Part 20

    "Codes, codes, codes," he thought aloud. "The codes will be here somewhere." Kevin searched through the drawers of the desk in the office of Captain Andere. The man's body was cooling downstairs, and he had given him a mission, though not all of the means to complete it.

    As he was looking through a few drawers in the trophy case behind the desk - stacked with medals of valor, photos of what had to be family and friends, and small odds and ends - he accidentally knocked over a model ship - the placard had said SSV Normandy - and that's where he found it: taped to the underside of the ship's base was a command code that could only be the self destruct sequence.

    Interesting hiding place...

    For a brief moment he wondered what other secrets were hidden here, but knew there was no time for that now. Maybe next time he had a chance to raid a superior officers things he would have more time. He ran off, back down the stairs and headed out the door of the bridge toward comms. Had Kevin had a moment longer to look around however, his outlook would have changed entirely. Just below the monitor on the desk, next to the stack of personnel records and a mostly empty glass decanter of a vintage late-21st century scotch was a paper map map, showing the intended direction for all of the ships that were a part of the Tycho Project. Had he seen this map, his excitement to get to the planet below - which he had been wrongfully assuming was Earth - would have all but disappeared. This projection would have told him that while the planet below looked Earthlike, sat within the goldilocks zone of the star that was much like their own, and even had a similar day/night cycle, it was actually thousands of lightyears away from the cradle of humanity. In fact, this meant that it was entirely unlikely that Kevin would ever see Earth again.