Soldier of Misfortune (chapter one)

The gigantic metal crane turned and extended its powerful claw higher and higher, slowly making its way up the monolithic wall.  Like a gargantuan ice tray, the massive steel wall held thousands upon thousands of blocks of ice. These massive walls lined the borders of the expansive laboratory.  Scientists were bustling about, checking computer monitors and entering information into the computer system. There was one gated door at the end of the room, protected by a pair of intimidating guards.
         Finally reaching the ice block it was searching for and, like a bird closing in on its prey, it opened its powerful talons and grasped the giant block of ice.  Streams of cooling vapors hissed and spewed as the opaque block was removed from its holding place. The crane lowered the frozen block down from the wall, and placed it on a grate-like platform.  Then the impassible gate door opened, and three men came into the laboratory. Two of the men were guards, wearing impenetrable black armor, which encased their entire body.  Grim visages protected their heads, and blaster pistols hung loosely from their left hips, and daunting swords hung at their right.  The other man wore a blood red breastplate along with gauntlets and greaves of matching color. A crimson beret with four gold stars on the brim covered his short brown and graying hair.  His stern brown eyes and muscular jaw gave him the appearance of a man half his age.  Near to completing his fourth decade, General Onnox, Warden of the Mandakan Prison strode into the laboratory with complete superiority.
         He approached the giant ice cube and stopped, folding his hands in front of his waist.  He gave a quick and stern nod of his head and one of the scientists walked over to the grate-like platform and pulled a lever protruding from the ground.  Scorching liquid began flowing through the grate.  Slowly, the giant ice cube began to melt and evaporate.  As the opaque block of ice began to wear away, the faint outline of an object encased in the ice could be seen.  It was no ordinary object; it was a person.  As the last solid piece of ice melted into water and then evaporated, the blazing liquid abruptly stopped flowing and the grate cooled instantly. A young man with highly toned muscles collapsed on the platform. His long black wet hair was covering his eyes, and the excess water vapor glistened all over his naked body. As air reached his unaccustomed lungs, his chest began to rise and fall. Rising out of the fetal position he was on all fours coughing and spitting the water from his throat.           
         He rose to his feet, using his arms as supports to help his feeble legs. Finally supporting his weight with his sturdy legs, he raised his muscular arm and brushed his wet hair from his face, revealing ocean blue eyes.  His eyes locked with those of the warden and a scowl crossed the man’s visage.  One of the scientists approached the damp man and threw a pile of clothes at him and the man quickly dressed himself.  Two intimidating guards clad in the sturdy black armor each grabbed one of the prisoner’s arms and escorted him off the platform, bringing him in front of Onnox. The warden glanced back to the sentries that were flanking him, and held his hand out behind him. The guard quickly fumbled with a pack on his side, and procured a scroll, which he placed in the warden’s outstretched hand. Onnox untied the red ribbon holding the scroll shut, unrolled it, and began to read,
         “Prisoner 85260725, as you may remember I am General Onnox, Warden of the Mandakin Prison you are now held captive in.  The year is now 2064.  You have been Cryogenically frozen for the past 20 years for the crime of Contempt of the Court.  You have been temporarily restored to society to give you the chance to redeem yourself.”
         As he finished reading the scroll he rolled it back up and glared at the prisoner. “Now, As you know you are charged with murder in the first degree, how do you plead?”
         The prisoner matched that glare and with a stoic face, he replied  “As I have said before, I did not kill that man, and I will not plead guilty nor innocent.”
         “Is this your final reply Prisoner 85260725? By not entering a plea you still find yourself in Contempt of the Court and will be send back to CryoPrison for the remainder of your 100 year confinement,” the General said with a slight note of optimism in his firm voice.
         “ Yes, it’s my answer, but you can’t put me back in there! I did not kill that man.  I was framed!” the prisoner exclaimed as he lunged toward the warden, causing the guards that were restraining him to pull tighter on his strong arms.
         “By refusing to enter a plea, you remain in Contempt of the Court,” the prison warden began. Then he looked towards the guards holding the prisoner,  “Get him ready, he’s going back.” Then the confident general turned on his heel and started to leave the room, his personal guards following closely behind, then he turned back and said, “ And if you accuse the Galactic Army of framing you I will lead you to the execution line myself.”  And with that the General headed towards the door, and left the containment center.
         No, I can’t go back in there, the prisoner thought to himself.  I must show the truth of this so-called safeguard known as the Galactic Army.  He quickly glanced around the room, planning an escape route.  The two guards restraining his arms began to pull him back to the grate-like platform.  The ex-Galactic soldier turned prisoner, flexed his powerful muscles and snapped his arms together in front of him, painfully smashing the guards into each other. With lightning quick reflexes, he quickly grabbed the hilts of the guards’ deadly swords as they began to stagger backwards. Drawing out the killing blades, the trained soldier crossed his arms and thrust the swords towards the backpedaling guards, catching them in the throats and drawing a deep crimson line across each of their exposed necks. They collapsed in puddles on their own blood, their dying faces still obscured by their grim helms.  The bustling scientists turned away from their blinking lights and flashing monitors and watched the blood pool under the two murdered guards.  They all flashed their attention toward the prisoner, who stood there, atop the dead guards, blood dripping down the blade of the swords.  Fear struck into the heart of every scientist as they all began to run about, trying to reach their veiled weapons.  The prisoner stooped down and snatched up the blasters on the guards’ corpses.  With deadly accuracy he began sniping down the scientists across the entire lab. Within a matter of minutes, all of the scientists lay dead and scattered on the cold floor.  Thinking quickly, the prisoner ran toward the wall of monitors.  He needed an escape route.  He needed to access the prison blue prints. However, the technology had advanced tenfold in the past 20 years.  Trained in the old computer technology used by the Galactic Army, the ex-soldier began scouring the files, trying to find any that contained any remote information about the blueprints.  Instead of finding a layout, he found the prisoner log.  Leaning closer to the monitor, the prisoner began searching though the prisoner files until he came to one in particular, his own.  It was marked confidential.  As he read more he realized the truth.  There was the answer, right in front of his face.  His unjust imprisonment was for nothing.
         Realizing that he was sidetracking from his main objective, he began scouring for the layout of the Mandakan Prison once again.  In a few minutes he reached the blueprints page.  Scanning the monitor he plotted his quickest and easiest path to the hanger bay.  Then he headed for the door, but stopped abruptly.  He knew he would get caught.  Everyone in the prison would notice an escaping prisoner.  His eyes quickly glanced around the room.  Then, he found a solution.  His cerulean orbs found the corpse of the murdered guards. Their obscuring black armor would provide the perfect coverage.
         A few minutes later the door to the laboratory opened and a man encased in impenetrable black armor, swords draping at his hips and a blaster pistol in his right hand, walked through and headed down the white corridor.  Continuing down the hall, his heart raced. Footsteps echoed down the empty hallway and the prisoner looked down the corridor.  Two more guards were approaching.  Just beyond them lay the hanger bay. Just beyond them lay his freedom. Acting nonchalant, the ex-soldier tried to pass the oncoming guards without any problems.  As the two guards approached, they looked at each other and exchanged quizzical looks beneath their black helmets. They stopped and the closest guard held out his hand to stop the prisoner.
         “Excuse me, where is your partner.” he asked.
         “ He is in the laboratory, there was a problem in there,” the quick thinking ex-soldier retorted.
         “Then why are you alone. You know we are not allowed to travel without our partners at any time in the prison,” the guard exclaimed
         “There is a very good explanation to that,” the prisoner started.  Flaunting his reflexes once again, the ex-soldier flashed his hands to the hilts of the deadly blades, drawing them out in the flash of an eye, and stabbing out, he caught the first one in the chest, forcing it through the black armor and piercing a lung.  The second guard managed to snatch his own sword out to parry the first attack, but as he tried to counter with an offensive stab, the highly trained prisoner side-stepped and then stepped behind the attacker and crossed his sword across his exposed throat. With a retraction of his hand, the finely tipped sword cut a clear line across the guards’ throat, and he collapsed.  Knowing he caused a commotion that most of the prison could hear, the prisoner dashed for the door at the end of the corridor.  Snatching up his blaster, he shot the keypad that controlled the doors motion, and the door slid open.  As he arrived in the gargantuan hangar bay, two more guards were guarding the plethora of ships.  Two shots from his blaster took care of his only opposition.
         Quickly scanning the hangar, the prisoner came to a ship he actually knew, a B-45 Star Fighter.  Jumping into the cockpit, the prisoner hastily turned the ship on and activated the engines.  The ship began to hover a few feet off the ground when three more people ran through the blaster hanger bay door.  General Onnox dashed in, flanked once again by his personal guards.  The warden stared dumbfounded at the newly activated ship and raised his blaster.  The-soon-to-be ex-prisoner flashed the general an exaggerated wink and the ship blasted out of the hanger.  Dryson Makko was now free to reveal the plot against him by the Galactic Army. The ex-Galactic Soldier would now take down the establishment that once meant so much to him.
         Back in the hanger, General Onnox threw his blaster pistol to the ground in anger.
Watching the prisoner escape in the stolen star fighter, he exploded,
         “I’ll find you, you criminal! There’s no place safe for you to run to!”
         General Onnox reached his seasoned hands to his belt, and retrieved a communication device.  He opened it quickly and punched in a memorized number.  After a few seconds a deep voice answered,
         “What is it now, Warden?”  The man on the other end sounded annoyed, irritated that the warden had interrupted him.
         “We have a problem sir,” Onnox solemnly stated, his voice trailing off.
         “Well? What is it man?” the deep voice exclaimed.
         “He got away.”
         “Who got away?” came the quizzical response.
         “Makko, sir, he got away.”
         There was no response on the line for what seemed like minutes.  The warden knew that the Commander of the Galactic Army was not a forgiving man, in fact he was a cruel and vicious individual.
         “Does he know?” A reply finally came.
         “Yes, Commander.  He found the file on one of our computers.  He killed all the scientists, the guards, everyone.  There was no way to stop him.”  Onnox said, his heart racing.  He had no idea what the Commander would do to him for this.  He had angered the Commander before, but never had he made a mistake this grand in the past. 
         “Yes, you could not stop him, but I can,” the deep voice now was soaked with a sinister motive.  The warden could hear the obvious change in his tone too.
         “And what is that?” The fervent warden inquired, eager to retain the escaped prisoner again.
         “Without the files, his word would mean nothing.  If there was no evidence of that file, Makko’s accusation would be null and void.”
         “How can we delete the file though? The files are permanently wired into the prison’s main computer, we can not delete or erase any files.”  General Onnox informed, pondering the Commander’s intentions.
         “We don’t need to delete the file, we need to erase the computer,” he began, but he knew that the warden would not pick up on the subtle hint.  “We need to erase the entire computer system.”
         “But we can’t do that, I all ready said we can not change, delete, or erase any files! They are all permanent. We can’t wipe the hard drives clean and start over.  The only way to get rid of the files would be to… destroy them…” The warden’s voice faded as he finally realized the Commander’s intent.
         “Exactly.”
         With a push of a button, the entire Mandakan Prison Complex erupted in a gargantuan explosion that tore through the forest, killing trees and animals along with the remaining prisoners.  The Commander removed his finger from the button and leaned back in his throne of a chair and smiled a sinister grin.  So he had eradicated thousands of prisoners, and a handful of trusted prison personal.  It was all worth it in the end.  If the Galactic Court ever discovered the plot against Makko he would be done for, exiled from all civilized society.  He knew he would have to invent a story for what happened to the prison, but that was not his first priority, capturing Dryson Makko, his scapegoat, was.