by M. D. Cooper
Johnnie slapped him on the back. “You’ve got that right. This is gonna be so cool. We can steal a starship. Go on the run. We’ll be renegades!”
Reg swallowed hard. “R-renegades?”
“You know, like…space pirates. I always wanted to get a parrot for my shoulder—no, wait! A space monkey.”
Rickard was listening in from his bench back in the cell, and decided to chime in. “Space pirates, eh? If only I had a credit for every renegade freighter I blasted out of existence when I was out there on the job. I’d be able to retire to the Pleasure Colony on Eros III, set myself up with a nice little cabin on a lake, and make this crappy little moon nothing but a distant memory.”
“Blasted?” Asked Reg.
“Out of existence?” Echoed Shannon.
“Oh, yes. There’s a reason why the Alliance has been able to keep the peace in this sector for so long. Our ships are able to turn anything the criminal element can get their hands on into comet dust.”
It was Tonga’s turn. “Dust?”
Rickard chuckled. “I remember when my son was an infant, and I would bring him along to work. I’d let him pull the firing trigger for the particle beam cannons over at the tactical station. Kaboom! Oh, how he’d giggle when he saw those ships vaporize on the screen. Everyone would get a really great laugh out of it.” He smiled to himself, then it faded as he got a vacant stare. “Hm. I wonder if that has anything to do with why he became a system warlord in the Dynasty of the Imperial Confederation.”
***
Bravhart rushed into the commandant’s office in a panic. “Sir! There’s a jailbreak down in the brig. All the cameras are offline.”
Lords stood up. “Well, we know it’s not Rickard. The man barely has enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. Obviously, it’s Jacobson.”
“But how, sir?”
“That little bastard might be the biggest pain in the asteroid I’ve ever met, but one thing he isn’t is stupid. In fact, he’s proven himself to be very resourceful in the past. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he found a way to get out.”
“Should I tell security we’ll meet them down there?”
“Yes. No, wait.” The commandant considered for a moment, then smiled. “Actually, let’s give it a few minutes. The longer it goes, the more rope he’s giving us to hang him with.”
Chapter Four
Shannon, Reg, and Tonga looked at each other to see if each of the others felt as nervous as they themselves did now that they were actually in the midst of breaking Johnnie out.
As Johnnie’s friend, Reg decided he should speak up first. “Johnnie, I’m not so sure about—”
“What? You break me out of here, and you don’t have a plan for where to go from there. What did you think you were going to do?”
Reg shrugged. “We just wanted to help you out. The whole space pirate thing sounds really…dangerous.”
Rickard shook his head and smiled as he made an explosion gesture with his hands and a quiet kablooey sound.
Johnnie waved at him dismissively. “Don’t you guys get it? It’s not like we’re going to be in some crappy freighter that we picked up at a skeezy cantina on a backward desert planet. We’re going to steal a ship like the one Captain Rickard used to use to blow up those ships.”
Shannon had her arms crossed and looked even more nervous. “It still—”
Loud klaxons began blaring as the lighting turned to red and flashed on and off. A computer voice came over the Academy’s intercom system. “All personnel on full alert. There is a jailbreak currently underway in the brig. Consider the perpetrators to be armed and dangerous.”
Shannon nearly hyperventilated again. “Oh, my God. What are we going to do? The entire Academy is going to be after us. I can’t believe I agreed to this.”
“Hey robot, please shut down the noise and light show.” As she complied, Johnnie grabbed the blasters dropped by the guards when they were knocked unconscious. “There’s only one way out of here. We blast our way out!”
He tried handing a blaster to Tonga. “Here you go, big guy. Lock and load!”
Tonga pushed it away. “First of all…no. I’m not hurting anybody else. And second: That saying was old and cliché when my grandfathers were suckling on the teats of their grandfathers.”
Johnnie raised an eyebrow. “Remind me never to visit your home planet, dude.” He tried giving it to Shannon.
She held her hands up in protest. “I’m going to be in enough trouble already. There’s no way I’m shooting my way out of here.”
Johnnie sighed and held it out to C.O.R.A., who stared at him blankly. “I have no use for that. My programming prevents me from directly harming Academy personnel.”
Johnnie’s shoulders slumped. “Seriously? Well, I guess I’m going to have to double up.” He struck a heroic pose with both blasters raised.
Reg held out his hand. “Hello? I’m here, too.”
Johnnie barked a short laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good one, Reg. I’m glad you’re able to keep your sense of humor under this kind of intense pressure.”
Now Reg was just plain offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re the biggest nerd at this academy, so I’m pretty sure you’re a horrible shot. Everyone knows the cooler you are, the better aim you have. And, furthermore, you’re…” Johnnie motioned at Reg’s visor. “…what’s the politically correct term for it? Oh yeah—blind as a bat. And not those bats on Phorset Four with the really good eyesight, either. I’m talking normal earth bat here.”
Reg grabbed one of the blasters from Johnnie’s hand. “You see that gnat over there?”
Johnnie squinted in the direction Reg was pointing in. “Gnat?”
Shannon and Tonga followed suit, and were just as clueless. C.O.R.A.’s pupils made a slight whirring sound as they dilated. “My ocular sensors detect a flying insect of the dipterid suborder Nematocera seven point five centimeters above the viewscreen on the far wall.”
Johnnie, Shannon, and Tonga squinted even more and leaned forward. They still didn’t see anything. Reg pulled the trigger on the blaster and fired a thin stream of energy at the spot on the wall C.O.R.A. had indicated.
Johnnie scoffed. “What’s that supposed to prove? We couldn’t see it before you shot it. Are we supposed to be able to see whatever’s left?”
“I believe I can help with that.” C.O.R.A. played back a recording of what she saw with her mechanical eyes, zoomed in and in slow motion. In a projected holographic image, the needle-thin energy blast sliced the gnat clean in half.
Shannon’s eyes went wide. “Wow. That was…”
Tonga covered his mouth with his hand, distraught. “Such carnage! Was it really necessary to take an innocent life just to prove your point?”
Johnnie looked at the recording up close. “Meh. You did all right. I still stand by my statement, though. You’re a colossal nerd.”
“Yeah? Well, my eyesight isn’t really all that bad. It just isn’t perfect, like everyone else’s in my family. But this thing makes me see way better than anyone else. Anyone.”
Johnnie nodded in C.O.R.A.’s direction. “Except her.”
Reg shrugged. “Except maybe her.”
Shannon looked through the doorway. “Maybe we should stop wasting time and start figuring out how to get out of here?”
***
Lieutenant Bravhart marched down to the lift again, where he’d just been so happy to escort Jacobson down to the brig not so long ago. Only now, he was miserable. The commandant thought that it was wonderful that the troublemaker was just heaping more trouble upon himself, but Bravhart wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t easy to convince Lords to let him go get him even after waiting so long, and Jacobson had been very slippery in the past.
As far as Bravhart was concerned, the more time they gave that kid to make his plans, the harder he was going to be to capture.
***
J
ohnnie looked at the map of the Academy that C.O.R.A. had brought up on the large vid screen. “So. All we have to do is get from the brig here in the lowest basement of the Academy, up to the roof of the main building, where the landing platform is located.”
Shannon was skeptical. “In other words, it couldn’t be more difficult.”
“You are quite the pessimist, aren’t you?”
“She’s just being realistic,” Tonga interjected.
“Well, you could look at it as us having to get from one end of the Academy to the other, through every security guard, and administrator, and student volunteer here. Or...” he used his fingers to turn the 3D map ninety degrees, so it was looking straight up from the viewpoint of the brig. “You can look at it as just having to get from point A to point B in a straight line.”
Johnnie smiled wide, but got only blank stares from the others. “The lift! All we have to do is figure out a way to go all the way up on the lift without getting caught.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
“Haven’t any of you ever watched a holo-vid? We get up on the roof of the lift, and ride up without anyone even knowing we’re there.”
“That does not sound safe at all,” Tonga said.
“I calculate a thirteen percent chance of death or severe bodily trauma,” added C.O.R.A.
“Great!” Johnnie exclaimed.
Reg did a double-take. “What do you mean ‘great’?”
“Those are fantastic odds. You could look at is as a thirteen percent chance of dying, oooooorrrrr an eighty-seven percent chance of living!”
“I prefer my survival chances to be closer to the ninety-nine to one hundred percent range,” Toga said.
“That may be surviving...but is it really living?”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “Where’d you get that from, a motivational poster?”
“No,” Johnnie replied. “A coffee mug.”
***
As they exited the lift on the detention level, Bravhart and his security team went into high alert, pointing their weapons in every direction and scanning the corridor. So far they hadn’t seen anything suspicious, and there was really just the one hall leading down to the brig. Just outside the doorway, two guards were comfortably lying on the floor unconscious, each with a thermos near his mouth in case he woke up and got thirsty.
When they got to the brig they entered cautiously, but all they saw was Captain Rickard sitting on one of the hard benches in the cell.
Bravhart was exasperated. “Where the hell is he?”
“He who?” Rickard asked.
“Cadet Jacobson! Your cell mate.”
“Oh, him. I’m pretty sure he escaped through the vents. I wasn’t really paying much attention.”
Bravhart pointed at two of the five security officers he had with him. “You two climb into the vents and look for him.” He pointed to another pair. “I want you and you to stay here until those guards wake up and question them.”
He grabbed the last one. “You come with me in case we see him on the way up to the top floor so I can give my report to Commandant Lords.”
Bravhart and the security officer hurried down the corridor back to the lift and got on. He hit the button for the top floor of the building, which was just under the roof, where the landing pad was located.
As the lift raced to the top, he thought he heard some noise from above him, but realized it must have just been his imagination. When the lift came to an abrupt stop, he thought he heard it again, but he was in too much of a hurry to get to Lords’ office to worry about it.
***
Johnnie and the others lay on top of the lift, still hanging on for dear life, despite the fact that the lift had been stopped for a few seconds.
“When I saw the ceiling coming down toward us so fast, I thought for sure we were dead,” said Shannon.
“I told you there was nothing to worry about. It stopped right before we got to the roof. It was perfect,” Johnnie said.
“Perfect? If Bravhart had decided to check the landing pad next, we’d be pancakes right now. You realize that, don’t you?” Reg asked.
Johnnie got a glazed-over look in his eyes.
Reg waved a hand in front of his face. “Johnnie? Hello?”
“Sorry. I just realized I never ate breakfast, and pancakes sound really good right now. Tonga, you think you can force these doors open?”
“Why am I always given brutish tasks like this?”
“Cause you’re a brute, dude. Embrace it.”
Tonga pulled the doors open, then gave Johnnie the finger. “Embrace this.”
Shannon laughed. “Whoa. I’ve never seen him act this way. You really bring out a new side of him.”
They climbed out into the corridor leading to the landing area on the roof. In addition to the blast door leading from the short corridor to the landing pad on top of the main building of the Academy, there was also a force field in place to make sure someone didn’t open it up when the energy shield was down and get blown out into space. Johnnie had taken off the cover plate on the control panel, and had managed to figure out how to lower the force field by crossing a couple of wires. He knew that it would have been much easier for C.O.R.A. to do it, but he was tired of being shown up by a sex robot and felt the need to show off his bad boy skills.
“All right, guys. Prepare yourselves. When we get through this door, we’re going to see a selection of ships beyond our wildest dreams. Just keep in mind that there are only five of us, so we won’t have enough crew to man one of the giant destroyers. But I’m sure I can rig it so we can take one of the big exploratory vessels, or a badass little escort with enough firepower to blow up a moon the size of this one. We can all have some input on which model to take, but we’ll have to keep the discussion somewhat limited since we obviously need to get out of here as soon as possible. Maybe we can each make our top choice and then take a vote. Are we ready?” The gang nodded their heads in anticipation and grinned with excitement. Johnnie put the wires together and the door opened.
The entire landing platform was empty except for one small ship, which appeared to be nothing more than an oversized shuttle. It was dented up and scarred, and looked like it could hold about twenty people at most. Some of the panels still had primer from where the ship had been repaired but they hadn’t gotten around to painting it yet. It didn’t seem to have any weapons whatsoever. And the words, “CAUTION: STUDENT DRIVER” were painted in huge letters across the back of the ship.
Shannon walked forward, stunned. “What the hell is this?”
Johnnie looked around, not accepting the reality of what he was seeing. “Where are all the ships?”
C.O.R.A. answered them. “The Patrol fleet that is normally stationed here at Forcus Three is currently on maneuvers around the Forcus system.”
“And you knew this?”
“Yes.”
“But you decided not to tell us...why?”
“I was uncertain as to whether it was relevant. I am constantly being reprimanded for volunteering information, so I decided to wait to see if the information was important.”
“It’s important.”
“I understand that now.”
“So not only will we not have a cool ship, but we’re going to have to fly through the entire fleet of Patrol ships to escape from the system?”
“That is correct.”
“Well, let’s get on board. I guess we’ll have to deal with what we’ve got until we can and then, I don’t know, upgrade I guess.”
The group’s disappointment was palpable as they opened the ramp that led to the entrance hatch. They dragged their feet, dreading stepping foot onto the small, crappy ship.
***
Bravhart stood behind the numerous security guards who were trying to get through the doorway to the landing platform, as well as the techies who were working on the controls to shut down the force field and get the door open. “What’s taking so long?”
“Everything’s been rewired, reset, encrypted and encoded, sir.”
“How is that possible? They were only here for a few minutes.”
“It shouldn’t have been possible to do this much damage in so short a time, but somehow they managed it.”
“No more excuses! Get that damn thing open!”
***
“So, anyone know how to use any of this?” Johnnie asked.
“I thought you were some kind of expert pilot.” Shannon said with more than a little frustration in her voice.
“I am. I can fly the crap out of this ship, no problem. What I can’t do is use all those other doodads and whatchamacallits.”
“I am quite versed in the operation of Galactic Alliance starships.” C.O.R.A. sat down at the operations/helm control station at the front of the bridge.
Shannon moved off to the left. “I guess I’ll sit at tactical and communications, even though I’m pretty sure this thing has no weapons.”
Reg went right. “I can man the engineering console.”
Tonga stood uncomfortably by as the rest of the group sat at their stations on the tiny bridge. “Is there a...sickbay?”
“No. But you’re welcome to take a seat at the science station,” Johnnie suggested. “Close enough?”
Tonga attempted to squeeze into the chair, which was much too small for his large frame. “Fine.”
Johnnie stood in the middle of the bridge and took a deep breath. “Well, only one seat left. I guess I’ll have to sit here.” He plopped down into the captain’s chair and addressed C.O.R.A. “Can you transfer helm control over here?” C.O.R.A. nodded and complied.
Johnnie looked toward the engineering station. “Reg, if you could start the engine?” They held their breath as the engines made a labored sound while they powered up.
Johnnie tapped a few buttons. “Prepare for liftoff, people. You might want to grab onto something. I can’t guarantee it’ll be smooth.”
The ship lurched forward, nearly throwing the crew out of their seats. Dark smoke poured from the ship’s exhaust port as it slowly rose from the landing platform.
