Night had not quite fallen when we decided it was time to enact our plan. We were unsure what night would entail on that world, since the star it circled was not especially bright, and there was no guarantee that there would be another planet or moon close enough to provide reflective light. It seemed wiser to know our situation better before having to contend with the possibility of an extremely dark night. Plus, I just didn’t think I could hold Nesti back anymore. He wasn’t foolish, of course, just headstrong and impatient. He could handle the plan, he was just happier to be doing something with it. And we had waited long enough.

After describing our respective cells, we had concluded on the right place to apply the pyrotechnic putty for maximum effect in each case. Well, Vos’go and Nesti figured it out. I didn’t really know much about breaking out of enclosures like that, and they clearly spoke from experience. I had proposed that we also try to use it to break our wrist restraints in the process, but they had both strongly rejected that idea. Vos’go insisted I’d only succeed at melting my own hands, and Nesti pointed out that the restraints didn’t restrict my movement that much and could be useful in their own way. I didn’t know what he meant really, but I figured Vos’go was probably right about the likelihood of hurting myself, so I left them in place.

I rubbed the putty along a small piece of the door where the mechanical lock housing supposedly was. There wasn’t much to go around, and I was worried about not layering it thick enough to get through the metal or properly ignite. When I finished, some was still stuck to my hands, and I nearly slapped them against each other to get the remnant off before realizing how much pressure that would apply. I wiped it on my pants instead, trying to spread it out enough that they wouldn’t combust as well, although there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I took a step back and then planted the heel of my boot as hard as I could against the spot where I had rubbed the explosive. The metal rang loudly as it moved against itself, and then fell silent. I pulled my boot back quickly, afraid that the resulting reaction might burn my foot. Nothing happened. I watched for any kind of spark or flame, but the cell was still and quiet. The silence was broken again by the sound of Nesti doing the same on his end, and based on his size and the ringing that followed his kick, I couldn’t help but wonder if he could have just broken it down on his own.

After a few seconds had passed, I began to worry a bit. Perhaps I hadn’t hit it hard enough, or had missed with my initial try. Worse, maybe the damn thing didn’t work at all. I wasn’t ready to voice that concern yet, but the thought had occurred to me before. It was a lot of faith to place in a concoction primarily designed to not be detected. Frustrating, as well, because had we known they were only scanning for electronics, we could have smuggled more powerful and consistent explosives in.

I was lining up to attempt to kick it again when it burst with a bright white spark, whistling loudly as it began to scorch its way through the metal of the door. I looked at it for a moment out of fascination, but it quickly became painful, and I had to turn away. I could hear Nesti having a much less restrained reaction.

“Why is that so goddamn bright?!” he shouted. At no one in particular, I suspected.

“Don’t look at it, you fool! Will warp your lenses, is P-56 grade ignition material!”

“Well, you didn’t tell us that!” Nesti snorted, adding a slew of indeterminate cursing behind it.

“Would you two shut up, you’re going to alert someone.” I added sharply.

I peeked back at it for moments at a time, waiting for the process to finish. The molten metal turned to twisted slag and peeled off, bits of the ignited material flaking off and dying out on the ground below, leaving tiny indentations. After a minute or two, the last of the light had fallen off the door and gone dark on the floor, and it was time to find out whether the plan had worked or not.

I wasn’t willing to stick my ungloved hands anywhere near the newly formed hole, and in the waning red twilight, it was too hard to see through the slagged metal to know if the lock mechanism was broken. Instead, I just pressed hard with my shoulder against the undamaged middle section of the door, trying to force it open. It groaned in resistance, holding onto the last of its material integrity, before finally releasing all at once as the clasp broke. The heavy barrier slid to the side and was still, and I could finally peer out into the corridor.

The length of the hallway was empty, end to end, but I waited for a few moments, listening carefully. Breaking the door hadn’t been a quiet process overall, and if any guards had been alerted, I didn’t want to encounter them in a long, straight corridor where I would be an easy target. Fortunately, none ever came to investigate. While I waited, I could hear that Nesti had likewise managed to get his cell door open, and we agreed to talk only when necessary from that point to avoid distractions.

I left the cell and began moving in the opposite direction from where I had been brought in. This was primarily because walking out the front entrance would be too visible, and likely put me back in the center of the base. But I’ll admit that I also did not want to pass by the cells of the other prisoners, who had no doubt heard the noise and would be looking around desperately for an explanation or hope. People were unpredictable in situations like that, and the less they knew, the better.

I moved as quickly as I felt I could without breaking into a sprint, because I still needed time to assess my surroundings without barreling directly into them. The hope was that the warehouse prison would have a back or possibly a side door, something that would let me out into a less visible side area between my building and the adjacent one. The longer I could spend in enclosed areas, the better, because I didn’t want to be out in the open until I found a weapon.

I reached the end of the hallway and glanced to each side of the perpendicular corridor. It was likewise empty, though dimly lit, but there were no exits to be found. My stomach turned over, but I moved forward anyway, swinging a left in the direction I would need to go to find Nesti. Looking around the corner, behind the back walls of the row of cages I had been in, I spied a side entrance. I raced over to it, and had already lost my breath when I arrived. Sweat poured down my face, and I stopped to take heavy, unrewarding gulps of air. Even at dusk, the heat was oppressive.

The roll-up door was a lucky break, and probably too small to have been used by the Okva with any regularity. They hadn’t even bothered to lock it down in any way, and I was able to push it up and open with minimal effort. It clanged loudly the entire time, and I ducked back into the darkness for a moment afterwards, listening carefully for any approaching footsteps. When none came, I took the time to pass my status along.

“Unguarded side entrance on my building. I’m out.”

Nesti didn’t reply to the update, but I hoped the information would simplify his own escape. Every little bit helped.

I glanced out through the newly opened doorway at the crater-marked landscape where the last lights of day were slowly going out. The area was quiet and empty, and covered in a stillness you can only experience on those worlds where no native life has ever existed. I took a chance to glance up at the sky, where a smaller planet glowed in a spot between the clouds, floating so close that it seemed like it might impact us if we gave it enough time. It was tidal-locked, I could tell immediately, because the white ice around the edges gave way to a dark blue in the center where the star’s heat radiated over it consistently. It seemed like the eye of some enormous being, looking down with more curiosity than disdain. I’d have even called it pleasant, had my circumstances for being there been different.

I quickly crossed the gap between my location and the concrete structure where I was to meet up with Nesti, pressing myself up against the wall as I reached it, and trying to keep the entirety of my body in the shadows. I moved along the wall in that fashion towards the back side of the building, where it would face out over the barren landscape instead of in towards the rest of the encampment. As I did, I looked out towards the landing areas stretched out besides the hangar bays. Empty still, which meant whatever other large ships they had were still absent. I couldn’t see around the buildings well enough to see if the corvette we arrived on was likewise still present.

Despite the issues we had encountered, things seemed to be playing out in a mostly favorable fashion. We were down a man, but we had escaped our cells successfully and the comms system had worked. Considering how things could have gone, I considered the situation pretty good. It was a conclusion I immediately regretted, because as I turned the corner towards the back side of the building, I ran directly into one of them.

I don’t know what the Okva happened to be doing that made him turn that corner at exactly the moment that I did, but I quite literally ran into him, my face hitting his hairy elbow hard enough to make my head ring. As soon as I could process what had happened, I lunged at him, but the restraints on my wrists made any kind of punching highly impractical. He let out a cry, caught the downward motion of my strike, and threw me over his shoulder and back behind the building.

I hit the hard ground and rolled slightly down the embankment, avoiding more serious injury only because of the lack of larger rocks. I managed to glance up just in time to see the guard trying to aim his rifle at me, a black shape against the fur of his body. He started to wail again, and I ducked my head, left with no options but to hope he would miss.

But the sound disappeared suddenly, and the distinct crackling of plasma rounds never impacted the surface around me. I lifted my head again to see the Okva on its knees, clawing furiously at the figure that seemed to have something wrapped around its neck. I pulled myself back to my feet and tried to run, stumbling all the while, towards the fight.

When I got closer, I could see why Nesti had argued in favor of leaving the restraints, the large chain of which was now pulled tight across the Okva’s throat. His desperate thrashing had caused him to drop his weapon which had rolled a few feet away. I grabbed it mid-stride, leveling it as quickly as I could. Nesti understood my intention, and spun himself about, releasing his garrote from the guard’s neck and separating himself from the thrashing creature. The moment he was clear, I put four rounds through it’s head and chest. The Okva fell back to the ground and was still. I dropped to my knees a moment later, overwhelmed by the brush with death, and weighed down by the unrelenting heat.

“Hey, we should-” Nesti started, before cutting his sentence short at the loud echo it induced. He pulled his own earpiece out and crushed it in his over-sized hand, creating a single additional loud noise. He tossed the pieces aside and then offered me a hand up. “We need to move, they probably heard all that.”

Taking no extra time for our composure, we moved along the back wall of the building to where a large door was installed. It was rounded at the top, and there were elaborate marks all around it, of the same style as the scrapings they had made in their ship, but added with paint rather than being scratched into the surface. The door itself was wooden, and didn’t seem to even have a handle, but gave way to a gentle push by Nesti.

We crept inside of the building, which was mostly dark and filled with a sickly sweet smoke. The smell wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it made breathing even harder. As we turned the first corner, we were greeted by a strange sight.

The building itself was a series of three concentric squares, the first of which was the outer walls and the door we had entered from. The second was the one we now found ourselves inside of, a rectangular corridor that contained numerous crudely constructed statues of things I couldn’t have really described even then. This opened at the corners into the most central section, a small square room with four obelisks, arranged along the cardinal directions of the building. The roof was high, tapering up to a small rectangular opening that the smoke was gradually floating out of.

The source of the smoke was a bowl at the base of each of the obelisks, and on either side sat two Okva for each, totaling eight in that room. The red-furred giants had their eyes closed tightly and seemed to be in a trance, with their heads tilted up towards that opening. They were unarmed, and as we moved around the outer ring, we discovered that their weapons had been placed near the front door. Nesti grabbed one of them before moving to the opposite diagonal as me.

I could just barely make out his large fingers as he silently counted off the time with them. As soon as his fist closed, we opened fire, placing our rounds in their motionless heads in quick succession. As far as I could tell, none of them ever even noticed we were there, and only a few seconds later, all eight lay lifeless on the ground. Perhaps it was in poor taste to gun them down while they were unarmed and in the midst of their religious ceremony, but it was hard to muster any sympathy for slavers.

We took what we could from the room, although there wasn’t much to take. The Okva hadn’t been carrying anything into the chamber itself, and all they had left near the front were more rifles. Nesti and I each grabbed a second one and slung it over our shoulder, since there was a good chance we would need to arm the rest of our party when, or if, we were able to find them. And it never hurts to have an extra weapon, especially when they’re as poorly maintained as these were.

We were getting ready to take our new haul and begin moving again when Vos’go came back on the comms.

“Got a problem here.”