CHAPTER 2: Aurora 1
The large doors opened and Snake could see inside into the gigantic Space station. The rocket had slowed downed to a slow pace and the back end of the fuel burners had broken off. Snake was now inside the small crew cockpit. The rocket docked onto the landing bay and snake was anxiously awaiting the restraints to unlock. At this time all Snake could see was the ceiling of the cockpit because of the angle the rocket landed at.
"Well here we go again." He said to himself as the restraints made a loud click and released him. Snake's chair lowered and the doors of the rocket had pulled apart for him to make his exit. Snake stepped out onto a steel catwalk and took a long look around. Snake was amazed at how small the rocket he arrived in was, it was like something he'd seen only in movies but now was a reality. The catwalk he stepped out onto circled around the rocket but only lead to one direction, directly in front of him. The landing bay was surprisingly small and the only door in front of him was steel door some six feet away.
"Better be on my guard." Snake said as he walked directly to the steel door and as he walked towards it, it automatically opened as was expected in such a large facility. He walked through the door and came to a lobby just like in a fancy office building. There were plants, a desk, and the United Nations symbol on the walls. It was a fairly large room and Snake was amazed at how well organized the station had been seeing as how it'd only been finished for a few weeks.
"Hmmm... better call Otacon." Snake said as he touched the Codec receiver attached to the inside of his ear. He input Otacon's frequency 141.90 and listened to it dial.
"Snake I see you made it into Red Nova!" Otacon said as he answered.
"Red Nova?" Snake asked.
"Yeah, that's the name of the Space Station. You're currently on landing platform Aurora 1. One of the six landing bays on the space station. The others are Aurora 2, Dwarf 1, Dwarf 2, Saturn 1 and Saturn 2."
"Great, but wait I really need to know is now what do I do? I mean this wasn't a very organized mission, all you told me was to sneak aboard the Stellar 9 rocket using the stealth Camouflage and prepare for further orders, who is your contact and what other news do you have?" Snake asked irritated.
"Well the truth is Snake I really don't know that much and trust me I wish I could let you know more, but you know just as much as I do and our contact is suppose to contact me again any minute now with further orders. What you can do for now is head North through that fancy office and hang a right where you'll find an elevator that will take you up. When you get to the 2nd floor you need to go into any of the computer labs on that floor, you'll have a nice pick of them to, and wait there until I give you further orders." Otacon told Snake.
"OK and how do you know where I am and where I should go?" Snake asked.
"Snake I'm surprised in you! You should know by now that whenever you wear that old Foxhound suit I can see whatever you can through optical lenses on the suit." Otacon replied.
"Oh, yeah I forgot, but how do you know so much about the Red Nova?" Snake asked curiously.
"Well our contact Vertigo faxed me all kinds of maps that detail the Red Nova. Red Nova has 13 floors. The first floor is landing bays, registration offices, information desks, and such. Floor 2 is security monitoring, Floor 3 is Crew quarters you know where the astronauts sleep, eat and relax. Floor 4 is Communications, where they send messages from Earth and receive them, it is suspected that the terrorists are holding the science team hostage there so if you're ever on that floor use extreme caution, these terrorists won't be as forgiving or sympathetic as Fox-Hound or Dead Cell."
"Got it, I'll head to floor 2 now and wait for your signal." Snake said.
Snake began to move past the lobby north and into a corridor that went straight ahead. At the end of the hall there was a wide elevator with yellow tape with black lines bordering it. Snake pushed the button and the wide doors opened. It was a very large industrial elevator, Snake stepped in and pushed the button for the 2nd floor. As the elevator went up Snake decided it'd be a good place to ditch his space suit. He undid the latches that secured it onto him and pulled off the gloves and then slid out of the large, heavy suit. Snake took off the sun visor he'd been advised to wear and dropped it on the floor. Even this far out of the Earth's atmosphere the sun's light was still present and it streamed through the sun roof at the very top of the elevator shaft. The light traveled all the way down the sun roof and into the roofless elevator and shined on Snake as he looked up preparing to exit the elevator and into possible danger.
The elevator halted at the 2nd floor and the doors opened with a ding. Snake stepped out consciously onto the 2nd floor and realized it was empty. Just outside the elevator doors and on the wall to his right there was a light switch. Snake flipped on all the lights and took a look around. There were many cubicles that lead down a single hall and ended at a booth surrounded by many monitors that were positioned in front of a desk. The box of half eaten donuts and cold cup of coffee told Snake that the security guards were probably being held with the rest of the hostages and that they struck in the early morning.
Snake walked over to a random computer and turned it on. He hacked into one of the employees account using Otacon's personal security breaching program and waited patiently for Otacon to contact him. Snake sat in the computer chair and put his feet on the desk and folded his arms behind his head. Snake began to think about the current situation at hand and realized how many things were left unanswered. He began to grow impatient when all the sudden he heard the elevator moving up.
"The terrorists are on the move." he thought, but then the elevator halted on the 2nd floor and the doors opened. Ding. Snake got up quickly and leaned into the corner of the cubicle where he wouldn't be seen. Snake peered from behind the corner to get a look at the terrorist, but to his surprise the guard wasn't a terrorist at all, it was soldier equipped with an M-16 and wearing army fatigues. Snake walked out to greet the soldier and opened his mouth to say something when all the sudden the soldier turned around.
"Who the hell are you?" he yelled and began to fire at Snake. Snake dodged out of the way rolling to his side. He could see the look of terror in the soldier's eyes as he held back on the trigger recklessly, missing Snake by a few feet. Snake didn't' even have to roll out of the way he stood there for a few seconds then ran up to the guard and kicked him in the stomach and then punched across the right side of his face. The soldier fell to the floor and Snake kicked the M-16 out of his hands.
"NO! Please No!" The soldier yelled. "Don't kill me!"
"What are you doing here?" Snake asked him.
"I'm doing my patrol route and I freaked out cuz the lights were on." The soldier explained.
"Your patrol route? What the hell do you think this is an Army base? Why are you here when the terrorists are up stairs with hostages?" Snake asked him.
"Terrorists? Hostages?" The soldier asked with his voice muffled by the ski mask he wore under his helmet.
"Why are you stationed here? I haven't heard of any armed forces patrolling the station. If you were here how did the terrorists take over?"
"I don't know what your talking about but you're freaking me out! Maybe I should be asking who you are?" The soldier said in a cocky tone.
"That's none of your business. Now answer me damn you!"
"Well I'd like to but....." The soldier said as he slowly reached for his Socom clipped to his thigh.
"But what?....." Snake asked grabbing the soldier by his collar.
"But instead I think I'll kill you!" The soldier kicked Snake off of him and fired one round from the pistol. The soldier fired wide and missed Snake. He attempted to fire another round but when he did the pistol gave off a click.
"Dammit it's jammed!" he yelled. Snake rush the guard and put him into a head lock.
"This is for your own good." Snake said as he turned the headlock into a sleeper hold. A couple minutes later despite the soldier's intense struggling he was out cold. Snake dropped him to the floor and dragged him under a desk in one of the cubicles. Before he could hide him well he heard his Codec ringing. He touched the sensory device and answered.
"Snake here."
"Snake are you at the 2nd floor computer lab?" Otacon asked.
"Yeah and I ran into a guard."
"A guard? I wasn't aware of any guards!" Otacon said.
"Yeah well the guard wasn't aware of any terrorists or hostages."
"He's probably playing dumb Snake."
"Yeah, I've seen it before. So anyway what's going on now? What do I do?" Snake asked.
"Okay Snake after a long talk with Vertigo on my cell phone I've been told you should meet up with a special agent we sent in who infiltrated their ranks."
"Huh? How long have these guys been up here?" Snake asked.
"Almost four days. They stowed away a rocket that launched at 2:00 p.m. and arrives sometime around 6:00 p.m."
"That late?" Snake asked. "How many are there? If there are soldiers and the soldiers are working for the terrorists how'd all these guys manage to steal a rocket?"
"Snake that's one of the many things I'm working on. Vertigo will inform us of any new information that comes up. What you need to do now is go into the personal files on that computer, okay?"
"I'm on it." Snake said while searching through the computer's hard drive.
"OK I'm in the personal files of the hard drive." Snake said clicking the icon to open up the information on the computer's F drive.
"OK, snake you're looking for a file called Novamap.vsx, can you find it?"
"Yeah, it's right here and I'm opening it now."
"Good, once it loads cram that map into your brain, it's the layout of Red Nova and all the rooms are labeled."
"Can't you just have it loaded into the optical lens of my Sneaking suit?" Snake asked.
"No, because the data can't travel that far away, I think you're forgetting that we're really stretching the technology of our nanocommunications here and that trying to cram to much data to you could overload the system." Otacon replied.
"OK, I think I can remember all of this, but just in case.." Snake said tearing a piece of paper from the printer of the computer.
"Snake don't rely on that piece of paper too much because I'm not sure if every computer has that map on it."
"Okay so where should I go to now?" Snake asked.
"Well Snake I think I should inform you of the real mission objective, that is the real reason I was so eager to have you infiltrate this station." Otacon replied.
"Huh?" Snake let out stunned.