BENNY’S CONFLICT

Afterwhat has seemed like months, Benny, Shana and Carlos have successfully rescued Carlos’ parents from the prison planet they have been imprisoned in for over thirty years. Unfortunately, this may be a very temporary rescue as the hatch leading to freedom is securely sealed.

EVERYONE in the ship stared in silence for a moment at the unrelenting hatch above their heads. The thick concrete would not be opening in a long time. Benny looked over at Shana, and he could tell she had no idea what to do. Then he looked over at Carlos, who was beginning to form a plan in his head.

Carlos explained that the superlaser he had could destroy the concrete, but the ship would have to be out of the way or it would get crushed by the rubble, and the security bots were waiting for them on the ground. Shana sat deep in thought, before she explained her idea. It would have worked, if the Freedom Cube had survived.

Then Benny pitched in, explaining the Freedom Cube was still with them, and not lost forever somewhere in the stairwell. This was what Shana needed to fulfil her plan. After some tinkering and hacking on the cube, she managed to get into the prison system, just like Izen had done. After a silent few seconds, she twisted it like a Rubik’s cube.

Immediately, a screeching and grinding could be heard across the planet, the collective opening of every cell door.

They wanted chaos to distract the security bots, and what more chaos could they create than setting free every prisoner on the planet?

The bots would certainly round most of them up, but now they were occupied with the planetwide crisis and not the initial escapees, who managed to land The Golden Dawn out of the way of the hatch.

The bots were gone, but the alarms across the prison was deafening.

Carlos leant out the door and aimed at the hatch that had blocked their way.

After the laser booted up, it fired, and with a spectacular smashing noise and a few rumbles the rubble fell.

Everyone on the ship celebrated, but not for long, because they needed to leave as quick as possible.

Once everybody was strapped in, the ship’s engines booted up and it flew through the hole out into the planet’s atmosphere. Shana piloted it past the laser turrets on the surface as fast as she could, but they detected the ship and started firing.

She began yelling down to the crew to disable the turrets, but Benny realised that nobody here could hack.

That was when Carlos revealed what his laser had actually been, and it folded and twisted back into the shape of his android, Carlson.

With haste, he attached the

Freedom Cube to the back of Carlson’s head, and told the android to disable the turrets. Immediately afterwards, the laser fire stopped, and Shana breathed a sigh of relief.

Benny could tell that Carlos’ parents were impressed at his escape plan, and he understood why.

He also thought what other bad situations Carlos had planned for, and was about to ask, but Carlos was distracted by their final obstacle, the rapidly closing forcefield in front of them.

It was clear they were not going to make it, and once again Benny was confident this was the end. It disturbed him how many times he had been sure going to die in this adventure, but that must be what came with this kind of lifestyle.

Shana, however, was not prepared to give up. Benny watched as she began preparing the ship for full speed, the insanely fast speed these ships could travel, faster than the speed of sound.

Manually flying this fast was extremely hard, and Benny was about to protest, but then the ship accelerated.

The speed it travelled always made Benny feel sick, and he felt more sick due to the emotions of the day.

But they sped past the forcefield and far away from the prison planet. Immediately, they stopped with a jolt.

Benny was confident he had nine lives, and he was about to thank Shana for her help when she announced there was something she had to do.

With that, she turned around and aimed her shield-rifle at Carlos’ cowering parents.

To be continued…