CHAPTER 13
The conference room was already occupied, Kiera, the Boss and other official looking people were there. I was only about 5 minutes early. Everyone in there seemed to have cups of tea or coffee and were taking about something or other. They stopped when I came in. There was a whiteboard to one side of this conference room. The walls were a pale blue and the carpet was a dark blue, there was a window with a city view across from me. The Boss stood up. “Commander, you are early”
“I am aware of that, sir”
“Good, well, help yourself to tea and biscuits, the meeting starts at two.”
“Thanks, I am not thirsty” I walked over and sat next to Kiera. “Tea and biscuits?” I asked, with a slightly confused look on my face. “Yeah, it’s a thing” Kiera said, finishing a custard cream. “We get given tea and biscuits in between meetings”
“OK” I sat and twiddled my thumbs for a bit, “What was the last meeting about?”
“Not much,” Keira said, clearly not giving me any more information. Time passed and soon it was 1400. The Boss stood up. “Silence please, the meeting is about to start, this meeting concerns Captain Tonitrua, if anyone was meant to be attending the meeting about how to make big ideas float then you need to be in the other conference room, anyone?” A small scrawny man got up and slipped out of the room. I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Captain Tonitrua, is a space pirate.” The Boss said, gesturing to a screen behind him, he started to go into details of when the Time Association first encountered him and his wrongdoings. I just looked at the picture of this man, if you could call him that – he barely looked like a man. His face was a dark grey and scarred. His hair was a dark brown, in fact, most of him was dark. He wore a long navy blue jacket that looked ex-military and a large belt kept that closed making it impossible to see what was underneath. He wore a triangular shaped hat that was pointed up at the front, this was also falling apart. I stared at this guy, he was repulsive. I briefly tuned in again as the slide changed. “The pirate’s ship is called the Arkanon, it is a traditional looking pirate ship, completely unalike a regular pirate ship once you take away from appearance – although it has sails, it is powered by several proton engines that can usually make the thing run at 100mph It is equipped with many laser cannons that could rip through the hull of a capital ship as if it were tin foil. It has a wooden exterior, but it is supported by a thick metal armour, it also has deflector shields. If we are going to defeat Tonitrua and bring him to justice then we are going to have to infiltrate his ship, defeat his Pirate cronies and then the Captain himself. Any questions?”
I raised my hand, “How many people on the team?”
“It will be just you and Kiera, you two seem to be a pretty effective team”
“Right, and what ships will we be flying?”
“It js a two man ship, and it looks like this –“The boss changed the projection slide to one of a small ship that, according to the scale, was about the size of a car. The ship tapered to a point at the front, there were some small wings on the side and intergrated into these wings were some engines about the size of a dustbin, there was a small guidance fin on the top, and extra guidance fins before the wings on either side. It looked tiny in comparison to Tonitrua’s ship. The Boss continued talking ”This ship is small enough to slip under his radar, you should be able to slip in, dispatch the pirates and slip out again – Tonitrua is now wanted – dead or alive, but alive is preferable.”
“Thank you, Sir” I said
“When do we leave?” Kiera asked
“You leave now.”
“Now?” I asked, we had barely got back!
“Yes, now” The boss said, “There is no time travel involved here – we are against the clock.”
