Inside, Roland rushed through the carpets, up three stairways, and into his home. His wife and daughter were preparing dinner for themselves. "Roland," said his wife, as she places a pot of bubbling carrot soup on the table, "why do you need to spend so much on your projects instead of helping us get out of the tenements?"
"They are necessary for our nation, madam."
"How?"
"You will have to find out yourself." he calmly replied, as he feasted on the steak and carrots as quickly as possible.
"What's the rush?" said his daughter.
"Not a matter."
After the meal, he cleaned his mouth, and rushed towards his room. His daughter watches him frantically open the shelves and cupboards, scurrying through clothing and knick-knacks, and placed several pieces of paper into his briefcase. She then enters, asking him:
"Dad, what's in those papers?"
"Business files."
"Can I help you retrieve them, Dad?"
"Then help me search for the documents with the National Seal on them."
He then placed a strange, blue, and round machine on the ground, and tapped on several black buttons.
"Plug the machine, Lisa."
Both of them, and Roland's wife, could hear poundings on the door.
"This is the police. We demand that Roland surrender to us, right now, or you will join Roland in custody."
Hearing this, Roland frantically shouted to his wife: "Stop them and help me, will you?!"
His wife instead opened the door, and led the cops towards his room. The room flashed with a blinding blue light. By the time both they, and Baker's crew, came into the room, Roland, his daughter, and the machine were gone.
"How did this Roland fellow manage to successfully hack through the jammer systems ... ?" murmured Baker, as he retrieved the few papers Roland and his daughter had left behind. He searched through the contents: "Pagos Military Base, Sector 2, Frigidum Territory."
On the next day, Mr. Baker and his colleagues had a meeting.
"Tomorrow," he said, presenting the papers, "we're boarding a Storm-Vessel to Frigidus. Any questions?"
One of his colleagues, who is Mr. Baker's assistant, raised his hand. "The Storm-Vessels were just built, but are not tested for resistance against the Tellurian Storm, which is much more vicious than any other blizzard in history. There is also the risk of sky-pirates swarming over the areas north of Frigidus, including Telluria. Also, the government has not authorized teleports within 600 miles of our borders, Mr. Baker, and the space transports are not available for investigative crews like us. How are we going to go all the way south to Frigidus through the Storm and the pirates as soon as possible?"
"We use another way: our Storm-Vessel flies to Kybos Island, and we will go island-hopping from there onwards." He typed his keyboard to show possible tunnels, passages, and portals into Frigidus and Pagos Base that are not under Tellurian, pirate, or Sonarian control. "Any one of these will become our destination. Commence Operation Polophylax!"
Aside from the longer timing, everything went to plan. That is, until they are at a point further away from Kybos Island, and nearer towards Frigidus, when they saw the black, wolfish sky-pirate skiffs hovering behind them. The crew readied themselves to fend off against the jetpack-flying pirates, who broke into the Vessel, demanding ransoms more quickly than Mr. Baker's assistant could even pull the rapid-o-lever. Nevertheless, only three out of Mr. Baker's crew managed to use the escape pods alive: Mr. Baker, his assistant Dr Edward, and Miss Rosalind.
There, Mr. Baker used a one-use-teleporter that was granted to him by the High Commissioner. But he did not use it to return to a base somewhere beyond the fringes of Peregrinium, but to instead teleport his party straightaway to the nearest military base to Pagos Base, past the Storm. In the process, the escape pod was destroyed, releasing a beacon that summoned Tellurian aircraft against the pirate skiffs and the hijacked Storm-Vessel.
They found themselves in a vast room, surrounded with still-functioning machinery whizzing, gurgling, and glowing all about, passing by and dodging robots eternally locked in mindlessly dangerous experiments. Unscathed, they afterwards walked out, navigating their way together towards whatever exit that is safe enough for them, and taking plenty of supplies with them.
While they traverse the passageways and chambers of the base, they collect evidence from the holograms and documents, hinting of supplying Peregrinum some kind of superweapon. This alerted the sentry guards, who furiously pursued and shot at Mr. Baker and his party, creating a lot of damage in the process.
They board into a robotic train, old and blackened with rust, with water occasionally splashing about the metallic sides around the heated tracks. As their train flushes out of the base, dashing its water to the walls and sides around it, and into the carved Frigidian landscape, they saw huge, imposing walls of ice gazing down cruelly at them. A gray sky loomed above, lashing howling winds that coursed the cliffs and drifted the gentle fall of snow.
The train goes up a waterfall of a track in a dark tunnel towards another clearing. There it is, Pagos Base. Its barb-wire fences have been worn away by ice, its imposing glass dome is half-buried, the rusted remains of one or two robots popping out of the snow here and there, and the lamps flicker about. But several lights have forced their way through the nearly-transparent snow, and through a certain door, indicating activity within the dome.
Mr. Baker and his crew then move on towards the dome, wanting to stop this threat of a possible superweapon from being realized.
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