Chronicles of a Forgotten Planet/4

Kala feverishly worked at the keypad system, inputting the codes required to gain access to the Otter's territory, through which, they'd enter the Feline's territory. Alex and John were going through their PDA's, digesting some new intelligence info that they has just received, “Say, John... What can you tell me about the Felines? Information in school about them was, how shall we say, not forthcoming.” John rummaged around his memory, “The felines are a patriarchal society; Women are the more powerful of the sexes, and Men are treated as Second-class citizens. They have a large mechanised army base, and their rumoured to have developed several advanced technologies, which they've been keeping from every other race, for their own gain, at everyone else's expense. When the time is right, and when they've developed sufficiently powerful weaponry, they'll launch into an invasion. Projections indicate that, should they launch a strike within a month, they'd overwhelm the continent within a month, but it's questionable right now if they'd survive an onslaught when the reinforcements arrive shortly after.” Alex gulped, “Now I see why we have to resort to espionage...”

Just as Alex was contemplating how the world would end, Predina successfully entered the last code on her side of the gate, causing the door between her and Kala opened nonchantly, and the darkness appeared to invite them in. Laprina was the first to enter, followed shortly by Kala, Sorona, Predina, John, Kitsake, Brantaka, and finally, Alex. All eight of them followed the tunnel, illuminated weakly by a small series of small, obviously unmaintained, emergency light, “It's amazing most of these light are still working, I'll bet no-one has been down here in decades.” said John, the sight of these light's excellent manufacturing obviously impressing him. Brantaka was fiddling with his communication device, the signal from the beacon in their territory rapidly deteriorating as they approached foreign territory, “Hey, John... any idea why we're losing connectivity with HQ down here?” “Every race, as a precaution, jams non-native EM frequencies. These, by definition, include Radio Signals. But, we've done a little reconnaissance, and we've worked out what you need to do. Re-tune your device to listen on the frequency 187.00, instead of the 150.00 we normally use, the Otters have purposefully cleared that frequency for our own personal use. But it's unencrypted, so you are to use your own encryption for any messages transmitted to HQ.” They all nodded. As in any case, they each had their own encryption methods. It was the mark of an intelligent employee to see specifically to that. John looked aghast at what just came into through his PDA, “Hmm... now we know just what the Felines are planning.” Alex put on his curious face, “And what would that be?” “You remember that matter-energy transport device I said they were working on?” “Yeah.” “Well, we've had a look at just what kind of power it's drawing... we've run the data by our data analysists and intelligence specialists, they didn't have a clue, so we passed it to our Science Division. The person who gave us the results, was both exited, and horrified.” “I assume that's not good?” John coughed. “No, it's not. I'm not allowed to divulge more information than that, I'll share more information when we get to the actual device. Until then, all you need to know, is that it must be stopped.”