Taking Space 2

THE ASSASSIN

XRenia walked down the docking plank leaving the Savage Razor suspended in air held in place by docking clamps. Ignoring the hundreds of people milling around the docking port she turned to her right and headed straight for the alleyway. What she found however was a twenty foot wide long hallway crowded with every type of conceivable machinery.

"So much for the long dark corridor I was expecting." Michael said from off to Stephanie's right as he watched the command deck's main viewport showing the first person view from XRenia.

"Yeah, with all that machinery I doubt your sensors will be able to see anything," Steven added.

XRenia stopped and peered down the long hallway as Stephanie quickly switched through all four of the available vision scans equipped on the android. "You're right it's all just one big mess I can't see through it all."

"This looks like a setup to me," Daniel complained.

"Could be," Catherine admitted, "Steven is there anyway you can hack the surveillance cameras without your drones?"

"Yeah. Here Stephanie give me control of XRenia."

Stephanie took off the hat and tossed it to him.

Steven took control of XRenia and walked back out away from the long hallway and into the large docking port. "Ah, there," he said as he noticed a broken down docking arm that had been pulled out of the away of traffic and set against the wall. XRenia casually strode over to it and grabbed a hold of one of the docking sensors and ripped it clean off then jammed her fist into the mess of wires behind it.

"Connecting," Alf said.

Steven ripped the hat off and tossed it back to Stephanie then quickly brought up a set of screens at his workstation. He tapped on them vigorously for a few moments as he said, "Installing... Exploit. There. I just convinced the system that this docking arm because of its damaged sensors needs access to external cameras, rerouting images through XRenia now."

Hundreds of camera views appeared on the main viewport.

"Good job Steven!" Daniel exclaimed.

"Great job actually," Michael added as he enlarged all the cameras at once causing all the walls of the room to be filled with images. He blinked and shook his head. "The only problem now is how do we know which ones are the ones were after."

"Here let me," Catherine said as she reached out and started to eliminate camera views until all that was left was the handful of cameras overseeing the long hallway.

Stephanie put back on the hat and walked XRenia away from the broken docking arm before someone got suspicious as they all carefully looked at each remaining camera view.

"Well it looks like there's no one in there," Daniel said after a moment.

Mike leaned back into his chair. "That's good, we must've arrived before he did, we are a few minutes early after all."

Stephanie guided XRenia towards the alleyway. "It also means we get to choose the exact spot hallway where we meet."

"Speaking of which," Catherine said enlarging one of the camera views. "About two thirds of the way back there is this large stack of crates you should easily be able to pull them over blocking any escape if he tries to bolt."

"Good eye. Headed there now," Stephanie answered.

XRenia made her way through the oddly shaped storage room like hallway towards the indicated location but halfway there she saw movement out of the corner of her eye as one of the machineries vanished replaced by a tall muscular bald man.