The Titan crew finally approached the Daedalus Crater, where Octus was sure the entrance to the moonbase was. Sure enough, he was correct: an unusual metal panel in the shape of a giant square was at the bottom of the crater.
"Titan's armor has recharged, so we may form it again if necessary," Octus told them.
"Good to know. It's time to go again. Nobody blow anything up since Arthur's down there," Lance told them. "And let me know if either of you find the brig. Arthur's likely being kept there."
"How do we get in?" Ilana asked.
"Titan is our solution, as usual," Octus explained. So the group formed Titan briefly to lift up the pad for a moment, reverting back to their spacewalk forms to slip through. Octus closed the panel back in place, not wishing to let the vacuum of space suck everything out. Lance and Ilana turned on their armors as they fell down to the landing bay below, where the Mutradi were waiting for them. Most had weapons, and the few that didn't jumped and latched on to our heroes, tackling them with surprising force. Lance quickly brushed off the ones that had latched onto him and shot them all with Manus' machine guns. Ilana quickly used her shields to knock off hers, and Octus just electrocuted the ones that had gathered onto him. The remaining Mutradi with weapons tried to stay back and fire, but our heroes were too durable and too quick to be impeded by this now-diminished group. A few attacks sent most of them scattering, save one Formutoid that fired his gun at Corus' heart. Octus immediately rushed to tend to Ilana as she fell from the blow at her weak point, while Lance tried to step on the Formutoid that did this in anger. But the Mutradi nimbly leaped up and landed itself on Manus' face.
"Forgetting our priorities, are we? What ever happened to saving poor Arthur?" The Formutoid asked Lance quizzically. The only thing separating them was a metal mask about a foot thick. Lance was too stunned by the fact that this Mutradi could speak (Galalunan) English and worried by his question to react. Thankfully Ilana had recovered by this point and shot a laser at the Formutoid, knocking it away and sending it running off with the others. But not before giving Lance an eerie look with its red eyes.
"Are you all right, Ilana? Sorry I zoned out there," Lance said.
"I'm fine! I didn't know Mutradi had that good aim!" She remarked. They don't, Lance thought as they continued out of the hangar and into a hallway leading in multiple directions.
"Which way is the brig?" Lance asked Octus.
"I cannot tell. The fact that we are on the dark side of the moon blocks off my contact with Earth satellites. I usually use these to survey unfamiliar locations, but since I have no contact with them I cannot map out this facility until I have explored it."
"Ok, split up, then!" Lance ordered. Octus was about to do so when Ilana held out her hand to stop him.
"No, that's ridiculous! Remember what happened the last time we raided a Mutradi facility and split up? We all got captured! We can't let that happen again! If we can't just instantly figure out where the brig is, it would be best for us all to stick together!" Ilana argued.
Lance gave her words some thought. In the past he would have insisted on his way, but now he had come to see Ilana as more than just a princess with no knowledge of fighting. She had just fought off a Mutradi by herself, after all. Well, she didn't quite kill it, but she did most of the damage and saved Jason and his friends. "All right, we'll go together," he decided. "I just want to get Arthur out of here. He'll be valuable in giving us this information—and as my friend."
"I understand," Ilana said. Lance and Octus were about to run off when Ilana piped up again.
"Hey, Lance?"
"What? Don't waste time, Mutradi could be on us any second!"
"There is another idea I have. Just give me a minute to talk to Solomon. I want to see if they can do anything to help us," Ilana told him. Ilana activated the communication system on her armor and called Solomon.
"Ilana? What happened? We're completely in the dark about your whereabouts. Edward is getting worried. Lance is still alive, right?"
"Yes, he's still alive!" Ilana then went on to explain the predicament they were in regarding Octus mapping out the brig.
"We can't help you there," Solomon reminded her. "The dark side of the moon is..."
"I know that. But send the email to my friends. I think they might be able to solve the problem," Ilana suggested.
"What makes you think that a secret organization with technology from your advanced civilization would be incapable of mapping out a building on the dark side of the moon while a few teenagers that seem to be little more than friends of your boyfriend with primitive Earth technology capable of solving your problem?" Solomon demanded.
"They're smarter than you'd give them credit for," Ilana argued. "It wouldn't hurt to try." And so Solomon did as she asked.
. . . .
Mark was in the middle of engaging in a vast flame war on the Internet over the practicality of space colonization when his computer made that sound it always made when he got an email. Gregory, Devon, Maribel and Jason got it too. It read like this:
Dear Starbecuers,
Don't be alarmed by the fact that the email address says "unknown". This is Ilana. I had to have this sent to you by G3, a group closely related to Titan and his robot friends.
While this may have been something that you figured out already, I am one of those robot friends. That is to say, I'm the pilot of the robot. I'm not actually a robot, but one of the other two is. But that's not what's important.
The point is that my brothers Lance and Newton aren't my family at all, but my guardians. In fact the whole Lunis family is a sham. Lance and I transform into fighting machines through our watches and Newton does so through the use of holograms. When the need arises we combine ourselves to form Titan and fight off aliens known as Mutradi that want to conquer Earth. They have a base on the moon from which they have begun to send their monsters at a much faster rate than before, and they also have a friend of ours hostage. We need you, as soon as possible, to map out this moon base for us so that we can find out where they are holding our friend. Normally our robots would do the work for us, but because we are on the dark side of the moon this is impossible. Time is of the essence with this task! I apologize for not having revealed all this about myself before, but now was the best situation in which I could do it.
-Ilana
Mark immediately called the others and demanded that they open up Skype. Minutes later all of them were awkwardly looking at each other through their computer screens, minus Devon.
"Anybody know where Devon is?" Maribel asked. "We need everybody to make this work!"
"Guys, do you realize what Ilana's just told all of us? Can we even believe her?" Jason asked the group nervously.
"Jason, stop being a starry-eyed lover and get to pinpointing the coordinates of their location on the moon!" Mark ordered him. "Maribel, run the program to map out the facility once Jason pinpoints it! Gregory, get that mini-rocket of yours ready!"
"And what are you gonna do? Yell at us from your nice, comfy room?"
"No! I'm going to be making a satellite to attach to the rocket to transmit the data from it to the robots, duh! Now everybody get to work, me included! Say, how did you know my room was comfy?"
"Come on, guys, focus!" Maribel urged.
"Right. Mark out!" Mark said, leaving Skype as quickly as he had joined. Gregory did so as well. Jason was a bit hesitant, and Maribel could tell.
"This must be a lot for you to take in," she said. "But didn't you ever get the feeling Ilana wasn't…like us?"
"Yeah. But now I can't deny it anymore," he told her.
Minutes later, the group gathered together in Mark's backyard, the rocket with the satellite and data attached ready for takeoff.
"Do you think this will actually work?" Jason asked them.
"As sure as your girlfriend hides things from us," Gregory reassured him. And then he lit the fuse.
"Everybody get back!" Mark cried as the rocket was about to lift off. It initially had about as much power as an ordinary model rocket, but then Mark pressed a button on a remote he had to activate the secret thrusters. The rocket suddenly shot skyward and impossible speeds until it was out of sight.
"Ok, now we're going to have to drive out and search for the stages as they fall down!" he told the group. "And make sure to collect anything that leaked out!" As Jason did as instructed he tried to focus his mind off what he would say to Ilana when she got back. Or if she got back.
. . . .
"Whatever you were whispering about, you made sure Dad knew I was alive in it, right?" Lance asked when he saw Ilana rejoin him.
"Don't worry, he knows."
"Good, now let's move!" The Titan crew went down the hallway on their left, hoping desperately that it would be the right direction. They encountered various squadrons of Mutradi, but most of them stood little chance, and our heroes bowled right through them. The Galalunan traitors on board were few and mostly stayed out of fighting, but whenever the group saw one it was guaranteed that he would not be spared. Lance had wanted to use his sword on each one that he found, but at Ilana's insistence he merely shot them with a missile instead. After wandering around for a while they finally found the archive room and rested there.
"How long have we been searching this place?" Lance asked Octus.
"48 minutes and 37 seconds." Lance turned to Ilana at Octus' response.
"When is that idea of yours going to kick in?"
"Soon, I promise!" Suddenly, Octus began to beep.
"I have received data from an unfamiliar spacecraft. It has given me a map of the facility. Follow me to the brig." The teens did so.
"Ilana, what did you do?" Lance asked. She didn't answer.