Sunday, 25 June 2017, 1500 hours, north of Topeka, KS
Ham and Judy were outside the main HPI craft, two rovers and a drone between them, undergoing checkout before release. “I’m telling you, Judy, that mana flash a couple of hours ago damn near blew the sensors! I had to run a level-one check on the sensor arrays to make sure they hadn’t overloaded!”
“I believe you, Ham. We on the scout party detected it on our hand-helds. It washed them out, and we had to go back and check again. Good thing we did, cause I found a six-pound chunk of the stuff,” Judy told him as she ran the final checkout on the drone.
“You found that one?” Ham asked before whistling. “If that size record holds up, you’re in for something good from Command.”
“I would trade all my attaboys for more time outside. I’m not looking forward to going back to the rabbit warren,” Judy grumbled as she stepped back from the drone, whose rotors began to spin.
“Once we let these go, let’s check out that Wal-Mart. I’m sure we can find plenty of fresh booze to replenish our stocks,” Ham commented, pointing at the store off in the middle distance.
“That will get us back in someone’s good graces. I swear, the white lightning’s getting worse by the week!” Judy declared as the drone took off.
“We’re also running low on flavors, unless you DO like the pink grapefruit!” Ham laughed as the two rovers, having passed checkout, lumbered off, chasing the drone. “Team One to Control, drone and rovers are loose, We’re going to go shopping at the Wal-Mart. Any requests?”
“No, I think you got our requests down already, Ham,” the voice of the mission commander came from his headphones. “Think you can be done in two hours or less?”
“More than likely, Control. You watch the clock, we’ll get the goods!” Ham said as he and Just started walking to the Wal-Mart. Despite the lightness of the suits, you don’t dare run while wearing one. Running leads to tripping, tripping leads to falling, falling leads to tears, tears lead to mana ingress, mana ingress leads to crispy critter. Not good if you’re the critter.
One hundred minutes, eight shopping carts loaded with bottles of booze, eight more with beer, the assistance of a four-man team, and two carts loaded with powdered fruit mix later, Ham and Judy got back aboard the mother craft. The commander met with the team as they shed their suits. “Great call on raiding the Wal-Mart. Command will appreciate it. They’re not in favor of sending a craft out just for booze, but since we were already out, right?” she said with a laugh, selecting a bottle of brandy from a cart.
“You got that right, Commander!” Judy said with a smile as she selected a bottle of vodka and a bottle of whiskey. As the originators of the idea, Ham and Judy got to take two bottles off the top.
“We’re going to circle far to the south before heading back. The crater’s still thaumically hot, plus natives are there. Just good to remain out of sight, right?”
“Good point, Commander,” Ham said, putting his booze bottles down so he could remove and stow the anti-thaumic suit.
Monday, 26 June 2017, 0800 hours, southern Missouri
Ham sat at his sensor console, the faint headache behind his eyes a reminder of the ship-wide ‘party’ last night. Nobody got really drunk, but after a long time being stuck with white (or red, or pink, or purple) lightning, some real liquor felt good going down.
A ping came on one of his sensors, one he did not expect any activity on. Once he tracked it down, he called the Commander. “Madam, I’m picking up an HPI transponder coding north of Branson. Running check on the coding,” he reported.
The commander was there before Ham could send a request back to base. “That’s Lexington’s craft! When he hared out early last year, we wondered why we could not find it. He must have disabled the transponder, only allowing it to send once it received a signal from another HPI craft. Got a fix on its position?” she asked.
“Yes, I do. It’s about fifteen miles north of Branson, bearing three-four-four degrees from city center. Sending co-ordinates to Navigation. We going to go look?” Ham asked.
“Yes, once I check in with Base. Wonder what happened to him. Well, we’ll soon find out!” The commander said cheerfully as she made her way to the Radio panel to check in. It was only a few minutes later when the HPI craft banked left, heading for the beacon.
Circling the site, at first, nothing was visible except trees. Focusing ship’s sensors, they found the trees were concealing an old Cold War missile silo, one long deactivated. Further scans did reveal traces of the silo having been used recently, exhaust stacks showing recent deposits of hydrocarbon residue. Further search found the transport craft Lexington had stolen, concealed beneath camouflage nets.
Once a way in had been determined, the commander, along with Ham and Judy, got to don suits and head inside to investigate. They found that the place was an old missile silo, with traces of habitation, a power generation system, a burned-out shield generator, and two charred, decayed corpses. The team took samples from the corpses, then checked the computer system. The power systems still had enough remaining power to run the computers, so the three wasted no time to download what data was on there, for return to Base for examination.
Judy got the job of doing a thorough inspection of the inhabited section, finding stray notes, two pallets, a pile of decaying mouse food, and a collection of mouse corpses. She collected the notes in a carry bag, met up with Ham and the commander, then went back to the mother ship for the ride back to the rabbit’s warren they called home.
Unseen by the HPI personnel, several mice with varicolored tails watched the humans work, staying well away from the shielding fields, sending their sight and hearing to the Big Ones, who were in a deep cavern fifteen miles away, in the Talking Rocks Cavern, well down from the tourist portions.
“Well, they took that part of the bait, Lex,” Amelia said quietly, focused more on receiving the signals from the mice than on talking, but she was heard.
“I hope it’s convincing enough, Amelia. I’m sure they are going to go gaga over my shielding notes. I’m sure they will be readable, but there is no way they could interpret and build from them in less than a year, maybe two. I know the idiots in the lab. Deciphering won’t be hard, it’s implementing what I have written down that will be hard,” Lex said in reply.
“Then again, it’s not like we need the shielding fields now, right?” Amelia said rhetorically, glancing at her light brown furred paw.
“No, we don’t. Not any more. The Gen-fives are working out just fine. The Gen-sixes will be even better. All generations are to be honored. They know it, we know it,” Lex muttered as he watched the three suited figures exit the door to the missile silo they had called home for months.
“Maybe now we won’t have to look over our shoulders as much as we have, Lex.”
“We’ll still take precautions, but we can relax some. I’m just glad we have our diamond dog aide to do much of the outside running about. He loves the mice, they love him.”
“Just glad we have the help, Lex.”