Chariot 3: Conception

A subtle alarm started echoing through the corridors. The military were primitive, but not stupid.

“Run Flumen. Run!” Cai Yiu shouted after his blade freed his friend from the far excessive number of handcuffs that held the harmless Nibirian.

Flumen`s legs felt lighter than never, although a bit shaky after the blade had just missed his middle area. He kicked off the chains to the side and then started to run, taking the lead back towards the maze of corridors they came from earlier.

Cai Yiu could hear the noisy boots becoming closer when a group of armed soldiers finally appeared running on the opposite direction.

“Move!” One of the senior officers ordered. “Don`t shoot to kill, we need them alive!”

Flumen felt somehow reassured and just hoped it would not hurt as much as he pictured should a bullet hit his body. He tried to think what part of his body would heart less should he get shot, but interrupted by his friend, he did not have the chance to reach a conclusion.

“Do you recall the way?” Cai Yiu looked at Flumen for some reassurance.

“Off course…I think.” He replied while scratching his head at an intersection, undecided.

“If you do not, then I shall decide.” Cai Yiu grabbed his shoulder and took the lead down the empty path.

At the meantime, the Colonel and his team of engineers finished assembling their powerful saw, designed by the militaries with the specific objective of cutting opened recovered enemy technology.

“Where shall we start?” One of the senior engineers, a reverse engineering expert, asked the Colonel.

“There is a locked door inside the spacecraft.” The officer replied. “I want to know what is behind it.”

“Y…yes, Sir. But should we not ask them what is behind that door first?” The man hesitated. “Simply trying to cut a door opened inside an unknown alien made technology may unchain catastrophic results.”

“Perhaps that door is locked for a reason.” The most senior of the engineers used his index finger to push his thick and heavy-looking glasses back up on his nose while hoping to bring some sense to the mind of his rather curious superior.

“If there is a reason, then we shall find out what the reason is!” Exon replied. His words were followed by the emergency alarm that interrupted the conversation with a terrible timing.

The Lieutenant Colonel turned his back to the men wearing the white lab coats. “Do as I command you!” The scientists looked at each other and then raised their shoulders, recognizing there was not much more to do other than follow what they were told.

The cautious reverse engineering expert tried to regain his excitement with the possible findings while at the back of his mind, he hoped nothing would spill, leak or explode on his face once he placed the electric saw through the mysterious door. “I hope to find just a pantry behind that door.” He jokingly thought.

Exon waived his hand to a small group of soldiers that surrounded the premises and ordered them to secure the side door that led to the rest of the facility.

The soldiers deployed their formation as they cocked their carbines. Two of them kneed just a few feet from the doors while other three took cover not far behind them.

“Captain…” Cai Yiu sounded breathless as he kept running as fast as he could. “We are almost there. Can you create a distraction?”

“A distraction?” Shoffer enquired while he swiftly moved his hands, rolling the Army green canvas from his stretcher over its wooden handles.

“A distraction?” V-Nus repeated. “We are locked in a cell!” He shouted as his patience reached its limit.

Two of the guards approached the cells to verify what the shouting was about.

At that precise moment, Captain Shoffer pushed the rolled stretcher through the metallic bars on the tiny window of his cell door. The hard wooden handle hit its first victim on the pit of the stomach, leaving him no action other than falling on his knees.

Shoffer then pushed the handle on his side of the window down towards the floor, lifting the handle on the outside like a seesaw, dropping another guard as the wood knocked the man right on the chin.

“Fine…they are distracted”, said V-Nus after listening to the two men that had just fallen on the floor. “Your path is clear, Cai Yiu.”

The third and last guard pulled out his service gun, pushed the helmet that covered part of his sight back up, and then aimed at the cell that held the extraterrestrial Captain.

The guard moved slowly, step after step. His incredulous, at the same time distrustful expression strived to accept the simple truth: the locked prisoner had just knocked out two of his armed guards with a canvas and a pair of wooden sticks. “A stretcher! Really?” He whispered to himself while making a stealthy approach towards the cell door.

A metallic noise just a few feet behind him broke the silence that filled the precinct. Without time to look back, his body was hit from behind by the door that although seemed weightless as it was thrown in the air, it felt heavy as it landed on his back.

Cai Yiu walked in through the door, or better saying, through the door frame wielding his dagger shaped gisra.

Flumen silently looked at the fallen guards with a noticeable amazement. “Three enemies with just a door. Interesting.”

Two rapid movements with his gisra and both cell doors were unlocked.

V-Nus kicked his door opened while Shoffer preferred a more civilized way or how he would have called it, a “non Martian way”, and just pushed it with his hands.