Chapter 5 - The Debrief

                                    

                                          
Dozens of G.U.N. personnel escorted Starline, who was in handcuffs, smiling, to a cell. As they passed the lab, Tails stopped working on the Tri-Core glove and looked up. Starline eyed him as he walked, nodding and smiling. 
***
Starline was now free from his cuffs and was contained in a large glass cell held by hydraulic rigs. Vector walked up the control panel of the cell. "In case it's unclear, you try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass..."
Vector pressed a button which opened up a hatch underneath Starline's cell. Starline peered as much as he can from the glass. Without seeing, the sounds of gusting wind would make any common man quake, but not this doctor. 
"Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?!" Vector questioned as he closed the hatch. He gestured between Starline and the control panel. "Ant. Boot."
Starline smirked. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." 
"Built for something a lot stronger than you," Vector responded. 
"Oh, I've heard," said the platypus, glancing at a nearby camera.
In another part of the ship, the others watched the interrogation from the briefing room. Everyone stared at the monitor intently.
Back in the cell, Starline paced back and forth. "The mindless beast. Makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"
"How desperate am I?" Vector was slightly taken aback. "You threaten our world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace, and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."
A grin painted itself on Starline's face. "Ooh, it burns you to come so close. To have the Master Emerald, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."
Vactor smirked. "Well, you let me know if real power wants a magazine or something." With that, he left Starline alone, grinning at the security cameras.
***
Shadow watched until the monitor went black. Knuckles, who didn't even look and just listened, stood there silently. Everyone was too stunned to say anything. 
Until Amy decided to break the silence. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" 
Shadow shook his head and sighed. "Starline's gonna drag this out. So, Knuckles, what's his play?"
"I'm not aware of much, but I do know he has an army full of things called Badniks. They're not from my island, or any other place. And clearly, he wasn't the one to construct them. He means to lead them against the people. They will win him this world. In return, I suspect, for the Master Emerald."
Shadow sighed irritably and rubbed his temples at what he was hearing. "Seriously? A robotic army? From outer space? You gotta be kidding me."
"So, he's building another portal. That's what he needs Wave the Swallow for," Tails concluded.
"Wave?" Knuckles questioned. 
"She's an astrophysicist and inventor," Rouge explained. "Starline has her under some kind of spell, along with one of ours."
"I wanna know why Starline let us take him. He's not leading an army from here," Shadow mentioned. 
"I don't think we should be focusing on Starline. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him," Amy remarked.
One could have almost seen something snap in Knuckles' mind. "Have care how you speak. Starline is beyond reason, but he worked with me for a long time."
Rouge stared at him with the blankest of expressions. "He killed eighty people in two days." 
Knuckles, struggling to respond, folded his arms shrugging and looked away from the bat. "He's obviously lost island privileges-"
"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?" Tails thought aloud.
"It's a stabilizing agent," Sonic said, walking in with Silver following behind. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at G.U.N."
He looked over to Knuckles. "No hard feelings, One Punch. You've got a mean swing." Turning back to the others, he kept informing them, Tails listening intently. "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Starline wants."
The hedgehog strutted up to the platform that overlooked the main work area of the ship, looking around at the G.U.N. employees below. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That girl is playing Mean Bean Machine!" He pointed to one of the workers, who was indeed playing the Mean Bean Machine on the computer they were at. "Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did."
Sonic put his hands in front of his face, mimicking Vectors long snout. "How does Vector do this?" 
Agent Blaze rolled her eyes. "He turns."
"Well, that sounds exhausting." Sonic slipped a hacking device he took from Tails' lab under Vectors desk without anyone noticing. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Espio can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the emerald."
Blaze looked at him in confusion, but still slightly impressed. "Ok, when did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"
"I'm not, I just skimmed through the packet, Wave's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"
"Does Starline need any particular kind of power source?" Shadow questioned. 
"He's got to heat the gem to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier. Unless, Wave has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect. If he could do that, he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet!" Tails debriefed.
"Could someone just speak English?" Shadow mumbled. 
Tails got up and shook hands with Sonic, who smiled at his old pal. "Long time no see buddy. Good to have you around again. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled."
Tails gave a shy laugh. "Thanks! And-uh, I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous furry rage beast now. Kinda cool!" 
Sonic grimaced a bit, slightly uncomfortable with the mention of his 'other half.' "Uh, thanks..."
"Sonic is only here to track the emerald. I was hoping you might join him," Vector said, walking in.  
"Let's start with that glove of his. It may be different, but it works an awful lot like a G.U.N. weapon," Shadow mentioned.
Vector shook his head. "I don't know about that, but it is powered by his studies and boosted by the emerald. And I'd like to know how Starline used it to turn two of the sharpest people I know into his personal flying monkeys."
Knuckles was confused at Vectors statement. "Flying monkeys? I do not understand."
"I do! I understood that reference," Shadow said, raising his hand looking a bit proud of himself as Sonic rolled his eyes.
"Shall we play, buddy?" Tails nodded at his hedgehog friend. "Let's play some." Sonic and the fox walked out. 
Meanwhile, the Mean Bean Machine player Sonic mentioned earlier turned back discreetly, watching as everyone else dispersed before going back to playing.