Rescue Mission to the Stars by Philip R Benge

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  That evening and miles away from the spaceport, Lexan Delong looked at the time on his alarm clock, which chose this moment to ring its message to him. Reaching over he quickly turned it off and changed the alarm setting to a more innocent time. He then got up from behind his desk and went to his office door, which he opened, and glanced outside, all was clear, so he donned a large grey floppy hat and a grey baggy jacket. Then he proceeded to walk down to the outer door and the beginning of the plan, which almost went wrong from the start. Ahead of him Delong heard footsteps approaching, he looked desperately around but all he found was a broom cupboard, he knew he couldn`t enter it and hide inside. Not without causing the security men on the other end of the security cameras to wonder what was happening. He turned around so that his back was to whoever it was and pretended to study a piece of paper which he found within his trouser pocket, it was a memo from the management of the studios requesting that all staff tried to keep their workspaces a little more tidy. He must have absent-mindedly tucked it away, he read it through as if it was of the most importance as the person to whom the footsteps belonged finally turned the corner and thankfully went on by without a word. Delong looked up to see a ‘go-for’ disappearing down the corridor with another piece of paper grasped within his hand. Breathing deeply DeLong turned around again, moved off, and finally reached the outer door without any further near heart attacks, what could he have done had the person stopped to speak to him. Delong was now beginning to sweat, but he forced himself to carry on with the plot. He opened the side door, stepped outside, and waited until he saw Lilliana and Carmen approaching down the back alley. Delong reached into his trouser pocket and pressed the send button on his cell phone that sent the message through to Johor who were standing near to the entrance of the television studios. They were waiting for the signal having just planted the small explosive device in the entrance hall of the television studios. Johor in turn operated his own cell phone to trigger the device causing it to explode. A large flash lit up the entrance, followed immediately by a loud bang, which was in turn followed by the smoke grenade that exploded and filled the entrance with a thick cloud of black smoke. Hearing the explosion Carmen and Lilliana quickly walked across the alley and slipped in through the open door that Delong had left just ajar. Outside, Johor and Roan walked briskly away from the area, which filled with the curious, all eager to know what had happened. Inside the studios, Carmen led Lilliana straight to the security office. Lilliana opened the door wide while Carmen threw the stun grenade inside knocking out the two security guards before they knew what had happened. After a hasty glance around to check if anyone had been alerted to all of the chaos that was happening both inside and outside of the studios, they put on their gas masks and entered the room. It only took Carmen moments to destroy all of the security recordings that had been made during the preceding hour. Then she destroyed the recording devices, to ensure that there was no way that they could be turned back on. Smiling at each other the two women left the security office and whipped off their gas masks only to walk into the studio manager, who had hurried to the security office to see if the security men had captured the bomb attack on their cameras?

  “Who the hell are you two and what have you been up to?” He asked angrily as the answer to his question dawned on him. Unfortunately it was just as Carmen pulled out a Phaser pistol that her father had owned many years previously, she had set it on its maximum setting and she didn`t hesitate to fire it. The powerful energy bolt whistled angrily between them and hit the studio manager in the middle of his body. Carmen had known that something like this could happen, and had already conditioned her mind to fire her weapon without hesitating. The dead man fell to the floor, smoke curling up and away from his smouldering clothes, which were ignited by the powerful bolt of energy. Lilliana looked down at the body horrified, and tearing her eyes away from it turned to Carmen with a look of loathing on her face.

  “Carmen you`ve killed him, why?” Carmen didn`t answer immediately for even though she thought that she was ready to kill someone, she was only now beginning to understand what it was that she had done. Tearing her own eyes from the dead man, she turned to her friend.

  “Would you rather have been sent to prison Lilliana? Left to the tender mercies of the state police, come on Lilliana get control of yourself we have to go now.” Carmen cried out as tears streamed down her face as reality kicked in.

  Lilliana stood there frozen, unable to move, then after two long seconds she turned her head slowly to look once more at the dead body at their feet, her whole body shook and a loud wail escaped from her mouth that would soon turn to a loud scream. Carmen grabbed Lilliana with one hand, turned her towards her, and brought her other hand round in a loud slap that stopped the wail in its tracks. The look of surprise on Lilliana’s face that followed the slap caused Carmen to smile, and now she dragged the shaking Lilliana away from the security room. They had forgotten to use the super glue on the lock on the security room, something that Delong had stressed was of the utmost importance, but it didn`t matter as the two guards would be out for a long time. The two women soon reached the outer door and quickly exited the studios.

  Elsewhere in the television studios, Delong had reached the empty control room and exchanged the pre-recorded program for the one that he had acquired from Admiral Stator. On leaving the room he quickly sprayed the lock of the control room with his canister of super glue, this was to ensure that the program couldn`t be switched back to the original program, which was the music festival, and then he returned to his office. Once inside, and with the door firmly shut he walked straight to the large window set into far wall and opened it to see Carmen and Lilliana waiting below him. He pushed his disguise and his spray can of glue into a carrier bag and dropped it down to Carmen`s waiting hands. Then he quickly closed the window and sat down behind his desk. Lilliana and Carmen had looked very pale Delong thought; obviously, the danger was affecting the two women. He was also feeling the affects of carrying out such an audacious plan, but he kept his cool. He would be suitably surprised and astounded when the state police asked their questions.

  Carmen took Lilliana, who was still in a state of shock, back to Johor and Lilliana`s apartment where she found Johor waiting anxiously. After telling a shocked Johor about the cause of his wife`s problem, and the reason for the red mark upon her face, she went into the couple`s kitchen and began to make three hot cups of Kakao, leaving her friend to tend to his wife. Johor hadn`t anticipated murder either, but rather the studio manager than his wife, which would likely be the result if the state police got their hands on her. He held his trembling wife in his arms but said nothing, he didn`t know what to say to her, but finally she stopped trembling and looked up into his eyes. Her own were now filled with tears as she finally came to terms with what had happened earlier on. It wouldn`t be so simple for Carmen.

  “Johor, I didn`t expect anyone to die, when Lexan went through the plan earlier I assumed things would go exactly as he laid it out to us.”

  Lexan Delong, along with all of the rest of the studio employees, was interrogated by the state police long into the next morning. However, he pleaded innocence and was finally released when the state police accepted that they didn`t have any evidence as to whether any of them were part of the attack on the studio, and so were innocent of anything to do with the incident. The thought being was that the anarchists, as the state police called them, had all been intruders who were aided by someone who had somehow gained entrance to the studios, and this person was currently unknown to them. They did know that this person had masqueraded as Planum Class. Class himself was also found to be innocent, as he had been two hundred miles away at the time; he was attending a party held by a local mayor of his small hometown.