Prison Break (Star Breaker Book 5)

  Prison Break

  Star Breaker, Book 5

  James David Victor

  Copyright © 2021 James David Victor

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  1

  Pluto Prison Facility

  The short woman stood before the wintry light of the port window, flexed her arm, and wondered why she could still feel it itching.

  My arm shouldn’t be itching, thought Holly Cropper, the young captain of the Earth Alliance Marines Forward Patrol and Recon Division. In fact, her arm shouldn’t have any feeling in it whatsoever—as it was entirely made out of black, bronze, and red metals. Holly frowned as she looked at the visible metal tubes and gears, the strange pneumatic joints, and the armor plating. She wondered why the good doctors, surgeons, and engineers of the Earth Alliance Marines hadn’t (at the very least) added a touch or two of design flash to it.

  “A racing stripe or something would have been a nice touch . . .” she murmured to herself in the small room. The space was only marginally bigger than she could stretch her arms. It was also freezing in the cramped Plutonian room where she had been billeted.

  Pluto. Dear stars. The Earth Alliance Marine groaned as she turned back to the port window and tried to look out. It was difficult because the layers of residual ice on the outside created a distorted, fragmented world—one that was half black with the stellar night above and half white and gray with the surface of Earth’s distant relative below.

  “Who wants to end up on fracking Pluto?” murmured the mocking tone of Marshal Smith as the door to Holly’s room whisked open. Her narrow-featured, rakish sergeant and pilot sauntered in to lean on the door frame.

  Holly made an agreeing noise as she let her new arm drop and turned to fix him with a cynical eye.

  “News, Sergeant?”

  “Meh.” The man made a face. “The big jobs are entering their final approach to the planet now. Should be making touchdown within the hour.” He shrugged as if the mere suggestion was tiring.

  Which it was. Holly had to agree as she cast another look out the window at the harsh surface beyond.

  “Big jobs” was Marshal’s euphemism for everyone who was a member of the senior brass: commanders, colonels, special consultants.

  Ever since she and her squad had destroyed the Thaal bridgehead—and the weird warp gate thing that the Thaal were using to bring their alien troops across—their group had been billeted here at the Pluto station. The actual site was now Restricted Access Only.

  And even though I lost an arm up there, Holly thought. She cast another eye at her new arm and wondered why she could feel the ghost of her old flesh prickling and freezing. It is still the higher-ups who swoop in and take over the site. Her site.

  And now she and her team had been left here on Pluto as she recovered. And get used to this new arm of mine, she added in her head.

  Pluto was a prison planet. She narrowed her eyes at the window and what she was sure were small shapes outside in the frozen wastes, trudging as they hauled back yet another mammoth block of ice. The Pluto facility itself was little more than a couple of towers, a compound, and some underground bunker complexes that housed the facility’s reactors and energy plants. There were surly prison guards here who didn’t look too happy to be playing host to official EA Marines like her squad—and who looked only about one step removed from the prisoners that they shepherded.

  After everything I’ve given the Marine Corps, this is what I get left with, Holly thought. She squinted through the icy window in time to see three hazy, blurred lights moving overhead through the black of a Plutonian sky.

  “Yeah, fracking Pluto,” Holly muttered, nodding as a distant roaring sound could be heard, deep and vibrational, through the building.

  “I guess that’s the big jobs.” The captain sighed, standing a bit straighter and reminding herself why she was here and who she was. A captain of the EA.

  “Let’s go say hello, shall we?”

  2

  “Eyes on the approach.”

  Sergeant Bastion Li of the Forward Recon squad said as he stood on the optimistically named “landing pad” of the Pluto Prison Facility. It really was little more than a large, flattened area of ice. Every now and then, jets of boiling water sprayed on it (freezing immediately) to make a smooth surface. The surface ice was so hard out here that it would form a good enough landing area for the smaller vessel approaching all by itself.

  Bastion Li was a very large man, and he was made larger by the full tactical suit that he wore. But even he was dwarfed by the black-and-brown main tower of the facility behind him and the odd-shaped craft that lowered itself towards them.

  It was shaped a little like a hornet, Bastion thought—although a fat-bellied one with four stubby, triangular wings along the body. Large gusts of thruster fire extended from its body on all sides, and it was already extending ungainly landing legs.

  “Safety lights! Markson—what are you doing?!” Bastion suddenly growled. He had seen the blinking light across from him on the other side of the landing pad erratically flash in triple time and then go out completely.

  “Markson, what’s the situation?!” Bastion hissed once again through his suit communicator at the distant Pluto prison guard he was supposed to be working with.

  “Sergeant! Bad connection, I—fzzzt . . .” The words of Markson disappeared in the screech of static as the line went dead.

  “Dammit!” Bastion growled, checking the trajectory of the craft above. It was a classic small craft of the EA Marines, and one that was supposed to hold the senior scientific advisors on their way to the Thaal site. First stop here to interview the Forward Recon squad and next stop, the Thaal site.

  The craft was still about three hundred feet up. It should be able to make the landing clean with just its ship sensors, Bastion thought—as long as it wasn’t paying attention to the guidance lights on the ground.

  And then the other set of landing lights, currently staffed by Plutonian Officer Temperance, also started flashing like a strobe before cutting out.

  “PO Temperance?” Bastion turned in the other direction, but this time there wasn’t any connection at all coming from the suit’s comms.

  “Stars damn! What is wrong with this backwater piece of rock?” Bastion snarled, gesturing with his hand to fling on his suit’s sensors.

  Heavy Tactical Suit: Li, Bastion (Sgt) . . .

  Active Sensors: Biological . . .

  He’d received two reports from the Plutonian officers, Bastion noted, and both of them had been good, not compromised or injured.

  So they’re not injured, the sergeant was thinking as the EA dropship craft swerved a little on its thruster jets, getting lower and lower towards the landing pad.

  The Plutonian prison guards weren’t injured. It was just that their equipment hadn’t been updated out here in probably nine or ten years. Bastion grimaced.

  “Sergeant? What’s going on out there?” It was Holly’s urgent voice coming in over the comms. “Marshal and I are in the reception lounge. I can see the landing lights have gone dark.”

  “Fracking connections,” Bastion grumbled, noting that their more advanced heavy tactical suits were still working well. The ancient gear that the Plutonian officers had out here was so old that he thought it could be put into a museum.

  “You think the ship can make it down clean?” Holly asked nervously.

  “Well . . .” Bastion looked up to see that the jets of thruster fire were now almost touching the surface, and there were great plumes of ice clouds billowing up on either side. “I’d say they’ll have to, at this rate.”

  “Dear stars,” he heard Holly swear as they all waited with bated breath.

  The dropship above wobbled on its down flight. It had no external lights to guide it, but Bastion almost willed the pilot to trust their instincts as the craft eased lower and lower.

  “FFZT! Sorry, Sergeant! Should be back online now!” Markson’s voice returned over the line. Was it Bastion’s imagination, or did the man sound pleased with himself?

  “Forget about it,” Bastion grumbled. The ship only had thirty feet or less to go now. They had cleared the main tower and any nearby buildings. Just so long as the pilot had a steady hand, they were going to be fine.

  “Just get back over here and be ready with the stabilizers,” Bastion said, moving back as the gales of steam engulfed the pad. He followed his suit’s holocontrols towards the reception lounge, casting a wary eye behind him at the ship every few paces.

  The dropship touched dow
n with a slightly heavier thud than was probably advisable, and one that Bastion could feel through the surface of the ice. He couldn’t see the state of the craft through the ice steam, but then the vapor started to disperse, and he was pleased to see that each of the landing legs was still holding, and none had been crumpled.

  “This is going to look so great on our reports,” Bastion heard Marshal mutter over the comms, half despairingly, half mockingly.

  “As if we pay any attention to them anyway,” Bastion quipped back—but he knew what his fellow sergeant meant. There was always a certain aura of anxiety around a meeting with the top brass. Even though the congratulations on their work at the Thaal camp had finally gotten through to them, Bastion and all of the others knew that there would be the inevitable series of analysis and meetings, questions and evaluation about how what they did could have been done differently.

  Like the fact that we got civilians from the Sunkisser Generation Caravan to help, Bastion was thinking, Or why Holly took it on herself to blow herself up.

  “Marine,” said the suddenly clear voice of Markson as the Plutonian security officer appeared out of the falling mists on one side. His second, a man named Temperance, appeared on the other.

  Both men were hauling large metal cords almost as thick as firehoses that snaked off behind them and back towards the base. These were the stabilizer lines that their ground team was supposed to attach to the dropship to secure it against any of the seismic activity that Pluto still experienced.

  Their suit comms were much clearer at this close range, Bastion noted.

  “What the frack happened back there?” the large Marine said as he picked up the rubber hose whose internal piping would refuel the dropship with the replacement oxygen, water, and accelerants that it would need. Bastion gave both Plutonian officers a hard stare.

  “Ah, well . . .” Markson spoke first, and Bastion could see the way that the man was grinning smugly behind his visor as he shrugged. “You know how it is out here. The tech isn’t the best.”

  You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Bastion immediately knew as he saw the Plutonian officer flash a grin at his fellow. The sergeant felt as certain that the two of them had orchestrated the little fiasco with the lights as he was certain that he hated Pluto. It was in the mocking smiles and the swagger of the pair of them.

  But I can’t prove it, can I? He growled inside his suit and shook his head, heaving the fuel lines as he nodded towards the dropship.

  “Come on. Let’s get her secured, and then we can all go inside,” he said irritably, knowing that it wouldn’t do any good to start throwing accusations around right now. He trudged forwards across the ice until the dropship was rising over him. Then he dragged the hose towards the nearest connector and started attaching it. A little way off, he saw Markson and Temperance laughing with each other as they dragged their wires to the legs and hooked them up to their own connectors before cinching them tight.

  “Everything alright out there, Li?” Holly was saying over the comms as Bastion finished up working. He wondered what it was about her, that there were times it felt like the young captain could almost sense her team’s unease even if she wasn’t there.

  “Yeah. The Plutonian security officers,” Bastion grumbled. “I don’t think they appreciate the fact that we’re cramping their style.”

  “What do you mean?” Holly said quickly. “They are doing their job, right? All of the prisoners are secured?”

  “I presume so,” Bastion grumbled as he finished up and stepped back. He had become the unofficial intermediary between Holly and the Plutonians in the time that they had been there. There was no real reason for it except that his size indicated that he was the sort of man that they would listen to.

  “Forget about it. If I catch any flak, I’ll have a word with them,” Bastion muttered. He signaled for the other two to come away from the legs and to the extending chute at the side of the dropship. The top brass were about to come out of there any minute.

  There was another crunch on the ice as the chute made contact and then a hiss of escaping gasses as the internal space depressurized. Bastion was leading the way (as the others dawdled behind) when the door opened. He saw just three people exit the dropship and make large, lunging steps onto the surface of Pluto.

  The ones on either side were trained EA Marines, Bastion saw. He could recognize their suits as well as the proficiency in their gait and walking.

  But that one in the middle, Bastion thought, watching as the figure in the suit took too-small steps and then took too-large ones. Finally, they had to lean against the other two guards to help.

  “Ma’am?” Bastion said as he approached the trio with the easy, rocking walk of one who was used to adjusting to different planetary gravities.

  “Ah yes, sir.” The middle figure looked up. “I see you are. Wait . . . Sergeant Li? Sergeant Bastion Li?”

  “That I am, ma’am.” Bastion stood his ground. Off to one side, he could feel the sniggering coming from Markson and Temperance at this supposedly senior officer’s complete lack of skill.

  “Right. Sergeant Li. I’m here to meet with your captain. Captain Holly Cropper?” The figure said, almost sliding on the ice before she caught the shoulder of the nearest Marine guard.

  “Right you are. She’s inside and waiting for us, ma’am. These are Plutonian Officers Markson and Temperance, and we’re here to escort you inside,” Bastion said in his best talking-to-authority voice.

  “There are still active cryovolcanoes here on Pluto so the surface tremors can be pretty bad,” he added by way of explanation—and perhaps a little pity at the way that the officer was handling herself.

  “I don’t remember feeling any tremors in the last hour or so. Do you, Markson?” Bastion heard the whisper over their shared comms.

  “Nope. Quiet for a couple of days now,” the other Plutonian prison guard said gleefully.

  “That must be it,” said the unsteady top brass. “I’m Dr. Rachel Crow, Senior Security Advisor and Scientific Consultant. I’ve been tasked with doing the interviews for those who saw the, uh . . . who was at the last incident?” she changed quickly.

  An advisor? Bastion blinked, surprised for a moment. They sent an advisor? Some science clerk?

  But orders were orders, after all, and Bastion saluted anyway.

  “Follow me, ma’am,” he said, turning towards the main entrance air lock. The two Marine guards at her side stopped, saluted, and gestured for Bastion to take the lead.

  “Ah yes. They’re staying with the ship,” the doctor said, turning to thank the two Marines briefly before staggering forward. She laid a hand on Bastion’s shoulder and used him to guide her steps forwards.

  “Blind leading the—” Bastion heard Markson whisper over their comms before Bastion immediately disconnected the line.

  “I must apologize. I’m not very good at zero-G maneuvers,” the doctor said as they crossed the rest of the icy landing pad to the air lock doors, and her attendant guards made it back to the dropship and disappeared into the belly of the ship.

  I guess this really is just a fact-finding mission. Bastion could almost hear the captain’s groan when she found out what was going on. The top brass hadn’t even bothered to send in any colonels or senior strategists to help them work out what had happened out there. To work out what their next steps were—now that they knew that the Thaal had the means to make a bridgehead into their space and were clearly amassing an invasion effort.

  The very fact that we are at war with a highly advanced alien species! Bastion groaned as they got to the air lock door. They waited for the giant lights to flicker from warning orange to red before stepping inside.

  Beyond the doors was a wide repressurizing and depressurizing lounge which filled with the hisses of compressed atmosphere as soon as the outer doors were closed. Just one set of doors to go until the main reception now, and Bastion could hand the doctor over to Holly.