“Evening Wisp, or should I say Ensign William Spacer, Valedictorian. Congratulations by the way.”

“Cheers Carl”

“What are you doing down here in the ranges? Graduations tomorrow I thought you’d be finishing writing your speech?”

“No I’m going stir crazy sat staring at the paper, thought I’d come down fire off a few rounds let off steam.”

“Sure, sure there’s nobody down here it’s all yours. Also as you’re an ensign now I can let you into the enlisted gear.”

“Nice. Erm, I’ll take a look at the X-57 Widow Sniper rifle, Vindicator assault, and how about a Shuriken Sub-Machine pistol?”

“Sorry Wisp you’re only allowed one at a time you know the rules”

“Come on Carl you know as much as I do that rules only there for stock issues. Im just trying to save you trips into the back. I’m not gonna pinch em.”

“Yea Suppose you’re right.” He stood up from the desk and headed into the back shouting over his shoulder as he went “It’d be one hell of a head line ‘Valedictorian steals Military hardware’ Hahaha. Here ya are. Sniper, Assault and a Machine pistol.”

“Could you pass me a body armour set? I wanna get the feel for a full combat gear.”

“Don’t get too comfy in that combat gear. With your record you’ll be lucky to see any ground deployment before they whisk you off to ship duty!”

Carl passed him the body armour which fitted over his undress uniform. Wisp then began fixing the two rifles to his back and the sidearm on his hip. As he reached for the last weapon he released a spray from a small aerosol covertly in his hand.

“We’ll I’ll probably shoot for about an hour then turn in. You look tired, maybe you should have a nap?”

“Yea.. I was feeling pretty beat. If anyone comes by just gimme a nudge.”

“Sure thing Carl, Night Night” Carl promptly fell asleep and began snoring heavily.

As soon as he was out Wisp headed for the emergency exit, picking up a rucksack of his clothes on the way. Before he’d covered half the distance he had a portable terminal in his hand which he used to disable all the alarms on the door for when he reached it. He stepped out into an area on the edge of campus where live fire trials were carried out. After a quick check on direction he set off towards town at a quick jog.

He’d planned this escape for month down to the last details, although he’d had the idea a few years previously. He didn’t want to be some military thug for the faceless alliance, he wanted freedom. At first all the guns and orders were exactly what a young teenage boy wanted, but soon he started finding the lectures and tactics went against his personal morals. Nobody seemed to care about people, in fact people seemed to be the biggest thing getting in the way of the grand scheme of Alliance control. He tried to talk to his parents about his opinions and after they’d changed their underwear told him in no uncertain terms to forget these silly ideals and fall in line. Well Wisp didn’t want to fall in line, and the more he sat through those lectures and read about how the cogs of the Alliance really worked he wanted to blow the whole line to hell.

He reached the fence exactly on schedule and began his next step. Unfortunately the security here wasn’t as easy to bypass as the door earlier so it required some creative thinking. Well the creative thinking had been done before time and all Wisp needed to do now was press a button and execute the whole thing. When he did every light-flyer on the base suddenly turned on and engaged their engines at full throttle, simultaneously every internal alarm on the base activated and one section of the outer wall went down for one minute. Of course the outer wall was entirely overlooked in the chaos and Wisp was over the wall and into the wilderness. The weapons he’d stolen were top of the line and should keep him safe until he could get off world.

But now he was free. No longer forced into service in the great conspiracy, his future was his own.