New Horizons: Chapter 6
One well-placed sword-thrust later, Brinsley looked up from his work just in time to catch a microsecond glimpse of Volere Darchon’s cloak before it disappeared behind a closing emergency door. Volere was not Brinsley’s most immediate concern however, as the guards were now starting to collect their wits after the chaos of his invasion into the throne room. Brinsley quickly dodged past them into a side room, closing the door behind.
“Jackpot, looks like me hiding place turns out to have been the administrative room.”
He was moving to blockade the door shut when an alarm began to go off, and a soothing computerized female voice began calmly informing everyone that they had 9 minutes remaining before detonation. Knowing that he lacked the technical skills to accomplish anything useful in that amount of time, Brinsley abandoned his blockade and simply grabbed every portable data-storage device he could find – hoping they would contain enough to figure out later what was going on.
The guards outside were no longer interested in fighting, they seemed more concerned with saying last prayers, crying, and glaring angrily at the still-sealed door Volere had fled through. Brinsley noted with interest that the Champion had joined the fray, apparently having run up from below in an attempt to defend Volere.
“What’s wrong?” Brinsley said cheerily “We’ve got a whole eight minutes and ten seconds left.” As everyone in the room turned to stare at him, he pointed at the closed door. “I assume that used to lead to the shuttle hangar?”
One of the guards looked quizzical “Yes, but why ‘used to’?”
“Theoretically speaking, it would need to have shuttles in it to be currently a shuttle hangar, and given that your employer locked the door behind him and activated a self-destruct, I suspect he would also have gone the extra step of destroying and remaining shuttles so they couldn’t pursue him. Which also makes him your former employer.”
The guards looked at each other for a moment, and then one of them spoke again. “Alright, you’ve made your point. Since you seem to be the only one of us not fearing for his life, does that mean you have a plan to get out of here? All of the doors are sealed.”
“I might at that.” He addressed the Champion “Tell me good sir, in our fight down there you struck me as the sort of person who possesses considerable skill with a great variety of weapons, and probably has a collection of them.” The Champion nodded in the affirmative, and Brinsley continued. “Good. And in that collection, do you happen to have a selection of high-intensity laser rifles, the sort of which might be recalibrated to burn through a floor?”
“I have several, but they won’t work with the disruptor field up.”
Brinsley motioned towards the control panel on the chair, and it obligingly emitted a shower of sparks. “I believe I have dealt with that obstacle.”
–
Several floors down, Brinsley bid farewell to the escaping guards. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, you should be able to make it from here. I have a friend to collect in the prison.”
Brinsley had concocted a plan, but the timing on it would be very close. For this reason, he was pleasantly surprised to find Laurie already out of his cell and working on something in the main guard room. Laurie looked up at him in mild shock.
“I didn’t expect to see you again. Most people would have gotten out of here by now.”
“I’m not most people” was Brinsley’s response. “How did you get out of your cell?”
“I’ve had an escape route from the cell set up for months. It was the guards and the rest of the tower that I needed out of the way. How were you thinking of getting out?”
“It’s a long shot, but I was thinking that if we were able to get one of these prison doors unhinged and attach a bunch of flammable material to one side, we could…”
“…jump out the window and glide to safety, and the auto-lasers would fire at the combustable material and ignite it, slowing the decent and pushing us over the lake.” Laurie finished. “That was my plan too. I’ve just been finishing the door.”
Brinsley was taken aback for a moment. He was not used to other people coming up with the same ideas as him. “You realize it’ll take considerable skill to aim and land”
“And there’s a decent chance that the door won’t hold. Yes, I’m aware. But I’ve had to jump out of a lot of windows in my life, I know how to pull it off.”
“Let’s give it a shot, then”
The two men picked the door up and began making their way towards the window.
–
The plan worked like a charm, and Brinsley and Laurie landed safely on the very edge of the lake in a cloud of steam, quickly leaping onto land before their shoes could finish burning through from the heat of the door remains. They had just enough time to dive behind a particularly large boulder before the tower exploded. Even the self-destruct had been designed with an eye towards style. The flames burning in the eyes of the four skulls suddenly shot out over the lake as the four towers they were attached too fell outwards and slightly to the left, directing the immense flame jets into a circular pattern that vaporized most of the lake and sent a shockwave through the dams, shattering them into small pieces. As soon as the rumbling from that had died down the main tower began its show, a series of shaped charges that sent each floor exploding upwards, creating a massive upside-down teardrop shape of debris that then collapsed towards the ground, only to be violently dispersed by a final, subterranean, charge that sent a foot-high shockwave radiating outwards.
Brinsley and Laurie peeked out from behind the remains of their boulder. Far off on the other side of the now-dry lake bed, they could hear the cheers of the guards, happy to have survived another day.
“Is it over?” said Laurie.
“I think so.” Brinsley responded. “That last explosion had to be the power plant.”
They say there in silence for a few moments, then Brinsley pulled out the remains of his tea set and began to search for some water. “So how did you come up with such an insane plan?” he asked.
“Like I said, I’ve jumped out a fair number of windows in the last few years, so I knew I could handle the gliding part.” Laurie began “I also knew that with a self-destruct charging, the lasers wouldn’t be able to get full power. Plus, I knew that I probably wouldn’t get another chance to surf out of an exploding building on a prison door riding a stream of laser blasts, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.”
There was a short pause while Brinsley chuckled, the Laurie continued. “So how did you come up with such an insane plan?”
“The wisdom of age and experience.”
Laurie waited a moment, expecting more, then simply chuckled and shook his head. “Well then, old man, I’d say this was a highly successful first adventure for us.”
Brinsley looked at him “The bad guy got away and we didn’t find any of the kidnapped villagers. Why do you call that highly successful?”
“Because if you can do all that without me, we’re guaranteed to succeed now that we’re together.”
Brinsley smiled, remembering the days when he too had been that confident.
“Actually, I’m still that confident, but now I know I deserve it.”
“I was thinking about a name,” Laurie said “for our adventuring team. It’s going to be a brand new experience for both of us…”
“How do you figure that?” Brinsley interrupted “Sure you’ll be learning all kinds of new stuff from me, but what makes you think I’ll be doing new things?”
“Let’s just say I have an unprecedented talent for drawing people into new experiences.” Laurie retorted with a grin.
“So what’s this name you’re thinking of?”
“New Horizons” Laurie proudly proclaimed.
Brinsley considered for a moment and thought to himself.
“Do I dare take such a similar name when I’m trying to stay undercover? It seems like a big risk, but then again I did just surf over a lake of acid propelled by lasers to escape an exploding building. Of course, so did he… Well, that settles it. There’s now way Brinsley Sheridan is going to go down in history as the cautious member of his team.”
A small falling object, the final remains of the tower, caught his eye. He smiled, it wasn’t every day he received such a clear sign. He held out his hand, caught a small tin cup that had been welded back together by the force of the explosion, and poured himself some tea. Raising his glass to Laurie’s, he proclaimed.
“to New Horizons”