked back out into space, but we managed to hold on to each other. Once we were all in, Lea brought up the rear and closed the door behind her. We finally had a second to catch our breath.
“Hang here for a minute. I need to raise the partitions L and I just adjusted.”
To more or less jury-rig an airlock, the doctor had closed partitions in the ship to isolate the passageway we’d be entering before Lea opened the door. Now that we were safely inside, she’d have to put things back the way she found them.
“I cut the emergency alarm beforehand, but there’s no hiding the pressure drop we just caused within the spaceship. That’s undoubtedly gotten some attention, so we should be careful going forward.”
“Got it. All right, everyone, let’s quietly stick to the plan.”
We changed out of our space suits to make it easier to move around stealthily. The hallways of the spaceship didn’t have their own gravity. That basically meant we were floating along, kicking off the walls for momentum. Thankfully, however, the hallways were rather wide, and we could move past other people without bumping into them. While we were invisible, we still had physical forms to be conscious of. Running into someone or otherwise accidentally touching them would give us away, so we had to be especially careful on that front. The extra-wide hallways made that much easier.
But just like the doctor had predicted, it seemed the ship’s crew had detected the pressure abnormality. There were people running around in a fluster trying to figure out what was going on, so we had plenty of targets to dodge. Progress was slow. We still had some time yet before the fleet was set to attack the agency’s headquarters, but being stuck in a traffic jam like this really made me feel the pressure.
“Calm down, Rekka.”
“Yeah...”
Fortunately, I had good friends with me who were helping me keep my cool. Being able to communicate telepathically on a stealth mission like this was exceedingly useful. Not to mention Harissa’s invisibility magic. We made a great team for this. And so, bolstered by my allies’ strength, I continued to move forward until we reached our destination: the command center of the flagship. The only catch was that there seemed to be no end to the stream of people coming and going.
“There’s no real break in the foot traffic.”
“We’ll likely bump into someone if we proceed carelessly. Let’s retreat to the corner for now.”
“Good idea.”
We followed the doctor’s suggestion and moved to a corner of the hallway and observed things for the time being. As the nerve center of the entire flagship, the command room was constantly abuzz with activity. Reports were coming in, information was going out... There was no end to it. It seemed a bit over the top to me, but I guess that’s just how things run on giant ships like this. To be fair, they’d just been taunted by a rogue pirate ship, and a boarding door had seemingly opened and closed for no reason. The latter was especially suspicious since it might mean intruders... Wait, who am I kidding? It did mean intruders. We were right here!
We’d actually passed several security teams combing the ship for intruders on our way to the command room. Moreover, this flagship was about to lead an all-out attack against the agency. There was an incredible amount of data coordinating going on without the trouble we’d caused. We’d only added to it, leaving the entire ship in a rather hectic state. It didn’t seem like things were ever going to calm down, which meant we’d never be able to sneak our way into the command room.
“Hmm... Should we whittle down our numbers to the bare minimum for the plan to work and force our way in?”
“If we force our way in there, it’ll be chaos. It would be terrible to get split up like that. Besides, if we get too far apart, Harissa’s spell might not hold up.”
“Ugh, good point.”
Unable to come up with a good plan, our only option was to wait and see if an opportunity would arise. But after a little while...
“Hey, guys?”
“What is it, Fam?”
Fam held up a finger and tapped it against her forehead twice... No, she wasn’t pointing to her forehead. She was pointing to her horn.
“If chaos won’t do, why don’t we kick it up to pandemonium?”