Mark had them all up at sunrise. "What the heck time is it?" "0630 hours, I figure if the rest of us have to get up early, so do you. Hold on," he touched his ear and listened intently to something for a few seconds, "We're wanted in the Comm tower, follow me." A few minutes later: "Whadda we got?" "Some sort of reply to that emergency beacon, but it's encrypted like I've never seen before." "Out of the way!" Izzy pushed through to a computer and looked around. "You guys still use floppies?" he asked, pulling one out of a pocket." "Floppies?" "Guess I'll have to copy the program by hand. You guys might want to get something to eat," he said as he started typing line after line of code, "this could take a while." It took longer than they thought it would, but Izzy explained that about half of the programming was "enough layers of security that you folks," and he indicated the Comm officer and Mark, "won't be deciphering anything unless I want you to." "So long as you're sure there ain't nobody else can decipher it." "Trust me, I've been doing this stuff for hundreds of years. Anyhow, the message from the Explorer basically asks if we're okay and where we can safely be picked up. What coordinates would work?" Mark walked over to the computer and punched up a map of the Sol system. "Easiest would be for them to come into orbit and send down a team to get you, but then the whole world would start shootin at you and us. Gold don't mean nuttin if you're dead. No, we gotta do this real quiet like. Safest 'd be to get out past the Oort Cloud, but only 'crats got that tech." "Huh?" "The only humans other'n you who ever left founded the Autocratic Human Empire. These days they're known as Autocrats, but you don't see much of 'em around this system. Anyways, I can getcha past the asteroid belt, but after that you're on your own." "That's a lot of possible coordinates." "Tell ya what, we'll go off perpendicular to the planetary alignment." "That's still two completely opposite areas. Which one should we send a shuttle to?" "Both." "Huh?" "How'm I supposed to figure out which way we're going once we get going? Send 'em ta both." Izzy shrugged, then punched in 2 series of numbers, "If all goes well, there will be a shuttle at each rendezvous point in 24 hours. So where's the ship we're going to be taking, I want to look it over before we launch." "Weeeeell, there's a slight problem with that."
"So you guys don't actually own a spaceship?" "Nope. But a neighboring country's got one holed up in a fort about 5 klicks from the border. They've been trying to get it working for the past half-century, but there's some parts they need that they don't have." "And you think you can buy it from them and have it past the asteroid belt in one day?!?" "First off, even if they were willing to sell it, I have no intention of buying it. Second, we do have the parts they need, and third, I can make anything mechanical work." "Isn't there some peaceful way of getting that ship?" one of the digidestined asked. "Yeah, we could surrender and start working for them, and then maybe in a hundred years or so they'll trust us enough to let us look at it! We're already at war with them, so the only option is to storm the fort and get the ship running before reinforcements arrive. Now if you'll come with me, I've used every bit of influence I have to get permission to give you folks firearms." "You may be at war, but we're not." "You'll be with me, so they'll be at war with you. The question is not whether you'll get shot at, but whether you shoot back. If one or two of you guys bite it 'cause you go in unarmed, I'm still gettin my money."
In the end, 6 of the digidestineds agreed to carry weapons. 5 took whatever the Minuteman handed them, and were visibly ill at ease with the prospect of shooting at fellow humans. As for the sixth: "Hey, what about me?" asked one woman when she noticed that Mark had only given guns to guys. "Here" he said, throwing her a laser pistol. "Here" she echoed, dismissively tossing the weapon to her husband. As she pushed Mark aside and started looking through gun racks, some of the Digidestined looked to Takato for an explanation, who only sighed, knowing all too well how his wife could be about guns. "Any particular reason that gun wasn't acceptable?" Mark asked, intercepting her before she got to some highly guarded secret weaponry. "I already got a sidearm" she said, pulling an officers pistol from a leg holster that Mark hadn't noticed before. "Then what *do* you want?" he asked, his patience growing thin. "A recent model Avtomav Klashnikov (hope I spelled that right) would do if you happen to have one." He went right to where the Ironfists kept Russian models, took an AK-73 assault rifle, and handed it to her. Her quick inspection of the weapon showed a skill with firearms that impressed even the veteran Biogen. She adjusted the shoulder strap so that she could manage the gun with one hand, then held out the other for ammo. He gave her 5 fifty-round magazines, and she loaded one, then stuffed the rest into various pockets. As she walked back over to the rest of the digidestined, their was a look in her eyes that Takato hadn't seen in over a thousand years, and had hoped to never see again. "Rika, this is a side of you I've never seen before," one of the Digidestined managed to say. Most of them were somewhat disturbed by the recent change in her personality, but the Tamers were too jaded to even notice. "Aw that's nothin, you should've seen her when she was in special forces," Kazu replied, knowing full well that he put his health in danger by mentioning Rika's past. "If you people are ready, I have a spaceship to steal, and you need to be on it."
"So you guys don't actually own a spaceship?" "Nope. But a neighboring country's got one holed up in a fort about 5 klicks from the border. They've been trying to get it working for the past half-century, but there's some parts they need that they don't have." "And you think you can buy it from them and have it past the asteroid belt in one day?!?" "First off, even if they were willing to sell it, I have no intention of buying it. Second, we do have the parts they need, and third, I can make anything mechanical work." "Isn't there some peaceful way of getting that ship?" one of the digidestined asked. "Yeah, we could surrender and start working for them, and then maybe in a hundred years or so they'll trust us enough to let us look at it! We're already at war with them, so the only option is to storm the fort and get the ship running before reinforcements arrive. Now if you'll come with me, I've used every bit of influence I have to get permission to give you folks firearms." "You may be at war, but we're not." "You'll be with me, so they'll be at war with you. The question is not whether you'll get shot at, but whether you shoot back. If one or two of you guys bite it 'cause you go in unarmed, I'm still gettin my money."
In the end, 6 of the digidestineds agreed to carry weapons. 5 took whatever the Minuteman handed them, and were visibly ill at ease with the prospect of shooting at fellow humans. As for the sixth: "Hey, what about me?" asked one woman when she noticed that Mark had only given guns to guys. "Here" he said, throwing her a laser pistol. "Here" she echoed, dismissively tossing the weapon to her husband. As she pushed Mark aside and started looking through gun racks, some of the Digidestined looked to Takato for an explanation, who only sighed, knowing all too well how his wife could be about guns. "Any particular reason that gun wasn't acceptable?" Mark asked, intercepting her before she got to some highly guarded secret weaponry. "I already got a sidearm" she said, pulling an officers pistol from a leg holster that Mark hadn't noticed before. "Then what *do* you want?" he asked, his patience growing thin. "A recent model Avtomav Klashnikov (hope I spelled that right) would do if you happen to have one." He went right to where the Ironfists kept Russian models, took an AK-73 assault rifle, and handed it to her. Her quick inspection of the weapon showed a skill with firearms that impressed even the veteran Biogen. She adjusted the shoulder strap so that she could manage the gun with one hand, then held out the other for ammo. He gave her 5 fifty-round magazines, and she loaded one, then stuffed the rest into various pockets. As she walked back over to the rest of the digidestined, their was a look in her eyes that Takato hadn't seen in over a thousand years, and had hoped to never see again. "Rika, this is a side of you I've never seen before," one of the Digidestined managed to say. Most of them were somewhat disturbed by the recent change in her personality, but the Tamers were too jaded to even notice. "Aw that's nothin, you should've seen her when she was in special forces," Kazu replied, knowing full well that he put his health in danger by mentioning Rika's past. "If you people are ready, I have a spaceship to steal, and you need to be on it."
