Chapter 7: Welcome To The Campus
At the Alliance Army's communication center, the equipment suddenly blared with an alarm.
"What?" The operator adjusted her headset. "Are you sure? What's your spaceship's code?"
Dazed, she put down her opticomputer, hung up the phone, and pulled up the surveillance record of the spaceship in question.
After confirming the situation was true, she trembled as she connected with the lieutenant. "Lieutenant, a civilian spaceship has sent a distress signal. They said they encountered space pirates but have now safely arrived at the transfer station."
The lieutenant spat out his tea in shock. "What? Space pirates? And they made it back safely?"
In the records of encounters with space pirates, those who made it back alive was less than five percent, and they were usually ransomed at a high price. Those pirates were fervent criminals, reveling in murder and destruction. No spaceship had ever returned safely from such an encounter.
"Immediately seal all entrances; don't let anyone from that ship disembark!" the captain ordered, then turned to instruct the Alliance soldiers behind him, "Send a squad... no, all soldiers to spaceship #3232, on standby!"
His face grave, he hung up the phone. The lieutenant suspected that everyone on that ship was already dead, and the person who called them was actually a pirate. The pirates must be planning to disguise themselves as Alliance citizens and infiltrate Capital Octoxis to create chaos!
'That's impossible. No one can do that,' he thought, putting on his coat and rushing to the transfer hub in his vehicle.
The entrance was already sealed, with other passengers inside panicking, constantly asking what had happened.
A junior-grade lieutenant jogged over and stood before him, reporting, "Sir, we've confirmed all the people on the spaceship, including the bodies, are Alliance citizens. There's no sign of space pirates!"