Book Five, Chapter 32: Dark Aura
"IBECS, this is the Helio. Please confirm this transmission. We have no edible provisions on our ship. Mayday, this is an emergency; we are requesting aid on behalf of KRSL," I said.
That line required hours of planning, including removing all the food from our ship and throwing it out the airlock.
"This is the IBECS. I'm confirming with the Helio AI. It seems that you are out of food. That is troubling. My protocols allow me to permit temporary coupling to provide the Helio with an emergency supply of provisions."
We all started to cheer aboard the helm of the Helio. It had taken us forever to figure out how to get IBECS to let us connect our ship to theirs so that we could actually go into the IBECS and interact with the story. Everything was a puzzle, even things that weren't happening On-Screen.
It ended up being pretty simple.
It was Ramona who figured it out. IBECS would allow us to dock if there were an emergency. It wouldn't acknowledge its own emergency, at least not in so many words. So, Ramona figured, what if the Helio was the ship with the emergency?
IBECS had to help us if we were in trouble, and it was able to help. The one thing that we knew for sure was that the IBECS had lots of food. If we needed food, then IBECS should let us attach even if we didn’t have the proper approval since we were a fellow KRSL vessel.
Exhale. Back to the real problem.
We were already halfway through the storyline, and we still had a long way to go to get the Player Surrogates to the helm of the IBECS.