Kara Discovered: Episode 8 Bang
Jeffries only chance was his captors did not know how dangerous humans could be, even blind ones.
One by one, each person reported they could get their hands free, the two doctors being the last. While they did, they worked out a crude plan of action. He hated depending on Private Preston, but had little choice. How could that man see, and was it something that they could copy?
Mostly Private Preston and Private Madison worked the plan out between them, as they were the triggers for it, and Jeffries only said something if he saw a dangerous flaw, but it worried him. If they did it wrong, both men were dead. Would the captors kill some or all of them after this as punishment for trying to escape?
God, he hoped not, but had no real idea how they would react.
If he could order Titus and Green not to try, not to risk angering their captors, he would. He didn’t. The first rule of command is never give orders you know will not be obeyed.
The next option was to get them out of the camp and the fighting as fast as possible, hence the order to run for it. Did either realize just how slim their chances were at getting to the gate running blind over uneven sand was?
Preston started yelling obscenities at the alien.
Time was up. The short tan being was between him and Madison.
Jeffries wrapped both hands around the stakes and prepared, visualizing every man there doing the same.
“Bang,” Preston inserted into his colorful tirade, signaling to Madison he had the creature’s full attention.
Jeffries put as much pressure against the foot stakes as he dared and began counting.
“Got the bastard! I think I broke his back!” yelled Madison.
If true, his chances of making the gate just doubled. He moved, and both stakes holding his hands came out of the ground. He grabbed one near a foot. That one popped out of the ground, too. The last offered little more resistance than the first foot, and he surged to his feet.
And almost fell in the first few steps as the stakes still tethered to his feet tripped him.
Any thought of stopping to remove them died as he used the two still tied to his wrist to block a staff swung at his head. He felt the bone he hit with his counter strike holding a stake shatter; a skull?
He ran in the direction he thought was the gate.
Whatever these creatures were, they could keep up with him. He heard them pacing him. If he fell or even slowed, he knew he was a dead man now.
He stopped, spun, and swung blind. He again connected again with one that had gotten too close and again bones broke, likely ribs. Then, adjusting his course where his ears said, he headed a slightly different direction, toward the camp, no shouting.
The gate camp shout got clearer.
He stumble and nearly went down again. Another chose to attack. His own block and counter was automatic from years spent studying martial arts, though that move had been practiced using swords. Jefferies shattered its leg. The stakes were turning into formable weapons in his hands.
The next time he stumbled, to his surprise, it was a human that caught him. It had been less than three hundred meters to the gate encampment, not the five that Green had said.
“It’s the Lieutenant, Major.”
Jeffries did not recognize the voice and could not see the face. “Water, I need water.”
“Here you go,” a voice that had to be Major Wilson said, putting a canteen in his hand. “The Colonel is waiting on station to hear what happened.”
“Top!” Jeffries screamed the moment he pulled the canteen down from his lips. “Assemble the platoon for combat. We move out after I talk to the Colonel.”
“Sir! Yes, Sir!”
Silence spread across the camp. In three thousand years, no lieutenant had given an Assemble for Combat order except as a drill. Being the first to do so left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Major Wilson led him to the gate but didn’t cross it with him.
He could see again. His sight seemed strange, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“Here are station coveralls for you,” said the man standing on the other side of the gate.
Taking them and slipping them over his nude body, he said, “Thanks, I will need a uniform from my quarters brought here. I will put it on after stepping back over.”
“Very well, Sir, but Dr. Arland and the station commander have set that room there aside for changing,” the man said, pointing to what had been an instrumentation room for gate monitoring.
Jeffries ignored the hover pad and made his way to Colonel Lipton’s office on foot.
