I looked to Te’rnu for an answer.
‘I guess the truth is important for you, too,’ he decided.
The three of us soon crept off into the night, heading northeast for Outpost WS1, and leaving the village sleeping behind us.
In the darkness, the outpost used huge lighting units to illuminate the area around it - to a good 150 metres radius. Te’rnu had been right; there was no way we wouldn’t be spotted when we approached.
Crouching behind the peak of a dune, just outside of the illuminated area, I turned to Te’rnu.
‘Definitely clear on the plan?’ I asked.
‘You wait for us to get into position, distract the guard, and then we creep up behind them. Then, we remove their helmet. That is it.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I guess it’s not really that complicated a plan, is it. You definitely want to go ahead with this? Last chance to back out.’
Te’rnu nodded. Pr’atu, watching for Te’rnu’s response, then nodded as well.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘And if there’s more than one guard?’
‘There will not be. There never is,’ Te’rnu replied.
‘OK, yes, but if there is? What’s the plan?’
‘I guess… we run?’ Pr’atu answered.
I shrugged. ‘Good enough for me.’
Te’rnu and Pr’atu, keeping low, began to skirt the edge of the outpost’s lit radius, and I began to count.
When the predetermined one hundred and eighty seconds had passed, I stood up, and the plan began in earnest.
I walked, as casually as I could manage, straight for the outpost.
As I got closer, I kept expecting to be seen, to be shouted at… but there was nothing.
Was the guard asleep at their post?
I arrived at the door, and, feeling in a particularly risky mood, opened it.
The room inside made up the whole of the ground floor, with the exception of a small transmat room right in the middle. The door to this room was closed, which presumably meant that the guard was asleep up above.
On my left, I noticed something: a computer terminal with that same symbol on - the symbol of Central Command. This was my chance, I realised, to decrypt some of Leya’s journal.
Forgetting, for a moment, about my mission and the two Arellians slowly creeping up on the other side of the outpost, I instead plugged the diary into the computer terminal.
It took me a few moments to muddle through the interface, being that it was in the Iyr’s private language. Fortunately, I was familiar enough with dodgy user interfaces to figure it out - I did work on Station 34-Alpha, after all, where the main terminals were nothing if not a complete mess.
A progress bar appeared; this encryption was complicated enough that the local processing power of the machine was struggling to handle it. While it was slow, it was still, just about, working.
That is - until the console started to overheat. What with this planet’s high average temperature, this couldn’t have been a rare occurrence - and indeed the alert that suddenly popped up confirmed this.
A siren sounded throughout the outpost, designed to alert the inhabitants to the computer malfunction. Instead, however, this seemed to stir the Iyr guardsman into life, who appeared at the exit of the transmat room just as the two Arellians arrived at the main doorway.
‘Who are you?’ the guard shouted, emerging from the room armed with a huge phase rifle. ‘Identify!’
Definitely making up for something, these Iyr are.
Before either Te’rnu or I could think, the young Arellian Pr’atu charged at the Iyr, jumping onto their back and catching them by surprise.
The Iyr, out of reflex, fired a shot from the rifle, hitting and completely frying the computer console that the diary was tapped into.
My heart lurched, just for a moment, before I recognised that the diary was unhurt. I grabbed the journal and ran for cover, dodging the beams as the Iyr fired clumsily around me, the Arellian youth still clinging to his back.
I slid behind a low table, and peered around at Pr’atu and the Iyr. Pr’atu was pulling, now, at the Iyr’s helmet, and I could see a glimpse of dark blue skin in the crack that formed.
Te’rnu, having previously been frozen out of fear in the doorway, suddenly realised that Pr’atu needed help, and started rushing towards the tussling pair.
The Iyr stopped firing at me and instead began to focus on the Arellian that was trying to remove their helmet. They jumped backwards, landing on and crushing Pr’atu - and the Arellian’s grip was loosened enough that the Iyr wriggled free.
The guardsman pointed their rifle at the young Arellian on the floor, and shouted, ‘Stop!’ to Te’rnu and I.
Te’rnu ceased moving mid-step.
The four of us remained still, quiet, and each tried to figure out our next move.
It was a stand-off. I could see the Iyr’s itchy trigger finger. If either Te’rnu or I approached to save Pr’atu, then we - or Pr’atu - would be fired upon. Pr’atu remained motionless on the floor, also terrified about what might happen if they moved.
Te’rnu and I made eye contact. I tried to communicate “don’t move!’ to him non-verbally, which was received with only a slightly confused expression.
And then, whether intentionally or not, Te’rnu moved, putting his until-now hovering foot back down on the ground.
That was all the provocation that the Iyr needed. They spun on the spot, pointing the phase rifle at Te’rnu, and began to fire.
Te’rnu dived out of the way, the shot hitting the wall behind him. As another shot charged up, he ran for the door.
I edged forwards towards Pr’atu, hoping that Te’rnu would divert the Iyr’s attention away for long enough - but I was out of luck on that front too.
Te’rnu leapt out the door, a beam barely missing him as he did so.
Once the older of the two Arellians was out of sight, the Iyr turned to face Pr’atu and me.
I was still over ten metres away from Pr’atu, with no chance of grabbing them before the Iyr could fire.
And then, the guardsman spoke.
‘Leave,’ the Iyr told
