Chapter 9: Escape
The troops take Marissa to the Medical Center, which has red emergency lighting and some electrical power. They report to the Commander’s aide that they found Marissa wandering the base.
“Find a place to lock her up and place a guard on the door. The commander has more important problems to deal with than traders wondering the base,” complains the Aide dismissing the guards and Marissa.
Leaving the building Marissa tries to convince the guards that the Aide meant Marissa was free to leave. “As you see I am not wanted here. I’ll just leave you to your duties.” Marissa hopes to extricate herself by smiling at the guards and prying at the guard’s tight grasp on her arm.
“Not so fast. The commander had you in a holding cell and until I hear otherwise, you will remain locked up. Someone destroyed the brig and it might be to free you. The aide said locked up and guarded,” proclaims Bart, the leader of her new captors.
“The buildings are locked, we can’t get into any of them,” gripes a second soldier as he looks around at the other buildings. “Without power the doors locked automatically. Once we left the barracks, we could not get back inside. The hospital is open because of the emergency power is operational that’s why the commander has it as the command center.”
“The orders are to break the door into any locked building. In the supply warehouse, there is a room with a broken mechanical lock and no windows. We can stash her there and post a guard.”
The magnetic aurora dimly lights their way to the warehouse where they find the entrance door missing. The interior is an impenetrable dark that Bart’s small hand held lamp dimly lights only a few feet inside the door. “Wait here until I return. Carlson, bring her. You will need your lamp and spare power pack.” Leaving the patrol to wait, he leads Marissa into the warehouse. Marissa shuffles along barely seeing where she is walking until Bart stops in the middle of the warehouse in front of a plain unmarked door.
“This is it. I was stuck in here last week when the door closed. I could not open it from the other side. Stay out here while I make sure this is right.” Bart tows Marissa through the door allowing it to close.
When the door closes, the room plunges into a stifling black darkness. Marissa jerks away from Bart. He chuckles at her reaction. “I am too tired to mess with you. You will be more agreeable after a few hours in here.” Bart tries the door, finds it still will not open from the inside, and then yells for his companion to open it.
Marissa slides down the wall just inside the door and listens to Bart assign his companion to guard the door. “I will see that you get relieved after we finish the patrol. Use the lamp sparingly. I do not know if we have many spare power packs.”
The room is hot with a stagnant smell of an unused room consisting of stale air and dust. Finally, falling asleep in spite of the close atmosphere in the room, Marissa slumps to one side across the doorway. When the door jerks open it jars her awake.
The guard tosses in the room a packet of field rations and a bottle of water then slams the door shut. In the darkness, Marissa slowly feels along the floor for the water, finding the rations first then the water. The water relieves her thirst, revives her to where she can think. Marissa begins to examine her prison by touch finding a narrow room with rows of locked cabinets lining both sides.
Finding nothing loose or discarded Marissa sits discouraged against the door trying to recall the little she could see in the dim light when the door was open. Bart mentioned a lock but Marissa remembers only a single latch. She slowly examines the door to make sure. Her fingers encounter the one latch. Nor did she hear a second lock or bolt after the door closed. She tries the latch and is not surprised that it does not open the door.
Marissa tears a strip of cloth from her ruined tunic and folds it into a small wad that fits in her palm. She kicks the door to get the guard’s attention and asks for a restroom break. Amazed that he agrees by opening the door, Marissa surreptitiously checks the latching mechanism barely able to see it in the gray light seeping into the warehouse.
It suddenly dawns on Marissa that the gray light illuminating the warehouse is from the sunlight of a new day. Her MMS treatment is today. The thought feeds her fear and drives her to attempt anything to escape. Desperately, when she returns to her prison, she grabs the door and balks. The guard forces her hand away from the doorframe thrusting her into the room but her other hand jammed the small cloth wad into the latch plate. As the door closes, Marissa listens carefully to hear if the latch engages and quickly grabs the handle, in case the guard checks the latch. Now she waits for night or the arrival of an escort to take her for treatment.
The gray light in the warehouse does not penetrate the Marissa's prison. Bored, restless, and trying to keep panic at bay, Marissa starts pacing the room. Blindly walking to the far wall dragging a hand along the cabinets, Marissa counts the steps. There are eight paces. Walking heal to toe makes it 18 of Marissa’s feet. She knows she is silly calling it the new official measure, a Marissa foot. Tiring she lays down for a nap praying that everyone has forgotten her.
A gruff disgruntled voice outside the door wakes her, “I am to relieve you. You need to get some sleep before your team takes perimeter guard duty for the midwatch. The watch captain wants everyone on the perimeter to get some sleep before starting that duty. Enjoy your rest. I’m not getting any. I have been up for two days; I get this watch and no sleep.”
Sympathetically, the guard grumbles, “You could sleep and no one would know. No one has checked since I started early this morning. The prisoner can’t open the door. I do not why the officers insist on wasting time guarding her. Where can she go if she does get loose?”
Marissa quickly grabs the latch holding the door closed as the new guard rattles the latch. Her heart is rapidly pounding with fear that the guard will discover her efforts. Then she realizes that holding the latch is a waste of time. The latch only works from the other side. She is feeling foolish.
Marissa listens to the retreating steps of the one guard as she hears the other slide down the wall to sit. Marissa lies on the floor with her face at the bottom edge of the door to catch the slight amount of cooler air seeping under the door’s edge. Excited by what she heard, Marissa tries to calm herself and nap. The change in guards indicates that it is evening. A few more hours and she can try to escape.
She awakens from a doze by the sound of heavy breathing that sounds almost like snoring. Hoping that she did not sleep all night, Marissa tries to open the door. It thwarts her plans by remaining firmly latched. Groaning in despair, she closes her eyes. She thinks about giving up but that means Jeffrey, Bart, and Goliath win. .Instead, the thought ignites her temper. Grabbing the latch she twists, pulls and pushes in frustration when with a snick the door bursts open almost throwing Marissa to her knees.
Panting from her fury, she stands enjoying the cooler air of the open warehouse. The warehouse is as dark as her prison and she cannot find her guard except by the sound of his breathing. She stands still listening to make sure that there is no change to the regular breathing of the sleeping guard then turns, pulls the wad out of the latch and closes the door. That should keep her escape from discovery at least until morning.
Marissa needs the light the guards have been using. She crawls using her hands to find him then lightly runs her hands over his hunched form. Frustrated in not finding the lamp she moves back and knocks an object that rolls away. The noise sounds like a drum roll drowning the noisy breathing of her guard. Freezing in place Marissa listens to the guard who continues to sleep. Releasing her breath, she hunts and finds the lamp that the guard must have dropped when he fell asleep.
Marissa cautiously uses the light as she approaches the warehouse door. With the power off, the light is a danger by attracting immediate attention and notice but it is a necessity to keep her from tripping. Thankfully, the warehouse is the last building
before the landing field and usually does not have any activity around it unless a shuttle arrives with supplies.
Slipping out of the warehouse, Marissa sees the area bathed in flickering greenish blue light from the magnetic storm. The lights add an odd beauty to the utilitarian buildings as if their natural grey color enhances the lights. The effect on Marissa is disorienting as she tries to remember the layout of the buildings.
She leans against the warehouse and evaluates her best path off the base. There is a wide margin between the spaceport buildings to the perimeter that troops are now patrolling. Anyone crossing the border will be visible and have no place to hide. There are guards at the gate and a concentration of guards around the Administration Center and Medical. She could try just walking away but her clothes brand her as a Klarn making her easy to recapture or kill.
Scurrying as fast as her abused body permits, she arbitrarily moves to the nearest building thinking that being inside should be safer than in the open. Marissa muffles the light against her skirt giving a dim illumination to the interior. To her horror, she finds cots and broken doors surrounding her with the soldiers sprawled in a haphazard array. Initially, she stands frozen. When no one shouts an alarm, she looks for a place to hide. Marissa ducks into a dark room and quickly flashes her light around to discover she is in a small empty office.
Calming, she slowly scans the office a second time. There is a desk and a few chairs but the room is bare of any personal items except for a uniform. Whomever the uniform belongs to, tossed it on the desk as if in a hurry to leave. Marissa picks it up and finds that it is clean. It can replace the medical’s scrubs she is wearing over her torn tunic.
The uniform is too large for her small frame with no belt the pants are slipping off her hips. She finds a pair of scissors in the desk drawer that she uses to cut her torn skirt into strips. She uses the strips to make a crude belt. Then she pulls the shirt out to drape over and hide the ties. It will not survive a close inspection but she plans to stay in the shadows and avoid everyone. She hopes that the night and exhaustion will allow her to pass as a soldier if seen at a distance.
.Marissa leaves the office and silently glides past exhausted men, waking no one. She sighs in relief as she leaves the barracks and moves toward the next building.
As she turns the corner of the building, Marissa recognizes the Medical Center. She stands in the shadows watching the soldiers dragging out boxes of field rations. One starts assigning soldiers to distribute the rations to the Administration Center, and then guard stations. He captures Marissa's attention when he calls for the front gate, then thrusts the rations and water at a soldier without even noticing who receives the packets. Next, he calls for the west gate; Marissa decides to gamble and shambles into place to take the packets. The waiting soldiers listlessly stare at Marissa but the one distributing the rations dumps the box in her arms without a glance and moves to the next. Luckily, the night and the flickering light from the aurora mask her damaged face and the ill-fitting uniform.
Marissa turns and walks to the west gate partially hiding her battered face behind the box. Her sluggish steps mimic the weary troops. When she approaches, the guard starts smiling and grabs the box from her reaching for the rations and water not looking closely at her. Marissa backs away, turns, and stumbles into the night using her last bit of energy. She looks back and falls as the guard fires his weapon barely missing her. She lies still where she fell as the guard turns on a search light trying to find her. As the light roams over the ground outside the gate, a series of pings erupt just before a crash as the light flashes out. Using the dark Marissa crawls further away until a pair of boots blocks her advance. She looks up into the steely gaze of an armed native.
The Klarn grabs Marissa by her arms and lifts her to her feet, “Who are you? And why do you run from your own?” The dark obscures his features enhancing the menace in his harsh demands.
“I’m Marissa. I want to see Chaytan.” She pleads almost crying in desperation.
He takes Marissa to a small building in the village outside the spaceport. As soon as they enter the room, a Klarn sitting behind a table evaluates and listens to the report delivered by her new captor.
“You say you are Marissa but you have no resemblance to the image. Cheveyo reports that you came from the spaceport” challenges the Klarn as he examines documents on the table in front of him and then stares suspiciously at her.
Marissa watches him with nothing to say. After a few minutes, he continues, “You will be taken to the others. They are equipped to solve puzzles. I do not have the means or the time.”
“Remove the wrist band, transport her to the rail head, and send this message cube with her.” He orders the Klarn holding her as he hands a yellow crystal cube to him. Her guard removes the medical wristband and places it on the table. Before Marissa is lead away, he warns, “We are in a high alert, you are not Klarn. As an offworlder, you are an illegal alien. There are no protections for you. Do NOT disobey the guards.”
“Why is she trying to look like a boy?” A whisper comes from a child peeking from behind the Klarn. He answers her, “Offworlders do not like girls.” The little girl snickers, as Marissa is lead from the room. As harsh as the native sounded to her the little girl had absolutely no fear of him.
After Marissa leaves, the Klarn picks up the wristband thoughtfully staring at it. He calls, “Caske!” when a youth appears he hands the wristband to him. “This is supposedly not traceable but I want to test the truth of it. You are accurate with that slingshot.” It is a statement not a question. The youth nods and waits. “Before dawn, send this back to the base but away from notice and activity. Assign one to watch. If it is found, I want to know when and all details.”
Marissa is lead to a group of Klarn guarding scooters that have an attached box. Her captor orders her, “Get in.” as the he points to the box.
Marissa looks at the box deciding she will not fit, shakes her head, and tries to back away. The Klarn grabs her upper arms lifting her. Marissa rebels twisting and kicking at the native. He drops her and calls out. Marissa is too exhausted and sore even to try to move away from him. This time two Klarn hold her while a third ties her wrists and ankles then they force her into the box.
With her knees bent to her chest, Marissa sits cramped tightly in the box resting her chin on her knees and clasping her arms around her bent legs. Waiting for the Klarn’s next move, Marissa realizes the futility and stupidity of fighting or resisting, at her best she could not win against a man. She feels that there will be permanent bruising on her upper arms, the Klarn’s favorite place to lift and immobilizer her. She promises herself, in the future, to stay out of arms reach, which may stop them from dragging and towing her wherever they want.
As soon as the lid clamps on the box placing Marissa in the dark, the scooter takes off at full speed jerking her head back hitting the box’s lid. The turns knock Marissa against the sides adding to her bruises. There is some airflow but the box is stifling. After hours of weaving and bouncing, Marissa has a headache that the pain med’s she received cannot dull. Her muscles are cramping and her mind is blank.
When the scooter stops with a jolt, she pitches forward with the top of her head hitting the front of the box. As the lid lifts, Marissa gasps drawing into her lungs the fresh cool air and gains the added relief that she can straighten a little. With more prodding and pulling, her captors force her out but she can barely walk from the battering and cramping. Confused and disoriented, Marissa staggers into the rail car. Her guards shove her into a seat where she passes out from exhaustion.
When the car stops, it is night and Marissa has slept the whole trip and apparently the whole day. The guards behave like the Kirch, treating her to silence not speaking in her presence even in their own language. A second group of guards meets them at the station. They take custody, march her into a mountain cave s
ystem, and place her in an isolated cell.
This cell has four walls of undecorated stone; the floor is smooth stone and the ceiling dimly seen. Located about seven feet from the floor are two-inch flat strips ringing the room and emitting the light. Other than a stone shelf about three feet off the floor, the room is bare of furnishings. The cell is like the one at the spaceport, neither have blankets but this one has room to pace and no bars. Marissa has left one prison and landed in another. She rubs her arms from the chill hoping that she will not be here long.