Kingly Adventures

Chapter 82: Expeditions and Start of The Phantom Menace (Part 4)

AFTER A FEW MINUTES ON THE DECK OF THE EXPLORER:

Iss'ek found himself lying on the floor and was quite confused on what he was doing on the floor. Suddenly, Aleena's smug face came into his field of vision and she said, " I had expected you to drop your datapad out of shock but you surprised me and dropped dead yourself.....Ah!!!!....Sorry!!.....I mean fainted."

Iss'ek popped himself up on his elbows and looked outside the deck and saw the massive behemoth floating in the space. Iss'ek saw that the ship was pitch black in colour,  shaped like a helmet and there were two golden structures pointing slantingly upwards towards the sky from the both sides of the helmet. Iss'ek turned towards the technician officer on the deck and said, " Can you scan that monster?"

The tech officer shruggred helplessly and said, " We tried but that monster is invisible to our radars. If I was not seeing this with my own eyes and was fully aware that I was awake , I would have taken it as an absurd dream."

The Communications Officer, " We are being hailed, Sir!!"  Iss'ek turned serious and said, " Open the holo-comm."

The Holo-comm crackled to life and a rough voice came out of it, " WELCOME TO HERMES!!! This megacarrier is our ride to the deep core. Our computers have calculated your arrival time, based on it, you will board Hermes in 6 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds. Wait patiently till then. The imperial officer on the deck will be your guide in the megacarrier." After hearing the message,  everyone turned to Aleena for answers.

Aleena said in a prideful tone, " HERMES is a megacarrier capable of transporting thousands of capital ships from one place to another. This megacarrier will be used to transfer all the capital ships primed for the deep core exploration."

A technician asked in confusion, " What is a megacarrier? How many capital ships this monster is able to carry?"

Aleena continued, " A megacarrier is the giant big brother of the star carrier.....Before you ask about the star carrier, I will tell you now.  A  star carrier is a transporter developed to transport capital ships from one place to another undetected as movement of hundreds of capital ships is easily noticed. This Megacarrier is capable of transporting 15,000 capital ships... Don't ask anymore questions, you all will be provided with the information packet, when you dock inside the ship." Aleena left the deck and contacted her superiors, reporting her arrival and the briefing she had given the Corellian personnel. She then, turned her attention to outside and saw hundreds of capital ships entering the HERMES, from the bottom of carrier. The ships moved below the carrier, placed themselves orderly below the carrier and then, they together moved upwards and vanished inside the carrier.

After the allotted time, the Explorer also moved below the carrier. The deck was filled to brim with people while the video of entry was being broadcasted to all the persons on the Explorer. When, the entry came into view, everyone was astonished as there was no entry!!! But, one look above them, made them see that the capital ships were seemingly going through the solid bottom without hindrance. All the people were confused and looked towards Aleena, who just sighed and said two words which greatly irritated the people but they could do nothing, " Information Packet!!"

The ship was moved upwards and when it arrived at the other side, two massive pilers graped the ship and put it on a platform. A shield came active and encased the ship and platform into a bubble. All this happened before the crew members could even get over their surprise of entering through a solid wall. The people looked around and saw thousands of ships placed on similar platforms and the platforms while carrying the ships were floating in the air. There were not able to see much from their vantage point.  After the last ship got through, the ships were reshuffled and similar sized ships were placed together. Then, the floating platforms interconnected with each other through several large and wide bridges. Thankfully, the bridges had railings.