The racers sprint off to the captain's room and get ready to get James's ship out of there, and away from what they think is an impending Black Shadow chase down, but luckily for them, Shadow's still stuck at the warp station, since he just got rid of the operator, and he can't work it himself. This time, they actually skip the warp stations, and warp-drive directly to the Fishbowl Galaxy, which they're able to do in the state-of-the-art Big Wyvern, and not in that old busted spacebus. He drops off the bus at the nearest spaceport, and blasts off to their destination.
As the ship rockets off to their first stop on this series of rescue missions, the gang seems to be reinvigorated and bound together, knowing the stakes and gravity of the situation. The group is talking together, being a little more communal, with even Zoda getting in on the interactions. Maybe they know that they need to be as close as possible in order to be properly in sync with one another. The trip through the vast amount of lightyears is done over the course of a full day (in Earth time). That does end up being a good bit longer than if they used the warpgates, but this also means Shadow doesn't have a paper trail to follow, and they can move through the cosmos more freely. This also means James doesn't have to take more of his medicine to go through that irritating light show the warpgates subject him to.
They reach the Fishbowl Galaxy with no real trouble, with Shadow or his men never appearing to cause them trouble, much to their delight. The planet of Zorok comes into sight, and once it does, the ship comes to a stop. They pull up a long-range viewfinder and zoom in until they see the space station that Dr. Stewart is apparently on. James moves his camera around, looking for an opening onto the ship, but is unfortunately coming up empty. "It looks like the ship only has one way on, and that's the entry bay that the ships load and unload from, at least from this angle. I'll try to move around and get a better view of the rest of the ship.
Jody examines the ship alongside him, and then turns to look at Gazelle, trying to piece together some sort of plan. "Hey Gazelle, you have x-ray vision right?"
"Up close yea, but not from this range, and not through a computer."
"And we can't get any closer or we'll start getting picked up by the space station's radar", James adds.
"Well, do we have a manual telescope?"
James looks around his cabin, looking for Jody's request, but he's pretty sure it's not there. "I think I got rid of it a while ago", he says in a bit of shame. "Didn't think I'd need it after some upgrades we got to the viewfinder."
"Alright then, Clash. What's the closest inhabited planet we can stop for supplies at?"
Once again, Clash jumps a bit from Jody interacting, but he looks at his hologram and pulls up his map. "There's a small, but fairly bustling planet, just back the way we came a couple planets called Pilver. It should have everything we need."
Jody nods, "Alright, I'll head over there and grab the telescope. If anyone wants to join in to help bring back any other supplies we might need, I wouldn't mind."
James replies, "Sounds good to me, I'll stay here and keep searching around the station for any other kind of opening."
With a plan in place, Jody, Zoda, Jack, and Clash head over to Pilver with a handful of space credits, while James, Monique and Gazelle stay on the ship and look for more openings. The ship they take down to Pilver is the Wyvern's medium-sized crew transporter, roomier than James's rescue vessel that got crunched earlier, but easier to maneuver than the big boss ship. Jody's flown plenty of aircraft similar to this, so it's not a problem to get them over to the planet's surface. Pilver is a smaller planet, but even compared to Earth, it's a beacon of futuristic progress. Many people get advanced degrees or training at the top-flight schools there, so it's constantly seeing new advancements and experimental technology that other planets don't have yet.
Upon stepping out of the craft, Clash gets a notice on his hologram. His maps have been updated with a map of the town they're in, with stops marked all over it with places of interest and shopping destinations. "I thought I turned the neural link off on this thing", he says as tries to fiddle with his device.
Zoda snaps to attention. "Yea, turn that thing off quick. Shadow could track us that", to which Clash is equally worried, and turns the machine to private mode. Now, his device is much less capable than it was before, but they'll be a little safer from Shadow.
They instead search the town the old-fashioned way, walking down the streets and simply enjoying the view. Since Pilver is such an academically focused planet, there's next to no pollution, so it's a beautiful walk through what appears to be a college town. They get some directions from one of the people walking as well to a fancy looking shop that contains a bunch of fancy new tech for spaceships. The four racers look around the store, with Jody immediately walking up to an older man behind the counter who's talking to a cashier, probably the owner of the store. She waits for him to finish talking, but he's taking a while, leaving her to just stand there awkwardly, looking for an opening that's seemingly never coming, which only makes her feel more awkward and like she's intruding on this guy's personal space, oh god, maybe she should just look through the store herself and… "Can I help you, Miss?", he asks her.
She snaps out of her little bubble and gathers herself. "Um, hi, yea, I'm looking for a manual telescope, just something that can help me see something through… let's just say… hundreds of thousands of miles of open space?", she asks with an awkward smile.
The owner looks at her with a slightly annoyed look, almost offended that she came to this hi-tech store for such a rudimentary item. "Aisle 14B, next to the radio amplifiers", he says before going back to his conversation with the cashier. She nods and heads off to the aisle, finding herself a large selection of ultramodern telescopes, perfect for emergency use in your ship if you lose power… or if you need something viewed with x-ray vision.
Clash and Jack are in another part of the store, looking for some small optimizations that might help the ship in certain situations. Or more accurately, Clash is doing that, while Jack is looking through all of the items on the shelf, and asking Clash what they all do. It's a bit repetitive, but Clash at least appreciates a young mind eager to learn, so he answers all of his questions without any exasperation. They manage to find a couple of stealth drops, which can make their ship undetectable by radar, provided they're going at a low enough speed.
As Jody walks back to the counter, Zoda approaches her with an annoyed look on his face. "Jody, can we get a death ray? I wanted to get one myself, but I need a license for one, and mine got revoked."
"Even if I could, there's a waiting period, you wouldn't get it before we got on the ship."
"Yes, but you're a space cop, you can overwrite that, right?"
"Zoda, why do you need a death ray?"
"WHY WOULD YOU NOT NEED A DEATH RAY?"
Jody sighs and puts her face into her palm. "We're trying not to get Stewart killed here. You know that, right? That's what's gonna happen if we go in there guns blazing. I get that you wanna dismantle Shadow's operation here, but that's not what we're doing right now."
As they're talking, a tiny voice comes from below them. "Um, excuse me, are you Jody Summer?"
Jody is surprised and looks down to see a young boy, no older than ten, wearing glasses, a bowtie, and wheels on his shoes, with a tablet attached to his hip. It takes her a second to remember that she's fairly famous as an F-Zero pilot, and surely has fans across the galaxies. "Um, yes, what's your name?"
"My name's Terry Getter, I've been a huge racing fan for years, and I can't wait to be a racer someday just like you guys. Can I have your autographs?" Jody happily says yes, and puts her signature on the screen of his tablet.
Zoda catches the last word of his sentence and is a bit struck, especially once Terry puts the tablet in front of him to sign too. "I have… fans!", he says in ecstatic delight as he signs his screen.
"At least one…", Jody says with a chuckle.
"Oh yes, Mr. Zoda. I've watched a lot of your races, and while I'm not a huge fan of you wrecking people all the time, I must admit that you get results."
"You hear that, Jody. I get results, ergo you should get me that death ray."
"Why do you guys need a death ray?", Terry asks, to which Jody tries to immediately change the subject, but unfortunately, it's right then when Jack and Clash walk back up to them.
"Oh, we're just about to break into a space station, to try and rescue one of our fellow racers who Black Shadow trapped up there."
There's a long, awkward pause as Jody death-stares at Jack. "Jack, what part about this being a COVERT MISSION confused you?"
"The covert part, I don't know what that word means… hey are you guys signing autographs too?!", Jack says as Terry puts the tablet in front of him as well to sign.
"Oh, you mean the space station above Zorok? Here, let me help you", Terry says as he starts typing away on his tablet.
"Oh that's ok, I'm sure we could…", Jody starts to say, but before she can finish talking, Terry's tablet begins spewing a long sheet of paper from the top. Terry rips the paper from the printing device and hands it to Jody. To her shock, the paper is a detailed blueprint of the space station, all the floors, all the rooms, everything they'd need. The rest of the racers look at Terry in befuddlement. "How did you get this, Terry?", Jody asks, very skeptical of everything he's telling her now.
"I pulled it from a secure folder in their system", he replies with a big smile as though there's nothing weird about that.
Clash is much more impressed by this kid's tech savvy. "Very impressive, young man. Do you go to school here?"
Terry's eyes light up as Dr. Clash speaks to him. "Yes sir, I'm going to be graduating from the Einstein Academy here in town. I'm trying to be an engineer, just like you were before you started racing, and I'm pretty good already."
Clash is beaming with pride, hearing that he's made a positive effect on the life of a young genius. "Well, you keep up the good work, kid, and I'm sure I'll be hearing a lot more about you."
Jack rubs his chin and turns to the kid. "Say, since you found those floor plans for the space station, you got anything else in there that we could use?"
"Jack, please", Jody says, "we don't need to rely on…", is all she can say before he starts typing away on it again.
"Sure, what do you need? Ventilation plans, patrol paths? Give me enough time, I could probably find their lunch menu."
"We'll take it all!", Zoda exclaims.
As Terry eagerly finds more information about the space station, Jody turns to Zoda, while Clash and Jack keep Terry busy. "This feels really sketchy, I don't know about this."
"What's so hard to understand about this? Fanboys probably love doing things like this for their heroes."
"What if this is some really weird way of trapping us? What if this kid, if he even is a kid, works for Shadow and is feeding us false info?"
"Is that a thing I can do? Should I be writing this down? Er, look, maybe it's a bit weird, but just get his information, and you can run a background check on him, if you're so worried."
Jody thinks about it and nods. "Smart, thanks Zoda."
"Smart enough to get me the death ray?..."
"No… just smart."
As Jody walks back up to them, Clash and Jack are cheering Terry on, seeing what all he can find. "Alright, boys. It's time we started heading back to the ship. But I'll tell you what Terry, do you have a way to get into contact with me? This information is really useful for what we need, and we might need more help from you in the future."
"Oh, yes! Absolutely", Terry exclaims as he sends his contact information to her. The racers all say their good-byes to the small child, as Jody still has a look of confusion and skepticism as she walks away.
