Gravity (Male x Male)

Chapter 18 - The Plan

I felt the sunlight across my eyes and grumbled as I woke. I concluded that the screen across the window in my room was probably not quite closed properly. I rolled over in the blankets without opening my eyes, hoping that I might be able to go back to sleep if I manoeuvred myself out of the stray rays.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Keleon's voice reached me.

That was enough incentive for me to prise my eyes open and look around.

Keleon was in his meditating position across the room from me.

"You stayed all night?" I asked.

"Not all night," he responded. "I did several checks on the ship once you were asleep, and I also needed to meditate, so I brought my blankets through."

"You didn't meditate in your own room?" I asked, surprised.

"Would you have preferred me to have gone to my own room?" Keleon looked just as surprised.

"No, of course, not, I just thought you'd prefer to be on your own for meditating. I thought you might like some peace, that's all."

"You sleep quietly," he replied, cocking his head slightly and smiling. "And I liked being near you."

My heart stuttered at the words, and I sat up to gather my bearings.

"I liked waking up to you," I confessed. I crawled across to him and into his arms. "It means I get to invade your personal space before I do anything else."

Keleon kissed my forehead.

"My personal space isn't being invaded," he replied. "There's enough room for two. However, we have quite a big day ahead of us, and we're still not sure whether you're coming or not. I suggest we get up and speak to Helen."

"I'm coming with you to Selenia," I said, determined.

I freshened up, fed myself and brushed my teeth, and it wasn't long before Keleon and I were knocking on Helen's door, and she was asking us to enter. Mia was already inside.

"Morning, Helen," I greeted her. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you last night."

"Damon wants to come with us today," Mia said, starting a discussion in which Helen made it clear she wanted me to stay on Epsilon 4 for my own safety. I explained that I wanted to help, that I'd spent the last three years with people telling me what to do, and now that I was an adult, I wanted to make my own decisions. I also argued that I could be useful; I knew the inside of the building better than anyone else, and that I could fly the Pavo.

In the end, Helen and I compromised, and decided that I should fly with the group to Selenia but stay inside the craft. Knowing that I could fly it, I could take off in a hurry if we needed to.

On the flight to Selenia, Helen explained that everyone would be equipped with several smoke grenades which would help to obscure the vision of the G.I.A. personnel. However, she also pointed out that they would also obscure the vision of the user, so they should be used with caution and only if they gave us an advantage.

She also told us that the disrupter module would knock out all electrical equipment within about a kilometre for about an hour, so there was no reason for anyone to take electrical equipment into the building as it wouldn't work anyway.

Nobody would be taking weapons, for two reasons. Firstly, the G.I.A. weapons were electrical and wouldn't work once the disrupter module was in action. We had the element of surprise, and only the security guards were equipped with weapons anyway, as most of the staff were researchers and wouldn't be armed. But more importantly, we needed to be able to create a legal battle on the other side of this, which we wouldn't be able to do if we severely hurt anyone. They were unlikely to hurt us for the same reasons.

We arrived in the orbit of Selenia faster than it took to go in the opposite direction. I remembered we couldn't use thrusters on our way out so that they couldn't detect us, but nobody was going to be looking for an ion trail in the opposite direction, so we could use the extra speed available to us.

I felt like a bit of a spare wheel as the team worked out the best place to dock so that their plan could be implemented quickly. Each of them had memorised the schematics of the building so that they knew their way around, but nobody knew which part of the building my mother was being held in. So, the plan was to search the building and then to get out and meet back at the ship after an hour, regardless of whether they managed to get Mum out or not.

It was the middle of the night on Selenia as we docked, although now I had adjusted to Epsilon 4, it didn't even feel like lunchtime yet. My aunt reminded me I was to stay in the craft as the team got themselves ready. Keleon kissed me on the forehead as they all stepped out into the darkness, and I fully intended to make sure I was ready to get them out of there quickly if I needed to.

Lost in my own thoughts, after about ten minutes, I remembered something I hadn't thought about for three years. I'd pushed it to the back of my mind because at the time it had seemed inconsequential. Walking through one of the southern corridors with a nurse when I'd first arrived here, there were some storage rooms without forcefields. I'd asked what they were for, and the nurse had told me that the rooms were there in case any of the forcefields ever went down, they still had a place to store things of value. Apparently, it was based on ancient Earth technology. The doors had an old-style "lock and key" mechanism, where a physical key was required to open a physical door. The key would have to be entered into a hole in the door and turned in order for the door to open and close. The security guards were the ones looking after the keys.

If I oversaw security, and there was a breach where the forcefields went down, I would probably move Mum to one of those storage rooms and use this "lock and key" mechanism. But my aunt and her team wouldn't know to look there, and since they hadn't taken radios, I had no way of telling them.

Even if they did find Mum in one of those rooms, they would be unlikely to know they needed to get a key from a security guard, or that they then needed to put it in the hole in the door. Either way, they'd come away empty handed and this whole mission would be for nothing.

I moved towards the door of the craft. Using the southern entrance would bring me close to the storage areas. I may not have any smoke grenades, but I knew the facility very well, since it had been my home for three years. I had a useful skill and information that none of the rest of my team had, and it seemed silly not to use it. There was no time for debating with myself; I had to decide quickly.

I'd know exactly which route to take and where I needed to look once I was in there. Getting to the southern entrance would be a different matter, but I was convinced I had enough information from the conversations on the flight over here to determine how to get to there from where we docked.

Under a dark blanket of stars, I aimed myself in the direction of the G.I.A. premises. I found myself behind a large boulder peeking out at the southern entrance to the compound before I fully registered where I was and what I was planning to do.

Everything was quiet at this end of the building. Presumably most of the personnel had been distracted by the arrival of the others at the northern entrance and gone in that direction to investigate. Adrenaline pumping, I reached the southern entrance and tested the forcefield. As predicted, it was offline, and I could stealth into the building relatively easily. Now I just had to focus on not being spotted.

I tiptoed through the corridors and the labs, checking for signs of life while hiding behind walls and turnings. I could hear distant voices but nothing that sounded close. I was nearly half-way through the southern end of the building when I found the storage rooms I was looking for, in a corridor just off one of the larger laboratories. Each one had a thin window in the door that I could use to look through and see what was inside. Carefully, I peered into the first one, but it was difficult to see anything when it was the middle of the night and the lights were out. My eyes strained against the darkness, but there didn't appear to be anything in there that might be a person.

My eyes were starting to adjust to the very low level of lighting. I scanned the area before moving over to scrutinise the next storage room through its window. Nothing. 

I moved back into the nearest alcove.

Maybe this was a bad plan after all.