The Adventures of Tim Bodge Ch. 17: Pt. 02

"Sarha, I order you to open the door to unit 521 now."

The door opened, and the tactical team entered the room. It only took two minutes, and their leader came out laughing. "Commander, you will have to see this." She stepped back into the room as the Commander and Tim followed her.

She directed them to a room where the other soldiers were standing outside, smiling. Tim and the commanding officer looked into the room and laughed. In the room was a man eight feet tall, approximately three feet from the ground. Beneath him was a plant, one foot high, with vines wrapped around the male and supporting him. Four females were holding each other in a corner with smiles on their faces too.

"Tim, do you know how we are to get this man down?" Said Commander Anden-Aipas.

"Please, don't hurt my plant. He only did that to protect us." Said Esireli. She stayed back into the corner.

Tim stepped into the room and looked closely at the male, and the plant really had him bundled up. It even had a vine wrapped around his mouth. He then turned and walked over to the females. "Are any of you hurt?"

"Tim, we have the other person in the next room, you may want to see her." Said the Commander.

"When I finish in here, I'll be over there, thank you." Tim turned back to the females. "Who's plant is this?"

"It is mine, sir." Said Esireli.

"No, it belongs to all of us." Said Nanladra.

"OK, how did you get it to do that to him?" Tim asked with a puzzled look.

"Sir, he is alive; I found him in one of the fields, and he was moving his vines around, and it made me laugh. So, I brought it home, and it feeds off what we gave him. He only did that because the male came in here and started to hit my mother. He is now our protector." Said Esireli.

"Sir, do we have to give him up? We love having him around." Said Nanladra.

"Sarha, do you know how this plant got on board?" asked Tim.

"No, Tim, I have no knowledge of such a plant; it would be nice to let it protect the women there since it seems to like them. We can keep an eye on it if you would like?" said Sarha.

"OK, we will let it stay with you. Now how are we going to get him down?"

"If I could, sir." Esireli walked closer to the plant. "It's OK to let him down now that we have the soldiers here to watch him, and after they leave, you will get our thanks from each of us."

The plant slowly lowered the male to the floor, and one by one released his vines. The last to be removed was his arms and legs. The soldiers had their weapons pointed at him the whole time. They placed arm and leg anklets on him. The Commander signaled the soldiers, and they took him away.

Tim watched the plant the whole time and saw that it did understand what the girl had said to it. He would have to know more about this plant.

"If you will excuse me, ladies, I have one more person in the other room to speak to," Tim replied. He left the room and proceeded toward two soldiers that stood in front of the door, where the Commander was. Tim entered and saw the Commander was talking to a female lizard.

The Commander turned and saw Tim, "Tim, I would like you to meet Freyaka; she is an employee of the Universal Security Unit. She was on leave when all this started. She recognized the guy from some of the searches she had done."

"It's nice to meet you, Freyaka." Tim reached out to shake her hand.

"I am very happy,... That I am able to meet you, and thanks for saving our lives. For a while, I thought we all were goners."

"Thank you for your help in capturing this murderer." Said Tim. Sarha appeared next to Tim.

"Tim, she might be interested in staying on board for a while," said Sarha.

"You have to be the AI of the ship?" asked Freyaka. She smiled at Sarha and came toward her. "Can I take a closer look at you? You're the first real artificial intelligence I wasn't able to hack on the first try."

"You were near the point, but my processing unit is a little faster than most of yours."

"It might be interesting to discuss the hacking theory with you."

Freyaka looked at Tim and said, "If I could stay a little longer on your ship and have more conversations with Sarha, I would appreciate it."

Tim turned to Sarha and said, "I think it would be nice for us to let her stay, get a unit for her on deck two."

Tim went to the Commander and said, "Commander, you and your troops did a great job; I think you were right about keeping them on this ship."

"Tim, we were pleased to assist you in capturing him."

"Commander, my next question is how are we to proceed with their transfer. We've got to transfer the two men?"

"That will be no problem." Said the Commander, "I'll have six soldiers on our planet there to receive them. We'll send them both through hooked together."

"Sounds OK to me." Said Tim as he stood and watched the soldiers as they took Gorhard away.

"Sarha, could you have Tabitha ask her father if he is ready to receive our guest?"

***

DarkIce and Bob said to Tim, "Tim, some of the volunteers talked to our guest about decks three and five. Now there are people who would like to stay. Where do we go from here?"

"We will treat them the same way we have been, show them the rules and answer their questions. If they agree, then have them moved to deck three." Said Tim.

***

Tammy was at her station when Sarha said that Tim wanted her on deck three. It only took about five minutes to get down to Tim. "Tim, you wanted to see me?"

"Tammy, this is Freyaka; she will be spending some time with us, could you show her around."

Tammy reached over and shook Freyaka's hand, "My name is Tammy; I am the ship's navigator. So, you are the one that gave Sarha a hard time with the computer system."

"I hate to say it, but she's good and knowledgeable as an AI. I would say that she is one of the best I have come across."

"I bet you and she would like to have a more extended conversation? If so, I know the right place." Tammy said, "Sarha, we will be headed to the lake."

"You mean you have a small lake on this ship? I can't wait to see it." Both Tammy and Freyaka started towards the lift. Tammy turned to wave at Tim, letting him know that everything with this woman would be OK.

***

Tawni was in the engineering bay working on her latest creation. Since they had made a smaller energy generator for their shield suits, she tried to make a smaller replicator. She now had it working. She wanted to know if it could make their small bullets with the micro-nano-bots. If everything worked out, they would have a new weapon, like no other.

Tawni was also working with her flame friends. She now has three flames, and they could stay out in the open for close to an hour before growing weak. With her friends and the rest of the crew, she now felt better about herself.

Also, with the team of researchers going through Sarha's database and finding a few more items to update, the things in engineering were looking up. She now had twenty-two people that were at work in her department.

Tim informed her that some of the soldiers would remain on board for two weeks and then rotate. So, she would need uniforms for each group, along with weapons. They would also need the shielding equipment.