“Yeah?” I replied to Vos’go, pointing at my ear when Nesti looked over confused. He shrugged, not seeming to regret having destroyed his own earpiece.

“Too many guards here. Can’t get near building they took pilot.”

“How many?” I asked, unsure why they chose to maintain guards there despite having left my building entirely unsupervised.

“Two by main door, another walking around. Might be more inside.”

“Where are you? We’ll come to you.” I replied, glancing towards Nesti, who was waiting patiently by the front entrance.

“In shadow of small tower.”

I moved over to the front door, taking up a position on the opposite side from Nesti. I expected him to have questions about our plan, but he offered none, just nodding knowingly at me. We readied our respective weapons, unsure of what might be on the other side, and then pushed the door open all at once.

It was silent and dark out in the center of the pirate base, with the last of the red starlight gone. Now only the pale reflection of the nearby planet through the clouds provided us with anything to see by, but it was enough for a quick survey of our surroundings.

There were no guards stationed outside of the Okva shrine we had just exited, which was more good luck that I feel is worth mentioning. A lot of mercenaries only ever speak of the times that fortune was against them, of the things they had to overcome, but credit their successes purely to their own prowess.

Looking out from our position, we could see the small tower that Vos’go had referenced, a dark shadow in the distance. It was directly across from us, but to head straight there would mean crossing a lot of open ground at the center of the complex. To the right of the tower was the warehouse building that Rada had been taken to, the one Vos’go said was watched by guards, and to the left was the hangar bay, likely to be the most well-defended location.

Since the warehouse was our most likely destination, we moved that direction, sliding into the shadows behind the first building we got to and moving along the rough ground as quickly as we could. We were slightly advantaged against any guard we might come across out there, both because the Okva’s large form made them easier to see in the dark, and because they had no reason yet to expect us. But even though the heat had died down with the setting sun, the low quality of the air still made every stretch of sprinting a struggle, causing my lungs to scream as they tried desperately to keep up.

As we neared our goal, a dark shape was visible standing out behind the building, looking off at the distant rocky landscape. It was within the effective range of our weapons, but there was no reason to be premature, so we closed the gap until we reached a point where it was clear that it was indeed one of the pirates. I worried over how the relatively quiet sound of a plasma rifle might carry in the nearly total silence of that night, but Nesti had no such hesitation; at the first spot he could stop to aim, he put several rounds through the singular Okva, leaving its body to fall on the dusty ground.

“We’re going in to look for her, Vos’go,” I radioed to him as we closed the last bit of ground towards the warehouse. “We’ll rendezvous with you afterwards. Stay out of sight.”

“Will be okay, have things to do.”

The warehouse had the same prefab design as the one I had been temporarily imprisoned in, including the roll-up doors along the side. These were not in any regular use either, nor noticeably locked, but opening it was likely to make enough noise that any of the pirates stationed inside would certainly hear. That was my consideration as we approached it, at least, until I could hear the screaming coming from within.

Now, my instinct as a hunter was always to stop and assess the details in situations like that, because it’s easy to make a rash decision, to let your humanity take over, and make a terrible mistake. I’d have probably stopped to listen closer, tried to figure out how many voices there were, whether I recognized them, how far away they were, and ideally what they were actually saying. Those were the pieces of information that would let me form some kind of basic plan. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be enough to give myself pretty good odds.

But Nesti wasn’t having any of that. The moment the screaming could be heard, he was already reaching for the bottom of the door, thrusting it upwards as quickly and forcefully as he could. There was no opportunity for me to talk him out of it or suggest he do so quietly. All I could do was level my rifle and prepare for whatever was waiting on the other side.

The first thing I noticed was that the inside of the building was clearly visible, more so than my own confinement, with large overhead lights turned on to illuminate everything in that unsettling red shade. There were several large, open barred holding areas, the nearest of which was packed tightly with prisoners, most of which were non-humans, and almost all of whom were staring in horror at what was unfolding in front of them.

I traced the line of their vision to the spot in front of the cells where three of the Okva were gathered around a single Kval in a gaudy coat and a young boy. The blue skin of the Kval’s face had several large scars, and he stood with his arms crossed like a trader inspecting a disappointing product. The kid was visibly shaking, too afraid to look up at his scarred and disapproving captor. I raised my rifle, but didn’t fire; they were in front of the holding cell and I could easily have missed, hitting either the child himself or the packed-in captives behind them.

Before I had time to decide anything else, Nesti had charged at them. He unloaded his rifle on one of the red-furred pirates as soon as he had a clean shot, dropping it immediately. He swung the butt of his weapon at the next one, catching it in the face and causing it to stagger back and away from the cage, wailing furiously in that high-pitched tone all the while. Once it stepped clear, I silenced it with a couple of shots of my own.

Nesti tackled the pirate to the ground away from the boy and slammed his knee hard against his chest, with enough force to easily break his relatively brittle Kval rib cage. The blue-skinned overseer cried out for a moment, then fell limp and offered no further resistance. But the remaining unarmed Okva was behind Nesti already, sinking several claws deep into his leg with one hand, while reaching up to his neck with the other. I tried to line up a shot, but the over-penetration of the plasma rounds meant I’d be just as likely to hit Nesti as save him.

A boot came flying from inside the cage, hitting the Okva in the side of the head, but he was too enraged to even notice, wailing and slashing at Nesti who could only try to shield his throat and face from the assault. The prisoners were yelling in many languages, more than I knew, but they could offer no further support. I moved in closer to get a better angle, hoping to find a spot where I could get a clean shot. Or, at least one that would only do non-fatal damage to Nesti.

Then the side of the Okva’s head erupted in flame, a bright white light emerging from the center of the ignition point. Abandoning his assault, the creature pawed vainly at the fire, crying in pain as he only succeeded in spreading the flames to the rest of his body. Nesti rolled away as soon as the Okva released him, and I put an excess of rounds into the creature the moment he was clear. It stumbled back from the impact, then fell lifeless a few feet away, its fur still alight. Nesti tried to bring himself to his feet, but once he saw the corpses laid around the child’s feet, he dropped back to a sitting position and started applying pressure to his bleeding leg.

I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed again by the difficulty of breathing and the intensity of the situation. The whole fight had lasted less than a minute, but it had felt much longer, and I was still trying to process all the things that had happened. I looked back up towards the holding cell, hoping to spot whichever captive had assisted us.

At the front of the cage was Rada, one boot missing, an intense focus on her face. Next to her was the man I had spent two days training myself to recognize, fully unharmed, seeming almost entirely unfazed by the events that had just unfolded.

“You found him,” I said to her, nodding to Kai, loosening my grip on the rifle, and letting out a breath I had been holding for too long. I looked back to the ignited corpse of the slaver, then back at her. “Good thinking there.” Her lip curled upward for just a moment, not quite a smile, but a moment of relief.

“The Hell happened to-” Nesti started to yell towards her, before cutting himself off with a wince as he adjusted his position. “What happened to your comms? We thought you might be dead.”

Rada looked over at Kai, who shook his head.

“It’s a long story,” she replied.

“Well, we’ve got what we came for at least,” I added. “Now we can get out of here.”

“About that,” Vos’go cut in over the comms. “Found control console in tower.”

I put my hand to my ear, partly to block out the noise, and partly as an indication to the others that Vos’go was talking.

“Good, can you open the hangars?”

“No, not from here. Is only the cells.”

“Which cells? All of them?”

“Yes. Are all controlled here, single system.”

“Open them all,” Nesti interjected, having pulled himself back to his feet and limped over to me. He couldn’t have heard what Vos’go was saying, but the meaning must have been clear from my own words, and the look of resolve in his eyes was unmistakable.

Worst of all, he was right. We couldn’t leave them there. Perhaps you think I’m wrong to have even weighed that option, but there was a real risk to releasing all of them. There probably weren’t enough ships to get everyone off the planet, and the confusion that would result from that many scared and desperate civilians scrambling to escape meant a lot of things could go wrong. Some of them would die in the process, as the slavers tried to re-establish control. But considering what would await them if we left them there, it was better to go fighting for a chance at freedom.

“Do it. Lock the doors, if you can, because they’re gonna come for you first.”

“Will be fine,” Vos’go replied with uncharacteristic bravado. “Have tangled with worse. Taking comms out now. Going to be too much noise.”

“Understood, we’re on our way.” I took the communicator out of my own ear and stuffed it in my pocket, not willing to crush it like Nesti had done with his, just in case it was needed again.

I turned to look at Kai. He was leaner than I had realized from the picture, and was not as young as I had thought he would be. But what stuck out most was the stoic calm that he maintained. This was a man who had to have been certain, until just a few hours earlier, that he was going to live the rest of his life as a slave. The realization that they might be free had already spread through the rest of the prisoners, murmurs and movement, a swell of energy. But Kai was quiet and focused, and while I couldn’t be sure what it was about him in that moment, I knew this: he was more than just the young freighter captain we had been told to rescue.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because only a few seconds after I removed my earpiece, the holding cell’s doors groaned to life, slowly sliding open. Nesti and I stepped clear of the opening, as the throng of desperate captives surged forward, desperate to taste the first moments of their newly granted freedom. The first few to exit grabbed the weapons left on the bodies of their captors, others trampling over the broken body of the Kval leader who had been clinging onto the last vestiges of his life. But they didn’t turn on each other, and the children among them were even shepherded out by the adults, almost always of a different species. It’s amazing how quickly we can come together once we have a common enemy.

Once they could safely exit, Rada and Kai joined us, and Nesti and I each handed them the spare rifles we had been keeping. I might have been worried about arming Kai in that situation under normal circumstances, since a shell-shocked civilian with a weapon usually couldn’t be counted on to act rationally. But the calm he kept about himself wasn’t the blankness of a sheltered aristocrat in shock, the sort of thing that I was used to. We needed the extra help anyway.

As we exited the building, I was relieved to see that the situation had not become fully chaotic just yet. The prisoners we had just released were already running across the open area, but the ones from the other warehouses must have needed more time to process what was happening. It was hard to see very far then, with the nearby planet’s light mostly covered by clouds, but I could still see the periodic flashes of plasma race across the dark. It was clear that the slavers would be fully aware of the breakout soon, if they weren’t already.

We split up again as soon as we exited, with Rada and Kai going to secure us a ship, since there was no guarantee one would still be around if we waited. Nesti and I took off in the direction of the small tower, fighting against the exhaustion and the strain of his wounded leg. Luckily, it wasn’t much ground to cover, and we managed to make it inside the building before any of the pirates figured out what was going on.

The tower was only three stories tall, but it was enough that it would have been a serious strain on Nesti, so I left the big man to defend the entrance and raced up the staircase that spiraled around the walls of the building. The low oxygen content of the air made me regret my own haste, and I had to stop a few times to catch my breath, but I eventually managed to reach the heavy door at the top of the structure.

“Vos’go, you in there? It’s time to go,” I shouted, banging on the door with the side of my fist. There was a loud grinding as the mechanism moved, then the door opened.

Vos’go stepped out without saying anything, but he seemed to be relieved to see me, as best as I could tell. I let him lead the way down the stairs, since his legs were shorter and I didn’t want to outpace him with my own movements. Halfway down, we could hear the crackle of plasma rounds coming from the ground floor.

“You two wanna hurry up?” Nesti shouted as we were rounding the final curve of the stairs. He nodded at us when we were finally in sight, and then motioned out the door. “They’re really pissed off now.”

We exited through the door, towards the corner where the body of a slaver lay, presumably the one Nesti had just been firing at. I had Nesti lead and Vos’go in the middle between us, while I kept up our rear. It made sense this way because, with his injury, I was the fastest one left, so I could most easily make up the distance.

As we came around the corner and back into sight of the main courtyard, we could see immediately how much the situation had escalated in the brief few minutes of retrieving Vos’go. There were now dozens of pirates firing into the crowd, which had swelled as the other prisoners joined it. The fighting was most intense around the hangar bays, but at least one ship could be seen taking off from the landing pad, so some had to have made it through already.

We swept along the outside of the complex, behind the building on the corner, trying to get into the hangar area from behind while the guards were occupied with the riot we had instigated. The lights from the landing pad were visible even at a distance, I can remember that very clearly, like rays of sunlight projected up into the night, shining off of the hulls of the ships. I felt a swell of excitement at the nearness of our goal, and in the next moment, I was on fire.

I never heard the shot, only felt it, the searing pain as it tore through my abdomen, the horrible smell, and then the hard sensation of the rocky surface as I crashed to the ground. I couldn’t even roll over to try to figure out where it had come from, much less yell that out to my comrades. Within moments of hitting the ground, everything went black.