Chapter 6 - the first contact III (last)

As Vernond slowly walked through the door, he was once more surprised by the sight greeting him.

Behind those doors was a room which was filled to the brim with electrical equipment.

The equipment he thought he recognized, were servers,and something that looked like generators. Although there was much much more, all connected through cables lying on the floor, he didn't recognize any of it.

The cables all converged into one spot at the back of the room, where something like a terminal was standing. At least Vernond thought so.

He just stood there, at a loss about what to do, because after going into the room he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

As time went by he simply waited, hoping the voice to say something again, but it simply kept quiet.

As he looked through the room, he slowly but surely saw that the only real thing in there was the terminal.

And just as he thought that maybe he should go to the terminal to take a closer look, it turned on like it read his thoughts.

Understanding the meaning of this, he walked forwards until he stood just half a meter away.

Looking closely, he could see that on the terminal that was in a simple black color and had blue linings running along its four edges. It was thinner below its top, was going straight to the ground, and got slightly bigger at the upper part.

"Looks like I have no choice." Said Vernon after carefully looking at the terminal and detecting a spot that's a bit lower than the rest of the surface, having the form of a hand.

Carefully putting his hand on the imprint, that was way too big for his hand, he waited a bit.

As the imprint started shining in a bright green light, it automatically adjusted to the size of his hand and Vernond was surprised to hear the voice again.

"Scanning…"

"Scanning…"

"Scan successful. Vernond Rakos successfully registered as the new owner."

"Ah."

"Wait, what?"

"What do you mean new owner?"

He asked in complete surprise.

"It means you, Vernon Rakos, are the now owner of the Xarilis fleet."

"Oh, right, yeah completely obvious." He said, his voice full of sarcasm.

"Then at least tell me why." He said.

The answer came immediately afterwards. "The reasons are, firstly, you are the only human in the range the ship is allowed to move, secondly on your capsule are substances from a weapons belonging to the Arxos, thirdly you have experience in leading a ship and fleet. And last but not least you're deemed to have your emotion under control and even in dangerous situation you keep a clear mind."

Vernond was a bit surprised by the answer, especially because it apparently knew about him. Therefore his next question was obviously why the Xarilis, or whatever they were called knew about him.

And to this too, the answer came promptly.

"Some data was collected based on what you did on this ship, some data was extracted from your capsule and the rest was acquired through the use of foreign computer systems."

"So you hacked my data…" He said with a defeated look on his face.

"Well, whatever if I get to have such a ship in exchange it's fine. About the ship though, what exactly is this? Why is it so advanced?"

"This ship was once the flagship of the Xarilis, and therefore needed the necessary equipment to stay true to it's job as the strongest ship."

"Yeah, about that, what are the Xarilis?" He asked getting more and more confused.

"The Xarilis once was a fleet of many races, numbering in the thousands. They all poured together their resources and knowledge in order to defeat the Arxos, a species coming from another galaxy, that was invading our galaxy. However together the Xarilis defeated them and pushed them back. Unfortunately we had no knowledge about where they came from, therefore we had no chance to start a counterattack. Then, as time went by and no more Arxos were found, the support for the Xarilis was getting less and less, after a few hundred years, this ship, the Isonoe, was the last one remaining and the previous owner 'parked' it here, plus he restricted the ability of the ship to move on is own. Since then a few thousand years went by."

"A few thousand years?? Alright…" But just as he was about to ask how the Isonoe was able to sustain itself, he was interrupted.

"As I have found traces from a weapon belonging to the Arxos, I have reason to believe that they have come once more, and it's probably the same reason they came last time." Said the voice, surprising Vernond as it now referred to itself.

"Therefore I trust that you will lead the Xarilis once more into battle, except for that you can do whatever you want, as long as you make sure that our galaxy won't be destroyed, like the Xarilis always have."

After listening closely, he roughly understood the situation. "Two more questions though. First, what are you, or what should I call you? And the second one, do you have any tipps for me concerning the Xarilis and my next steps?"

"Of course, you can call me Sarah, and about your next steps, at first you should go to the bridge, I will inform you about the ship and its capabilities roughly, as well as give you some items, now that you're the owner."

"Okey Sarah," he said while grinning a bit, excited about what items he might recieve. "but where do I get to the bridge?"

"Just step in the room you where at before, I will teleport you to the bridge."

Widening his eyes in shock, like he did so much the last half an hour, he exclaimed loudly. "So it really was teleportation!"

"Yes, but the ship can do much more, so if you would go to the bridge, you can find out more."

"Yes yes, already on my way." He said while waving his hand and turned around to walk towards the teleporter to get to the bridge.