Prison Pit
- Characters
- Prison Library
- Logs 1
- Logs 2
- Jailbreak
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science base, odegra, 21:00 local time 110/1106
Alice turned back to Minion and demanded a complete personnel list for the facility. The list appeared in moments, twenty-four scientists, five admin staff and five corptroopers. Confident they'd dealt with all the corptroopers in the Terbium wing, they spent a few minutes poking through the labs in the south wing, passing over the crushers, refining furnace and the testing rooms with the funny-looking wooden models of starships with grids of terbium connected through to the monitoring room at the end. Nothing caught their attention, and - conscious of passing time - they headed for the crawler garage.
Martha was still lugging the corptrooper helmet, listening in on the comms in case the remaining CTs called to check up, but the ether was quiet.
All felt they were pushing their luck, and that it was time to get the transport and get out. Rather than go all the way back over the roof, they examined the inner face of the iris valve leading into the Atrium. Although the control electronics were wrecked on both sides, here on the inside there was a socket for an emergency manual handle, and a quick search turned one up in a nearby locker. Alice plugged it in and started cranking, and after ten minutes or so the hatch was sufficiently open to slip through.
With Gripper leading and Alice bringing up the rear, they sneaked back through Maximillian Hall and into the main dome. As Gripper rounded the corner, rifle first, into the circular corridor, a movement caught his eye and he froze, gesturing backwards to the others to halt. A door had just opened, and a female form in a white coat adorned with a stethoscope was walking away from him around the curving corridor in the other direction. Gripper remained where he was as she reached another door, opened it, and disappeared inside. He gestured for the others to move past him and on towards the crawler garage, then moved to the junction where he could cover the corridor, the central common space, and the crawler garage.
The next two doors on from the garage were (according to the governor's computer) the corptroop barracks and armoury. Martha and Alice peeled off and headed for the armoury while Manx opened the garage hatch and slipped inside.
Martha dug out the swipe card she'd taken from one of the CorpTroopers and flicked it across the sensor outside the armoury. With a quiet click the door opened, and she began to cautiously push it open, only to freeze in horror as a voice from inside called, "Hello? Who's there?" Alice pushed the door all the way open. "There's a problem in the kitchen," she said - the first thing that came into her head.
Across the darkened room inside was a workbench, on which a gauss rifle lay partially disassembled. Just standing up from the seat in front of it was a man dressed in corptrooper armour except for the helmet. "What?" he said irritably, "Who are you?" Alice smiled seductively at him and blew him a kiss, which threw him off his mental balance for a crucial moment. The next instant, Martha's riflebutt crashed into his right eye, hurling him backwards to sprawl moaning faintly on the floor. She stepped forward, raising it again for a crushing follow-up, but Alice had already bent and rammed her extended fingers into the man's exposed throat. The corptrooper gurgled, twitched briefly, and died.
Martha turned and quickly shut the door, then turned on the lights and wiped blood and aqueous humour off her rifle while Alice dragged their victim into a corner and turned to examine the room. As they'd hoped, there were racks of gauss rifles, clips of ammo for them, a second rack of automatic pistols, some pre-loaded clips for those and some boxes of ammunition. The workbench yielded two tool kits, one a gunsmith's and one for maintaining the corptrooper armour. Martha stripped the body of his suit and put it on, then while Alice bagged up the weapons for transfer to the crawler, returned through the base to the kitchen of the Terbium wing and retrieved the suit from one corptrooper to go with the helmet from the other, which she'd already got.
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Manx carefully entered the garage, pistol in hand, and looked around. The heavy tracked vehicle, the same as their existing one except in that it wasn't knackered, sat quietly facing inwards in a space not much bigger than it was. A box on the wall provided keys and he clambered into the driving seat and looked around. Everything seemed the same, although there was a large prominent green button on the console that he didn't remember seeing in the prisoner crawler. Carefully laying his pistol down where he could reach it quickly, he studied the console and reviewed what he'd learned from watching Taxi. Slowly and cautiously, he flipped switches and was rewarded with a gentle thrum as the fuel-cell power plant came out of standby. Readouts flickered on, and he examined the information; power, good; life support, nominal; fuel, fully fueled. Ready to roll. Picking up his pistol, he settled back in the driving seat where he could see the door into the corridor to wait for the others. Then a thought struck him. Leaning down, he groped under the driver's seat. Yes! There it was. He pulled out the holdout pistol and hefted it with a grin, then slipped it back and returned to waiting.
It wasn't long before the door opened and Martha and Alice slipped inside with the looted weapons. While the others loaded gear, Gripper went to look if there were controls on the outer door to open it. There weren't, which pointed to the green button as being the door opener.
The discussion was once again opened on whether to blow the seals on the science base and exterminate the occupants. Gripper and Martha were for it, but Manx and Alice weren't keen; though they could kill people when they had to, and would without a blink in order to get away, they didn't see themselves as mass murderers. Gripper conceded the point grudgingly. "When we start this thing, people are going to notice," said Alice. "We should at least deal with the remaining guards in their barracks." Martha agreed and the pair set off to do so. Slipping into the barracks, they found the last two corptroopers sleeping quietly. Taking one each, they moved close to the beds. As they did so, Alice noticed that Martha - for all her height and large build - moved like a cat, always balanced, ever silent. Martha reached her target and drew a long kitchen knife from her belt. For a moment Alice had a qualm; killing a helpless man in his sleep felt wrong. There was no choice, though; these men might be able to stop them getting away. She kissed her fingers and laid them on the sleeping face. "Night night," she breathed inaudibly, drew her shiv, and held up three fingers. On one, both women stabbed with brutal accuracy; a couple of gasps and it was all over.
The room turned up the usual personal effects; books, clothes, pictures of family, a bible, a few credits. A more thorough search under mattresses and so on (who knows more about hiding stuff than prisoners?) added a long, non-regulation combat dagger and a cheap hand computer. A slightly oversized wardrobe turned out to contain their armour, which the pair added to their heap along with the mattresses from all five beds. Then they transferred all the plunder - and the three bodies - to the crawler. Gripper came along to help, lugging a mattress down the corridor at the back of the line. As he entered the garage for the last time, he paused un-noticed for a fraction of a second in the doorway. Then all four were in the crawler, Manx in the driving seat, and with a deep breath he pressed the Big Green Button.
Nothing happened. After a moment, Martha glanced at the inner door, and noticed it didn't seem to be shut. All four were as familiar with airlocks as a knife and fork, and knew that if the inner door wasn't shut, the outer wouldn't open. She clambered down from the crawler and walked over to the door, a nasty suspicion blooming in her mind. Sure enough, a dropped 9mm pistol clip was blocking the door and holding it open.
Pulling the clip out, Martha watched as the door clicked shut. As she clambered back into the crawler, she wedged a scrap of paper into the clip and scribbled Gripper on it before quietly handing it to Alice. Manx pressed the button and as the outer door slid up into the wall, Alice leaned over his seat, kissed her finger and touched his face. "Night night" she said enigmatically and walked off, leaving him baffled.
Manx took a deep breath, reached out and fed power to the tracks. Taking firm hold of the sticks, he glanced in one of the old-fashioned rear-view mirrors before pulling them both back towards them. Why did it have to be reverse the first time? he thought wryly. Nothing seemed to be happening, so he pulled a little harder. Suddenly, with a roar and clatter of tracks that was shattering in the confined space, the crawler leaped backwards, smashing into the right-hand side of the doorframe. A loud hissing announced that the damage had been enough to spring a leak somewhere, and Gripper hurried off to put a patch on as Manx wrestled the sticks around to realign the vehicle. With no further need for silence he slammed them back again and the crawler lurched out through the door into the thin night air. Twenty feet out, he rammed the left stick all the way forwards and the huge vehicle spun in place like a forty-ton ballerina, jungle and buildings whirling past the windscreen in a nauseating blur. As the road away from the base came into view, Manx shoved both sticks forward and the crawler trundled into the jungle, leaving the science base far behind.
Science base road, Odegra, Local time 21:42 110/1106
Ten minutes later, the science crawler pulled to a halt next to the battered one from the prison. Swiftly the cons shifted their gear into the new crawler, and the dead corptroopers into the old one. Hurker stayed to drive the old one and Manx gladly surrendered the controls of the science crawler to Taxi Ardan. Then they were off again, in convoy this time, with most of the cons finally able to take their masks off for the first time in more than three hours.
main road, odegra, 22:02 local time 110/1106
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Half an hour later, the original crawler's panel announced an upcoming terminal shortage of fuel, and they turned off the road. Alice directed Hurker to drive it into the jungle a good way, then dragged out the two bodies. One she shot in the back of the head before sprawling it some way from the crawler as if fleeing; the other she shot in the face and arranged in the side door. "Lover's tiff," she said. Hurker smirked. "Love hurts," he commented, glancing at Alice in a manner that made her clench her fists. With him, of course, it was probably true.
The two of them returned to the science crawler and the journey resumed. Alice turned to Manx. "Time for another broadcast," she told him. "Let's work out your script first this time." With preparation, the Preacher's performance was more convincing, and the rest of the planet was soon 
convincingly informed that the rescue crawler from the prison was well on the way to the 'crash site' and in constant short-range communication with the crew. All that remained now was simply to travel, and most of the cons now succumbed to their weariness and stress and sacked out among the seats and science equipment in the back of the crawler, Gripper, Manx and Martha among them. Alice remained awake for a bit, using Minion to pry more information out of Governer Pinkus' handcomp. She extracted the details of several of his bank accounts off-world, and skimmed a considerable amount of information about the setting up of the current mine. Interestingly, the Pit was also referred to as "Mine #4" but there were no records of prisoners transferring from any "Mine #3" when it was set up. Finally, she too lay down and slept as the crawler rumbled on through the night.
main road, odegra, 01:43 local time 111/1106
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Four hours later, the four sat around Minion and queried it about the spaceport towards which they were heading. He delivered a personnel manifest for the 'port (5 technicians, 10 wardens, 2 crew for whichever shuttle was dirtside) and a schematic. Yes, the power station was the only one. Yes, he could interface with Flight Control's computers to check the shuttle Curly's status - but not at this range. No, he couldn't fly Curly. Yes, he could get plans of the building interiors. No, he couldn't override local control and shut down the power plant; I am not programmed for aggressive computing he announced primly. "But you could be," suggested Gripper. Yes. "I could do that," claimed Martha, but no-one took her up on the suggestion.
The 'port was equipped with sensors, but they were specifically designed to track incoming spacecraft, and couldn't detect vehicles like the crawler on the ground. The shuttle itself was probably capable of tracking ground vehicles from the air but not from the ground.
The towers around the fenced landing pad were fitted with machine-guns and double-manned when inbound shuttles with prisoners landed. When these arrived, they were revived on the shuttle and walked to the waiting crawler for the drive to their destiny in the discard. The listening cons nodded grimly; most remembered their first sight of Odegra, blurry with hibernation sickness from the Low berth, stumbling out of the shuttle and across to the crawler.
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With this information gathered, the four fell to discussing how they were going to get in and out with the shuttle. The sound of planning attracted old "General" Burkins and his tired face lit up as his steel trap of a mind engaged the problem. "Rather than trying to bull in as scientists," he rasped, still not completely recovered, "why not pretend to be injured or ill scientists, perhaps caught by something while quite close to the 'port. If it's bad enough, your 'casualties' could need Low freezing and medevac offworld for hospitalization." Alice grinned. "Some kind of disease," she agreed. "Minion, are there any creatures or plants on this planet that can cause a contagious disease?" Minion didn't pause for a moment before a list started scrolling up the screen. "Good..." said Alice, then paused as the list kept going... and going.... "All right!" she said loudly, "let's narrow it down!"
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Before much longer they'd selected the poison of a particular plant from Odegra's nightmare flora, one that produced unconsciousness, fever and facial discoloration. Gripper had assembled some drugs from the medical kits that could simulate the fever and render the 'casualties' unconscious, and some that would simulate the facial marks. Reviewing the cons, they had picked out Slippers, Benkin, Hurker and Spanners as the least useful in overpowering the shuttle crew and stealing it and this suitable for playing the part of casualties. Burkins, near-blind as he was, had displayed his tactical genius over and over in the planning, and was military after all - if he could see it, he could shoot it. Joe the Zho was also handy with a gun as well as being the backup pilot if Gripper came to grief. Taxi would be needed to to drive the crawler, of course, and could use a laser carbine moderately well. Scarrow was so deadly that even if his blade skills had not been potentially useful, no-one would have dared suggesting using him as a casualty. He was also the cons' only trained astrogator.
No-one could remember who said it first; it was one of those crystal moments of reason that make a good plan superb. "Why not call the 'port and ask them to send the shuttle to us?" The more they discussed it, the better sense it made. Finally, Hurker set up a call to the 'port and Manx and Alice put in the request, using authorization codes dredged from Pinkus' handcomp, and with Alice impersonating the science base's doctor Lynn Heggie. After some discussion, Flight Control agreed to send the shuttle to collect the 'casualties', but specified it would need a marked-out landing pad 70m long by 90m wide... the Shardik class shuttle had a big wingspan.
With just the right amount of panic in their voices they agreed, and the plan was in motion... now all they needed was a flat piece of ground
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