Prison Break (Star Breaker Book 5), page 13
Holly felt the impact more than she heard the shout of Markson. The Zenetic mercenary hit the rising doors on the other side of the laser cannon and clung onto them for dear life, much as she was. He was struggling not to be sucked under and through the doors himself—but Holly saw, incredibly, that he also shot one hand out to grab one of the reinforcement bars and dragged himself towards her, across the door.
“Just give up!” Holly yelled, although she didn’t think anyone would hear her over the roar of escaping air pressures. She couldn’t believe what Markson was doing, or what he was capable of doing, as he dragged himself along the reinforcement bar. Several of them were braced across the inside of the air lock door. Holly knew they were intended for just such emergencies as this, when prisoners or staff had to grapple for their lives.
Slowly and implacably, Markson was heading towards her. He had lost his rifle, the same as Holly had lost hers, but she could see that his encounter suit’s utility belt still had a heavy service pistol on it. And a taser and a baton. Or maybe the Zenetic mercenary would merely batter at her with his fists until she couldn’t hold on any longer.
Which wasn’t going to be long, Holly thought as she felt her good hand slip.
In fact, she was probably going to lose her grip any moment now.
“Agh!” Holly swiveled with her body, suddenly reaching across and hammering the stop button. It didn’t do anything to stop the hurricane of escaping gasses, but it did stop it from getting worse.
And yet Markson was still coming for her.
You just have to wait. Just a few more seconds. Holly was desperately banking on this as a scream split across her comms channel.
It was Dr. Crow. She was spinning through the air, rising towards the half-open air lock.
Before another arm abruptly reached out to catch her.
It was Dr. Metz, holding onto the pipes at the wall at the same time as she was holding onto Rachel’s hand.
Most of the Zenetic mercenaries were either similarly clinging on for dear life, or else they had already been sucked out over the Plutonian ridge. Holly knew that they could feasibly live out there as long as they were inside their own encounter suits—but that didn’t factor in the effects of being thrown off the side of a twenty-story cliff.
Even with the pathetically weak gravity that Pluto had, being thrown over that distance on the last gasp of pressurized atmosphere would still mean you at least broke bones and crushed your suit by the time that you got to the bottom.
Hold on! Holly tried screaming but couldn’t hear her own voice. Just hold on for a little . . .
All at once, there was a change in the air pressure.
Longer!
All of the available oxygen and atmospheres in this upper lobby of the mine and the stairwell had escaped.
Now! This was the moment that Holly had been waiting for. She jackknifed from the lever handle, spinning in midair above the floor of the lobby a fraction faster than Markson was also doing—now that he had realized that it was safe to come down.
The inside of the mine was normalized with the outside, which meant that a small movement from Holly would lead to much greater travel . . .
Holly hit the floor and allowed her legs and knees to absorb the impact as she kicked off once more.
Markson was heading straight for her too—but she was quicker. She was better trained than he was.
He was reaching for her as he spun towards her through the air, while Holly was concentrating on getting to him too.
Markson’s hands made a grab for Holly’s helmet, probably intending to strike it or release the helmet catch to expose her to that dangerous lack of oxygen.
But Holly’s hands had instead reached not for Markson himself, but for the prison service sidearm at his belt. Holly seized it up at the same time that Markson’s hands hammered against her already-cracked visor.
Alert! Losing Pressure!
Holly’s eyes screamed in agony as the already-cracked plate glass in her helmet cracked a little more. She was losing air! She was losing pressure!
But her hands had seized the man’s stolen sidearm from his belt, reversed it, and fired it straight into Markson’s suit. She pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. Each time, she was pushed backwards by the recoil.
She had done it. Markson was dead. Her last sight of him was of the dead Zenetic mercenary captain slowly turning head over heels, spilling blood as he turned and slipped through the open door and up into the Plutonian dark skies.
“Captain! Cap—here!”
Holly grabbed onto the welcoming hands. Bastion and Marshal seized her by the shoulders and guided her towards the emergency vehicle to one side of the lobby.
“I got the clearance!” she heard Rachel Crow say. They clustered at the entrance hatch, and the doctor used all of that high-ranking security clearance of hers to open the doors and pile everyone in.
Holly was the first, guided by Marshal, then Dr. Metz, and finally Bastion. They thumped into the tiny, emergency evacuation vehicle as Marshal wasted no time in getting to the flight chair.
“Igniting batteries. Repressurizing cabin!” Holly heard Marshal say as she lay on the floor gulping for her quickly escaping oxygen and willing her eyeballs to stay in her head.
They did. And it was a good thing, too, as Holly definitely did not want to miss what was coming next.
Epilogue
The small emergency evacuation vehicle that the Forward Recon squad had commandeered barely scraped through the half-open doors of the upper access lobby of the Plutonian mine.
But it did, and from the outside, it appeared as though a tiny metal insect was rising on hidden thermals before the edge of the giant ice Massif while the mountain shook and trembled.
The giant frozen columns of ice that formed entire frozen rivers of water vapor or nitrogen were cracking. Entire buildings’ worth of their pure crystalline white were crashing to the surface below, sending up vast clouds of rock and ice dust.
It was like a war zone without a war, Holly would later remember.
Marshal expertly piloted the little vehicle out beyond the cliff face. Behind them, the top of the Plutonian mountain was changing. There were sudden jags of black rock raising their ancient heads into Pluto’s thin atmosphere. Giant shards of frozen molecules were being thrown like missiles.
And the cryovolcano started to erupt. A giant flume of green-and-blue-hazed white burst outwards into the sky, rising higher and higher behind the shaking, shuddering, escaping craft.
Billions and trillions of gigatons of liquidized gasses were released in an instant, forming a treelike shape that nevertheless appeared to rise slowly in the below-freezing temperatures behind them.
The shape reached higher and higher, stretching to the edge of orbit for Earth’s most distant sibling, and hung there like a glowing flare.
Of course, such a sight drew the attention of every nearby Earth Alliance Marine as well as every rescue and civilian vessel. And when the rescue boats got to Pluto, they would find the small emergency craft filled with the squad members of Forward Recon, Captain Holly Cropper’s squad—finally free from the prisons of Pluto, but plagued with more questions than when they got there. And leaving with the woman who might have some answers for them.
Find out what happens next to Holly and her team in Hyperspace. Order it now on Amazon.
amazon.com/dp/B09M86Q38C
Thank You For Reading
Thanks for reading Prison Break, the fifth book in the Star Breaker series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I really have a lot of fun writing about the amazing technology the future holds for us, and all the possible chaos :)
The next story in the series is called Hyperspace and you can order it now on Amazon.
amazon.com/dp/B09M86Q38C
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James David Victor, Prison Break (Star Breaker Book 5)
