Explore "Fugue" by Stephen Marlowe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The rescue proved so incredibly simple that Ker-jon almost couldn't believe his senses. With his two uniformed companions he made his way down the length of the Ark and deep within its bowels, almost to where the unknown engines which propelled them through space thundered and roared and pounded within their casings. Here in a deserted storeroom the prisoners were kept. And Ker-jon's uniformed companions walked right in, just like that, unquestioned by the guards who stood watch in the corridor.
The fight was brief. Unleashed, the prisoners swarmed all over their guards, killing them quite expertly, and quite ruthlessly. No time for an alarm, and the engines drowned all sounds of combat. Towards the end, Ker-jon had to turn away. What the mutants did to their captors wasn't pretty. But in a sense he couldn't blame them -- what was the old expression about the shoe being on the other foot?