RidOv Chpt-5

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==Ridiculously Overboard!! (A Captain Roberts Tale!!)Chapter 5 - Missing Girl==
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"What were they after?"
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Seron was part of the Clan's Watch contingent, brought in after 'miss Amanda Roberts' gave the garrison here the slip in one of their very own Landing Craft.
"I do not know."
"Of course you do not know. If you knew, I would not have been sent." Seron noted, "This is where she was detected, quiaff?"
"Aff."
The building was on the edge of the ruin of this world's first city, near a crater left by the fighting in the rebellion...or A rebellion.
"What systems ran through this data trunk?" Seron asked.
"Nothing of importance, mostly the remnant management systems for the city's utilities..."
"Utilities...do not require a trunk with this much through put."
It didn't take Seron long to figure out what the oversized, overpowered data trunk line was connected to besides the city's utility net.
"Get a work crew, and follow me." Seron led them out into the street, and down an alleyway to the ragged wall of the city, and then over it, and into the near-wasteland where some ship-mount weapon had scoured to bedrock.
"Dig here."
The ruins of a bunker were revealed. A Military bunker. Thoughts of valuable salvage were not there, however, Seron recognized the general remaining pattern.
This had been a command and control site.
With a central computer that was still hooked up, and still drawing power.
"We need to unearth this. Fetch heavy equipment and laborers." Seron ordered. "THIS is what they were after."
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Amanda woke on the ninth twenty-four-hour-day of her flight into the outer system.
She adjusted the course, re-examined the star maps and planetary positions, and recalculated her burn...with some help.
"That's correct, Amanda."
"Thanks." she finished punching in her vector changes and burn rates, then settled in as the shuttle altered trajectory to make for the solitary gas giant in the system. 
While she waited, she palmed the glass eye out of her pocket, and painstakingly got it past her eyelids, until the contacts lined up, giving her binocular vision...and an overlay of her course plot, and destination.
"Yo, ho, yo, ho, a pirate's...life...for me..." she sang off-tune again, before relaxing the couch back and going to sleep.
Somewhere ahead of her, lay things that wanted codes to open and activate, and a chance to stand out AND become exceptional.
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