"...No, there is still no more word from Rygel," D'argo repeated for what felt like the thousand time in the last arn. Normally he would have been annoyed with his lover's repeated queries for updates, but the Nebari had also given him something of some good news this time when she commed.
"Tell me again, what exactly happened when Noranti changed your bandages?" he asked, wanting to focus on a more pleasant subject for the moment while he was forced to wait. The joy in Chiana's voice was unmistakable.
"I saw shapes! They were blurry... but I saw them," she cried.
"What did the old woman say about the treatment?"
"Wrinkles said that my irises were starting to look normal again," the girl replied.
"The outer perimeter of both irises appears to be returning to their normal color." D'argo heard Noranti put in from the background.
The Luxan exhaled a deep relieved breath. It looked as if their risky trek to the Diagnosan had been worth it. His lover was healing, now if only he could restore John and Aeryn to the crew, he would feel that the others' confidence in him as captain would be warranted. He almost scowled when he remembered that the fulfillment of that desire hinged at the moment solely on Rygel and Chiana's pet Shrike.
He bit down the sour taste that thought left in his mouth and turned his attention instead back on Chiana's good news. A part of him wondered how this might change their renewed relationship, but for the time being, he would take the good news for what it was.
"How long does Noranti think it will be until your sight is totally restored...?" the warrior started to ask when an explosion suddenly rocked the image of the prison building on the holo scanner. "What the hezmana?" the Luxan growled as fire spewed from several places in the corner of the upper most floors. Some microts latter the actual concussion reached his position several blocks and rooftops away where he had set down his ship. The sound reverted off the hull of the big cargo transport like a hammer blow.
"D'argo? What's going on?" Chiana asked, puzzlement and alarm warring with each other in her voice from the comm link.
"I do not know. There has been a massive explosion at the prison location," he supplied idly as he click through a number of scanner frequencies trying to find a better view of the area without moving the Pod closer from it's rooftop hiding place.
"Rygel? Berret?" the Nebari asked fully worried an instant later.
The Luxan hissed. "Not now! No more questions... I have to switch over to the scrambled channel and try to contact them."
The warrior flipped the comm over, silently cursing a blue streak as Crichton called it, to himself. If those two frelled this up, they'll wish they had been vaporized in the blast he thought.
To his surprise, the secured comm sounded like it was already opened when he tuned in to it.
"Rygel!" he growled, "Rygel, are you there?"
The open channel hissed and popped a moment and then cut off without warning.
"Shrike! Shrike!" D'argo demanded next.
Only empty airwaves answered his call. The channel had been over-rode and locked out.
"FRELL!" he roared inside the transport's cockpit.
The dust cloud settled slowly, but Berret's battle visor's optics cut through the haze. The stairwell seemed to be eerily quiet suddenly. The malfunctioning light panel above his head strobed on and off, which made the optics flare and struggle to keep up with the constantly changing surrounding light.
He pulled his brace blades from the wall and floor where he had buried them and willed the rest of the climbing spikes and smaller blades to retract into their armor housings. Free from the pinions that had obviously saved his life, he shifted his weight and several pieces of rubble fell off of his metal-sheathed form.
He rolled over into a sitting position, to find that the stairway landing he was on abruptly ended at a sheared off edge a bare two drec from where he sat. The railings and banister he had crouched on just moments ago, along with the rest of the staircase, were now gone as if a angry giant had come along and whacked them away with a few enthusiastic blows from an equally gigantic club.
Without warning, Berret found himself chortling with unsuppressed glee at the destruction he'd wrought.
Just as quickly he choked the laughter off as he realized what he had just done. Every prison guard, every person except for himself, who had been in the stairway, was now dead.
He rolled the rest of the way to his feet and moved cautiously to the crumbling brink of the landing to look over. The optic lens in the visor automatically flipped up into the helm when he wanted to look at the scene with unaided eyes. Despite the swirling dust, he could make out that the next three lower landings in the stairwell were gone. Ripped out and crushed by the imploding plasma blast. The wreckage, along with the bodies, had been compressed into the size of a grape, an impossibly heavy grape that lay somewhere below on the ground or basement levels.
That voice in the back of his mind shrieked with demented laughter once more, what the look on the guard's faces must have been like as forces like unseen massive hands squashed them into base atoms!
The few nano-microts of sheer terror must have been priceless... worthy of the best of Syndicate eradications. For some small sane part of him, time seemed to be lagging even though at the same moment he was aware it was passing normally.
Slowly, even though he wanted to fight it, he found he couldn't help but laugh with the shrill voice... it screamed at him to go find more beings to kill, more things to destroy. The insanity called to him to bask in the glory of the chaos. It was like a slow constant slide downhill and no matter how much he clawed at the ground to arrest the fall, his progress into dark madness never halted. That distant part of himself wondered if he were finally losing the battle to keep his mind as he flicked the optics back in place over his eyes... the better to see the wreckage.
The voice told him he shouldn't care about the moral right or wrong. He was what he was designed to be, the perfect killing machine. There was so much pleasure to be had in spilling blood... even more when the eradication was carried out with such perfect calculation.
And he pleasantly found it was becoming easier not to care just then with each passing microt.
Without warning Chiana's sightless eyes filled his mind and the echo of her plead for his help filled his ears. The voice pricking his brain screamed in defiance, trying to banish the Nebari girl. For the moment, the gray girl won, and the Shrike, with some considerable difficulty reasserted control.
He still had work to do... and a promise to keep.
Berret tapped at his comm badge. The channel opened as it was programmed to and overrode the Hynerian's already activated comm badge, taking over the link and securing a private channel.
"Rygel... open the frelling door," the Shrike demanded in a humorless low tone, now as fridged as death itself.
The Hynerian Dominar was just about to call the Luxan's name over the channel, when his comm badge squawked and the just opened link to the Pod severed. The device clicked and hummed as it reset itself on override.
Rygel poked at the badge desperately with stubby finger, fearing that the Qujagans had somehow discovered the covert comm link and were jamming it.
The communication device settled into an open frequency a microt later and the Shrike's icy voice made the Hynerian's blood run momentarily cold. "How could the bastard be alive?" he asked himself.
"Open the goddess damned door, you miserable frellnik," growled the Enforcer. "Or I will detonate the Crinite device I have with me and blow the entire five top floors off this structure... and you along with it."
Rygel groaned for an instant but then jumped down to run over to the security access control panel.
"Give me a micron, frell you!" Rygel spat as he quickly inspected the board and then found the correct door release codes. He should have expected the Shrike to have a back-up plan in case Rygel did decided to double-cross and abandon him outside the fortified door and escape.
A final sequence and the huge door cycled open, admitting the dust-covered assassin into the secured room.
Berret strode down the short hallway like a conquering hero, while Rygel quickly reverse the door codes to close the portal behind him. The Shrike entered the main room and without a word, the brace blades from his right gauntlet hissed into view. The Hynerian drew in a sharp breath, fearing that the assassin was then going to murder him now that the important part he was needed for was over. All Berret would have to say was that he was killed in the fighting with the guards and no one would be the wiser - not that any of the others aboard Moya would care all that much if he didn't come back.
He released his pent up breath a moment later as Berret spun and stabbed his blades into the control panel.
Metal screeched as the rare alloys of the cutting edges sliced through solid metal, plastic, and wiring with equal ease. The board exploded in sparks and Rygel suddenly grew angry as he realized that they no longer had a way to open the security door again. If their plan didn't work, they were trapped there inside until the Qujagans finally got around to cutting them out.
"You farbing idiot!" the Dominar exclaimed. "You've trapped us in here if something else goes wrong and the plan doesn't work. We'll never get out that door again now!"
"Trust me," Berret replied without looking at him. "You do not want to go back that way."
Rygel could almost hear the smile that had to be on his face in the man's electronic toned voice. "Not that there's probably much of a stairwell left after you blew off several plasma grenades inside it. But you probably could have scaled us down the well's wall if we had no other choice."
Berret seemed to be ignoring his complaint as he unslung the bag from one shoulder. He opened the pouch and began to lie out detonators for the explosive charges.
"And what the frell is a Crinite device, anyway?" the smaller being demanded to know.
This time the Shrike did look up at him for a moment. Even with the featureless faceplate, Rygel still got the feeling the Enforcer was regarding him in some type of twisted amusement from under it.
"Nothing... I made it up," he replied before going back to his task.
"You Garrb'ta!" Rygel cursed, "I knew you were bluffing."
"Make yourself useful, Dominar," Berret simply replied. "And assemble the cutting charges. You do know how to shape demolition charges and the proper sequence for cutting a hole, don't you?" Berret asked in an obvious patronizing tone.
Rygel allowed himself a superior snort. He wasn't going to let the bastard Shrike goad him so easily.
"I was well trained in explosive ordinance a hundred cycles before you were a gleam in the eye of whatever monstrosity that spawned you," he countered. "Just stay out of my way. I don't want you frelling up our one chance for escape now that you nickfattled us with the door."
Berret rose from the assortment of devices as Rygel added his cargo of explosives to the organized pile.
It would have been too dangerous to transport the charges already assembled, so the task had to be done on site... correctly and as quickly as possible.
"Then I shall leave you to the task," Berret said. "Meanwhile, I will use the laser torch to cut the device free from its floor mounts."
"You do that..." grumbled the Hynerian. "Just don't take all frelling solar day about it."
Berret left Rygel, and moved into the next chamber to get his first look at the reconstruction machine.
It was roughly a little more than half the size of a Prowler with an inset monitoring station where the operator stood. At one end it had a folded aperture arm that was obviously where the beam it fired to perform its function emitted from after it was targeted. Luckily, the machine was in storage mode with most of the protective panels and covers in place.
The Shrike took a moment to inspect the device more closely to verify where the mounts and structural framework was strongest. He found the power cable and the first undertaking he performed was to cut it clear with the torch, leaving as much of the wiring harness attached as possible to work with later.
Next he moved to several places he had identified as being the strongest positions in the machines framework, and installed several self-welding cargo clasp connections. Before the smoke and smell of the suddenly heated metals faded, the assassin was back on the floor using the laser torch once more to cut away the steel mounts that secured the reconstruction device to the floor beneath it.
No sooner had he cut the last of the mounts, then Rygel waddled carefully into the chamber with both sacks of charges over his shoulders.
"Good, you're done," he said as Berret tossed aside the laser torch now that it usefulness was over. They would be taking nothing that wasn't necessary back with them. While the device itself shouldn't be much of a problem for the heavy cargo transport D'argo was piloting, the speed in which they need to move during their escape was critical. Not only did they have to get off planet with the machine, they had to make the run back to Moya like a Whoisma out of hezmana... and every micro-drannit that weighted them down counted toward whither they succeeded or failed. The Pod itself had been stripped of all nonessential equipment and systems to make it lighter.
Rygel smirked to himself with the thought that he could think of something else they could leave behind as he gazed at Berret.
If the Shrike knew what he was probably thinking, he gave no sign.
"Are you ready to set the charges?" the Enforcer asked.
Rygel nodded and passed him a bag. Berret paused only long enough to boost the Hynerian up to a roof support beam so that he could crawl along it to place his devices.
"The charges are clearly marked," Rygel warned, "Do not mix them up. Remember, we want the ceiling to blow up and then out. Get them backwards... and we bring the entire roof down on us and the machine."
Berret let out an electronic tinted chuckle from under his battle helm.
"I will endeavor to place them correctly, Dominar," he said. Something about the comment let Rygel to believe that the Shrike probably could care less if the roof blew out in the exact manner.
"See that you frelling do!" the Hynerian spat back.
Within a hundred microts all the cutting charges were laid out. Rygel did his best to recheck them quickly but there was no way to be sure of them all with the time they had.
"That's as good as it gets," the Dominar said doggedly.
"Then call the Luxan and tell him we are ready," Berret ordered while he busied himself programming the remote main detonator switch.
Rygel sighed one last time and wondered if he were just mere microts from his death. He keyed his comm badge open.
"D'argo?" he asked.
"RYGEL!" came the warrior's instant shouted reply. "What is happening?" he demanded to know.
"We're ready to blow the roof. The device is set to travel," he reported. "Where are you?"
The background noise in the channel, told the Hynerian that D'argo had just powered up the Pod's engines and lifted off.
"I'm on my way to the prison now," he responded. "How soon until you detonate the roof?"
Rygel glanced up at the Shrike for confirmation. Berret held up all the fingers on one armored hand and flicked them three times.
"Fifteen microts," Rygel answered the warrior.
"Understood... I'll be there in less than twenty. Good luck, out."
The channel closed and the Luxan was gone off the air.
"I suggest you run, Dominar," said Berret as he closed the final switch and started the countdown.
The Hynerian gasped in surprise as Berret dropped the now useless main switch after the last command was given. The remote had sent its command signal and there was no calling it back now.
The small being turned back toward the short hallway that was the only place to hide and take cover in the area from the blast. He now cursed his short legs and wondered if he was going to make it that far to the limited safety before the explosives went off.
Rygel had taken only several steps toward relative protection when he suddenly felt himself yanked upward from the floor. His first thought was the charges went off prematurely and that he had been caught in the detonation. An instant later he realized that Berret had come up behind him and had grabbed him up by his equipment harness. Hauling the Hynerian along with him, the tall Shrike raced toward the far end of the hallway.
They dead-ended at the massive security door. Without warning, Berret carelessly tossed Rygel into a corner. Before the Hynerian ruler could automatically complain about the treatment, a great weight crashed down on him and smashed his small form even harder against the wall; driving half the wind out of him.
It took the Hynerian a moment to figure out that Berret had thrown his metal-covered body over him. If he didn't know better, Rygel might have thought that the Shrike meant to use his armored form to give him protection from the blast.
It was most likely that the clumsy assassin had dived for cover in his own haste for self-preservation and had not realized that he was doing Rygel a service by covering him also.
Oh well, his negligence is my gain, the Dominar thought as he felt cold unyielding metal all around him.
He remembered from his early military demolition training to open his mouth to equalize the pressure in his ears; otherwise the blast pressure wave could perforate his eardrums. Something he was sure the Shrike didn't have to worry about locked inside his metallic shell.
They didn't have long to wait as the floor suddenly jumped under them and the thump of displaced air reached them a nano-microt behind the lurch. Rygel cursed as something tossed Berret hard into him.
Rygel made himself count to ten and before he reached nine, he felt Berret roll away from him.
The Hynerian rolled over himself and looked up in time to see a thick dust cloud spin down the hallway toward them.
"Let's go," said Berret's voice. He was already becoming just a dim shadow as he moved off into the dust storm. Rygel uttered another time-honored Hynerian curse about the Shrike's lineage. He yanked out a section of square cloth that Noranti insisted he keep in a spare pocket and tied it around his face like a mask as best as he was able so he could breathe while attempting to follow the Enforcer back into the chamber.
To himself, he blessed the annoying old woman's persistence that he keep the cloth with him though she wouldn't tell him why she thought he should have it. Still, he'd be damned to hezmana if he'd ever admit to the odd female that it had come in handy after all.
To the Hynerian ruler's relief, he found the air clearing the closer he came to the medical device.
He arrived to find Berret standing under a perfectly position hole in the ceiling. The machine had sat in the eye of the shaped blast and had remained undamaged except for a light coving of plaster dust.
At first the Hynerian ruler didn't quite understand the low wail he was hearing. It seemed to him for a moment that maybe his hearing had been damaged during the blast despite his precaution, judging by the constant howling in his ears.
Looking upward again, he saw the Luxan had arrived and the dim outline of the Cargo Transport without running lights hovering over the hole they'd made in the roof. The howling was the whine the thrusters made as D'argo held the craft in position.
The transport's cargo bay doors dropped opened, suddenly flooding the area with the glare from the cargo bay's loading lamps. Several cables dropped from the lit hole down to them.
The pair on the ground worked fast and secured the cable hooks to the cargo connections that had been welded on to the machine's framework. Both Rygel and Berret finished hooking the last cables onto the top of the device. Without being told, Rygel slammed anxiously at his comm badge to reopen the link.
"They're set, D'argo!" he cried over the whine of engines. "Go! Haul us in!"
The slack in the cables abruptly took in as the winches activated inside the Pod. The de-constructor device with its two passengers was just as suddenly jerked upward with a groan. With the swift whipping motion, Rygel lost his grip on the cable he was holding on to. With a startled cry he began to topple over as the machine cleared the roof opening. The Transport Pod began to assent into the night sky even while the cargo was being still hauled aboard.
Rygel saw the edge of the prison building pass under him as the ship took off. He was going to fall and miss the building totally now... and this time surely plunge to the streets far below.
He made one last frantic grab for anything... and missed.
He felt gravity start to take him and just as suddenly his freefall came to a sudden jerking halt.
Rygel looked upward to see what had stopped him, only to find himself looking into the glowing red orbs of the Shrike's optics. Berret leaned out into space over him, holding onto a cable with his far hand.
The other had its fingers wrapped around Rygel's ankle.
The assassin hauled them both back up on top of the machine, just as it slammed up into the cargo bay. The bay doors closed with a metallic slap under them and the device tilted sharply on the cables as the craft nosed upward in a rush. The harsh thrum of engines being pushed too hard came to them as D'argo sent the Pod screaming toward orbit and its meeting with Moya behind one of the planet's three moons.
It was then that the Dominar found that he had started laughing with relief somewhere along the line. He wasn't going to die after all... and they had actually pulled the frelling insane plan off!
It took another moment to realize that Berret was laughing also.
And Rygel shivered because he realized the Enforcer's mirth had little to do with the reasons for his own.
D'argo drove the Pod hard in their mad rush to escape. The ship cleared the planet's atmosphere well before the rearward scanners told him the defense force had launched interceptors in pursuit. One of the systems they had stripped out was the secondary cooling system from the drive unit. Already the engines were redlining and he was mixing the fuel too richly, attempting to add speed. The induction manifolds and the charge plates were going to be nothing more than a pile of slag after they made it home to Moya.
The DRDs would have to overhaul the Pod before it could be used again after this trip... assuming that it didn't blow up or that he crashed it first. He steered a straight course for the farthest moon where Moya waited. The warrior judged that barring a malfunction, they should make it to the Leviathan with enough time to starburst away before the fighters arrived. It seemed that the defense minister had not taken into account a possible escape by spacecraft in the trouble that was happening at the prison. Thus their defense fleet had been caught unprepared to give chase in time.
"Tell me again, what exactly happened when Noranti changed your bandages?" he asked, wanting to focus on a more pleasant subject for the moment while he was forced to wait. The joy in Chiana's voice was unmistakable.
"I saw shapes! They were blurry... but I saw them," she cried.
"What did the old woman say about the treatment?"
"Wrinkles said that my irises were starting to look normal again," the girl replied.
"The outer perimeter of both irises appears to be returning to their normal color." D'argo heard Noranti put in from the background.
The Luxan exhaled a deep relieved breath. It looked as if their risky trek to the Diagnosan had been worth it. His lover was healing, now if only he could restore John and Aeryn to the crew, he would feel that the others' confidence in him as captain would be warranted. He almost scowled when he remembered that the fulfillment of that desire hinged at the moment solely on Rygel and Chiana's pet Shrike.
He bit down the sour taste that thought left in his mouth and turned his attention instead back on Chiana's good news. A part of him wondered how this might change their renewed relationship, but for the time being, he would take the good news for what it was.
"How long does Noranti think it will be until your sight is totally restored...?" the warrior started to ask when an explosion suddenly rocked the image of the prison building on the holo scanner. "What the hezmana?" the Luxan growled as fire spewed from several places in the corner of the upper most floors. Some microts latter the actual concussion reached his position several blocks and rooftops away where he had set down his ship. The sound reverted off the hull of the big cargo transport like a hammer blow.
"D'argo? What's going on?" Chiana asked, puzzlement and alarm warring with each other in her voice from the comm link.
"I do not know. There has been a massive explosion at the prison location," he supplied idly as he click through a number of scanner frequencies trying to find a better view of the area without moving the Pod closer from it's rooftop hiding place.
"Rygel? Berret?" the Nebari asked fully worried an instant later.
The Luxan hissed. "Not now! No more questions... I have to switch over to the scrambled channel and try to contact them."
The warrior flipped the comm over, silently cursing a blue streak as Crichton called it, to himself. If those two frelled this up, they'll wish they had been vaporized in the blast he thought.
To his surprise, the secured comm sounded like it was already opened when he tuned in to it.
"Rygel!" he growled, "Rygel, are you there?"
The open channel hissed and popped a moment and then cut off without warning.
"Shrike! Shrike!" D'argo demanded next.
Only empty airwaves answered his call. The channel had been over-rode and locked out.
"FRELL!" he roared inside the transport's cockpit.
The dust cloud settled slowly, but Berret's battle visor's optics cut through the haze. The stairwell seemed to be eerily quiet suddenly. The malfunctioning light panel above his head strobed on and off, which made the optics flare and struggle to keep up with the constantly changing surrounding light.
He pulled his brace blades from the wall and floor where he had buried them and willed the rest of the climbing spikes and smaller blades to retract into their armor housings. Free from the pinions that had obviously saved his life, he shifted his weight and several pieces of rubble fell off of his metal-sheathed form.
He rolled over into a sitting position, to find that the stairway landing he was on abruptly ended at a sheared off edge a bare two drec from where he sat. The railings and banister he had crouched on just moments ago, along with the rest of the staircase, were now gone as if a angry giant had come along and whacked them away with a few enthusiastic blows from an equally gigantic club.
Without warning, Berret found himself chortling with unsuppressed glee at the destruction he'd wrought.
Just as quickly he choked the laughter off as he realized what he had just done. Every prison guard, every person except for himself, who had been in the stairway, was now dead.
He rolled the rest of the way to his feet and moved cautiously to the crumbling brink of the landing to look over. The optic lens in the visor automatically flipped up into the helm when he wanted to look at the scene with unaided eyes. Despite the swirling dust, he could make out that the next three lower landings in the stairwell were gone. Ripped out and crushed by the imploding plasma blast. The wreckage, along with the bodies, had been compressed into the size of a grape, an impossibly heavy grape that lay somewhere below on the ground or basement levels.
That voice in the back of his mind shrieked with demented laughter once more, what the look on the guard's faces must have been like as forces like unseen massive hands squashed them into base atoms!
The few nano-microts of sheer terror must have been priceless... worthy of the best of Syndicate eradications. For some small sane part of him, time seemed to be lagging even though at the same moment he was aware it was passing normally.
Slowly, even though he wanted to fight it, he found he couldn't help but laugh with the shrill voice... it screamed at him to go find more beings to kill, more things to destroy. The insanity called to him to bask in the glory of the chaos. It was like a slow constant slide downhill and no matter how much he clawed at the ground to arrest the fall, his progress into dark madness never halted. That distant part of himself wondered if he were finally losing the battle to keep his mind as he flicked the optics back in place over his eyes... the better to see the wreckage.
The voice told him he shouldn't care about the moral right or wrong. He was what he was designed to be, the perfect killing machine. There was so much pleasure to be had in spilling blood... even more when the eradication was carried out with such perfect calculation.
And he pleasantly found it was becoming easier not to care just then with each passing microt.
Without warning Chiana's sightless eyes filled his mind and the echo of her plead for his help filled his ears. The voice pricking his brain screamed in defiance, trying to banish the Nebari girl. For the moment, the gray girl won, and the Shrike, with some considerable difficulty reasserted control.
He still had work to do... and a promise to keep.
Berret tapped at his comm badge. The channel opened as it was programmed to and overrode the Hynerian's already activated comm badge, taking over the link and securing a private channel.
"Rygel... open the frelling door," the Shrike demanded in a humorless low tone, now as fridged as death itself.
The Hynerian Dominar was just about to call the Luxan's name over the channel, when his comm badge squawked and the just opened link to the Pod severed. The device clicked and hummed as it reset itself on override.
Rygel poked at the badge desperately with stubby finger, fearing that the Qujagans had somehow discovered the covert comm link and were jamming it.
The communication device settled into an open frequency a microt later and the Shrike's icy voice made the Hynerian's blood run momentarily cold. "How could the bastard be alive?" he asked himself.
"Open the goddess damned door, you miserable frellnik," growled the Enforcer. "Or I will detonate the Crinite device I have with me and blow the entire five top floors off this structure... and you along with it."
Rygel groaned for an instant but then jumped down to run over to the security access control panel.
"Give me a micron, frell you!" Rygel spat as he quickly inspected the board and then found the correct door release codes. He should have expected the Shrike to have a back-up plan in case Rygel did decided to double-cross and abandon him outside the fortified door and escape.
A final sequence and the huge door cycled open, admitting the dust-covered assassin into the secured room.
Berret strode down the short hallway like a conquering hero, while Rygel quickly reverse the door codes to close the portal behind him. The Shrike entered the main room and without a word, the brace blades from his right gauntlet hissed into view. The Hynerian drew in a sharp breath, fearing that the assassin was then going to murder him now that the important part he was needed for was over. All Berret would have to say was that he was killed in the fighting with the guards and no one would be the wiser - not that any of the others aboard Moya would care all that much if he didn't come back.
He released his pent up breath a moment later as Berret spun and stabbed his blades into the control panel.
Metal screeched as the rare alloys of the cutting edges sliced through solid metal, plastic, and wiring with equal ease. The board exploded in sparks and Rygel suddenly grew angry as he realized that they no longer had a way to open the security door again. If their plan didn't work, they were trapped there inside until the Qujagans finally got around to cutting them out.
"You farbing idiot!" the Dominar exclaimed. "You've trapped us in here if something else goes wrong and the plan doesn't work. We'll never get out that door again now!"
"Trust me," Berret replied without looking at him. "You do not want to go back that way."
Rygel could almost hear the smile that had to be on his face in the man's electronic toned voice. "Not that there's probably much of a stairwell left after you blew off several plasma grenades inside it. But you probably could have scaled us down the well's wall if we had no other choice."
Berret seemed to be ignoring his complaint as he unslung the bag from one shoulder. He opened the pouch and began to lie out detonators for the explosive charges.
"And what the frell is a Crinite device, anyway?" the smaller being demanded to know.
This time the Shrike did look up at him for a moment. Even with the featureless faceplate, Rygel still got the feeling the Enforcer was regarding him in some type of twisted amusement from under it.
"Nothing... I made it up," he replied before going back to his task.
"You Garrb'ta!" Rygel cursed, "I knew you were bluffing."
"Make yourself useful, Dominar," Berret simply replied. "And assemble the cutting charges. You do know how to shape demolition charges and the proper sequence for cutting a hole, don't you?" Berret asked in an obvious patronizing tone.
Rygel allowed himself a superior snort. He wasn't going to let the bastard Shrike goad him so easily.
"I was well trained in explosive ordinance a hundred cycles before you were a gleam in the eye of whatever monstrosity that spawned you," he countered. "Just stay out of my way. I don't want you frelling up our one chance for escape now that you nickfattled us with the door."
Berret rose from the assortment of devices as Rygel added his cargo of explosives to the organized pile.
It would have been too dangerous to transport the charges already assembled, so the task had to be done on site... correctly and as quickly as possible.
"Then I shall leave you to the task," Berret said. "Meanwhile, I will use the laser torch to cut the device free from its floor mounts."
"You do that..." grumbled the Hynerian. "Just don't take all frelling solar day about it."
Berret left Rygel, and moved into the next chamber to get his first look at the reconstruction machine.
It was roughly a little more than half the size of a Prowler with an inset monitoring station where the operator stood. At one end it had a folded aperture arm that was obviously where the beam it fired to perform its function emitted from after it was targeted. Luckily, the machine was in storage mode with most of the protective panels and covers in place.
The Shrike took a moment to inspect the device more closely to verify where the mounts and structural framework was strongest. He found the power cable and the first undertaking he performed was to cut it clear with the torch, leaving as much of the wiring harness attached as possible to work with later.
Next he moved to several places he had identified as being the strongest positions in the machines framework, and installed several self-welding cargo clasp connections. Before the smoke and smell of the suddenly heated metals faded, the assassin was back on the floor using the laser torch once more to cut away the steel mounts that secured the reconstruction device to the floor beneath it.
No sooner had he cut the last of the mounts, then Rygel waddled carefully into the chamber with both sacks of charges over his shoulders.
"Good, you're done," he said as Berret tossed aside the laser torch now that it usefulness was over. They would be taking nothing that wasn't necessary back with them. While the device itself shouldn't be much of a problem for the heavy cargo transport D'argo was piloting, the speed in which they need to move during their escape was critical. Not only did they have to get off planet with the machine, they had to make the run back to Moya like a Whoisma out of hezmana... and every micro-drannit that weighted them down counted toward whither they succeeded or failed. The Pod itself had been stripped of all nonessential equipment and systems to make it lighter.
Rygel smirked to himself with the thought that he could think of something else they could leave behind as he gazed at Berret.
If the Shrike knew what he was probably thinking, he gave no sign.
"Are you ready to set the charges?" the Enforcer asked.
Rygel nodded and passed him a bag. Berret paused only long enough to boost the Hynerian up to a roof support beam so that he could crawl along it to place his devices.
"The charges are clearly marked," Rygel warned, "Do not mix them up. Remember, we want the ceiling to blow up and then out. Get them backwards... and we bring the entire roof down on us and the machine."
Berret let out an electronic tinted chuckle from under his battle helm.
"I will endeavor to place them correctly, Dominar," he said. Something about the comment let Rygel to believe that the Shrike probably could care less if the roof blew out in the exact manner.
"See that you frelling do!" the Hynerian spat back.
Within a hundred microts all the cutting charges were laid out. Rygel did his best to recheck them quickly but there was no way to be sure of them all with the time they had.
"That's as good as it gets," the Dominar said doggedly.
"Then call the Luxan and tell him we are ready," Berret ordered while he busied himself programming the remote main detonator switch.
Rygel sighed one last time and wondered if he were just mere microts from his death. He keyed his comm badge open.
"D'argo?" he asked.
"RYGEL!" came the warrior's instant shouted reply. "What is happening?" he demanded to know.
"We're ready to blow the roof. The device is set to travel," he reported. "Where are you?"
The background noise in the channel, told the Hynerian that D'argo had just powered up the Pod's engines and lifted off.
"I'm on my way to the prison now," he responded. "How soon until you detonate the roof?"
Rygel glanced up at the Shrike for confirmation. Berret held up all the fingers on one armored hand and flicked them three times.
"Fifteen microts," Rygel answered the warrior.
"Understood... I'll be there in less than twenty. Good luck, out."
The channel closed and the Luxan was gone off the air.
"I suggest you run, Dominar," said Berret as he closed the final switch and started the countdown.
The Hynerian gasped in surprise as Berret dropped the now useless main switch after the last command was given. The remote had sent its command signal and there was no calling it back now.
The small being turned back toward the short hallway that was the only place to hide and take cover in the area from the blast. He now cursed his short legs and wondered if he was going to make it that far to the limited safety before the explosives went off.
Rygel had taken only several steps toward relative protection when he suddenly felt himself yanked upward from the floor. His first thought was the charges went off prematurely and that he had been caught in the detonation. An instant later he realized that Berret had come up behind him and had grabbed him up by his equipment harness. Hauling the Hynerian along with him, the tall Shrike raced toward the far end of the hallway.
They dead-ended at the massive security door. Without warning, Berret carelessly tossed Rygel into a corner. Before the Hynerian ruler could automatically complain about the treatment, a great weight crashed down on him and smashed his small form even harder against the wall; driving half the wind out of him.
It took the Hynerian a moment to figure out that Berret had thrown his metal-covered body over him. If he didn't know better, Rygel might have thought that the Shrike meant to use his armored form to give him protection from the blast.
It was most likely that the clumsy assassin had dived for cover in his own haste for self-preservation and had not realized that he was doing Rygel a service by covering him also.
Oh well, his negligence is my gain, the Dominar thought as he felt cold unyielding metal all around him.
He remembered from his early military demolition training to open his mouth to equalize the pressure in his ears; otherwise the blast pressure wave could perforate his eardrums. Something he was sure the Shrike didn't have to worry about locked inside his metallic shell.
They didn't have long to wait as the floor suddenly jumped under them and the thump of displaced air reached them a nano-microt behind the lurch. Rygel cursed as something tossed Berret hard into him.
Rygel made himself count to ten and before he reached nine, he felt Berret roll away from him.
The Hynerian rolled over himself and looked up in time to see a thick dust cloud spin down the hallway toward them.
"Let's go," said Berret's voice. He was already becoming just a dim shadow as he moved off into the dust storm. Rygel uttered another time-honored Hynerian curse about the Shrike's lineage. He yanked out a section of square cloth that Noranti insisted he keep in a spare pocket and tied it around his face like a mask as best as he was able so he could breathe while attempting to follow the Enforcer back into the chamber.
To himself, he blessed the annoying old woman's persistence that he keep the cloth with him though she wouldn't tell him why she thought he should have it. Still, he'd be damned to hezmana if he'd ever admit to the odd female that it had come in handy after all.
To the Hynerian ruler's relief, he found the air clearing the closer he came to the medical device.
He arrived to find Berret standing under a perfectly position hole in the ceiling. The machine had sat in the eye of the shaped blast and had remained undamaged except for a light coving of plaster dust.
At first the Hynerian ruler didn't quite understand the low wail he was hearing. It seemed to him for a moment that maybe his hearing had been damaged during the blast despite his precaution, judging by the constant howling in his ears.
Looking upward again, he saw the Luxan had arrived and the dim outline of the Cargo Transport without running lights hovering over the hole they'd made in the roof. The howling was the whine the thrusters made as D'argo held the craft in position.
The transport's cargo bay doors dropped opened, suddenly flooding the area with the glare from the cargo bay's loading lamps. Several cables dropped from the lit hole down to them.
The pair on the ground worked fast and secured the cable hooks to the cargo connections that had been welded on to the machine's framework. Both Rygel and Berret finished hooking the last cables onto the top of the device. Without being told, Rygel slammed anxiously at his comm badge to reopen the link.
"They're set, D'argo!" he cried over the whine of engines. "Go! Haul us in!"
The slack in the cables abruptly took in as the winches activated inside the Pod. The de-constructor device with its two passengers was just as suddenly jerked upward with a groan. With the swift whipping motion, Rygel lost his grip on the cable he was holding on to. With a startled cry he began to topple over as the machine cleared the roof opening. The Transport Pod began to assent into the night sky even while the cargo was being still hauled aboard.
Rygel saw the edge of the prison building pass under him as the ship took off. He was going to fall and miss the building totally now... and this time surely plunge to the streets far below.
He made one last frantic grab for anything... and missed.
He felt gravity start to take him and just as suddenly his freefall came to a sudden jerking halt.
Rygel looked upward to see what had stopped him, only to find himself looking into the glowing red orbs of the Shrike's optics. Berret leaned out into space over him, holding onto a cable with his far hand.
The other had its fingers wrapped around Rygel's ankle.
The assassin hauled them both back up on top of the machine, just as it slammed up into the cargo bay. The bay doors closed with a metallic slap under them and the device tilted sharply on the cables as the craft nosed upward in a rush. The harsh thrum of engines being pushed too hard came to them as D'argo sent the Pod screaming toward orbit and its meeting with Moya behind one of the planet's three moons.
It was then that the Dominar found that he had started laughing with relief somewhere along the line. He wasn't going to die after all... and they had actually pulled the frelling insane plan off!
It took another moment to realize that Berret was laughing also.
And Rygel shivered because he realized the Enforcer's mirth had little to do with the reasons for his own.
D'argo drove the Pod hard in their mad rush to escape. The ship cleared the planet's atmosphere well before the rearward scanners told him the defense force had launched interceptors in pursuit. One of the systems they had stripped out was the secondary cooling system from the drive unit. Already the engines were redlining and he was mixing the fuel too richly, attempting to add speed. The induction manifolds and the charge plates were going to be nothing more than a pile of slag after they made it home to Moya.
The DRDs would have to overhaul the Pod before it could be used again after this trip... assuming that it didn't blow up or that he crashed it first. He steered a straight course for the farthest moon where Moya waited. The warrior judged that barring a malfunction, they should make it to the Leviathan with enough time to starburst away before the fighters arrived. It seemed that the defense minister had not taken into account a possible escape by spacecraft in the trouble that was happening at the prison. Thus their defense fleet had been caught unprepared to give chase in time.