Taking Space 2

- Now What? -

Adolf slammed his fist against his desk, he had been played for a fool. Vilex, had raided his mobile black site taken the prisoners then destroyed it.

Very few knew of its existence and no one, but him and the people on the mobile station knew where it was at, at any given time. However, a day and a half before this he had Cmdr. Eldridge deliver some of the more interesting characters they had detained involving the cow to its location and because they were scheduled to be moved again shortly after questioning he hadn't bothered with relocating the station.

He closed his eyes. Vilex knew him too well. He knew he wouldn't bother moving it, he knew that such a transaction with a cow would prompt the detainment of those involved and some of them would be moved to the mobile black site, and he knew tracking the commander who delivered them would be impossible but capturing him later, quite feasible. The whole thing had been one giant set up from the cow all the way to his prototype android showing up on White sun station. And he had played perfectly into his hands.

He rested his face in his hands. Vilex was older wiser and knew exactly how to get at him, hubris had stopped him from seeing it before but now he realized it and it was time to stop playing by his rules.

He tapped the top of his desk and the intercom beeped. "Gather the generals and my advisors for an emergency meeting."

None of them were going to agree with what he was about to do next but none of them, but him, understood the threat they were now facing.

***

The droid Daniel was currently controlling stood staring down at an odd-looking spherical machine about the size of a large beach ball. After several moments of glaring at the object Daniel opened his eyes and rubbed his chin as he said, "Are you really sure that's what this is?"

"Yes, I'm sure that's the sun harvester the Armorer promised to sell us," Steven said without looking up.

"But it's so small," Daniel argued. "I thought it be shaped more like a torpedo and have a cockpit."

Steven looked up from what he was doing. "A cockpit? Are you insane? The thing may be coated in an inch thick of TG38, but it flies into the inner atmosphere of a star!"

Daniel shrugged. "Yeah, I thought it be pretty cool to see."

"See? There is nothing to see! It's a star!" Steven declared.

"Yeah, but you said yourself the inside of a star has an ecosystem, I want to see it," Daniel continued to argue.

Steven clasped his hand over his eyes. "Oh yeah, you go ahead and get inside that thing. As soon as it gets within three hundred thousand GSU of a star it will get so bright on the inside that it burns out your eyes in a nanosecond then turns the rest of you into ash in a picosecond."

"Oh," Daniel said. "But I thought the sun armor—"

"No," Steven said cutting Daniel off. "I'm not going to try to explain to you how a sun harvester works I don't even know all the details myself. Just put it with the TG38."

Daniel sighed realizing that his dream of actually flying into a sun was never going to happen. Ever since the Armorer said he was selling them a sun harvester he had fantasized of flying it at breakneck speeds over top of a molten surface of the inner atmosphere of a star dodging solar flares as he scooped up buckets full of Stardust. But harsh reality was always cruel to him.

Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth in concentration he took control of two more droids. The three droids he now controlled surrounded the sun harvester and picked it up then carried it through the dimensional door they had set up and set it down in the grass besides a pile of sun armor taller than him.