They seem to have given up on torturing him for a while. Perhaps to let him recover. Perhaps to make the next session more effective with the effect of anticipation. Kaarin didn't know.

He'd been imprisoned roughly a week – he measured time by the guards' shifts and the regular interrogation sessions. Caldos did not have advanced pharmaceutical technology, or any ability to produce interrogation implants, so they had to rely on skillful individuals with interesting hobbies involving objects both sharp and blunt. They actually were quite proficient; he only lost sight in one eye, only a few ribs were broken, he didn't have any dangerous internal haemorrhages that he knew of. He was even allowed to rest on the floor sometimes, chains extending from the ceiling, given water that he might survive for a little while.

At first, he resolved to tell them nothing. This lasted two sessions, until his self-preservation instincts overruled his determination, and he spilled the truth – that the Chancellor was in cahoots with the Lord Admiral, and that he was unjustly framed. They did not believe him. Growing increasingly desperate, he started making up whatever came to his pain-addled mind, but the interrogators punished him even more severely for saying things that didn't match up with the results of the palace security's own investigation.

Eventually, they seem to have given up. He was given some food in addition to his ration of water. His paranoia had grown explosively during his incarceration. Kaarin had been in jail before, on minor offences related to starport pubs, but never this long, and never tortured for information. A first for everything, he thought grimly. Is this how he was going to end? Would he rot until his death in some barbarian gaol, forgotten by everyone... until the warlord came, conquering and smashing, doubtless having little consideration for the lives of prisoners who happen to be sharing the location with seats of power.

"No," Kaarin said to himself. "I will not. I will not!"

"You will not what?" asked a quasi-familiar voice. For a moment, Kaarin thought it was the Chancellor again, but when the door opened, it was the Emperor himself who came into his cell, in all his expansive glory. A pair of retainers flanked the door inside.

Karin stood, chains rattling. "Sire! Your Chancellor, he-"

"-framed you to remove your delegation from the equation. Yes, yes, I know. I can't say I approve of his methods. He could have notified me, for one," the sovereign harrumphed. "Still, he does what is good for the realm."

"But the warlord-"

"I know about the warlord, this 'Lord Admiral'. Surprised?"

Kaarin certainly was. "I don't understand."

"Yes, that's what a lot of people don't. I had been already contacted by Lord Peter, through his agents. And I must say, he has given me a lot to think about. To rule this entire world, all that power, at my fingertips, should I accept a cession of the starport and a plot of land around it to him. I was skeptical, at first, but then you came. So it is true that he has Ancient artifacts of some sort, and in working order too. Extraordinary."

The Emperor smiled, gleefully, greedily. Kaarin wanted to punch him in his fat lip.

"If you knew all this, why have me tortured?"

"I knew, but I wasn't sure. The torture of you and your companions was actually Gaminakkur's idea. He's usually right about such things, though." The Emperor shrugged. "I would actually let you go, but he thinks that we could get something in barter for you, from the Lord Admiral."

"You bastard!"

"You know I could have you tortured again, for lese majeste?"

Kaarin shut up.

"Well, I'm glad we had this talk."

The Emperor turned around on his heels and strode out of the cell.

ooo

Kaarin paced in circles, for the last several days. He did not have anything else to do in his two-by-two cell. Couldn't look out the window, because there was none. The door did not have a window either, just some ventilation slips. The 'toilet' was just a cavity in the floor in the corner, covered by a plastic lid, and entertainment by looking into its contents was unlikely.

So was escape, for that matter. If he were a Darrian midget, it might have been possible to use the latrine hole – if he believed the Mycians were stupid enough to have that lead anywhere remotely resembling 'freedom'. Picking the lock was made troublesome by the absence of a pickable lock – as far as he could tell, the door was opened automatically through some electrical system located elsewhere. Tunneling through the walls was made more difficult by the fact that the cell was apparently made of reinforced concrete slabs; even if he could chip the stonelike substance away, he would likely have to contend with metal bars embedded in it, and he had no way to get through that.

Another problem were the manacles. They never came off – his gaolers just extended them or drew them back in, as they needed, probably via a similar conveyance as the door worked on. In any escape situation, he'd need to either get them off – fortunately, unlike the door they were equipped with simple mechanical locks that he could get out of, provided a piece of thin metal or plastic. The only challenge was to obtain such.

After mentally enumerating the difficulties, he began formulating his plan – decades in the Scouts meant that he'd acquired a habit of not multiplying problems unnecessarily. If he were to escape, it had to be during one of the now-infrequent visitations. One day, the guards were going to slip up somehow, and Kaarin would be able to use that to his advantage. Perhaps he could strangle a guard with the manacle chain, without anyone else noticing? The cell did not include any cameras – apparently, the locals did not master miniaturized electronics yet. He hoped.

Footsteps sounded outside, along with the regular noise of tiny wheels moving along a concrete floor. Food delivery, most likely, given the time.

The door clacked, locks releasing, and opened.

"Your dinner, Sanders," said the guard outside, looking in.

Kaarin noted that the delivery man was a new guy, different from the one who usually gave him the slop they had the audacity to call 'food'. He rolled the cart by the door, took a tray and a bowl, and slapped a couple of ladles into the container, and went it, as Kaarin waited, leaning against the back wall. He could maybe take the guy hostage, but it was a bit doubtful whether they'd care about the life of a menial worker.

Said worker placed the tray next to Kaarin on the plywood 'bed'. Normally, he'd take the used tray away, but instead, he leaned in to the prisoner's ear.

"Pretend to strangle me," he said, almost too quiet to make out.

"Huh?" Kaarin replied, dumbfounded.

"Pretend to strangle me," repeated the stranger.

Kaarin did not need to be told thrice. With a low growl, his hands seized the other's neck, but in a way that didn't actually cause the supposed victim to have reduced airflow. The man started to vocalize as if he was choked.

"The fuck is going on in there," said the guard, noticing something amiss. He strode in, armed with a baton. "Let him go, bitch!"

The guard smacked Kaarin's arm from the side, unwilling to hit the delivery man on the head accidentally. Kaarin let go, grunting in completely genuine pain. He fell back into the corner, as the guard pushed the erstwhile strangulation victim behind him.

"Don't like the food, Sanders? How about some whoopass instead?"

The guard raised the baton to strike at him again, but stopped suddenly when the one he was defending pressed a cloth into his face from behind. Predictably, he inhaled, eyes going wide – and collapsed after a couple of seconds struggling.

"I don't know who you are – but thanks anyway," said Kaarin, elated at the unexpected help. "You're here to break me out?"

The stranger was already rifling through the guard's keychain. "Yes. Here, unlock yourself," he tossed him a jangling bunch of keys.

"What do I call you?" Kaarin asked, working through the keys one by one, until he found the one that did work on the manacles. Meanwhile, the other man was stripping the unconscious guard of everything worthwhile – gun, wallet, identification card, handcuffs, baton.

"Arthur. Can you run, Sanders?"

"After a fashion," replied Kaarin, rubbing his wrists. "Where are we running to?"

"Nowhere right now. That's a contingency," Arthur said, unveiling the underside of the cart, revealing it mostly empty. He dumped the guard's belongings there. "Get in. I'll roll you out, but there's no guarantee we'll make it out the whole way like this. When I tell you to run, do so."

"Got it." Kaarin took a seat in the tray mobile. "What about my friends?"

"Don't worry about them."

"I'm not leaving without my friends!" protested Kaarin.

"I said – don't worry about them," insisted Arthur, closing the door and beginning to roll the cart down the hallway. "They're already being liberated as we speak. You're the only one in the high security block, they were deemed lower security risks and put elsewhere."

Reassured, Kaarin settled into being illegal cargo.

From within the veiled interior, he had only a limited perception on the events outside his temporary lodgings, but enough light to arm himself. Given his greater strength, he would probably have a decent chance in hand-to-hand combat, especially armed, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He also had the liberated slug pistol – with just one eye, long distance accuracy was going to be horrible, but these weapons had a very short effective range even in the hands of uncrippled users.

His heartbeat was elevated, given the circumstances, and it was very difficult being quiet – not wheezing, not moving his weight around. Still, he did the best he could as Arthur rolled his escape vehicle along several corridors, got them into a lift and went up. Soon, they were rolling along on concrete floors again.

"Give me the guard's access card," his liberator demanded, shoving a hand under the cloth, and Kaarin complied. Something beeped. The cart rolled onwards.

"Hey, you!" a voice sounded from a distance. "Where the hell are you going with that cart?"

"Out to the garage to have the wheels oiled. They creak a lot," Arthur replied, slowing down.

"They don't sound creaky to me."

"Come here and listen then. It's maddening from up close."

Kaarin heard footsteps coming over. He gripped the pistol harder and swallowed.

"Hear it now?"

"As a matter of fact, no. You got some Vargr in you, fella? I don't hear a thing."

"It's the front wheel. Just lean in and you'll hear it too!" insisted Arthur.

"Okay, hearing-ear dog, look here-"

Sounds of struggle began outside his tiny world.

"Help! Alarm!" shouted the investigator.

Kaarin decided that hiding time was over. In a smooth motion, he rolled out from under the cart, to see Arthur struggling to put a cloth over a guard's face, and the guard not letting him get away with that. Kaarin double tapped him in the legs.

The guard screamed and the sudden painful distraction gave Arthur the upper hand he needed and finally managed to put the chemical-soaked rag onto the other man's air intake. He stopped struggling very quickly.

"This way! Run!" Arthur sprinted onwards.

They were in some sort of small courtyard, albeit one closed from the top by a barred glass ceiling. Kaarin took off after his benefactor, in one hand gripping the baton, in the other, the pistol.

"Halt!" came from behind them. Kaarin didn't look around to identify who was shouting, but it became clear enough immediately, as shots rang out and impacted the door they were racing towards. Arthur was there fist, and smashed into it shoulder-first. Fortunately, the building was not fire safety-compliant and they both ran into the room beyond before they could be shot.

It was a garage, just as Arthur described their destination to the guard. Aside from stalls and a limited automobile workshop, there were some vehicles that reminded Kaarin of recreational buggies from a garden world he visited once.

"Open that door!" yelled Arthur. "Use the red button!"

Kaarin complied, running over to the closed exit, and smashing the red button next to it. The banded covering began to raise, far too slowly for Kaarin's taste. Meanwhile, Arthur jumped into one of the buggies, started it and wheeled around to meet Kaarin at the exit.

A pair of guardsmen emerged from the door they've used to get into the garage. Kaarin noticed them and opened fire immediately, causing them to dive for cover.

"It's open enough! Get in!" Arthur said, and Kaarin jumped into the passenger's seat.

As his driver put the pedal to the metal, Kaarin emptied the magazine providing suppression fire against their cowering pursuers. In seconds, they were in a downwards-winding tunnel, safe from immediate retaliation.

ooo

"Where are we going?" Kaarin asked, as they drove onto flat interior terrain again.

"This is part of a nuclear shelter system," explained Arthur, parking the buggy and jumping out to throw a lever. A giant metal door began to slide to the side, propelled by a whirring motor. "It was built after the Mycians and their enemies became capable of building nuclear weapons. There are hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels, between critical locations in the city, including the palace and the starport."

"The starport! Yes! Is my ship intact? Is it fueled up?"

"Your ship is fine, Sanders, it's fueled up and ready to go at a moment's notice. It might be under guard, but security is very likely light. I don't know much more."

Arthur knelt down near the motor powering the door and did something Kaarin could not properly see. The door managed to get open all the way, and the rescuer threw the lever the other way, before sprinting back to the buggy as the slab of metal began to close. He drove through it with time to spare.

"Is it worth the effort to close the door? We lose about as much time having to close it as just driving through it just after it opens up enough," Kaarin said.

"Wait for it."

"Wait for what?"

There was an explosion behind them. Kaarin jumped and looked behind – he saw only the closed door.

"Plastic explosive. Not too powerful, but enough to disable a crude motor. They will have to waste substantial amounts of time to open that door if they wish to pursue us the way we came in," Arthur explained.

"Damn, this operation is more intricately planned than I expected," said Kaarin. "I don't know what I expected, really. Just who are you?"

"Now is not the time."

"This tunnel goes on longer than I can see!" Kaarin pointed ahead. Indeed, the other end was too miniscule to make out. "Who are you? Why are you breaking me out?"

Arthur was silent for a little while.

"Imperial Intelligence," he said, finally.

"Imperial... you meant the Third Imperium? Not this petty realm."

"Indeed. We have reason to believe that your continued freedom and accomplishment of your mission on behalf of the Tyrian government is a net benefit to the interests of the Imperium. Therefore, it behooves us to free you and send you on your way," explained the covert agent.

Kaarin had a good look at the man who rescued him for the first time since they've met. In fact, if he were to study Arthur's – if that even was his real name – features at length, he would have trouble remembering anything about him. Everything about him was average, non-descript, average height, average built, average hair. He had a certain shiftiness about him, if one studied him intently, an alert sort of focus – but otherwise, any warrants for his arrest could well include an ethnicity composite instead of a likeness for all the good it would do.

"Well, I'll be damned," Kaarin shook his head. "I never really believed the Three-Eye would stick up for me."

"To be clear: Your particular well-being is of secondary importance, Sanders. It's just that you happen to be important to certain events the Imperium would like to occur, and some which it would prefer to preclude happening." Arthur paused. "You're welcome, Sanders."

Kaarin laughed.

ooo

"Last stop, everybody out," the imperial agent announced, when they pulled up against the tentative end of the corridor. It continued in two other directions, left and right, but there was a door at the center of the T-intersection. Kaarin noticed that the lock had been destroyed with some kind of heat-based tool, like a blowtorch or fusion cutter. Arthur plowed past the door, barely pausing to push it open. Kaarin followed him in and up the staircase.

They came up to a sort of dusty lobby, to a welcoming committee.

"Captain! I knew you were alive!" exclaimed Yosef.

The priest wasn't looking too good, sporting some bruises on his face, and wore the same prison garb as Kaarin did. Aside from him, there were two others – one was Sai, who had two black eyes and her hair chopped up unevenly, close to the skin – and the other was a man in the uniform of a Mycian imperial guardsman. Kaarin aimed the stolen gun at him, to a mutual reciprocation from him.

"Stand down, Captain," Yosef said. "He's on our side. Same side as the man who came with you," he indicated Arthur.

Kaarin relaxed, and put the gun down. "I'm out of bullets, anyway. What's the situation? Where are we?" He noticed more details now – Yosef and Sai were armed with slug pistols too, and all three of them had respirators hanging at their necks.

"The starport exit of the nuclear tunnel system," answered the fake guardsman. "Security's been alerted, but they haven't received reinforcements yet. This won't last. If you want to get to your ship, the time is now. The ship's berth is three slots from here, once you're out of the building. Be quick and stealthy, and you might just get to it alive."

"Let's go, then!" Kaarin exclaimed, turning towards the door.

"Captain! This belongs to you, I believe," the faux-guard handed him his miniaturized laser pistol and power pack. "And take this, too," he took off his respirator as well.

"Thanks, man, I owe you one."

"Don't mention it. To anyone," said he, and turned towards the staircase. "I'll slow them down below. Arthur, get them to safety."

"Will do," replied Arthur, opening the interior door of the airlock leading outside. "After me. Be quiet, follow me, don't open fire unless there's a firefight already going on."

The three of them followed him out.

ooo

The outside turned out to be a nasty place, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the very thin atmosphere that wrapped Caldos. Kaarin, Yosef and Sai put the respirators on their faces, but it was still a horrible experience to go from relatively standard pressure to something that was fairly close to vacuum in a span of time measured in seconds. Kaarin's working and non-working eye both felt like they were going to explode.

They were truly back at the starport, which Kaarin had no opportunity to explore after they landed. It was similar to what he'd seen in Imperial space and in the frontier, a collection of administration buildings, a communication center, loading and off-loading cranes and trucks, and plenty of poured-concrete landing spaces. At the moment, there was an utterly huge, multi-kiloton freighter parked on the pad nearest them, blocking a lot of the view.

Arthur led the way, which gave Kaarin enough information to find the 'Imminent Misjump', standing where he set it down the couple of weeks before.

"It's them! Stop them!" came a shout from the side. They'd been spotted.

"Run!" shouted Arthur, following his own advice.

Kaarin thought better of it, in the present circumstances of being in relatively open terrain – the buildings on their right did not provide any cover, and the chainlink fence between them and the berth with the big freighter could not be counted to stop bullets, even if it could delay pursuit.

He stopped and found the shouter – one of three guards ducking under the belly of the behemoth cargo ship. Kaarin fired off a few beams at them, the only sound produced being a faint 'zot' from the pistol's electrical components discharging, and was pleased to hear cries of pain. This would cover their retreat for a little while, as the pursuers were temporarily demoralized. Only then did he follow the others, who'd already put several meters distance on him.

"Wait for me!" he breathed, too quietly for them to hear and fell into a dead-out run.

Shots rang out when they cleared the freighter, streaming in from a guard tower situated on the other side of the starport, perforating the sides of the buildings alongside which they were running. Kaarin redoubled his efforts – running targets were quite difficult to hit, after all, and faster running targets better than slower running ones.

Fifty meters to the scoutship.

A window exploded to his side, spraying glass everywhere.

Forty meters.

Bullets chipped away at the concrete next to his feet.

Thirty meters.

Kaarin was getting short of breath, the respirator apparatus not helping in the least.

Twenty meters.

He saw who was shooting at them – there was a manned guard tower on the other side of the starport. It was too far away to see clearly, but they had a crew-operated slug thrower over there. Kaarin cursed internally. The only saving grace was that these kinds of weapons weren't meant to be accurate – for suppression, primarily, not kills.

Ten meters.

Arthur, Yosef and Sai hugged the scoutship's door while the engineer frantically tapped the entry console with the access combination.

Five meters.

Kaarin felt as if someone had thrown a rock at his side. He was already falling over, carried by momentum, as he realized that he had been shot. His limp body tumbled forward, giving him an unwelcome taste of the tarmac.

"Help me!" he heard Arthur's voice yell. Seconds later, he was lifted up from the ground by the imperial agent and someone else – Yosef, he thought. "Crap! Get him in, get him in!"

Consciousness was fading. Curiously, the pain he felt was very limited. His face hurt like hell, he must have scraped it pretty bad. One of his hands burned, too, more abrasions, probably. But the rest – not really. Kaarin tried to speak, but only unintelligible gargling came out, along with a metallic taste, which he knew from previous experiences – blood in his mouth.

"Shut the door!" Arthur commanded. "Fire up the P-plant and the M-drive!"

"Yes, sir!" came Sai's voice.

Kaarin heard bullets impacting on the ship's hull – uselessly. Starship armour could take a hit from a tank, and be none worse for wear. Anti-personnel munitions were utterly pointless, even against unarmoured hulls, and the 'Imminent Misjump' had a layer of crystaliron.

Yosef and Arthur dragged him by his hands into the common area.

"Flip him over," Yosef suggested, as they put him down on the floor. From here, Kaarin had a beautiful view of the ceiling. It was painted a different colour from the floor, just in case artificial gravity failed, and you had to know which way was up. He felt pretty blissful, all told, cares about pertinent things falling away.

The priest's face drifted into his vision.

"Can you hear me, Captain?" he asked.

Kaarin responded with a grunt and tried to smile. He wasn't sure of he'd succeeded or not.

The priest swore.

Kaarin lost consciousness.

ooo

Arthur wasn't his real name, of course, just a pseudonym he'd chosen for this operation. He'd had many before, and expected to have many yet – provided they get out of this one with their hides intact. In order to achieve this, he had to get them off the planet, and the regular pilot was out of commission. Fortunately, his impressively wide skillset included starship piloting. Once the power plant came online and the maneuver drive revved up, he wasted no time making a vertical takeoff at approximately three and a half effective gravities – a welcome surprise that the ship has been refit from the standard drive which packed only half this boot.

"Diplomat, get useful," he shouted. "Plot us a jump to the Dostoevsky system."

"Hold your horses! I don't know how to plot jumps or anything like that," objected Yosef. "Can't you do it?"

"I'm busy dodging bullets and will be busy dodging lasers."

"Can't Sai Marte do it?"

"If she knows how. Doesn't matter. I don't care, so long as it's done," Arthur waved him off.

They were in orbit mighty fast, compared to chemical-powered thrusters the industrial base of the planet could just barely produce. Immediately, he had to contend with angry demands to return to port or be destroyed – he shut down the comm lest it distract him. Then came the actual laser beams, low-powered discount ones coming from several small ships the one-third of the Caldosian economy managed to buy them, and a few from the Mycian planetary point-defense satellites. The latter he could ignore. The former, he would better dodge, even if they were unlikely to cause much harm against even a lightly armoured starship, which this was.

The engineer stalked onto the bridge.

"Sir, I need a point to plot the jump from," she said simply.

"Here," Arthur pointed to the astrogation display. "Jump-2 to Dostoevsky, minimum safe distance from gravwell, current heading."

Astrogation was one of those tasks which were relatively straighforward, but required lots of tedious calculations, yet were difficult to offload on a computer. A computer could check if the calcs were correct, but only a trained human could avoid having to brute force the entire domain of possible answers.

They were raked by a laser from one of the Mycian SDBs. Arthur checked the automated damage report – nothing major, just some superheated armour and hull. They'd live. Of course, it would take the better part of two hours to make it to the jump limit. They might not be able to weather the storm quite so long.

"Diplomat!" he called again, as he multitasked avoiding stray shots and the engineer was busy crunching numbers.

"My given name is Yosef, and my title is 'Father', or if you prefer my secular rank, 'envoy'," the priest complained. "What can I do for you, Arthur?"

"Can you operate a laser turret?"

"I've never tried."

"Get up into the turret, grab the controls, try to align the crosshair with the red rhombuses on the display. When you do, press both red buttons," the agent gave him a crash course in starship gunnery. "We're relying on you to prevent our destruction by hostile forces, but no pressure."

"You have got to get a course in diplomacy," muttered Yosef and drew down the ladder that led into the turret on top of the scoutship. A minute or so later, he begun shooting – not accurately, but credibly trying to harm the enemy.

The engineer was ready with a set of astrogation parameters in thirty minutes of sweaty grinding away at troublesome numbers – but Arthur heard the telltale sad beep the automated checker made when the calculations were incorrect.

"Do it over, same departure point," he instructed.

Meanwhile, their amateur gunner had enough success to actually score a hit on one of the Mycians' hundred-tonner patrol boats. That one disengaged from the fight, but the other five redoubled their efforts. Fortunately, distance was on their side, and Arthur could veer away from any likely beam trajectories – it also made Yosef's job harder, but Arthur did not actually expect that cleric to hit anything, so he was already ahead on that front.

The woman produced a second set of numbers, some forty minutes after the first set, and plugged them in.

Another sad beep.

"Did you actually do this before?" Arthur demanded.

"Once successfully, sir," she said.

"Do it again, but for real this time," he waved an arm in her general direction without turning from his own task.

A decompression alarm sounded – not good. If they started losing air, they'd have to suit up, which they hadn't done so far, due to their haste and necessity to do other things rather than take ten minutes to attach everything.

"Leaking air in the cargo bay, sealing off the lower deck," Arthur announced. "How are you doing with those numbers?"

"I'm working, sir."

"Work faster."

"I'm trying, sir."

A scream came from the upper deck – which consisted only of the turret controls, narrowing down the location of the problem, whatever it was. Arthur always kept his cool, never panicked, but this situation was increasingly trying both his nerves and his patience. This crew was incompetent.

"Status report, diplomat!"

"The controls have gone bad! I can't make heads or tails of them, everything is sluggish and I can't get the crosshair pointed where I want it!" came a plea from the turret.

"The turret's probably been hit, keep trying," he shouted back. "The jump limit is coming up in six minutes, where are those numbers?" If they missed it, she'd have to start all over again, and the way things were going, they might not have that long. Their gunner got lucky only once, and by now they've been roughed up pretty severely by the opposition.

"Numbers, sir," the woman said, and started plugging them into the computer a third time.

Arthur almost let his composure drop when he heard the happy beep of an accepted astrogation route.

"Get to the jump drive and I hope you're a better engineer than you're an astrogator," he said.

"I am, sir," she went away at a run.

"Jump in three minutes," Arthur counted down the time. "Two minutes. One minute. Thirty seconds. Is everything ready?"

"Ready, sir!" came an answer from engineering via the intercom.

"Engage when green."

The seconds counted down, appearing to take their sweet time about it, then hit zero. Power output fluctuated massively. The main viewport turned blue.

They were in jump space.