by Caleb Fast
“Your wife is quite beautiful, Mister Richardson,” Clint continues as his focus shifts to Phelix. He continues to Richardson as he begins his return to his seat, “Don’t you lose this one.”
“We’re not—" Richardson starts before stopping himself with a shrug, “Never mind,”
“Clint has a way with people,” Clive whispers to Richardson with a chuckle. Although he isn’t too far off base with these two, Clive thinks as he turns to the rest of the group.
“That he does,” Richardson agrees after exchanging an awkward look with Phelix.
“Alright, so Jenessa will be informed that she will lead you three,” Clive continues after the chuckles in the audience subside after Clint had tagged Richardson and Phelix as a couple. Pointing to three large inmates he continues, “You three will tip over all of the cargo containers from the catwalks down onto the flight deck that you can. That’ll cause the distraction we need to take out the guards who are manning the hangar. You got that?”
“Yes, sir,” The three say, after they whisper their assurances to each other.
“And you two are in charge of making all the hover-sleds you can go haywire,” Clive continues, pointing toward Mav and another geeky-looking man, “That’ll make for some great cover.”
“That it will,” Mav agrees with a gleeful grin.
Several inmates and three of Richardson’s guards stream into the room from the door T is guarding and they find their seats as T ensures the coast is clear before easing the heavy door shut. Fortunately, the guards in the cafeteria were always too distracted by those immediately around them to notice people slipping in and out of a door that was supposed to be sealed.
“Just the people I was looking for,” Clive smiles as he looks between Dream and the three new guards, “Dream, as per the original plan, you’re flying one of the escorts. But now you’ll have some wingmen, so we won’t have to blow the other ships up.”
“Won’t there be five escorts?” Dream asks, “Because I only see four pilots here.”
“We’ll find another pilot,” Clive reassures Dream. He pauses before continuing to the guards, “Richardson tells me you guys are great pilots, so I figured I could use the talent.”
“It’ll be an honor,” One of the guards says with a smile.
“As for the rest of us who won’t be hiding out, we’ll act like we’re the dockhands until everything to falls into place. Once the guards are distracted, we will make our move, take the freighter and its escorts. Those we’ve vetted will be waiting nearby so we can get them onto the freighter as fast as possible. And remember, we left shipping containers empty to fill with both our people, and supplies. Understood?”
“Yes, s—"
A shush from Richardson cuts everyone off. Richardson, who has his finger pressed against his ear is listening to his earpiece, “I see,” he says to the voice on the other end, “Yes, yes. Of course, Commander. As you wish.”
Everyone is tense as their eyes rest on Richardson when Clive finally asks, “What was that about?”
With a chuckle, Richardson responds, “Change of plans, everyone. I’ve been promoted to Major. Triborn, and his crew went missing on his post-shift inspection. Since night shift is already stretched too thin to spare the men, that means that my boys are on for tomorrow’s pick-up. On top of that, a lot of night shift’s guards haven’t reported in. I guess your trap did its job, Clive.”
“Well then,” Clive says sitting down. He pauses to recalibrate his plan, and then continues confidently, “It appears the stars are smiling upon us today, let’s not mess things up. Richardson, you dispatch the freighter’s crew by any means necessary. Kill them if you have to, but don't stoop to Jenniston's level if it isn’t necessary. We can always put them in the cargo hold as prisoners too. We take the freighter’s fighter escorts; my pilots and Richardson’s will commandeer and man them. The bulk of us will be in the main hangar, as planned, and await Richardson’s go. Don’t make a move until we say so, or things might just go south fast.”
“Will you still need us on the catwalks?” One of the inmates assigned with dropping the cargo crates asks.
“Yes,” Clive answers as he envisions how he hoped things would go down, now that he wouldn’t have to worry as much about other guards, “We need to still be prepared for anything, so you three and the hover-sled teams should still prep things, just wait for my signal instead.”
“What about all of the prison’s AA guns?” Richardson asks after a few beats, “Jenniston can take away my control of them at any point. If she gets them online, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Yeah, really big fish, in a real big barrel,” T adds with a chuckle.
“Mav’s got a team working on that right now,” Clive says reassuringly, “We’ve got enough explosives getting set up that those guns won’t be bothering us any time soon.”
“—Or ever,” The man next to Mav adds with a laugh.
“And if any of the guns are left, that’s what the escorts are for,” Clive continues as he looks between his current pilots. Pausing, he continues to the rest of the group, “That reminds me, we still need one more pilot for the fighters. Everyone, please be on the lookout for a potential pilot.”
Finished with his new plan, Clive looks at each and every face in the room. He smiles, content with the team he had painstakingly pieced together, and confident in all their abilities. He knew he could trust everyone in the room with his life, and he knew they were all very capable. They all had different life stories, different upbringings, but here they all were, brought together by the Coalition they had all taken up arms against. Who would have thought that our enemy would be the one to bring all of us together? Clive thinks, chuckling at the irony.
Clive lets his mind wander to when he was made the ‘Mr. X’ of Paradise. Back then, there were only three in the top leadership, plus himself. The group never had more than ten members as members kept on getting found out and killed. Clive had then taken the reins and straightened the organization out, secrecy became their nature. Within the first week of Clive’s new position, he reopened the machining wing of the prison for their meetings. After another week, the other inmates saw the changes Clive was implementing behind the scenes, and the bravest of them reached out to him. After the third week, Clive recruited Jenessa, who then recruited out of the female population in the prison. As time went by, Clive found more and more leaders, and the numbers of his group swelled.
Clive cuts his trip down memory lane short as he remembers the hard decision he had made about his grand escape plan. Why do I have to leave some of my people behind? He asks himself for the hundredth time, he answers his own question with the same mantra he had before, I have to leave some of the leaders, so others can have their chance to escape. Clive knew Jenniston was bound to punish everyone who he left behind, and that fact still pained him, but he hoped that those who survived the punishment would join the cause he would be leaving behind and try to escape as well. Once he was settled, he also hoped to return to the prison and break everyone else out, because no one, no matter how evil they were, deserved to die, not like this.
A gentle knock on the doors to their meeting room draws Clive back from his train of thought, and Clive takes in the murmuring of the group as they talk about the plan Clive had just offered. Clive nods to T who is manning the door, and he opens it, allowing Jenessa into the meeting room, along with two other women. Once the three are inside, T ensures the coast is clear and slides the huge blast door shut yet again.
“Here’s the one you told to contact me, sir,” Jenessa says, indicating toward the shorter woman who looked frail, but determined, her eyes… a startling green-blue, show sincerity, while also giving Clive the feeling that she could see into his soul. She offers a cautious smile after noticing that everyone was staring at her.
“Who?” Clive asks, unnerved by the presence of an outsider.
“Trix Callaghan, sir?” Jenessa offers, suddenly
concerned, “She contacted me by using your signal…”
“I’ve never met her,”
“It was your idea to have something so easy that an outsider could break it. I did what you told me to do when someone did that and slipped her one of the meeting invites.”
“Hey, the ID toss idea beats your ripped off sleeve idea, any fool could notice that one.”
“That was a good idea, and you know it.”
“If we were the Dregg pirates! We want to stay unnoticed, not stand out as some—"
“Please,” Richardson cuts them off, “Enough bickering, you lovebirds! How about we let these ladies vouch for themselves.”
“Okay, talk,” the flustered Clive and Jenessa say simultaneously.
“Ladies?” Richardson prods the two women.
The one with the unnerving eyes speaks up first, glancing fearfully from one face to another, “I-I I-uh… I’ve been here a little while and have been plotting on a way to get Jenessa’s attention –you can tell she’s someone in charge the way everyone crowds around her protecting her—today I decided to throw the ID in front of her, it was covert enough that guards wouldn’t think anything of it. She slipped me the note, and I told Srin… I only told her though, promise.”
Clive smiles when Tix pointed out that the guards wouldn’t notice his method, “And you?” Clive asks of the other woman, only an inch or two shorter than Jenessa, but just as built. Judging by the way she looked and how she carried herself, Clive assumed that she, like Jenessa and T was a native of Sinerra, a planet full of mighty men and women.
“Trix here dragged me along,” The big woman, Srin, says, “I told her if anything panned out, she should tell me. I just never thought there were any attempts to break out, so I never thought to look.”
“We can’t just leave them somewhere,” Jenessa points out, “They know who’s part of our group now.”
“I could put them in solitary,” Richardson offers hesitantly, clearly not fond of the idea.
“I know Trix and Srin, they’re good people,” Dream, who had remained silent until then, asserts and gives Clive a reassuring nod.
Clive studies both of the women’s faces. The one called Srin, appears to be doubtful, and beaten. Not a good person to trust, Clive thinks, But, now we don’t have a choice. Looking toward the other, Trix, she looks hopeful, energetic, and scared, Trix seems to be a great new recruit, Besides, she’s probably only afraid of being put on the spot or being stuck in solitary. That place really gets to people, these newcomers could be a valuable asset, Clive concludes.
Clive had learned how to look at someone and determined their intentions out of necessity. A boy kicked out onto the streets has to learn quick who he can, and can’t trust, and Clive could read people very well. If it hadn’t been for Clive’s ability to read people, the group would have been discovered ages ago, like every other group had been in the past. Addressing everyone, Clive says, “We can trust them.”
A collective sigh sounds among the inmates, they knew Clive was a good judge of character and his ruling was trustworthy.
“How can you be so sure?” Richardson asks, he hadn't seen Clive’s gift of judgement at work, “You said yourself that you didn’t know them.”
“Just trust me, and trust them,” Clive answers quickly, not wanting to take the time to explain everything to Richardson. Seeing Richardson had no more to say on the subject, he continues to Trix and Srin, “We need a pilot, either of you fly Coalition fighters before?”
“I have,” Srin answers without hesitation. Noting the skeptical looks from around the room, she continues, “I used to boost their fighters back home, I had a buyer who wanted every single one I could get him.”
“Great,” Clive smiles, turning to Dream, he continues, “Can you brief her on what she’ll be doing?”
“You got it,” Dream responds, guiding Srin to the group of would-be pilots who are busy whispering amongst each other.
“What do the rest of you think about the plan?” Clive asks the rest of the group, “Think we should add anything?”
“We should do something to distract the other guards as we escape,” T says from his position at the door, “Otherwise they will be able to come at us in swarms, and that will be very problematic as we load the freighter.”
“What do you propose?” A man by the name of Raycee Steede asks from his barrel, which sits front and center of the whole meeting. That was the thing about Raycee, he was always front-and-center, he said it was a habit that was seared into his character after years of being a salesman.
“I don’t know…” T answers with a shrug, he then offers, “Fire? Explosions?”
“Explosives would cause too much collateral damage,” Mav speaks up from his perch up in an old vehicle, where he eventually wandered during every meeting. He continues, thoughtfully choosing his words, “But a fire in the office Mister Richardson here will be taking over… Some starship fuel would make for a great distraction that the guards would have to address.”
“Richardson, what do you think?” Clive asks expectantly.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Richardson answers after several moments of thought, “But can you guys do something to start the fire a while after I leave? I’m not in the mood for getting burned to a crisp.”
“Yes, yes,” Mav responds in his condescending tone, “I’ll get a timed explosive ready for you. You can set it to detonate whenever you please, that will start the fire for you.”
“Thanks,” Richardson says flatly, unamused by Mav’s tone.
“What about those of our people that we will leave behind?” Comes the melodic voice of Audaz Steede.
As alluring as Audaz’s voice may be, it was her looks that left most men speechless. Many described her beauty as ‘queenly’ and ‘regal’, which she didn’t hesitate to use against those unfortunate souls who sided against her. Factor in the fact that she could sway someone’s opinion with ease, and it was obvious Audaz could have been a queen if she so wished it. Audaz and Raycee were siblings, who were both arrested when their countless lucrative sales, which benefitted the Resistance on their homeworld, were brought to the Coalition’s attention. After several months of Audaz using her countless connections to stay one step ahead of the Coalition, Raycee’s reckless pursuit for attention ended their lives of leisure.
“It does feel wrong to leave behind our people,” One person adds.
“Me either,” Another agrees.
“Would you want to be left here?” A third demands.
Audaz is leaning on the wall nearest the door, carefully eying the rest of the room. Audaz, unlike her brother, preferred being on the fringes of a crowd, but that didn’t mean she would keep silent when she felt the need to speak. After several others others voiced their support of her question, she feels emboldened to continue, “I don’t like the idea of leaving behind people that have helped us get this far to suffer our punishment.”
“We will do our best to ensure their cover isn’t blown,” Clive answers, trying his best to sound steadfast in his decision. He was as torn on the decision as Audaz was, but he knew what had to be done for everyone’s sake. After a beat, Clive continues, “Our keeping their involvement under wraps is the best chance they have.”
“No, bringing them with us is their best bet,” Comes Audaz’s protest, more voices sound their support to the idea of bringing everyone along.
“And then what about everyone else after that?” Clive asks pointedly, “Who will they have to look toward for a way out? Where will they be able to turn? We have to leave some people behind to make sure that everyone can escape once we’ve left!”
“It still doesn’t feel right,” Audaz mutters before shrugging in surrender. She continues with her head hanging slightly, “But you do have a point, it is the best option for everyone.”
“How many people are we leaving behind?” A concerned woman by the name of Francine Leeds asks after several moments from her seat on one of the
derelict conveyor belts.
Francine, or Frankie as she preferred being called, was in charge of logistics of a large shipping company before she started rerouting shipments to Resistance cells and got caught. She had helped Clive countless times before they were both stuck here on Paradise, so she quickly found herself among his top brass in the prison.
“A little over twelve hundred,” Clive answers, still off-put by how many people he was going to leave here, “It’s impossible to bring them all with us.”
“What if we gave them a fighting chance?” Frankie presses.
“What did you have in mind?” Clive inquires, his interest piqued.
“What if we set up a prison break for everyone else?” Frankie offers. The room erupts with countless conversations, some sound agreement, others voice their doubts.
“I would sleep better at night, knowing we gave everyone else a chance of survival,” Raycee proclaims.
“Something like that would provide us with the distraction we need too,” Audaz points out.
“Can we actually pull something like that off?” Someone asks doubtingly.
“There’s no way we could pull something like that off,” Jenessa says, taken aback by the idea, “It would be a logistical nightmare.”
“It would be harder for Jenniston to stop the fighting that would ensue than it would be for us to kick things off,” Audaz counters.
“But so many people would be killed!” Raycee complains, doubling back on his initial support.
“I was thinking,” Frankie starts, pausing long enough for everyone to quiet down, “What if we used everything we could get our hands on to blow the guards’ quarters and the control room to smithereens? That would give everyone else a fighting chance.”
“But where would they go after they took control of the prison?” Clint asks softly, “The Coalition would be here with a battalion to take the complex back soon enough. Those we leave behind would be left essentially defenseless.”
“We can come back for them,” Dream offers, “Clive’s said he’d like to do as much.”