1:01 P.M. (EDT)

With a vessel like the Almagest always flying so high above the Earth’s surface––always in constant motion, moving as fast as it’s known to––it’s a wonder how anyone is ever able to board or de-board the airship at all. The truth is, most people who board the ship usually stay on it for weeks or even months at a time. Though no one is a hundred percent certain, this is presumably due to the craft’s highly efficient engine system that allows the ship to sustain itself in the air for long periods of time. And when it does finally decide to land, it’s usually in the Arctic––somewhere where no one will find it and where nobody on-board the craft in their right mind will ever choose to de-board.

PHADSYN however, being the elite, tactical unit they’re known to be, are probably the only members on the airship who are able to travel to and from the craft at their leisure. Much of their thanks for this capability goes out to their engineering and development facility in Kenopsia––Newform Industries. They, who continue to outperform and outclass any competition in the military industrial complex with their production of top-of-the-line, future-proof vehicles, gadgetry, and weaponry, consistently allows the members of PHADSYN to continue to stay one peg above the rest of the world on the evolutionary ladder of modern technology.

It didn’t take long for Newform to develop a multitude of ways for PHADSYN to disembark the airship at any time they may need to. Getting back on the ship once it’s airborne, however, continues to bedevil the group.

As technologically adept as PHADSYN and Newform have come to be over the years with their technical achievements, certain feats still escape their grasp, including being able to return the team back to the Almagest after completing a mission, while the ship shrieks across the stratosphere at a staggering 75,000 feet, for example. In the past, especially during the time when PHADSYN were just starting to test prototypes of surface-to-air deployment vehicles, the Almagest would have to lower its altitude and speed by over fifty percent in order for the team to return to the craft successfully. The good news is that when the craft reached that precise altitude and velocity, the members of PHADSYN were able to very quickly access it via a compact, commuter rocket that transferred them to the exact location of the airship. The trip was so fast and efficient that once upon a time, it was unanimously agreed that this would be the de facto way to get members of PHADSYN, or any other officials that had been dispatched from the ship, back onto it without a problem.

This decision however, didn’t last very long considering that every time the Almagest accessed these particular vectors, they placed themselves in vulnerable, compromising positions. It even got to the point to where the airship was almost destroyed in an attack during one of these approaches.

It is the culmination of all of these factors that gives the answer to why, at this moment, four of the five members of PHADSYN are currently huddled together in one of their numerous, secret bases planted throughout the sub-terrain below United States soil, and not on-board the aircraft like they usually are. After completing a mission as vital as the one they just did, normally, PHADSYN would waste no time reporting back to the Almagest. This time however, for some reason, they spend quite a while debating over what exactly they should tell Odem, their magnanimous leader, about how their mission went.