“That looks good,” Johnny said, reaching for the mallet, but Acorna shook her head.
“Find your own weapons,” she told him. “I like the heft of this.”
Johnny’s eyebrows shot up, but he made no further protest.
“I did mention, didn’t I, that she’s very independent?” Calum asked drily.
“You didn’t tell me the half of it,” Johnny muttered, rummaging around the cluttered room for something he could use as a weapon. He settled on a length of thin cable that he carefully knotted around a pair of screwdrivers.
“I’ve got a better idea than using the good doctor as bait,” Calum said. “Markel, you said you could hack into hangar security and disable the grapples on the AcaSeckil If you did it now, that’d distract them for a moment right when we make our break and give us a head start on getting out of here.”
“Start opening the door and get ready,” Markel said, pressing more key pads. “I got the hangar security on line and …”
The sound of the grapples retracting echoed throughout the large hangar. The guards went running toward the ship, and Markel and his followers were out of the storage room before the guards spotted them.
One of the two guards on the catwalk pounded on a device on the wall before he followed his companion down to the hangar floor. The three guards made straight for the AcaSeckil and the attackers made straight for them.
Acorna let her hammer fly at the nearest guard as he lifted his stunner. Her weapon shattered his hand and sent his stunner skittering across the metal floor, right to Market’s feet. Markel picked it up and downed the top one on the ladder, while Johnny, coming out from behind the bulk of a small shuttlecraft, tackled the third guard before he could raise his weapon. Calum looked around, puzzled that there was no one for him to attack.
“That was too easy,” he said.
Markel was taking the stairs to the catwalk two at a time, and running along it, checking the unlocked hatches leading into the interior of the ship.
“We’re secure in here now,” he called, and sauntered to the farthest ladder, sliding down it without using the actual steps. The boy had had a lot of practice in such acrobatics. The others followed him in more conventional fashion but with scarcely less haste. Even though until Calum powered up they could not lock the hatches, Acorna felt more secure once she and all her friends were inside the AcaSecki.
“Well done, Markel,” Johnny said, throwing an arm about the boys shoulders. “But what do we do now? Once they see us leave, they merely latch the tractor beam on us and haul us back aboard. Unless you can disable that. …”
“Yes, that much I can still do,” Markel said, “but…”
“The AcaSecki’s fast,” Calum said, “but, even with the tractor beam useless, I’d be surprised if the Haven doesn’t have laser cannon and missiles.” Markel nodded, looking mournful. “Both-and there’s no way I can get into those controls.”
“You mean there’s some security on this ship you haven’t worked around?” Johnny pretended amazement, but Markel looked so hangdog that he patted the boy on the back and told him it didn’t matter; there was more than one way to skin a cat.
“We may not be able to get clean away,” Calum said cheerfully, “but we can activate the ship long enough to send out a spurt for help in all possible directions, then lock down again and … well…”
They all looked at one another for a long moment, acknowledging that they might have come to the end of this particular road. Their takeover of the AcaSecki was not likely to go unnoticed for long, no matter how cleverly Markel disguised his jamming of the communications between the harbor and the main deck; and they could hardly hold the little ship like a besieged fortress. “Well, we’ll jump through that spacewarp when we come to it,” Johnny said with a shrug, accepting the inevitable. “Better get on with it-no telling exactly how much time Markel can buy us with his system manipulations.”