I flattened my lips. ‘I know. Erm…’
I paused for a moment. My now-suited Arellian friend stared silently at me, mechanical red eyes glowing at me in the dim light.
‘I could be your prisoner?’ I suggested.
‘How would that work?’
‘You grab a phaser - must be one around here somewhere - and-’
‘I could take the one from the Iyr we knocked unconscious.’
‘Perfect. And then you lead me back to Central Command?’
After a moment of contemplation for the Arellian, he nodded. ‘And if anyone asks… I have been ordered to bring you in.’
I bit my lip. ‘I mean… it’s a classic ploy, and that must be for a reason. Think it’ll work?’
‘I think it is the only plan we have,’ he grumbled.
‘Fair point.’
With the possibility that more guards could return to the barracks at any moment, we wasted little more time; stopping only to stuff the Head of Guard’s body in the corner of a storeroom.
‘Do you think we should…,’ Te’rnu began to ask, gesturing at the Iyr’s helmet.
I shook my head. ‘The more time we spend here, the greater our chances of being caught. If everything goes to plan, then…’
‘…Then we shall know everything anyway,’ Te’rnu finished for me. ‘OK. Let us continue.’
We slipped out the back door of the guard barracks and made our way towards our final destination: Central Command.
The impressive cubic building soon loomed over us - as, indeed, it did most things in the Iyr capital. Te’rnu stopped for a moment, stunned, when he first noticed it.
‘You can’t be stopping to admire the view now that you’re an Iyr,’ I told him. ‘They see this every day.’
‘It is bigger than it looks from the Wastelands.’
‘Yep, that’s generally how perspective works. Come on - we should hurry.’
Te’rnu and I assumed the “law enforcement and prisoner” formation - me walking in front, Te’rnu walking behind, phase rifle pointed in my direction.
‘Just make sure you leave the safety on, eh?’ I asked Te’rnu - and then realised that I would do well to actually explain the concept of a “safety” to him before he accidentally shot me.
We approached the main entrance to see that it was being guarded by two armed Iyr. I could feel Te’rnu’s pace slow behind me, the reality of the danger he was putting himself in now being realised.
As we reached the main door, Te’rnu prepared to tout his reason for bringing me in.
‘I am here to-’
The Iyr guard waved us through.
‘Oh,’ Te’rnu whispered. ‘I see.’
‘Rifle on the rack there,’ the guard reminded him. Te’rnu responded with a curt nod, placed the phaser down by the Iyr, and turned to me.
He paused for a moment before grabbing me by the wrists and twisting them behind my back.
I played along - put up a little struggle, but essentially let him do it.
‘Sorry,’ Te’rnu whispered in my ear.
‘Don’t be,’ I replied, ‘At least, not so audibly.’
Te’rnu pretended to force me up the stairs in the main atrium, which led to a series of long, narrow hallways. We proceeded onwards - Te’rnu acting as confidently as he could in the direction he was taking me - until I saw a small maintenance room coming off the corridor to our left. I signalled to Te’rnu, and we crept inside.
‘Alright, keep watch,’ I told my friend. He manned his post, peering through a small gap in the door.
I looked around the room for the inevitable control panel. On one side, behind the cleaning equipment, I found one.
‘Easy peasy,’ I muttered, and then hoped I hadn’t just jinxed it.
I plugged my console into the panel and ran a scan for accessible systems.
There was only one: emergency exit procedures. A diagram of the building filled the screen, arrows suggesting the fastest way to exit Central Command.
‘Shit,’ I murmured, and then, realising that maybe I was getting a little carried away with this whole swearing thing, added, ‘Excuse my French.’
‘What is that?’ Te’rnu whispered. ‘This… “French”?’
Alright, fair enough - that’s a Terran thing, after all.
‘It’s a dead language, back where I’m from. On Terra.’
‘So you were speaking French?’
‘Well… no, that’s just an expression. It means I said a rude word.’
‘Oh,’ Te’rnu replied in a hushed voice, ‘So the French were a rude people, then?’
I thought about it for a moment; this conversation was going on far too long considering what we were doing, and so an easy answer was required. ‘Yes. Very rude.’
I played about with my console some more, hoping I was going to suddenly find some advanced hacking abilities that I never knew I possessed. I had no such luck.
‘All I have is emergency exit systems,’ I told Te’rnu - and saying this out loud made me realise something. ‘But that means I do have the building’s schematics…’
Te’rnu remained quiet, letting me continue with my train of thought in peace. I tapped frantically at the screen, looking for our destinations.
‘…Which means that I can figure out where the core mainframe servers are… And, look! I mean, no, don’t look, stay over there and keep watch. But, if you were to look, you’d see: there’s a room marked ‘cells’. Not far from here, either.’
‘OK. How far to the mainframe?’
I furrowed my brow. ‘Mainframe? Don’t you think the prisoner is the first priority here?’
Te’rnu whipped his head around to face me. ‘Yes. I am sorry. I apologise. I have been searching for the truth for so long… I forget what my priorities should be. We can find the truth later.’
I touched Te’rnu’s arm. ‘We’ll find it. Soon. I promise.’
We proceeded through the corridors and transmats of Central Command through the route I had memorised, me signalling directions to Te’rnu with the smallest of nods. Without running into trouble of any kind, we arrived at the entrance to the cells.
As we walked into the room, a guard, who had been standing almost invisibly still, suddenly stood to attention and saluted Te’rnu.
‘Sir!’
Te’rnu was taken aback. ‘“Sir”? Oh! Yes - the disguise!’
Both the
