Pidge is staring at Shiro as though the man holds the secrets to life and death and also kicked his puppy. 

"That—that's Captain Shirogane Takashi," he stutters. "He was the pilot on the Kerberos mission! We have to go down there!" 

Akira starts calculating a path through the encampment. "We won't do much good caught."

"But how do we get past the guards?" Pidge mutters. "We could...get some hazmat suits and sneak in pretending to be medtechs?" 

"I'm pretty good at fast talking? And yeah some kind of stolen uniform's gonna work best I think. Though biggest is not looking nervous, you gotta look like you belong."

Pidge nods seriously. 

"You know, what we really need is some kind of—"

There's a BOOM as something explodes just over a nearby hill on the opposite side of the crater. 

"...distraction?" 

"...That was weirdly convenient," Nuray mutters.

"Yeah, but not for us—look!"

As most of the guards rush to investigate the explosions, someone with a scarf tied over their face drives up on a hoverbike from the side nearer the three cadets, out of sight of the distracted guards.

Leaving the bike running, the person leaps to the ground and heads into the airlock of the med dome. 

"Let's go."

She starts heading to the med tent, keeping down but moving fast.

Akira curses under his breath and follows her.

Pidge follows too, scrambling to keep up on shorter legs. 

With the guards' attention diverted, it's not hard to reach the airlock. From there, they find their way cleared for them: the stranger with the hoverbike has left a trail of knocked-out Garrison personnel behind him. 

When the three of them get into the dome, he's already cut the straps and is hauling Captain Shirogane—who seems to have been drugged unconscious—off the table. The medtechs, like the guards, are down for the count. 

He's pulled his scarf down, and under the bright lights, hoverbike guy is recognisable as a cadet from Nuray's class who got expelled last year. 

"Oh, great. Who the hell are you." 

" - We're cadets. We were investigating the crash and then saw they had him tied up and wanted to rescue him."

"Fine." He tugs one of Shirogane's arms over his shoulders. "One of you get his other arm." 

The 'other arm' in question, Shirogane's right, is some kind of metallic prosthesis. 

Nuray does; she suspects she's the strongest of the three cadets, and Akira's going to be more useful keeping an eye out, anyways.

Then she can help haul an unconscious guy outside and load him onto the hoverbike. It's a passenger model, with a second seat behind the driver and a bit of extra cargo space at the back, and clearly modified considerably. 

Its owner, who hasn't introduced himself yet, is constantly alert, looking around for any sign that the rest of the guards have noticed their presence. 

A torch beam swings in their direction, and they can hear the guards shouting to each other. 

"...we should get out of here."

Having said that, though, Pidge is making no moves to actually step away from the hoverbike and its passenger. 

He swings himself into the driver's seat and sighs. "Alright, get on, quickly."

There's just about room for all of them to pile onto the hoverbike. Someone's going to have to have the unconscious guy on their lap, though. 

Nuray fortunately has zero bubble. She and Akira climb on, Nuray with unconscious dude in her lap.

Pidge squeezes in as well. 

The bike starts to move almost as soon as everyone's feet are off the ground, accelerating a little too fast to be entirely safe and leaving a dust cloud behind them. Sounds of pursuit are clearly audible behind them as the bike streaks across the desert. 

Their driver is reckless, scarily so, but he clearly knows this terrain like the back of his hand and knows his vehicle even better. There's one particularly heart-stopping moment where he drives them straight up to the edge of a cliff—Garrison trucks right behind them—and then carries on right over the edge, sending them plummeting downwards.

(Pidge shrieks like a girl.)

This is actually kind of fun. She never gets to do bullshit like this anymore.

Isn't it, though. 

He's laughing when he brings them out of the dive, pulling up at just the right moment to translate downward momentum into forward motion using the hoverbike's cushion of air. Their pursuers, not being equipped with hover vehicles, watch helplessly from the clifftop as they escape into the night. 

"Warn us next time, asshole!" Pidge yells, voice high-pitched with shock and indignation. 

Nuray starts laughing.

Eventually, they come to a stop outside a small...well, 'shack' is probably the only word for this building. It looks like there are maybe two rooms inside, but it has its own generator and water tank. 

"Help me get him inside."