“Vector Nine, come in. Vector Nine, repeat, come in.” A woman's raspy voice echoed through the plush pink headphones into the young man's ears.

Slowly opening his eyes to look at the miriad of screens before him, all dark with lime green text and numbers scattered across them, a sigh came out of his throat. He eased upward from his relaxed position to look at the monitor with a pink blinking triangle on it. “Vector Nine here,” he said in a calm voice, “I see it.”

“Vector Nine, request for visual confirmation.”

“Vector Nine, request received. Checking now for visual confirmation.” He tapped a few keys on the left side of the armrest where his hand was. His seat swiveled up and at the same time, the monitors lowered to reveal thick glass he could peer through to the outside world.

Outside it was raining, little wind, with the dark of night clouding everything. His blue eyes scanned slowly up and down in a grid pattern along the part of the sky he could see. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

“Vector Nine, visual confirmation status: No object.”

There was silence on the other end as no one replied to his headphones.

“Vector Nine, repeat, visual confirmation status is Negative.”

“Received.” came the woman's voice. “Vector Ten, come in.”

Still sitting at attention, the young man's eyes continued to watch the sky in front of him for any sign of something strange. After a few seconds a glint of something white sparkled in the lower right of his eye. Right away, his eyes zipped to where it had been and remained focused on the area.

“Vector Eleven, come in,” continued the woman.

His eyes blinked once, but kept their focus. Then once more.

“All Vectors in the South region, be on the look out for the Object. Out.” Her voice although raspy was crisp and demanding, and then there was silence.

A beep sounded in his ears and the young man, without removing his eyes from where he was focused, lifted his right hand to tap a small button on his right ear covering. “Go ahead.”

“Any clue what they're looking for?” came a young man's voice.

“No. It's likely just another bird like yesterday.”

“The one that was trying to nest above Elwin?”

“Yeah.”

“That was a huge bird!”

“It's the price we pay for living in an airship.”

“Floating Naturalized City, Ikato.” corrected the other in a sarcastic tone.