||Location: [CLASSIFIED]
||Time: 1023 MST

Kir’ion wished they’d had more time to give him all the answers he was seeking, but the situation just didn’t allow for it. They’d have plenty of time after their escape. She expected they’d be together a while. Anyone who could remove bonded Imperial tech would have to be keeping a very low profile meaning it would probably take a while to track them down. The prospect wasn’t an unwelcome one, though. Freedom and a friend was more than she expected to have by the end of the day. 

Harrison took to telepathic communication much easier than she expected. The precision with which his words pierced was untrained but clearer than most beginners. With practice, he’d be able to reach out to her easily with just a thought and learn how to shield his mind from intrusion. Fate must surely have worked her spell over them, Kir thought to herself. 

She nodded firmly at his order, taking a few steps to put herself in line behind him. She had grown up around the very tool that gave him his powers, but when the armor materialized, she was startled by it. It was the same armor she knew, but something was off. Kir’ion chalked it up to whatever damages it had sustained that allowed him to control it rather than the other way around. Curiosity almost got the better of her until Harrison shattered the floor, using a shockwave to disable the guards. It wasn’t lost on her that his first choice was non-lethal action. As if on cue, the alarm rang out throughout the entire base. Once the alarm was triggered, all the moving parts went into play and there was no time to hesitate.

Bending down to one of the soldiers, she placed a hand on his cheek and closed her eyes for a moment. “We have maybe five minutes before the blast doors seal and lock us in. There are three security doors between us and the hangar,” she shared what she’d learned from the guard’s nearly unconscious mind. She flipped open the pocket on his uniform shirt and pulled out an unmarked card that would get them through the locked checkpoints. Jogging over to the door, she peeked around to check the hall. It was clear for the moment, but she could hear bootfalls coming. ”Come on,” she waved him over through the door and followed quickly behind him. She kept up with his pace, staying tucked partway behind Harrison’s shoulder to easily duck behind him. She was the only one of the two of them in any real danger; his armor was more than capable of deflecting projectiles like bullets.

As soon as they got to the hangar, she saw her ship nestled amongst all the jets and helicopters. The engineering hangar was a research lab in its own right and they had been reverse engineering her ship for years to improve their own technology. Spurred forward by seeing their way out, she took off at a sprint for the cargo door of the ship.

“Oh, sweet girl, what did they do to you?” Kir muttered, realizing as she got closer that it was partially disassembled. It would have to be enough, though. She threw herself into the pilot’s seat as soon as she hit the cockpit and began priming the engines for take-off. The blast doors at the end of the hanger were slowly inching closed, so they needed to get in the air fast. 

“Bypass start-up sequence, ignore all systems warnings, and send full power to engines,” she told the ship’s command panel as her fingers flew over the controls. A melodic chirp affirmed the voice command. “Hold onto something, Harr. This is going to be rough,” she added, turning to look at him for a split second. The ship gave an unsettling mechanical screech jerking her attention back to the flight controls as she murmured a string of soft encouragements. The ship lurched forward onto the runway and she could see what must have been half the soldiers on site running into the hangar.

“Too late, chumps,” she grinned, turning the ship toward the hangar door and launching them out at full speed. They’d be halfway to the moon before air support could be scrambled. As the sky came into view beyond the mountain, she angled them upward and out of the atmosphere.

It was over. 

Kir’ion sank back against her chair with a heavy sigh. The sky gave way to stars and everything beyond – an entire universe was unfolding before them. "I missed that view." She turned to Harrison again with a look somewhere between relief and joy, “Are you okay?”