The Unseen War

Chapter 12

Earth Year 3010, November 3rd

Thirty-Three Months since the Attack

It had been twelve days since Mitsu and I had been imprisoned. I had only seen Mitsu once since then and I hoped that Sia was keeping him company. She had managed to come see me one other time and she had just enough time to let me know that she was assigned a guard position over Mitsu. Aside from the regular interrogations, the guards would come into my cell with nightsticks. They thought I was a traitor to earth and they were treating me as such. My only solace from the consistent beatings was that Sia would be able to keep them from beating Mitsu.

During the free time that I had, I had started to come up with a plan to escape. I was going to need to know where the Voidstorm and Proto Guardian were being kept, but even with that information the chance for escape was going to be slim. It was going to have to be me, Sia and Mitsu. If I escaped then they were probably going to make Sia's life a living hell.

We were going to need a small cargo ship to escape, otherwise we would have to find a way to retrieve the Guardians later and that wasn't going to happen. We needed a destination as well. Sedronia would be the most obvious choice but without knowing where we were in space there were probably better options. Edravis would be a better option depending. The Whists didn't tend to spend much time looking for wanted humans. There was also Ulara, the Ordeerians had always been neutral and I don't think Faucheur would come looking for us there.

I was trying to do as much thinking and planning as possible before the next time that Sia came by. The main issue was going to be getting the Guardians out. The Tempest had never experienced escaped prisoners, but I was hopeful that having inside help would make it possible. Plus I was a little more familiar with the Tempest since I had served on it for nearly two years.

November 10th

Soon I had a functional plan in mind, the guards switched out consistently at the ship's nighttime. The second shift of guards were usually asleep after two hours. If Sia managed to knock out her guard then we would be able to be unseen for a while. Sia said that she could put in a work order that would force the Guardians to be moved at a specific time, which meant that we would be able to load them into a cargo ship without too much work needed. The main issue was how we would get from the cells to the hangar bay without getting caught.

If I managed to get one of the guards' outfits, we could escort Mitsu and it would look like a prisoner movement. We would still need to move quickly though, once the alarms went off it would be a lot harder to get through the hangar bay. Even if we got through the hangar bay we still had to make sure we were moving fast enough that Faucheur couldn't use the Sibylline Blast. Sia and I managed to work through as many little details as possible in such a short time, and then the day we decided on was on us.

November 13th

I was sitting in my cell, thinking about every detail of the escape plan when the door opened. Sia stood there with a guard outfit in her hands. "Get dressed quickly." She whispered, throwing me the clothes.

I pulled the guard outfit over my prisoner uniform and walked out of the cell. Twenty-two days since we had been caught. Mitsu jumped onto me and hugged me. I had worried about Mitsu all twenty-two days, but he seemed okay. Hopefully he had been treated better than I had. We were quietly walking past some of the other cells when I happened to notice something. Most of the cells had Regored or Whists that I didn't recognize. There was one single Taggon. I stepped closer to the cell and checked. It was Qhil. After seeing Faucheur here, I should have assumed that Qhil was also here. This was going to throw a wrench in the plans for sure but I wasn't going to leave Qhil behind.

I motioned for Sia to open the door and went inside the cell. "Qhil!" I whispered.

There was a small silence followed by a stirring. "McMillan?" A tired voice whispered back. "Is that you, or am I still dreaming?"

"I'm here Qhil. Keep quiet, we're getting out of here." I said holding my arm to help him off the cot. Taggons weigh a lot more than I expected but I managed to keep my balance as I helped him up. He looked like he had been suffering more than I had.

Qhil started to speak. "Otath-"

"Tell me later, we need to get moving and we can't draw attention to ourselves." I said, cutting him off. I glanced at the sleeping guards around us. Our deadline was already tight and taking a fourth person with us was going to make us stand out more.

We started moving towards the main hallways with Sia leading the way, Mitsu and Qhil in the middle, and I brought up the rear. We walked past one or two guards but they didn't give us a second look. I was definitely glad that we had grabbed a guard uniform. One guard escorting three prisoners wouldn't have passed even a slight glance. We had just made it past the interrogation rooms when we started to have trouble.

I did my best to be observant without staring. There were still soldiers up and about during the 'nighttime hours' of the Tempest. I kept an eye on them while making a backup plan in my mind. Even if the backup plan wasn't needed, this was still going to be dangerous.

We passed the interrogation rooms and suddenly there weren't any more soldiers around. Sia seemed like she was a natural at looking relaxed in a tense situation, Mitsu also looked relaxed. Qhil and I were the ones more likely to stand out. Qhil kept himself hunched over and kept his eyes on the floor. I was just thinking that we might make it with little interference, when the alarms started blaring. Either the sleeping guards and empty cells were discovered, or someone had noticed us without confronting us. Either way, the alarms were going off and my backup plan had to be used.

"Hurry to the hangar bay and get ready for takeoff!" I called out to Sia.

"Where are you going?" Sia asked.

"I'm going to open the doors so you can get out of here."

"No! Chris! I can't..." Sia grabbed my arm and held on for a second.

I pulled her in close and kissed her on the forehead. I wanted to stand there forever, but the alarms kept me grounded. I pulled away. "You have to escape." I said simply.

I started running for the control room. The guard uniform had a nonlethal taser on its belt which I was glad for. I didn't want to kill or injure someone I had known. There were a couple of soldiers around the corner which I ran into and knocked over. Luckily, I was a bit quicker on the draw than they were and they were unconscious before they realized what had happened.

I wasn't sure what our chances were. With Sia leading Mitsu and Qhil, they should reach the hangar before I reach the control room. I just hoped that they would be able to load the Guardians before things went insane.

I didn't run into any more guards until I got to the control room, where there were two guards inside. My instincts were better than I thought and I had the two guards in the control room unconscious before they had time to realize what had happened. I ran to the controls and looked out the window into the hangar. There were a couple of cargo ships and I looked to see which one they had taken. Suddenly I could see Mitsu in one of the cockpits, Sia was just sitting down next to him. I threw the lever to open the hangar doors and watched as they took off. The alarms were still blaring as they flew away. I pulled the lever again to close the doors in case they tried to send someone after them. Shortly after, the soldiers filled the room. Faucheur looked like he had been woken unpleasantly and I suppressed a smile.

Faucheur was definitely mad, he walked right up to me and slapped me. I barely felt it, in fact, I smiled at him. The soldiers closed in around me and I felt several fists thrown before I fell unconscious.