The Interview - II

The medical personnel completed running preliminary health tests on the survivor. She had not suffered any internal or external injuries; her tough skin also played a huge role in protecting her. But that didn't mean she didn't suffer from mental trauma.

Colonel Amelia was waiting for the survivor's medical tests to be complete. If it was some other situations then they would have allowed the survivors to take rest for a few days before interviewing them. However, this was a matter of emergency.

The IGT Fed wanted to know what kind of creatures had attacked the Station. They wanted to know about the unregistered planet as well as about its inhabitants and their technology. They did not want to be unprepared for a war, if those inhabitants decided to declare the war against other planets.

The Federation did not want to see the peace between the planets to wither away. After all, it took hundreds of years for the Fed to establish the peace and come this far.

After the medical personnel went away, Colonel Amelia sat by the side of the survivor and took her hand in her hands. "I am extremely sorry for your loss Zhora. I cannot even imagine what you must be going through right now."

Zhora didn't say anything; she didn't have courage to even say a word. She just kept staring down at her shoes, which had splatter of blood on them.

Amelia hated what she was going to say next. But it had to be done for the greater good. So she inhaled sharply then spoke, "Zhora, I know that this is not the right time to be asking you for a favor. But this is really important. We need to know what really happened out there in that galaxy."

Zhora turned to her side to face Amelia and bravely put on a smile on her face. Then she nodded and said, "I know I have to explain everything. And I know that is more important right now. Captain David pulled off the rescue mission by putting the lives of his crew on the line. So the least I can do is to explain what I saw there."

Colonel Amelia smiled with a hint of pity in her eyes and said, "Follow me."

Both Amelia and Zhora made their way to the briefing room. When they walked inside the room, Vorian was busy going through the file of Space Station X51 and was preparing the questions for the interview. When he saw his new guest, he stood up from his seat and gave a warm smile.

Colonel Amelia introduced Zhora to Vorian. "This is Zhora Caldera. And she is the sole survivor from the attack that took place on Space Station X51. Try to gather an overview of the attack and also some information about the attackers."

Before Amelia went away from the room, she went closer to Vorian and whispered in his ears, "And please, be sure to be sensitive. She is still in the state of shock from the loss."

Vorian nodded his head and Amelia left the two of them to carry out the interview.

Vorian extended his arm towards Zhora and introduced himself, "I am Vorian Zadoc and I will be asking you some questions about the attack."

Zhora shook his hand and tried to smile.

Vorian gestured her to take a seat and said, "Please make yourself comfortable."

After Zhora took her seat, Vorian placed the recording device in front of her and informed her, "I will be recording this interview in both written as well as audio format. I will ask you a few questions and you need to give as much details as you remember."

Vorian opened a new file in his holographic screen and started the interview, "Please start by introducing yourself, your name, designation, and base."

Zhora fidgeted her fingers as she spoke, "My name is Zhora Caldera. I am a Communications Officer and I am from headquarter of the IGT Fed."

Vorian proceeded to the next question, "Will you talk about the mission of Space Station X51 briefly?"

"Sure" Zhora tried to process her thoughts and answer the question, "There were two instances before, when the Federation had sent out spaceships to explore the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy."

She paused for some time to think whether the information what she was about to give were classified or not. But she was unable to think straight so she blurted out everything, "But both of them lost connection out of the blue with the Federation when they reached around one specific coordinate, 007.67|05.17|-34.20. Those ships and its crews never returned back or came back online."

Zhora clenched her fist after she said this because now that she thought back at it, they were sent out on a suicide mission. Those missing ships and crews were the red flags. Her big eyes noticed from the corner that Vorian was waiting for her to continue, so she tried to calm down and continued.

"Related people at the IGT Fed headquarter then speculated that there was something at that coordinate which was dangerous. There were two speculations - either they were sucked into a black hole, or their signal were jammed meaning there was an existence of intelligent life form."

"And headquarter changed its tactics of exploration. Rather than sending huge spaceships for exploration, they decided to send an unmanned craft to collect data around that coordinate."

Vorian was typing non-stop in his holographic screen. He would, once in a while, glance at Zhora because he felt like Zhora was giving out classified information as well. David never mentioned that there were other ships that had gone to Canis Major for exploration before them.

And when he read some files before, none of them mentioned anything about the lost ships and crews. But he didn't want to interrupt Zhora so he just kept on listening and typing simultaneously.

Zhora was explaining further, "Soon, the possibility of existence of black hole was ruled out, while our next theory of existence of a planet with intelligent life form seemed more plausible. And then Space Station project was put into place."

She finally started to explain about their mission, "Our mission was to observe the planet from a distance and send any useful information back to the headquarter."

Vorian continued the interview with related question, "If I am correct there were a total of 25 crews in the Station, right?"

Zhora felt a pang in her heart as she was reminded how many colleagues she had lost. She took a deep breath in and answered, "Yes. Our crew consisted of a total of 25 crew members from various backgrounds like scientists, astronomers, mathematician, physicist, data analyst, and many others."

"Did you depart from the headquarter on Central Date 93178?" Vorian wanted to reconfirm what he read in the file.

"Yes, we went there in the Stealth Craft. You know to block out any signals and avoid being detected."

Vorian continued asking his questions, "So, you were there for 16 days in total. What tasks did your team do when you were there?"

Zhora glanced at Vorian and started to answer him, "It took about a week for our crews to gather up at the Station, few of the crew members arrived at a later date. Then we set up the Station as well as the equipment. The first week went like that. We started our observation of the planet from the second week."

"We immediately noticed that there was a large civilization on that planet. We observed them and studied them from our station. It seemed like they were on the early stages of their evolution. Their houses were made up of mud and woods. They dressed up in metal armors and carried metal weapons."

Zhora took a deep breath before continuing, "But their appearance fooled us all. And they ambushed us on 93193."

Vorian was confused by this statement. He scrunched his brows and asked, "What do you mean they fooled you?"

"We underestimated their technological advancements." A hint of regret could be seen on Zhora's face. "Our seismometer picked up unusual seismic activity on that planet. All our readings were going crazy. We were trying to figure out what was happening in that planet."

Beads of sweat were forming on Zhora's forehead. It was tough for her to recall every little detail of that day.

"Then we saw what our cameras had recorded, we could not believe what we were seeing. A whole different civilization was hidden underneath that façade. And before we could figure out what to do next, several fighter crafts were already approaching our Station."

"They approached us so fast that we did not even have time to send the video recording to the base. And in another minute we were taking heavy fire from the crafts. As we were just sent to collect data, we did not have any defense system. And we could do nothing other than take the attack."

Zhora felt rage as she was saying that. The headquarter knew that the ships that went before them vanished. But they still sent them defenseless. Of course there were three trained fighters among that crew but they didn't stand a chance in front of the fighter crafts.

"I managed to send a distress signal hoping that it would reach some ship. The station was losing its air integrity so I went on to grab an oxygen mask. I could see that several of my colleagues were already injured. The firing had stopped. Everyone was running around, trying to get to relatively safe space."

A chill shiver ran down her spine when she thought about what happened next. She wished she could erase her memory of that particular day. It was too much for her to bear.

"But then something unexpected happened. Those monsters got inside our Station and started to butcher all of us. They were swinging their axes around in a frenzy to chop my friends as if they were lifeless woods." Zhora's large eyes were filled with tears when she said this. But she tried hard not to cry.

She paused for a while and then continued, "I managed to run and hide in small ventilation. And I crouched there for what felt like an eternity. I thought I would die there in unknown space, but thankfully I was rescued."

"What did they look like? The attackers?" Vorian was curious to know that because Zhora termed them as monsters. And he also needed to keep the record.

Zhora gritted her teeth as she described those monsters, "They were very huge. They were at least 7 feet tall and they looked very bulky. They had long hairs and beards. They were still wearing metal armors and were carrying ancient weapons with them when they jumped inside our Station. It was just their ships that looked modern."

Then Zhora narrowed her gaze and spoke in a stern voice. "There was a word on Earth's myths that would be perfect to describe them… Ah! Yes… Berserkers... they looked like Berserkers."