by Henry Vogel
“It’s all right, Matt. I can descend stairs and talk at the same time.” Michelle listened for a few seconds then smiled. “Yes ma’am, that’s pretty much exactly what Matt said.”
We descended further as our parents continued questioning Michelle. “No, I don’t think the marriage is premature. I love Matt and he loves me. And we both know it beyond all shadow of a doubt.”
Michelle’s eyes widened. “You figured that out, Daddy? I never did until he told me.”
That almost made me miss a step. “Jonas figured out about my psychic ability?”
“Daddy says it took him years, but he spent more time around you than anyone. And he’s really observant—it’s part of what makes him so good at his job.”
Her attention returned to the comm unit. “What’s that, Daddy?” I almost missed it in the dim light, but suddenly Michelle blushed. “In, um, really…intimate…moments, Matt’s feelings come through loud and clear…Well, if you don’t want to hear the answers, then stop asking the questions, Daddy…Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the support. And just in case anyone I call ‘Daddy’ is thinking of asking, I’ll tell you right now that I am not pregnant.”
By this time, we’d descended halfway to the floor below. Noise still echoed around us and hand-held lights still waved around on the catwalk above. Those searching were getting closer to the junction box I’d sabotaged. If they found it, could they repair the shield before help arrived? We needed our connection to the outside world to coordinate with our help when it arrived. Then I cut my speculation short as I heard a commotion from below, followed by the pounding of feet on the stairs.
I tapped Michelle and pointed down. She nodded. “You’re all going to have to shut up now. Matt and I have to get off the stairs so I’m pocketing the comm.”
Without another word, she pulled the comm from her ear and stuffed it in her pocket. Then she muttered, “Parents.”
We went to the stair railing and Michelle climbed over the rail. “We’re going to have to climb around the framework and hide behind the stairs.”
I followed her example, adding, “You know heights terrify me.”
“Yes, even if it wasn’t in your briefing, I’d have figured it out watching you during that trip to the amusement park back in eighth grade.” Michelle led the way along an extremely narrow girder, using one hand to steady herself with a girder just over her head. “I never did figure out why you rode the roller coaster so much, though. Didn’t that scare you?”
I knew the chatter was Michelle’s way of taking my mind off the yawning gulf below us, but I went along with it. Both of my hands gripped the girder above and I shuffled my feet, never picking them up from the girder below. “Roller coasters are the worst—until the coaster crests that first hill and the ride really gets started. Then they’re the best thing ever.”
Michelle reached a point beyond the stairs and casually stepped across a meter of open air to a girder behind the stairs. I reached the same point and froze, staring down to the docking bay floor far, far below us.
“Okay, babe, just take one big step and then we can just duck down in the shadows and let the pirates run right past us.”
I nodded but my feet stubbornly stayed where they were while the pounding footsteps came closer and closer.
Michelle reached for me. “Just take my hand and step across, Matt. I know you can do it.”
I reached toward her hand and then, hating myself, snatched my hand back to grab onto the girder above me. I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“You know it’s bad luck to get your wife killed before you’ve even been married for a week, right?” Michelle gave up coaxing and shifted to a stern whisper. “Well, that’s what will happen when those pirates see you standing over there. They’ll shoot you and you’ll fall. If I’m very lucky, the pirates will shoot me when they find me. Seeing how short of pretty women this base is, though, I’ll probably end up as the plaything for a ship full of criminals.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I whispered fiercely. Taking a deep breath, I stepped across to the next girder. I wobbled a bit, but Michelle steadied me.
“Great job, babe. Now we just have to sit down on the girder and we’ll disappear into the shadows.” Michelle gracefully straddled the girder, her feet dangling off either side of it. She patted her lap. “You can lean forward and lay your head in my lap. It’ll be just like the night in the spaceship before we left Draconis.”
Michelle held out a hand to steady me as I lowered myself onto the girder. With a shudder of relief, I leaned over and laid my head in her lap. Michelle gently stroked my hair as we huddled in the shadows. A moment later, feet pounded around the landing just below our position and up the stairs. We both held our breath, knowing this was when the pirates were most likely to spot us. They never even slowed down.
We waited for the pirates to ascend a few more flights of stairs before deciding it was safe to move. Before we got going, Michelle kissed me, smiled wickedly, and said, “You did really well, honey. So well you deserve something special in return.”
“Like what?” I couldn’t keep a bit of a leer off my face.
Michelle rose to her feet. “I’ll tell you when we’re back on the stairs.”
Proper motivation is everything. I made it back to the stairs right behind Michelle and never once needed coaxing from her. Then she told me what her ‘something special’ was before leading off down the stairs.
“How am I supposed to concentrate on this mission after you planted that image in my mind?” I asked.
“That’s easy, Matt. It won’t happen until we get out of here and find ourselves a private room.” Only then did she reach into her pocket and pull out the comm unit.
“Then let’s get this over with.”
We finished our descent without further incident but could no longer keep to the shadows. The floor of the docking bay around the two ships was brightly lit, providing illumination for the work being performed on the two pirate ships. Trying to act inconspicuous, we turned away from the two ships and toward the huge docking bay door.
Several pirates carried pads similar to Michelle’s maintenance pad, so she pulled hers out and flashed it about. It’s all about looking busy without actually being busy. It didn’t work.
A pirate called, “Hey, you two. Can you help me over here?”
We needed to get the docking bay door open so Jonas’s help could get inside and couldn’t really spare time to help the pirate. But we also couldn’t afford to rouse the man’s suspicion. And, most importantly, we couldn’t allow the pirate to get a look at Michelle. Just having the man watch her walk away, even wearing the loose and shapeless maintenance coveralls, was risky. If the clothes shifted at just the wrong moment, any man alive would recognize the feminine swing of Michelle’s hips.
“I’ll take care of this,” I murmured. “You just keep walking away.”
Not waiting for Michelle’s answer, I spun about and headed toward the man who’d called. As subtly as possible, I put myself between Michelle’s retreating form and the pirate. After all, the less he saw of her the better.
“What do you need?” I called.
“What I need is both of you.” The pirate waved toward a portable machine mounted on a motorized cart. The right front of the cart rested on the floor, its wheel caught in the well for recessed rails. “The last moron to come through here with the crane didn’t put the metal plate back over the tracks after he got past here.”
At the far end of the first spaceship, a huge crane sat on the same set of rails. Near the stuck cart, a thin metal sheet lay on the floor.
“We’ve got a deadline, so you’re going to have to settle for me. Just be glad the first part of our job can be done by one guy.” I stopped beside the cart and adopted the standard ‘guy studying a problem pose.’ Basically, I crossed my arms and shook my head. “Man, you are stuck but good.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” The man wormed one end
of a three meter piece of pipe between the lip of the recess for the rail and the front end of the cart. “Can you help me lever the wheel up and out?”
“Yeah, sure.”
We were out in the plain sight of a bunch of other pirates, so I kept the stun stick up my sleeve. Instead, I grabbed the end of the pipe and the two of us put all of our weight onto it. The cart rose incredibly slowly out of the recess and, once clear, rolled backward onto level flooring. I released the pipe, ready to continue on my way, but noticed the pirate looking at my hands. A quick glance at his hands showed why. The man had some sort of spoked wheel tattooed on the back of his left hand.
Since I’d obviously seem him studying my hand, I had to say something. I thought of Cummings and Spitz. Did they have tattoos? I hoped not.
“I’m with Cummings’ crew. We operate out in the open so we can’t wear the mark.”
The pirate nodded slowly. “Right. Sorry, but you can’t be too careful.”
“No problem. Look, I’ve got to catch up with my partner.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder in the direction Michelle went.
“Sure. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. See you around.”
I turned and walked away, willing myself to act casually. I swore I could feel the man’s eyes boring into my back and expected him to shout at any moment. Then I heard the obvious sounds of someone dragging a metal plate across the floor. A second later, I heard the whine of an electric motor and the clump-clump of wheels rolling over the metal plate. I heaved a big sigh of relief at my narrow escape.
Suddenly, the cart’s little horn began beeping incessantly and the driver shouted, “We’ve got two intruders in the docking bay! Over here! Two intruders!”
I broke into a run, hoping to disappear into the shadows before too many pirates spotted me. It didn’t take long to get out of the light, as the only well-lit areas were around the two ships. Once out of direct light, I steered clear of the pools of light around doors to storage areas and control boxes and the like. Behind me, the driver no longer shouted and the cart’s horn no longer beeped. That had to mean he’d drawn the attention he sought. How long did I have before pursuit swarmed all over this end of the docking bay?
Not long, it turned out. Shouts rose behind me and the sounds of a lot of running feet echoed around the docking bay. From far above, hand-held lights lanced down to the floor, forcing me to swerve and dodge even more. Staying in the shadows took so much of my attention, I feared I would miss the door controls entirely. Then I spotted something flashing dimly in the shadows to my left.
Risking discovery, I ignored the searching lights for a few seconds and stared hard at the flashing light. The light was too dim for a torch and too strangely shaped. It was rectangular and not more than thirty centimeters across. Then I got it—Michelle was waving the pad around so I could see the screen.
I put on a burst of speed to reach her—and the door controls—all the faster. And that’s when one of the lights from far above caught me. I passed back into shadow in a fraction of a second, but I heard a shout from far above and half a dozen lights flicked to my area. I cut ninety degrees to the right and tried to angle around the sweeping lights. I mostly succeeded, but the pirates knew where I had been and the direction I had been running. Even if they never figured out my destination, the pirates had the manpower to find us with a simple brute force search.
I skidded to a stop at the door controls, just in time to help Michelle wrestle a metal barrel into place. She’d already dragged a few smaller boxes around the controls, creating some small cover.
“Matt, Daddy says to get the doors open fast. Help is on its way.” Michelle angled the pad screen so it illuminated the keypad for the door controls. “He also sent a team of your bodyguards to the door in starship maintenance, but they won’t be here for another two or three minutes.”
“Got it.” Never before had two or three minutes seemed like an eternity, but it sure did now. I pulled a range of tools out of the coverall pockets. “Did you have a chance to check out the keypad?”
“Yeah. They supported local business and stole a GenCo oh two oh one model.”
I burst out laughing. “Seriously? That’s the same model Jonas installed in my aunt and uncle’s house after my parents disappeared.”
“Why is that funny?”
My fingers tapped keys on the control pad. “I found out about the requisition before he filed it. That night, I used a backdoor into the GenCo system and installed a permanent code key into the keypad’s firmware. I couldn’t let a keypad keep me from slipping away from my bodyguards, after all.”
“You mean you can open it?”
“Sure. It’s a long code—I didn’t want anyone stumbling across it by accident—but I’ll have this thing open in twenty seconds.”
Then two lights stabbed out of the darkness and lit the keypad and a man shouted, “They’re at the door controls.”
Michelle pulled me down behind her makeshift barrier as a hail of blaster bolts flashed all around us. “Duck, Matt!”
The barrier wasn’t high enough to offer cover for the keypad. The keypad wasn’t much higher, though. Surely, I could enter the code key without raising anything but my hand above the barrier. Without giving myself a chance for second thoughts, I reached for the keypad.
Blaster bolts spattered on the wall, showering us with hot sparks. Then pain erupted from my hand as a blaster bolt burned a hole in it down to the bone!
CHAPTER TWENTY
Breakthrough
I dropped to the floor, curling up around my throbbing hand. Much as I tried to stifle it, I screamed in pain.
“Oh my God, Matt!” Michelle spun around at my cry, fear and concern drawing her face taut. Her eyes searched for my wound and found nothing. “He’s been shot, Daddy, but I can’t see where.”
I forced myself to unbend and showed her my right hand. She sucked breath in through her teeth when she saw the blaster burn. “No, it’s not life-threatening, ma’am. He’s got a hole burned halfway through his hand.”
A hail of blaster bolts splattered against our makeshift barrier and the wall behind us. From what seemed like very far away, a pirate shouted, “Looks like we got the shooter. Move in!”
I waved Michelle back toward our defense. “You…shoot…I’m okay.”
Concern still reflected on her face, Michelle nodded and spun around. She snapped off several shots and was rewarded with a scream from the other side. Shouts of surprise erupted and I heard the clatter of people scrambling for cover.
“Got one!” Michelle crowed. “That still leaves a few hundred, of course…Yes sir, Matt’s wound does throw a spanner into Daddy’s rescue plan.”
Through the pain, the word ‘spanner’ triggered something. Spanner… Spanned… Hand… Rhyme time… Focus! I had to span the gap between cover and the keypad. I looked at the collection of tools I’d pulled from my tool belt. Heh, I did have a locking spanner. And the vibroblade hilt. Leaving the blade turned off, I clamped the spanner around the hilt and raised it to the keypad to continue tapping the code key. It came up just a few centimeters short.
“Dammit.” I looked around for some way to make my code tapper a little longer—and spotted the stun stick and the roll of tape. Moving as quickly as my wounded hand allowed, hissing in agony throughout, I taped the spanner handle to the stun stick.
Michelle, hearing my oath, glanced quickly over her shoulder. “What are you doing? Keep your hand still or you’ll make the wound worse.”
“Keeping it still is more likely to make us dead,” I said through gritted teeth. “We both know the pirates are just waiting until your power pack is exhausted. They’ll be able to take us at their leisure once that happens. But I think I can use this to finish typing in the code key.”
“How many more numbers do you have to enter?”
“I’ve already entered eight, so eight more.” I lifted my extended code tapper with my left arm, struggling to keep it
under control.
Michelle listened to her comm briefly. “Yes, Daddy, I was going to ask that…And what are the rest of the numbers, in case I have to enter them?”
“Your birthdate. The first eight are my birthdate.” The vibroblade hilt wobbled too much to use one handed. Breathing fast, I grabbed the stun stick with my right hand, too. In my mind, I forced myself to imagine what would happen to Michelle if I didn’t enter the code. Forcing that horrific image into a loop, I pushed the pain aside.
“You have got to be kidding me, Matt.” Despite her incredulous tone, Michelle kept up her vigil, firing off a couple of shots. “You said you programmed that shortly after your parents disappeared.”
I tapped the two digits for Michelle’s birth month, fighting to keep from hitting any other keys. There wasn’t time to do this twice, so it had to be right the first time. “I told you I’ve been in love with you since the sixth grade.”
Tap.
Blaster fire picked up and bolts flew all around my makeshift tool. Michelle returned fire deliberately, conserving her power pack and trying to gain me time to finish the code. “Why don’t the pirates just shoot the keypad? Won’t that make it impossible for you to open the door?”
Tap.
“Yes, but it will make it impossible for them to open it, too. They’ve got to know the jig is up here at Pegasus Station.” Tap. “Can you feel the deep thrumming that started up about the same time as our shootout?” Tap. “The pirates are powering up their ships. I’ll bet they’re going to make a run for it—but they can’t run if they can’t open the doors.”
My control improved with each tap and I only two more numbers to go. Then a bolt caught the stun stick right below the spanner handle. With a crack, the stun stick broke.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Now what?” Michelle fired three more shots before looking over her shoulder. Seeing the broken stun stick in my hand, she simply said, “Oh.”
“How many shots have you got left, babe?” I asked.
“Six or seven, maybe.”
