a plasma cutter stashed conveniently nearby. I looked around, but the room failed to deliver. Even the air vent was a tiny rectangle that no human could fit through.
Richard had chosen my prison well.
My only chance of escape would be the window or when the soldiers entered the room to move me. And with a dozen guards standing outside the door, the chance of success rested at approximately zero.
It would help if I knew what Richard had planned for me. We were waiting for Richard’s battle cruiser, the Santa Celestia, to return, which meant it wasn’t here. Telling me that information was a slip on his part because it meant he had no backup except the soldiers with him. And while I worried that the Santa Celestia had followed Rhys to the gate, even if it had, space was vast and the stealth on the smaller, nimbler Polaris was second to none.
It meant that Polaris wasn’t caught yet.
It also meant that I had two hours or so to escape, assuming the Santa Celestia jumped with an alcubium FTL. Escaping from Richard’s ship would be orders of magnitude more difficult than escaping from this barely secured facility.
I just had to get out of this room.
I walked to the back wall. When that was successful, I paced back and forth. The soldier watching me didn’t move his head, but I had the sense that he carefully tracked my movements nonetheless.
I had a stretcher, a glass window, and a locked door, plus a roomful of soldiers waiting outside. These were not the ideal circumstances for escape.
I kept pacing, stretching the muscles that had tensed into knots under the onslaught of the stun rounds. Once pacing no longer hurt, I boxed an invisible foe. My arms felt heavy and slow, but I kept at it until the muscles warmed and softened.
Richard walked out of sight, the commander trailing behind him. The rest of the guards stayed, though they lounged around more with their superiors gone. Plans flitted through my head, but I discarded them as fast as I thought them up. Richard had been thorough and I didn’t have much to work with. Only one option presented itself and it was guaranteed to get me stunned again.
Yay.
With nothing to lose, I picked up the stretcher and slammed it into the window in one smooth motion. The handles penetrated the window and glass shattered into a million tiny pieces. I kept pushing, ramming the guard who watched me. Before the other guard could react, I’d caught him by the belt and pulled his blaster from the holster, using him as a human shield.
The room froze, as if they couldn’t quite believe their eyes. I did not waste time. I’d hit three soldiers with incapacitating shots by the time they regrouped and took cover.
The guard I held tried to pull away. I jammed the blaster in his kidney. “Move and die,” I said.
“You won’t shoot your shield,” he said. His voice came out muffled thanks to his helmet.
“Oh, but I will. I have this nice wall to hide behind. And if you don’t quit squirming, you’ll see how serious I am.” I jabbed him again with the gun.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Richard demanded. He walked into sight, his face furious.
The man should know better than to walk into a combat zone. But perhaps he hadn’t heard the blaster shots, just the shouting.
“My lord, get—” an anonymous soldier tried to warn him.
I took a potshot at Richard. It went wide, but it forced him into cover. The guard in my grasp spun, trying to pull me off-balance. Instead, I let him go and shot him point-blank.
I mentally boxed up the revulsion caused by my actions. I would mourn him later. I would mourn them all. But for now, I was still trapped. A half-full blaster was the only thing standing between me and a stint aboard Richard’s ship.
It would not be enough. I knew it even as Richard yelled for the soldiers with stun pistols to pin me down. Stun bolts slammed into both the wall I hid behind and the back wall of the room, sending sparks flying everywhere.
A quick glance out the window proved the guard commander was back and issuing silent orders via hand signals. The remaining soldiers fanned out. I jerked my head back as a barrage of blasts plowed into the wall.
There was no substantial cover between me and the soldiers. The second I went over the wall, they