Chapter 127: Breakout
“Bad planners and good planners can be equally unpredictable.”
—Philosopher Tuai Zoulo in his most famous work, On Warfare
The stairs led down to a series of identical hallways, each dimly lit and without decoration or decorum. Zaina wondered how deep the facility went when the android turned sharply right, entering one of the halls, and marching three doors down. It then posted itself outside the door on the right.
Its mechanical voice said, “Guard protocol initiated. Please enter while this unit remains here.”
“Thank you,” Zaina said out of instinct, but the android gave no reply. They stepped in front of the bare door, which lacked a handle or any way to open it from the outside. There was an audible click, and the metal door separated from its frame and slowly opened to a small room, small enough that Zaina wondered how she, Baeus, and Kazlo would all fit.
Within was a Coltanish man of thin and meager frame. His grayish-blue scaled skin was pale, and there were deep bags beneath his oversized brown eyes. Covering his humanoid body was a simple blue jumpsuit dirtied by oil stains and burn marks. He sat at a table covered in spare glyph parts and other strange odds and ends; aside from that, a bucket in the corner, and a flat metal bed protruding from the wall there was nothing in the dark cell. He quickly hid something out of sight and swept the loose parts off his table.
“I was about to go to sleep, I—oh, hello. You’re not with the cartel.”
“No,” Zaina said, then turned and waited as the door shut behind her and Baeus. It got much darker, so she activated the light function on her vis-screen; it projected a radiant sphere, though it only provided enough light to see a few feet ahead. “We’re with the Order of Riiva.”
The Coltan leaned forward. “Lancers—or rather, one, and a scholar. Well met, fellow. I’ve never come across one of your kind before.”
Baeus turned toward him. “Well met. My name is Baeus.”
The prisoner flashed a toothy smile revealing poorly kept teeth. “I’m guessing you know who I am if you came all this way to see me. Unless my employers lied to you.”
“Kazlo Kamu?” Zaina asked, stepping forward. “Ghost?”
He nodded. “And to what do I owe the pleasure, uh—”
“Zaina Quin,” she said. “And I—it’s strange, really. I’ll explain when we’re back on the ship.”
Kazlo’s head tilted, and his smile faded. “Your ship? Tralgon’s letting me go?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Baeus said.
Kazlo blinked a few times. “You guys aren’t that bright, are you?”
Zaina took offense. “What the hell does that mean? What kind of thanks is that?”
“You know they’re recording everything, right?” Kazlo said. “And if Lord Jetane didn’t actually give you permission to take me, you can imagine he won’t be happy to hear that.”
Zaina’s stomach sank. She wasn’t exactly ready for a fight, and the jig was already up. She summoned her cipher.
This is looking bad.
Kazlo had taken to scooping up every loose piece and part from the floor and throwing them on the table. “Well, intelligence may not be either of your strong suits, but it’s your lucky day—I happen to be a genius.”
Zaina shot Baeus a can-you-believe-this-guy look, and he returned it. Then they turned their attention back to Kazlo. “So what, you have a plan, then?” she asked.
He didn’t hesitate in his reply, now fidgeting with the parts on his table. “I’ve had a plan. It was supposed to be for next week, so I haven’t had the chance to test everything, but with a little more luck and the help of my new friends, I’m sure we can figure something out.”
His hands were moving with speed and precision, taking all the mechanical bits and bobs and assembling them into a haphazard-looking vis-screen. A holo-image popped up.
“I’m already in their network,” he said, already assembling something else with more pieces, something larger. “I promise I won’t be long, and then we’ll see if my plan’s going to work.”
Zaina blinked a few times. “What is your plan, exactly?”
“Well,” he said, “it wouldn’t exactly make sense to say when we’re being recorded, would it?”
She hated that he was right. “All right, so we have to trust you, then?”
He shrugged. “It’s either that or leave me here and fight your way out. I don’t see it going well for you two. And consider that I’m putting quite a bit of faith in you. For all I know you’re in costume, testing my loyalty.”
“Trust it is, then,” Zaina said. “Okay, we’ll follow your lead. But we should probably hurry.”
“Yes. Almost—”—he put the last bolt into a small glyph, which then beeped to life and rose into the air—“—done.”
“Bzzt—Hello, Kazlo. Patches 2.0 online.”
He held out a finger, and the glyph cheerily orbited around it. “Hello, Patches. Oh, it’s so good to see you, buddy. Initiate Freedom Protocol.”
“Are you sure? The functionality of that protocol has not been tested.”
“I thought the words would be triumphant, too. We’ve little choice and less now, I’m afraid.”
“Understood.” Patches emitted a chirp. “Freedom Protocol in effect.”
“Okay,” Kazlo said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s start with something simple. Can you open the door?”
Patches beeped a few times; the door’s lock clicked as it slid open.
“Here comes the real test,” Kazlo said, taking a step toward the outside.
“Wait! The android’s out there!” Zaina hissed.
“Exactly,” he replied, then continued out the door. “It’s clear!”
Zaina rushed out to see what he meant—the android was still in its guard position, with Kazlo waving his hand in front of it.
“Perfect,” he said. “We’re invisible as far as our friends are concerned.”
Baeus popped out. “So, now what?”
“Patches, path-read,” Kazlo said.
“Already done, Kazlo. Would you like me to lead?”
“If you would. All right everyone, follow Patches.”
The glyph led them twenty feet down the hall to a vent. It looked just big enough to fit Baeus’s bed-pod, about four feet in diameter; Kazlo turned to Zaina and said, “If you would do the honors.”
She drove her cipher into the vent, cutting it at the edges and tearing away any excess pieces with her hand. The energy blade cut through the metal grating like it wasn’t even there, and within a few seconds they had their escape.
“Yay! We’re on our way,” Patches said, then slipped into the opening.
Kazlo turned to Zaina and said, “You’ll have to do the same thing on the other side, so you go in first.”
It made sense. She stooped over and crawled into the vent, hustling to clear room for the next one through. On her hands and knees she made her way through the vent, which was blowing cool air. She looked behind her to make sure the others had made it in—sure enough, Kazlo was right behind her, followed by Baeus, whose bed-pod was barely able to maneuver through.
“So,” Zaina said, assuming they weren’t recording in the vents, “that was a neat trick back there, with the android.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Lord Jetane thought his operation network was secure, but he isn’t nearly as good a programmer as he likes to believe. By the by—you got one of those fancy lancer grenade dispensers on you?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Why?”
“There’s a half-decent chance we’ll encounter some resistance in the landing bay. If we do, and I hope we don’t, you might want to have some mag-pulse grenades ready to go, and some smokies too. The mags will scramble their sensors in case the Freedom Protocol is overridden.”
“Okay,” she said, deciding to go along with whatever he was saying. She loaded up a batch of mag-pulses and stored them in the chamber, then programmed the next batch for smoke grenades. She slipped on her mask and put the heads-up display on heat-tracking in case she lost visual in the chaos.
It didn’t take long for them to reach the other side of the vent. Zaina cut through the same way and punched their exit open. Upon crawling out she examined the landing bay—it was exactly the same as before, except a lock had been placed on their ship’s landing gear.
Well, that’s great.
Kazlo stumbled out and stood ungracefully, and Baeus hovered through. Kazlo then turned to Patches, who chirped and said in a low voice, “Ambush to the southeast. Thirty active engines.”