Prisoner Escape

[redletalis]

"I may be no bomb expert but are you nuts or something?! Bringing fire close to thermite is the equivalent of setting the bomb off!" Kim stared at him. Was Sean serious? Or had he hit his head during the crash? Or perhaps that rock-creature had some sort of poison in its saliva that made people confused and reckless and suicidal after a while? All of that sounded plausible to her. Far more plausible than actually opening the thermite solar panel powered bomb with a blow torch.


"I have a screwdriver you can use. No torches go close to that thing unless we intend to set it off." She picked up a screwdriver and held it out to him. "You might want to wait until we have a food or water pack to empty the thermite into, though. I could use some susteinance anyway, and if we make a second hole in an empty pack we can use it as a more or less air tight funnel. And less chance of hands shaking from exhaustion and hunger."


Unless Sean could explain what he was doing and why to her, then she wasn't letting him anywhere near the blow torch with that bomb. Seriously.

 

[Red Thunder]

Eyebrow raised, he scoffed.


"You're really no fun. And you've got no trust. Live a little; life's too damn short to be careful.


"Look," Sean stated, pulling out a cigarette to shove in his mouth. "A blow torch contains different parts and mechanics to let it do its thing. The fire only comes once all the bits do their individual jobs. Well, part of what makes a blow torch work is the gases that the tank contains: usually either propane or acetylene and oxygen. They start off each individually contained and are only allowed to mix just before the spark is introduced, each having been pushed out by propellant within each container."


Lips pursed, he reached out and took hold of the screwdriver. He examined it, comparing the tip of it to some place within the unit that he evidently wanted to shove it.


"One last question: as a kid, did you ever play around with compressed air? Turn it upside down and spray some of that freezing liquid onto a friend's or sibling's pants?" Sean looked up from the screwdriver, a touch of impatience in his eyes. "Do you understand where I'm going with this?"

 

[redletalis]

Kim hesitantly brought the blow torch out of her backpack, stared at it for a second. Was she really going to sacrifice this tool for the minute possibility that this crazy idea could work? The torch would definitely be useful later on, and there was no guarantee that it would work once this project was done. If they even survived it. This was the stupidest thing that she had ever done and probably would ever do.


She handed the torch over with a groan. "Never done that, and I can't believe I'm going along with this. If we die I'm going to find your arse and then I'm killing you myself, I hope you realise that." Taking a deep breath Kim prepared herself for what they were about to do. "Alright. Since you seem to know what the hell you're doing - and god do I hope that you do - then tell me what you need me to do during this."


They were so going to die. They had survived an impossible crash and then they were going to kill themselves with stupidity. It was so stupid that it wasn't even funny anymore!

 

[Red Thunder]

Sean laughed as to accepted the tool.


"Relax. I know what I'm doing. You'll live, I'll keep my 'arse', and we'll still have a working if somewhat more limited use blow torch. All I need is a bit of the oxygen."


After unscrewing the nozzle from the canister, he began dismantling it, trying to remove the fire starter from the device. He worked the screwdriver in it deftly. As he did, Sean continued their conversation, as if trying to reassure his companion of all this.


"I'll *grunt* remind you that I still have that lighter in my pocket. *grunt* If I'd wanted to set the thing on fire, I wouldn't have bothered asking for the *grunt* torch.


"Ah, finally."


A small square-ish device fell out, and picking it up, he tossed it to her. It was a dull gray in color, and inside it was a triggering mechanism connected to a striking plate, clearly designed to create a spark.


"There. Now keep your shirt on; I'm not gonna blow anything up." He glanced at her quickly, a mischievous grin on his face. "On purpose."


Without further to do, he slapped the nozzle back together, spun it onto the canister, and turned the unit upside down. Giving it a shake and still grinning, he pointed it at her knee and pulled the trigger. A small quick blast of liquid shot out its mouth into her pant leg, which immediately hardened as the liquid hardened into bitterly cold ice. Pulling it back and spinning it on his fiber like a gun before blowing on the nozzle, Sean smiled innocently at Kim.


"See? Easy as pie."

 

[redletalis]

"Hey! That's cold!" Kim yelped and jumped slightly. She started rubbing her frozen knee and had to concede to the point. That was cold. Maybe even cold enough to actually keep the thermite from reacting in this humid head and blowing them all to kingdom come. She sighed and dragged over a food and water packs for them both. "Right, let's eat and drink first. I don't know about you, but I want your hands as steady as possible. Besides we need food and we need something to keep the thermite in. What would you prefer? Mystery meal or mystery meal? They're equally as crappy."


She grabbed one of the water packs and opened it with a jerk. The water was heavenly and refreshing. She hadn't realised how much she had needed to drink before she had the liquid on her tongue. The food pack followed. There were no spoons provided and all of the food was mush so one simply had to squeeze it out and into one's mouth. Not the most graceful way of eating, but food was food.


"Being blown to bits on a full stomach. Could have done worse." Kim muttered once she finished. She got up and climbed further up along one of the branches to pick one of the biggest leaves she could reach. It was tick and sturdy, bigger than her palm, and when she rolled it up it would be a pretty good funnel. She stuck it in the pack that had held her water, and then turned to Sean. "Ready to do this thing? What do you need me to do?"

 

[Red Thunder]

"First off, I need you to tell me just why in the hell you want to hold on to thermite, of all this, when we're in enough of an unstable situation as it is."


Sean had watched, curious and bemused but not inclined to help, as Kim had shimmied up and yanked down a leaf. He was still finishing up his food as she rolled the leaf and prepared for the outpouring of explosives. Shaking his head, the man looked at her patronizingly.


"First, you're assuming the thermite is powder." He shrugged. "Granted, it probably is, but often times the stuff is a compressed block of the stuff. Can't fit that in a funnel, can we?


"Second, well, I guess I just restate my original question. I'd just intended to toss the stuff to the wind, provided it is powder. There's a nice breeze blowing from that weird-ass ocean. Can't you feel it?" Stretching out, Sean looked down aways from their tree and chewed on his cigarette thoughtfully. "If it was a block, I was just figuring we'd throw the thing as far as we could and how for the best."

 

[redletalis]

"Because, Sean, I just might need it. The torch is a godsend, but if I have the thermite as well I might just make something better and more powerful because I'll use the thermite for the rough welding and the torch for the really important bits. And if not that then we can use it as a distraction when we meet up with the local wildlife. Or even the other prisoners that survived." She sighed.


The thermite would be unstable but it would be useful in the future one way or another. And the army was all about saving every last scrap of possibly useful material. Just look at the ship they had been on. Granted, it didn't have a happy ending, but the point still stood.


Kim pointed at the solar panel. "Look, something like that can't hold a big, compressed block. The weight would be too much and there is no room, the panel is too thin. It makes it even more likely to be powder. And I really don't want to trust much more to my luck today, with the crash and everything I'm figuring I've almost used up my quota for the week if not even the year. Nor do I want to possibly burn down this forest, especially not with me in it. What do you have against it apart from it being unstable? We carried it fine until now."

 

[Red Thunder]

"Yeah, well. We didn't exactly know what it was until now, did we?"


He shrugged, evidently not wanting to fight her on it. Spinning the cold torch in his hand once more, Sean faced the solar panel power unit and began spraying the cold liquid onto it.


"But hey, if you wanna carry explosives on your back, I guess I won't stop you."


He stared at the unit as he worked, moving the torch back and forth to best distribute the cold effect. After about a minute he glanced back up.


"Uh, this will probably take a little bit. Don't wanna risk anything, so I wanna get it good and frosty before trying anything." He paused, looking at Kim with curious eyes. "In the meantime, I've told you my sob story; why don't you tell me yours? What leads a pret- uh, a chick like you to join the military, and as an engineer aboard a prisoner transport no less?"

 

[redletalis]

"Not much to tell, really. Military family for generations, and I'm the oldest child so I was an automatic shoe-in for the job. I always tried to pick things apart and put them back together so, yeah, mechanics. Got a sister who's six years younger than me. She got married last year but I was deployed over at the M-344/G System at the time so I couldn't attend. Took this assignment because the ship would have taken me almost all the way to where my sister lives. An short local ship trip later and I could have congratulated her on that. And her firstborn. Small chance of that happening now I suppose." Kim shrugged as she leaned back against one of the branches.


She refused to give up hope of sending out that SOS and surviving long enough for rescue and to meet her sister and the new family members, but it wasn't like their current situation was ideal. Oh, could have been a whole lot worse, of course, they could have been totally dead, or she could have been alone in this hostile, dangerous place, surrounded by escaped convicts. But still, not ideal.


"At least it's warm enough on this planet to not worry too much about freezing to death." She muttered and sighed. Then she shifted into a more upright sitting position. "Right. Enough with the depressing thoughts. I need something to do or I'm going to go crazy with too much thinking. You done with the cooling soon?"

 

[Red Thunder]

Sean nodded, shut off the torch, and touched a finger to the main body of the unit. He immediately drew it back and shook it, as if he'd been bitten.


"Yeah. Should be ready for handling now."


He set the torch aside and picked up the screwdriver. Carefully he wedged it into one edge of it. The bits of adhesive broke off readily, and the blade of the tool slide easily between the metal panels. With a creak the front cover fell off, revealing the unit's contents.


If the manner in which the unit had been secured wasn't proof enough, the arrangement and orientation of the material inside certainly was. A small computer unit and power pack about the size of a deck of cards was attached to the roof, giving life to the display. Two sets of wires ran out from the computer's back end: one set ran back and up through the roof and into the solar panel while the other set ran back and down into a heavy plastic box. Squinting inside, Sean whistled, pointing to it.


"And there it is. Gonna cool it off an extra bit before yanking it." He grabbed the torch and once again began spraying, this time onto the plastic box. "You don't have any wire snips, do ya? Gonna be hell getting it disconnected otherwise."

 

[redletalis]

Kim held her breath as Sean wedged open the little panel and leaned forwards to look inside. A surprisingly simple mechanism but it would have been more than enough to seriousy injure the spaceship old as it had been, or even blow it up completely if it had been placed close to the engines. Almost one thousand souls lost to this, and for what? It simply didn't make any sense whatsoever.


"Who the hell would want to bring down a prisoner transport ship anyway?" she said as she rooted through her backpack. She brought out two wire snips - one a thicker, heavy duty one, and the other smaller and thinner and could be inserted in difficult places if the need arose - and held them both out to Sean. "Here, take your pick. I mean, I suppose that some prisoner might have someone on the outside willing to bust them out, but blowing the ship up in the middle of space certainly won't help much. Besides, smuggling something like that on board isn't something just anyone could do. But then that would mean that someone from my team wanted the ship to blow up, and it really doesn't make any sense whatsoever!"


Because, really, who the hell would want to bring down a prisoner transport ship? Why? Kim ran a hand through her hair and winced as her fingers encounted the lump where she had hit her head duringt he crash. It seemed to be a bit smaller and not as painful. Or it could still be blocked by adrenaline coursing through her body. She shuffled over to the medical equipment to look for something to help bring it down and prevent the upcoming headache.


"You didn't happen to see the name of the soldier holding the solar panel, did you? Or at least their skin colour?" she asked and looked over at Sean.

 

[Red Thunder]

"I've no idea."


His answered her concisely, not sparing much thought for words. He'd accepted the smaller wire snips and was no trying to work out how to insert them into the box to get at the wires in question.


"The smoke was dense, and I was a little pressed for time and preoccupied with not dying to take much notice.


"But hell, anybody could have any number of reasons for wanting to free prisoners or destroy a military transport. Up to and including actual personnel. I doubt everyone is as happy with their job as you seem to be."


He fell silent for a while, wordlessly working. Finally Sean withdrew, snips in one hand and plastic container of thermite in the other. Looking much like a Tupperware container, it was sealed with duct tape save for where two snipped wires stuck out of the lid. Grinning, he tossed the container to Kim nonchalantly.


"Happy birthday, Miss Military."

 

[redletalis]

"What the hell, man?!" Kim dropped the medical supplies she was searching through and fumbled awkwardly to catch the small container. Her heart was in her throat and beating a million miles per second, and it didn't start calming down until she had the pack safe and sound on the ground next to her. The packet seemed to be relatively well secured all thing considering except for the stumps of the two wires still coming out of it. She assumed that whoever was to have used this didn't want to be accidentally blown up themselves.


"You trying to give me a heart attack?" she grumbled as she rooted through her backpack until she found the duct tape. "Ha! I knew this would come in handy." She used the tape and the used food and water packs to make another layer of isolation around the container, hiding away the wires as well. It was a bit bulky and ridiculous-looking, but she would take that over accidentally setting it off any day of the week.


When that was done she went back to searching through the medical supplies until she found what she was looking for. She swallowed two pills dry and then sighed. "Let's get all this packed up again and ready in case we have to make a quick getaway during the night. And thanks for this." She added as she held up the thermite container. "You want the first watch or the second one?"

 

[Red Thunder]

Sean laughed, perhaps a bit patronizingly.


"No prob. But relax; it's thermite, Kimmie, not nitro glycerin. The only thing that's gonna set that bastard off is intense heat. Hence the solar battery. And hence the freezing precaution I took."


He looked out across the trees. It did indeed seem to be getting darker, albeit slowly, and rest would honestly do them good after all that had happened to them in the past few hours. The solar unit and the opened box still lay before him, stream rising from it from the environmental temperature difference; it would need further dismantling to be able to make use of the solar panels and its battery.


"I'll take the first," Sean offered, pointing to the device with the screwdriver. "Still gotta finish taking this apart anyway."

 

[redletalis]

"Still no reason to give me a heart attack. And it's Kim. Or Kimani. Call me Kimmie again and I will castrate you and then roast it and feed it back to you." She threw a food pack more or less in his direction in revenge before she started repacking her backpack. Now that they had shared the heavy tools between them and she took the time to actually put things properly inside it wasn't such a mess and there was room for more. A lot more. So much more than the satchel she had used was practically obsolete. In a day or two they wouldn't even need it anymore, depending on how careful they were with their rationing, but that in itself was a topic for daybreak and rested minds.


She rolled up the satchel on her side of their nest, and hunkered down for the night, her back to Sean. "Wake me up in six hours tops, preferrably sooner - or if something happens, of course. Sience says that shorter but more frequent naps are better for you than longer ones in these sorts of situations, and we both need to be as rested as possible for the journey ahead." Especially since neither of them actually knew where the hell they were going.


Kim shifted around a bit until she was as comfortable as she could on the hard wood, and made sure that the safety was on the gun before she clutched it close. She didn't quite trust Sean, but she trusted this alien planet even less. It was a cold comfort to have the hard, heavy metal in her hand, but it allowed her to doze off and slowly sink into sleep and that was what she was hoping for.

 

[Red Thunder]

He bit his tongue, the remark he wanted to throw back at her being caught only just. Castration was perhaps a dramatic response, but he wasn't sure of 'Kimani' yet. So he shook his head, eyed the pile of supplies he'd need to pack later, and got to work on dismantling the unit. He paused to light the cigarette he'd been chewing on, grimacing a bit at the thought of his quickly dwindling supply. Stowing his lighter, he glanced at Kim. As much as he distrusted her, he distrusted the other escaped conflicts far, far more. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. Sighing, he got back to work.

 

[redletalis]

She dreamt about the crash. About all her squad mates being dead and consumed by the fire that was probably still raging around inside the enormous ship. How one of them wouldn't ever return to his wife and young son, how another was leaving behind a teenage daughter, how a third was never going to get the chance to travel from one edge of space to another as he had always dreamed about. She also dreamed about the countless dead prisoners too, and a shady figure lording over it all and ordering the crash to happen like some stereotypical villain from old movies.


Kim was quiet as she slept, but she woke in constant jerks and in the end she simply gave up and sat up. It was fully dark now, but the entire forest seemed to be mildly luminescent for she could still see the counters of things surprisingly clearly. She turned to look at Sean. "How long was I asleep?"

 

[Red Thunder]

His hands cradled his head as the ex-con lay upon the floor afforded them by the alien tree. Though as vastly different than any arrangement he'd ever seen, as indeed they were whenever he visited a new world, Sean couldn't help but gaze at the celestial lights in awe. The one great consistent, no matter the location; different each time, but stars they always were. And he'd never seen anything as simply beautiful as the bright points in the night sky. Suddenly Kim's voice pulled him from his revelry.


"Hm? Not terribly long. Maybe four hours? It's kinda hard to tell on this foreign ball of dirt." The solar panel was out of sight, likely stored safely in his pack, and the leftover pieces of his unit dismantle lay neatly piled off to the side. Even the tools the mechanic had given him were put away, and both blow torch and its lighter were packed securely among her supplies. He sat up. "What, can't sleep?"

 

[redletalis]

"Yeah. Dreams." Kim stretched slightly and rubbed her neck. Not the most comfortable place to sleep, really, but it could have been a lot worse than it was. Instead of being dead she could simply roll her shoulders and massage the aching muscles. Although she suspected that not all of the aches came from a hard bed, but from the crash itself and the door they had broken through in order to escape.


She yawned. "You should get some sleep if you can, I'll take over guard duty since I'm already up. Doubt I'll get anymore sleep for a while now, and it was soon my turn anyway if the time flows like it does on most planets." The planets that didn't have a day-night cycle were hell to be stationed on and messed up her internal clock like crazy. Kim hoped that this place had a more normal rhythm, ideally a 24-hours-type of rhythm.


Shifting around until she was sitting against one of the branches with no danger of falling way down to the ground, Kim placed the gun next to her and settled in for a few hours.

 

[Red Thunder]

Sean looked like he might have rebutted. After all, four hours was nothing like six, what she'd originally requested. For her to assert that it was nearly her shift anyway was ridiculous. The woman needed rest just as much as he did; he'd be damned if her lack of sleep attributed to his death.


On the other hand, he was tired. A great deal more than he'd have liked to admit. Shrugging, letting his silence answer for him since the soldier had already taken up a watch position, Sean merely lay back down and closed his eyes.


"Sure thing, Kimmie. Wake me if we've got trouble."


Kimmie. Coincidences were funny things, always popping up in the odoest places. Well, sure: 'Kimani' wasn't quite 'Kimmie', just like this hard ass mechanic would never be his gentle bride. But it was some small comfort to the ex-con to say her name again, five or more years though it'd been since he'd seen her. But the soldier's warning still rang dangerously in his ears. She might not actually harm him, but she might run. He reached out and grabbed his pack, hugging it closely as he fell into a fitful sleep.

 

[redletalis]

"My name's Kim!" she hissed at him, but there was no real venom or reprimand in her voice. She wasn't up to arguing with the only person who seemed somewhat trustworthy around here, not when stranded on an unknown planet with heaven knew what kind of creatures and escaped ex-prisoners around. Well, no arguing tonight at least. She wasn't making any promises about tomorrow.


She shighed and let the silence of the night settle around her. Except it wasn't truly silent. There were night-time noises all around her, soft and quiet. Some of them were familiar - croaking of a frog, or something that sounded like a frog at least - and then there were quite unfamiliar ones that she didn't really want to think about. What a crazy planet they had ended up on. Hell, it was crazy that they had managed to survive at all!


Letting her eyes scan from one point to the other, Kim pushed those thoughts away and instead focused on making sure that nothing sneaked up on them.

 

[Red Thunder]

Sean may as well have been a part of the tree for all the moving he did in his sleep. Five hours later he awoke and immediately pushed himself up. The nocturnal noises had all gone quiet with the promise of the rising of the system's sun, only to be replaced by the eerie silence that always accompanied dawn. It was strange: no matter where he went, the dawn-quiet was ever present, as if all planets shared the same reverence for those few moments of time between Awake and Asleep. The pack was still wrapped securely in one arm, and the man pulled a water bottle from it. Only taking enough to wet his mouth, he capped the bottle, dropped it back into the pack, and glanced over at the mechanic.


"Well, Miss Military: you wanna grab another hour or two?"

 

[redletalis]

Guard duty was always boring, and the hours passed incredibly slowly. Exhaustion made itself known around two hours into the watch, but she continued to doggedly keep it up. The unfamiliar night-noises made her tense until she slowly got used to them, and several times she thought something had rushed past their resting place either in the air or down on the ground, rustling the leaves and disturbing the air, and once she thought that she saw a big shadow of some cat-like beast, but that could have been the darkness playing tricks on her eyes. Nothing discovered them and by the time Sean woke up, Kim's head was drooping.


She jerked up when he spoke, blinking to clear the sleep out of her face. They were in no real hurry to get anywhere, and she really needed some more rest if she was to be useful come morning, so Kim nodded and yawned. "I'd like that if you don't mind. Nothing happened, but there might have been a cat-like thing sneaking about. Or it could have been something small and cuddly and the darkness and luminescence made it into a monster. We can check out if it left any tracks come mornin'..."


By the end of the sentence Kim had trailed off and was dead asleep in her seated position.

 

[Red Thunder]

As her head tipped forward, he sighed, relieved. That was one weight off his mind, anyhow. Now to figure out what the hell he needed to do. The forgotten pack of dried foodstuffs, tossed to him earlier but ignored until now, lay by his side, and he munched on the nutritious but very bland concoction within as he mused. Ah right, the solar panel: it and it's battery needed to be connected to the radio. Unfortunately said radio was in Kim's bag, and Sean felt certain that she'd be rather displeased to find it in his hands.


But hell. He was bored and needed something to do. Eyeing the soldier as he would a ravenous sleeping tiger, Sean pushed himself to standing. Placing one foot slowly in front of the other, he eased forward towards her pack. He glanced at her occasionally, concerned, but she never stirred.


No one organized quite like a soldier did. Everything was in its proper place and separated seemingly by import and consistency of use. As a result, the radio transmitter was close to the bottom. Which meant disturbing her pack. Damn. But they might not have time to piece it all together later. So, holding his breath and trying desperately to not look suspicious, Sean began moving things aside food, medicine, and tools to retrieve the transmitter.

 

[redletalis]

Luckily this time she was simply too exhausted mentally for any dreams and her sleep too deep. Only once did she come close to waking up, some sort of noise reaching her even while unconscious, but all that accomplished was Kim sliding down sideways until she lay fully horizontal. She curled up on her side, her hold on the gun remarkably unbroken, ending up with one arm under her head and the gun right next to her face.


Despite the presence of an ex-prisoner, someone who had all the reason in the world to hate the military and kill her, Kim slept on. Her internal clock was apparently exhausted as well because she didn't wake up after two hours. She simply kept on sleeping, breathing softly and taking no notice of anything around her. If they were attacked she wouldn't know it until it was far too late.