“Shut up, you lazy pack of mutts, or you don’t eat for another week!” he bellowed out the door. The howling quieted to a whine. He took a long look around, then turned back to Bunny.
Fresh out of more subtle tricks, she jumped up and ran back to the trap door. She was smart enough not to show her weapon.
“Don’t you touch me again, mister,” she said, lisping a little through her cut lip.
The dogs began howling again, but this time Satok refused to be diverted. He reached Bunny in two seconds flat, and Bunny, backing up, found she was against a wall with nowhere to run, not a good position for any animal to be in. Further more, Satok was standing on the trap door as he closed in on her, his hands going for her throat.
The front door slammed open, flooding the room with strong icy wind.
Bunny punched upward with her ice pick and felt the pointed tip sink into meat. Satok’s grip on her loosened, but he had twisted away from her to face the front door and her weapon didn’t make the lethal strike she intended. She was trying to loosen her neck from his arm and her weapon from his wound when another body crashed into them, almost strangling her as the impact drove Satok’s arm against her wind pipe.
As Satok whirled to meet the new attacker, Bunny dove out of the way, searching for another weapon.
Diego was riding the big man’s back, punching at him with a dagger, but Satok reached back and wrested the dagger from the boy’s hand as if he were taking a rattle from a baby. Bunny groaned. Diego was good with books and computershe wasn’t a fighter.
She picked up a wrench and danced around the two of them, trying to get in a lick here and there but she was afraid of hitting Diego.
Satok looked annoyed, but hardly worried. Still standing on the trap door, he reached back and grabbed Diego’s head in both hands and started pulling him over his shoulder.
Bunny dropped to her knees, threw herself forward, and whacked the big man hard with the wrench, first on the knees, then the shins. He whirled around, still holding Diego’s head in a vise, and she slammed the wrench against the backs of his knees. He fell to the ground with a crash that swept Diego’s legs against the computer table and toppled the machine to the floor.
But when he and Diego fell forward, they cleared the trap door, and the pounding under the door that had been obscured by the sounds of the fight became clear. Bunny crawled to the door and pulled up the ring. Through the widening crack, Krisuk’s arms and head appeared, and with a shove he pushed the door back across Satok’s calves.
Satok was slamming Diego’s head against the floor.
Gaining confidence at the sight of Krisuk climbing out of the hole, followed closely by his father, Bunny dove toward Satok’s head and brought her wrench down over it. Again, the man twisted at a crucial point, and Bunny’s wrench only tore loose the back of his ear just as a third person emerged from the secret passage.
Satok grabbed the injured ear, staggered to his feet, and ran, Krisuk and the others after him.
Bunny knelt beside Diego. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He blinked at her twice, rubbed the back of his head, and said ruefully, “I came to your rescue.”
She kissed him, bloody nose and all. “You sure did. Are you hurt bad?”
His hand came away bloody “Not bad. I think. My dad always said my skull was the hardest part of me.”
Iva was kneeling beside them now. “Come on and I’ll bandage that for you.” she said. “We’ve seen what Satok did to the planet. Some talk he had! The others will catch him and he’ll tell his lies no more.”
“No,” Diego said. “We’ve got to get to Sean and Yana and tell them what Satok’s done.”
“How did you know he was a pirate?” Bunny said.
“If we go back through the cave, you’ll” Diego stopped and stared at her. “What do you mean, pirate? As in pirate pirate?”