Matt & Michelle 1: The Fugitive Heir (22 page)

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.”

That didn’t leave me time to tape the two pieces together, much less finish typing in the remaining two digits. I stared hard at the gap between our cover and the keypad. Never had half a meter seemed so far before.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “To hell with it. My hand is already wounded.”

“Matt, what-”

Releasing my deep breath and fighting the pain, I raised my right hand to the keypad. The sharp smell of blaster fire against metal increased as the pirates shot faster. Two keys. I just needed to tap two keys. Then I could curl up around my shrieking hand again.

Tap
.

I felt the heat of near misses and sharp prick of minor burns as sparks showered my hand.

Tap
.

The door control light switched from red to green. Without giving myself a chance to think about it, I slapped my palm down on the door control. The jolt sent pain lancing from my hand and through my arm but then I felt the deep, metallic thump of doors releasing and the deeper hum of large motors pulling a heavy load.

“Matt did it!” Michelle called over the comm. “The doors are opening.”

A pirate yelled, “Looks like we’re out of time, boys, and the boss says hostages will come in handy. Let’s get ‘em!”

With a roar, half a hundred pirates rose from behind cover and charged our position.

I scooted up next to Michelle and we took turns firing around our metal barrel barricade. Michelle’s blaster had much greater range and accuracy than my little taser—especially with me firing left handed—but the mass of charging pirates was hard to miss.

Just as I leaned out for my third shot, Michelle grabbed my coverall and pulled me to the ground. “Daddy says duck.”

The high-pitched whine of repulsers came from our right, followed by the harsh glare and floor-melting heat of a ship-mounted laser cannon. Pirates screamed in pain and terror as another laser blast burned some of them and blinded a lot more. The mass of feet pounding toward our position became a rout of feet running away.

As I blinked my eyes to clear the after-image of laser bolts, I heard the whine of several more repulsers. In the dim light, the state-of-the-art starfighter hovering ten meters to our right shone like a beacon of hope in the darkest night of the year. Flight Commander Nancy Martin gave me a two-fingered salute, all the while barking out orders to her fighter wing. The five ships under her command maneuvered through the docking bay, harrying pirates and taking shots at the unshielded engine of the closer Q-ship.

Grinning from ear-to-ear at our sudden reversal of fortune, I said, “Michelle, tell Jonas we need a ride up to the catwalk so we can get my parents.”

“Daddy already has that covered, Matt. Look.” She pointed up at a small personnel shuttle hovering overhead. A team of armed men sprang from the shuttle to the catwalk and charged into the office.

“Once your parents are aboard, the shuttle will pick us up, too. Then we just wait for the Federation navy to arrive and mop up the pirates.” Michelle took my uninjured left hand. “You did it, babe. You rescued your parents.”

I gave Michelle a quick kiss, wishing we had time for a more leisurely one. “
We
did it, Michelle. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Michelle’s eyes danced as we watched the team hustle my parents out of their prison and onto the shuttle. She put the comm into my ear, saying, “Daddy wants to talk to you.”