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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 7: Kondor 258
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 74
The manacles came loose with Zeke’s help. Kondor rubbed his wrists, and put the manacles down on the desk. Zeke had not been chained at all, which Kondor thought a mistake. His friend was a trained soldier from a more advanced, if not yet modern to Kondor, society tech level.
They were locked inside the office, for who knew how long. Zeke asked him a question, and then gave an evil smile. He took the knife and began cutting quietly at an internal wall behind the desk.
“One barracks I lived in, the previous soldiers had cut a hidden door in the wall so they could sneak out at night and send a couple Scout Regulars to the nearest town for a beer run.”
“Ah.” Kondor nodded. He understood the pull beer had on soldiers with sore muscles, and nothing to do but drill, play cards, make work, and lay about a barracks. The authorities would not want to let them loose because a couple dozen soldiers on liberty could do a remarkable amount of damage to a ‘friendly’ town. But the soldiers, in true Army ‘hurry up and wait’ fashion, were bored out of their mind. Enter the beer run by the sneakiest country boys in the platoon.
Cutting and pulling apart the wall, Zeke and Kondor made a man-wide hole to crawl through. The next office was thankfully empty. The two quickly left their confinement in the botany professor’s office, and made their way into a geology professor’s office. Poking his head out the door, Kondor saw a Parakeet guard down the hall twenty feet at the botany professor’s door, whistling very softly to himself.
The next wall went quicker as they had less concern about noise, and they had more practice. The next room was another geology professor’s domain, and the end room in the corner as shown by the two high windows in disparate walls. Poking his head out, Kondor waited until the guard turned away. One quick step, and he was across the hallway, and in the adjoining corridor. After a minute wait, hearing other Parakeets talking around the further corner behind him, Zeke joined him when the guard turned again.
Now they were in the hallway on one end of the building, with a guard in one direction and chatting Parakeets around the next corner in the other direction. Zeke gave him a wide grin.
“This is fun.”
Kondor nodded. It was high-stakes hide-and-seek. The duo went to the farther corner, and poked their head around. No one, wait, a pair just entered the hall. Ducking their heads back, the escapees listened to a door open down the hall. Poking his head out again, Kondor saw no one in the hall. But just around the corner was an open doorway with chattering chirps from two or three inside. They would have to go past that open door, and who knew if someone would be looking their direction.
At this point, Kondor leaned on his clairvoyance. He saw the trio, with a map. They were planning on building railroads, and airports, and he saw what he thought were symbols for four spaceports. Wow. The new rulers were really ambitious. But he suspected that this was not national ambitions, but personal ambitions for themselves, and their social class of courtier clerks.
All of them suddenly leaned over the map, and Kondor moved, dragging Zeke with him. They were past the door, and then to his horror as he dropped the clairvoyance, he heard noises of an opening door ahead. Moving swiftly on light feet, he hot footed it down the hallway, and to the right to the front door. No guard was there, which was strange, and he went out, and suddenly he was slammed against the wall of the building, and a knife was pressed against his throat.
He looked down. One of the Parakeets looked up at him with what he recognized as a puzzled look. He linked the language center, and heard a familiar voice.
“Cho? We came to rescue you.” It was one of the swordbirds. A furiously glaring guard laid tied up and gagged on the ground, and near him were the other swordbirds, a pair holding Zeke. The Professor of War was there as well.
“Perhaps we can let our friend Cho, and also, you two, let Zeke free. After all, it is a failing grade in my class if we kill the prisoners we came to rescue.”
“Sorry Cho.” The swordbird holding him at knife point apologized, and put up his knife even as he tried to pat down Kondor’s clothes as if Kondor were a feathered bird.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #524: Twisting Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
