Conflagration

You Don't Fuck with a Mechanic's Tools

The first part of the escape plan fell to Lyssa. She had to retrieve the hardpointer's control card.

Again.

At least this time it wasn't at the bottom of a kilometer-deep lake. It was (according to Matty, anyway) locked in Tolbert's footlocker in her private tent. "Colonel Tolbert isn't there," Matty said in Estrellan. "She's meeting with the village elders and discussing how they're gonna get the lady off the planet in the morning. They're planning on making Erin fly it and holding you here for a hostage."

"Too bad the plane will be gone by morning."

"True that, love."

Erin and Sister Judith waited in the woods near the shed-jail while Matty led Lyssa to Tolbert's tent. They had posed the unconscious guards just outside the shed's closed door so that it looked like they were sitting on the ground with their backs against the door drinking and talking. Lyssa had said nobody would believe that if they happened past, but Matty had assured her that's what guards do when no officer was looking.

Lyssa thought back to the night she had played cards with Scalps out on the platform while she waited for Erin to return from flying with Tolbert. Those men had been on guard duty, watching the hardpointer, but all they really did was drink and gamble.

"Mercenaries aren't real military, love."

"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me 'love'?"

"At least one more, love."

Sneaking around the periphery of the camp and keeping to the shadows, they made it to Tolbert's tent without anybody stopping them. "You go in and get the card. I'll keep a lookout," Matty said.

Lyssa just nodded and ducked inside the tent. She found the tent surprisingly spartan for a pirate warlord. There was just a cot, a bath basin in one corner, a couple flight suits hanging from hangers, and a small desk. There was a lantern on the desktop and a plastiform crate on the bare ground right next to the desk. Lyssa guessed Tolbert must use that crate as a chair. And at the foot of the cot was Tolbert's foot locker where Matty said the old sociopath had locked away the control card.

Lyssa was no safe cracker, but this was just a common soldier's foot locker, not a safe. It had only a simple, mechanical lock holding it shut. If she had something to pick the lock with, she could probably open the footlocker that way, but Lyssa knew a quicker and easier way to open it. She dragged the heavy footlocker away from the cot and examined the hinges along the back of its lid.

She poked her head back out the tent's flap. "Matty, gimme your rifle."

Matty looked around but no one seemed to be nearby. "If you fire it, everybody will be on you. You'll be dead pretty quick."

"I don't need a gun. I need a hammer and a punch. Now, gimme your fuckin' rifle."

Matty considered it. He was clearly loath to give away his weapon.

"You'll get it back. Now, hurry."

Reluctantly, Matty unclipped the rifle from his body armor and handed it over. Lyssa didn't fuck around. She grabbed the rifle and pulled it back into the tent. By the light of the lantern, she removed the rifle's cleaning rod and examined it. It was the perfect diameter to use as a punch, but she was gonna fuck up the threads on Matty's cleaning rod, good and proper. She placed one end of the cleaning rod on the first of the three hinge pins and tapped the other end of rod with the butt of the rifle. After about the second time she used the gun as a hammer, it occurred to her to wonder if doing this could make the gun go off. She knew nothing about guns, so she had to just hope for the best.

After only a few smacks on the cleaning rod, she managed to get the first pin out far enough that she was able to grab it with her fingers and pull it the rest of the way free. It hurt her fingers, but she got the job done. "I miss my pliers," she muttered as she set the first hinge pin aside and got to work on the second. In less than a minute, she had all three pins out and she lifted the footlocker's lid free. The front of the lid was still secured to the locker via the lock's shackle, but she now had full access to the contents.

And the contents proved to be interesting. There were several books inside. A couple were about airplanes, but others were about the philosophy of war from ancient Earth warlords and dictators. One was called The Art of War while another was called Mein Kampf. She also found Erin's useless gun, still in its shoulder holster. She'd definitely be returning that to its owner. Inside a strange, black box, she found a prosthetic eye like the one Tolbert wore. Must be a spare. Looks expensive, Lyssa thought. After she smashed it, she put the pieces back into their box. She pushed aside toiletries and personal items of no interest to her. Where the hell did the old bag hide the control card? Matty, you better be right about it being in here.

She picked up a makeup bag and even before she opened it to look inside, she recognized a familiar clatter from the bag's contents. Her heart leapt with joy as she unzipped the makeup bag and found her confiscated tools within. The pockets of her coveralls had felt annoyingly empty the past day or so without the familiar weight of her tools. You don't fuck with a mechanic's tools.

She quickly slipped her adjustable wrench, her favorite ratchet, multimeter, wire stripper, a roll of electrical tape, and about a dozen other tools back into their accustomed pockets. Her soul felt complete again.

She found Tolbert's data pad and phone. They were both inert at the moment since they were inside the tenebricite shadow, but that didn't stop Lyssa from using her pliers to break their screens. You don't fuck with a mechanic's tools.

She still hadn't found the control card, though, and she had been all through the footlocker. Fuck! If that thing ain't in here, we are proper humped so hard.

Then, she looked at the books again. One of the books called The Prince bulged oddly. She opened the book and found the control card being used as a bookmark. She was almost as thrilled as she had been at finding her tools. She examined the card closely just to make sure it was the real thing. It was.

She quickly threw Tolbert's stuff back into the footlocker and tapped the hinge pins back into place. She looked around the tent and was satisfied that everything looked just as it had before she'd entered. Tolbert would be pissed when she opened that footlocker, but until that happened, she shouldn't suspect anything.