Unwelcome attention

Calvo cautiously looked up and around. Painful twinges from the stun beam still plucked at his muscles, making them twitch, but he finally felt like he could move.

He saw the mist-filled **** dome on the beach, still intact. The guards were still trapped, then? How long had it been? He wondered if they had been badly affected by his reduction of the temperature.

He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet. He bent down to pick up the control panel and shuffled forward through the brush. Before he could advance far enough to see any details inside the dome, he felt more than heard the teeth-shaking whine of an **** craft in overdrive. Calvo went to ground and buried himself in a drift of sand mounded behind the fallen trunk of a giant tree fern.

The whine increased in volume, and suddenly there was a flash and a WHUMP! that blasted Calvo out of his hiding place. He tumbled and rolled with the **** of the blast wave. A sharp pain flashed through his left leg.

His ears ringing, Calvo recklessly stood up. In the distance, he saw the retreating tail of the **** craft, perhaps one of the ones that had attacked the prison. His left leg ached, and he looked down to see his lower leg running freely with blood. Some blast-thrown fragment must have ripped through him while he was tumbled round.

The control panel was a heap of junk crumpled to the side, but it mattered little. The **** craft had blown the dome, and a tower of smoke and mist twisted skyward.

Calvo felt a little dizzy. He wondered if he should try and find the guards' supplies for the sake of a medpack, or try and stop the bleeding before he proceeded. Could any of the guards have survived the assualt?