Shortly after my last log entry, a doctor came in and drugged me up with something, I don't know what. My memory gets pretty fuzzy for a while after that. I remember an old doctor coming in, and putting me on a hospital gurney. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. After that... I remember waking up in a cyrogenic tube. The same old man was pulling me out, but this time he wasn't dressed as a doctor... I fought back. I didn't know what else to do. I was desperate and not thinking straight. I don't remember if he said anything or not. I managed to break free of him, or he let me go. Either way, I found myself in some kind of cargo hold. There was a small ship in the corner. I had seen one like it before...
"Does this thing have Stealth capabilities?" I yelled, even though I knew the answer. This was it! With this, I could get back to the Aedos before anyone could stop me. I ran as fast as I could toward the ship. The old man yelled at me to stop, but I ignored him. I thought that this might be my only chance for freedom, ever again.
Looking back with a clear mind, I regret my hastiness. But then, I acted fast, running purely on survival instinct. I jumped in the ship, and figured out how to launch it. Hmm... no exit. Well, I could deal with that too. The old man was no longer in sight, and I armed one of the missiles mounted on the tiny ship. I aimed at a bulkhead as far away from myself as I could find, and fired... the missile lept off the launch rail, and tore a massive hold in the side of the cargo bay. The blast knocked the ship into the nearby hull, and then the entire cargo bay just disintegrated, the results of explosive decompression. I flew out of the hole and into the darkness of the surrounding nebula. The ship that had brought me here engaged cruise and disappeared into the night. Apparently, the old man had managed to disengage the cargo segment before I blew a hole in it.
It didn't take too long to get my bearings and lay in a course for Planet Houston. My head was a bit clearer now, and as the adrenaline wore off, I started to think again. Who was that old man? What did he want with me? Somehow, I got the impression that he had actually rescued me from the hospital. But why?
Way to go, Tannik. Someone finally rescues you, and you thank him by clobbering him over the head with a pipe, stealing his ship, and blowing a hole in the side of his cargo bay.
The worst part was that I could have gotten answers if I had stopped to think. And now, I had none.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. So very many unanswered questions.
A short while later, I was in orbit above Planet Houston. Nobody had approached me... apparently I had been right. This was a stealth ship, a one-manner used to slip individuals into places unseen. What was that old man doing with one of these? My imagination pondered this question as I slipped into the atmosphere and began my approach to Houston Spaceport, where the Aedos was parked. The lights twinkled in the night ahead of me, and the columns of flame from spacecraft thrusters reminded me that space commerce knows no sundown.
Suddenly, a warning light flashed! My gut plummeted. Hull breach in the engine compartment. It was minor, but I knew that it would grow. A tiny crack had developed around the H-fuel storage area, probably when the blast from the missile ripping through the cargo bay slammed the ship into the bulkhead. Since then, it had continued to grow, expanded by the force of the H-fuel seeping through it. The crack would continue to widen from this force until the fuel decompressed explosively. At best, I would be dead in the water. At worst, something would spark and the fuel would catch fire.
Normally, this kind of thing is easy to fix. You land, empty your fuel tanks, and repair the problem. But I didn't have that luxury. I couldn't risk being arrested and sent back to the hospital again.
Fortunately, the docking bay occupied by the Aedos was roofless. I had a rough idea where it was, but it still took me a few minutes to locate. Just as I did, another alarm sounded. The hull breach was starting to reach critical levels.
As carefully as I could, I eased the ship into the docking bay and started descending. There she was beneath me! The Aedos, just as I had left her, maybe slightly dustier and rustier. I moved to the side, and was only a hundred feet off the ground when alarms blared again. The ship had decided to initiate emergency engine shutoff. Unfortunately, it hadn't considered that this was an extremely bad time to do so. I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach as the small craft fell the last 100 feet with no power to hold it in the air, a captive to gravity. A second later, there was a loud crash.
Somehow, the impact didn't blow up the ship. I was at least right side up, and the well-designed landing gear absorbed a good deal of the impact force in a well engineered but extremely noisy way. I hit the manual cockpit release latch, slid it open, and dived out of the ship. I didn't have much time. Even if the ship wasn't about to explode any minute, someone was bound to have heard the crash and come to investigate.
I ran to the Aedos, unlocked it, and jumped in. Power on, shields up. As I spooled the engines, I saw through my cockpit a group of guards running in through the door. As I lifted off, a few small laser blasts bounced off the shields. Poor guys, I thought. They must think someone stole the ship. I grinned a bit at the irony, then my grin ceased as I thought of the timebomb of a ship I'd left in the docking bay. I hope they get clear in time...
But there was nothing I could do about that. I engaged full power and blasted full speed out of the atmosphere and into the sky. I nearly cried as I saw the stars appear in the deepening black from the cockpit of my own ship. I was free again, at last! A thousand questions haunted me, but I had the most important thing.
I made for Freeport 2, the nearest destination where I could dock and feel safe. Once I've had some rest, it's time to look for answers.
![[Image: aedos_mini.jpg]](http://students.cs.byu.edu/~sushi/aedos_mini.jpg)