Ali was escorted back to her cell by the same number of guards as she had been taken to see Tihud with. Pixie was leaning against the far wall when she returned to - or more rather, roughly shoved into - their cell. She took half a step towards Ali, but hesitated when she saw the way the guard turned to her.
"Are you okay?" She asked once the door was sealed behind Ali again.
Ali had turned to look at the door instead, before thumping it in frustration. "I'm fine," she replied, taking a steadying breath as she tried to focus when feeling more emotions than she wanted to. "We've gotta get out of here," she decided.
"It went that well, huh?"
Ali cracked a smile, though her back was still turned to her, so Pixie couldn't see that. "Their boss wants to know what we know, and I'm pretty certain I'm only here to work out that it's in our best interests to cooperate."
"And is it?"
Ali had to admit, that was a good question. If she were alone she'd already be halfway through formulating an escape plan, but she wasn't, and she was the senior officer and it was her responsibility to keep her crew safe. Though her instincts were telling her that Tihud was not going to play nice with them for long, they were in danger either way. She could try reaching Ben over their tetnar, but what could he do? Based on the hum beneath their feet and the design of the corridors she'd been shepherded through, Ali knew they were on a ship now. That meant she had no idea where they were, so any SOS she tried to send was useless until they knew.
"I'm pretty certain that if we don't talk, things are going to get nasty. If we try and escape, things are gonna get nasty. I have no guarantees that talking won't end badly, they'll have anything we know, plus they might just dispose of us once we have no further use," Ali explained as her eyes darted around the cell. It wouldn't be the first jail she'd broken out of - or into.
"I'm not sure I want to stick around long enough for them to experiment on us like they did the others."
"Then we're agreed," Ali nodded to herself.
Ali stuck Pixie on door monitoring duty as she finished scoping out their cell for anything they could use. There wasn't much, but at least they had an idea of the guard patterns by the time she'd figured out their best chance. Though it'd be a lot easier if she still had her scanner, but she supposed that was probably why it had been confiscated.
"Reckon you can give me a leg up?" Ali asked as she stood in one corner of their cell and beckoned above her to the camera embedded in the ceiling.
Pixie crouched and laced her fingers to hoist her up so she could perch on her shoulder as she worked, braced against the wall to help her balance. "Whatever you plan on doing with that, be quick about it, yeah?" Pixie teased, but Ali could tell from the strain in her voice that she wasn't going to be able to hold her long.
Ali had already re-purposed a buckle on her boot as a mini lever to prise the cover off so she could get to the electronics inside. "Surprisingly the door isn't that difficult to pop. I think they're pretty confident about their other security measures to stop any prisoners getting too far." She was busy reconnecting the wires inside as she spoke. "If I get this right, though, I can knock out all their internal vid feeds."
Pixie glanced at the door as if she expected them to get caught any second, but Ali continued working as if this were a perfectly normal situation. Pulling a chipset out of it's holder, giving it a once over and scoring it with the buckle she still had hold of it before slotting it back in and finishing reconnecting everything. Pixie practically dropped her as alarms went off throughout the ship. "What did you do?"
"Don't worry, that's expected!" Ali reassured her as she rushed towards the door, but stayed a good foot or so away from it, holding a hand out to indicate Pixie stay put.
Less than a minute later a couple of guards ran at their cell, glanced inside to see them both still there, before hurrying off again. Then Ali rushed the remaining distance and set to work on the door. "If you just knocked out the camera, how come they didn't see you doing it?"
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"Apparently, they don't check their footage too often, and based on that I guess they have other priority things to secure," Ali said, as she worked the door's vulnerability. Sometimes her knowledge of the criminal world came in handy, such as knowing obtaining various data caches on which systems had what weaknesses. It wasn't something anyone would think to try, but a nice employee of the manufacturer had felt the need to share it. Sure enough the door slid open and they checked the corridor before hurrying out.
"I don't suppose you saw a nice big 'shuttles this way' sign on your field trip earlier?"
"No, but I know where not to go," Ali replied as they made their way quickly down the corridor whilst still checking every nook and cranny to ensure they weren't about to be ambushed and returned to their cell.
They came to a fork and as Ali was checking the different options Pixie patted her shoulder to get her attention. "Elevator, reckon shuttles'll be near the bottom."
"Good call," she said as she followed her to it. Ali watching their backs as Pixie watched the progress of the lift.
They weren't waiting long, but it arrived with three mercs stood in it. There was an almost comical split second where they just stared at Pixie as if they didn't know what to do, before she launched herself to tackle the middle one as she shouted a warning to Ali. Ali turned as she heard the commotion and ran to swing her arm down into the elbow of the one to the right to collapse the arm that had hold of the rifle. She twisted into the strike so that her back was towards him and planted her leg behind his as she threw her elbow towards his chin, and followed it through with her shoulder. Off balance, he fell back and even his helmet didn't stop the impact with the wall knocking him out.
Ali retracted her leg and bent to retrieve his weapon, looking up to see Pixie finish off the last one. They shared a look, nodded and quickly dragged the mercs out of the elevator before hitting the controls for the lowest deck.
Both of them were ready with their rifles when they arrived at their destination. A little surprised there was no welcome party when the doors slid open. Grateful for whatever small amount of luck they had, they hurried out of the lift and tried to find some sense of where they were at, and where anything they needed was. They came across a pair of guards, but were quick enough to shoot them first. "We need to find some kind of map or other directions," Pixie suggested as Ali quickly rummaged through their pockets.
"Hopefully this'll help," Ali said as she raised a PDA for her to see. "Seen anywhere good to take cover?"
Pixie nodded and led them back to an alcove with decent sidelines for Ali to work her magic on the computer systems whilst she kept lookout. It took longer than either liked, but Ali was able to find the way to the combined shuttle and cargo bay. "But given how few guards we've seen, I'm gonna guess they're waiting for us there. It's where I'd send my guys."
"Why? I thought you said the alarm for the vid feeds wouldn't be specific."
"By now I'm assuming they've found some of our handiwork, therefore someone's escaped. And if someone's escaped they'll want to get off the ship."
Pixie pulled a face at that, and Ali almost laughed, before they shared a look and another nod. They'd just have to take everything as they found it, with as much preparation as they could.
They hadn't been too far away from the shuttle bay and soon enough Ali was working on the door controls to get them unauthorised access. Unsurprisingly they were shot at as soon as the door slid open, but they'd taken cover behind the walls to the side to avoid it. Pixie was able to determine a path via some crates that would start their journey whilst keeping them safe. She provided covering fire whilst Ali ran to duck behind the first one, before she returned the favour to allow Pixie to join her.
They traded fire as they managed to make some progress towards a shuttle, and they had taken out a couple of the mercs by the time they got to the home stretch. "Okay, this is the tricky bit," Pixie explained from her cover as Ali took her turn to fire at the mercs.
"How tricky?"
"Impossible," a voice replied from above them, and both of them turned with their weapons raised to see a group of mercs - including a sniper - positioned atop the shuttle. A perfect vantage point due to the elevation that left Ali and Pixie nowhere to go.
Pixie glanced at Ali to find out what their plan was. Ali was frowning at the sniper before she sighed and placed her rifle on the floor. There was no way they wouldn't get shot if they tried their luck. PIxie followed suit.
Once they'd surrendered the mercs quickly retrieved the weapons and had them surrounded and cuffed by the time Tihud joined them. "I thought you were smarter than this, Ali."
"What can I say? You really made us feel welcome," Ali quipped.
"Indeed," Tihud said, without any humour in his voice at all. "I hope it was worth it, because such a transgression cannot go unpunished." Neither Ali nor Pixie offered any response to that, so without any further ado he indicated to one of the mercs, who made a point of increasing the setting on his pistol, before firing it at Pixie's head.
Ali couldn't help her startled jump as Pixie fell limply to the floor, brown eyes glassy and staring straight ahead at nothing. She swallowed as she fought against rage, grief and guilt and the fact she wanted to scream and flail at Tihud and his goons. "What the hell was the point of that?" She demanded between deep breaths. There was no point in stating she was unarmed, these people weren't the honourable sort.
"You need to know that your actions have consequences, and that you better start taking them seriously if you don't want to end up in a nightmare of your own making," Tihud said. "Get her back to her cell, I have plans for her."