by Wesley King
“What did you find?” Sally asked.
“I have no idea,” Jonah said. “Have you ever heard of Project Weed?”
She shook her head. “Anything about the Space Raiders?”
“Not yet. Maybe—”
“Shh,” Sally said suddenly.
They fell silent, and she looked at Jonah, her eyes wide.
“Footsteps.”
Jonah looked around the room in a panic. The desk was the only place to hide.
“Here,” he mouthed, and then quickly climbed behind the desk.
The desk was placed diagonally in the corner of the room, leaving a big-enough gap for them to fit between the desk and the wall. Sally was there in an instant, hunkering down beside him. She was just in time.
Jonah heard someone walk inside, muttering to himself.
“Get the folder, Bogg. Hurry up, Bogg. I need it right now, Bogg. I don’t care if you’re not on duty, Bogg. You’re always on duty, Bogg.”
The man was heading right for them. Jonah and Sally hunkered even lower.
“I need to see PER-7, Bogg,” the man continued. His voice was raspy and rough.
Jonah heard him snatch the Project Weed file off the desk. He exchanged a confused look with Sally as the man started for the door.
“Whatever you want, captain,” the man said. “I live to serve.”
He left the room and started down the hallway, still muttering about the captain.
“That was close,” Sally said.
“Too close,” Jonah agreed. “We better get to the air duct.”
She nodded, and they crept out from behind the desk and started for the door. Jonah was about to take a look into the hall when he heard voices. He quickly stepped against the wall, pulling Sally with him.
“Worst idea ever,” Sally whispered.
The voices grew louder.
“Should save the bars, if you ask me,” one man said. It sounded like Wrinkles.
“And starve ’em all?” another man asked. His voice was familiar too. It was the man who had taken Martin the Marvelous. “Be a nasty cleanup.”
“Nah,” Wrinkles said. “We throw ’em in the air lock and dispose. Easy. We do it with the garbage.”
The other man chuckled. “And Leppy, too?”
“Him most of all,” Wrinkles muttered. “Cost us two weeks.”
“You got somewhere to be?”
“Yeah,” Wrinkles said. “The bar. I’m taking a leave after this job. I’m sick of carrying these miserable kids across the galaxy. And now I have to feed the troublemakers on top of everything else. This is not what I signed up for. We should be back looting the transport ships like the old days.”
“Dangerous game,” the other man said.
“And a profitable one,” Wrinkles said.
They were past Jonah and Sally now, and their voices were growing a bit fainter. Then they came to a stop. Jonah heard a door slide open.
“Here you go, you miserable buggers,” Wrinkles said. “I must have forgotten a bar, so you can fight it out to see who goes hungry. I know my guess,” he sneered.
The door slid shut, and the two men walked past Jonah and Sally again, talking and laughing about some transport ship they’d once hijacked. Jonah waited until their voices had faded away, and then he glanced at Sally.
“Space pirates,” he murmured.
She nodded.
“Follow me,” Jonah said. There was something he had to see.
He took a quick look out the door and then hurried down the hallway.
“What about the air duct?” Sally whispered behind him.
“I need to do something first.”
He jogged down the hallway, looking from door to door. And then he saw it. One door had a square of solid glass built into it, and a well-lit room was visible inside. And there, scooping up the food bars, were the captured Space Raiders. Jonah didn’t know how many had been taken overall, but there were a lot. He saw Martin and Samantha and nine others he didn’t recognize, though two looked like the captured hall guards. He even saw one younger boy who looked a lot like Victoria. He’d found her brother too.
Jonah did notice that Alex wasn’t in there. Jonah hoped he’d made it back to Sector Three.
There was a control panel next to the door. Sally tried 111 and shook her head.
“Didn’t think so,” she said.
Jonah was about to tap on the glass to let them know he was there when he saw the grizzled, sallow-faced man with bright red hair sitting in the corner. He guessed it was Leppy, the imprisoned crew member. And he knew Leppy would gladly give him up to get back into favor with the captain.
Leppy was just glancing toward the door when Jonah stepped out of the way.
“Let’s get to the grate,” he said quickly.
He and Sally jogged back to the air grate, pulled it off, and climbed inside. Not until it was firmly in place and they were tucked farther up the supply duct did Jonah finally relax a little.
He looked at Sally. “I need your help.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
* * *
JONAH AND SALLY DECIDED THE first step to a successful rescue was information. They needed to find out more about the movements of the crew and the controls for the brig door panel, all without being detected by a group of bloodthirsty space pirates.
Jonah was starting to feel like a hero again. Just a really scared one.
They began by crawling through the entire air duct. Unfortunately, the section they were in ended before the brig itself; Sally guessed that the air in the brig was being fed in through a grate in the ceiling. They wouldn’t be able to get in that way.
The air duct also ended before the thick double doors to the bridge, where the captain and his crew piloted the Squirrel across space. Jonah had hoped to spy on the bridge for a while and figure out exactly where they were going, but no luck there, either. However, the air duct did travel along the rest of the crew’s quarters, with scattered grates staring out into the short hallway along the way, which Sally named Pirate Road.
Watching from those grates, Jonah and Sally managed to piece together a loose schedule for the crew. Over the course of three to four hours, Jonah saw five different pirates, including Red Eye, Wrinkles, Bogg, and the two pirates who had captured Martin—Sally had named them Weasel and Beardy. Sally told him she’d seen two others as well, including one she guessed was First Mate Grouter and a stout, foul-mouthed woman she called the Space Witch.
So that left them with seven pirates, Leppy, and Captain White Shark himself. Sally had never even seen him. She had just heard stories.
“Even the crew is afraid of him,” she whispered as they sat hunched beside an air grate, waiting for crew members to walk by. “If you ever run into him, run.”
“I just wish we could get onto the bridge,” Jonah said. “I want to know where we’re going.”
Sally frowned. “We’re going to the Dark Zone. Same as every other trip.”
“Then what’s PER-7?” Jonah asked.
“Who knows,” she said. “A certain part of the Dark Zone, maybe? All I know is, Space Raiders go into the Dark Zone and they don’t come back.” She paused. “I hope that’s because the fight is still going on and you’re all just reinforcements.”
Jonah glanced at her. “And not replacements.”
She nodded.
Jonah pictured himself being dropped onto some haunted alien planet with a bonker and a bunch of marching, uniformed kids at his side. A thick purple haze lay over the planet, sweeping over scorched red soil and barren cliffs that rose to the sky. They walked between the cliffs, the commander at the lead, and then a bellowing cry rang through the air and clawed green monsters with black eyes streamed down the cliffs toward them. Jonah lifted his bonker, preparing to fight, and said a silent good-bye to his family, knowing he would never leave that planet.
Jonah turned back to the grate. “I don’t think I want to go to the Dark Zone.”<
br />
“I don’t blame you,” Sally muttered.
It occurred to Jonah that the thought of hiding in an air duct spying on pirates and plotting to rescue a group of Space Raiders might have once been just as crazy as marching across a red planet with a bonker. He tried to remember what he was like before. A quiet, shy kid with no friends. A scared little boy who watched other kids venture into the woods because he was too afraid of the trees and even more afraid of what the other kids would say if he tried. That was just a few short weeks ago.
Space was changing him.
Maybe it was the musty air or the gray walls or the haunting, moaning engine. Maybe it was the constant threat of exile and the Shrieker and the crew. But Jonah Hillcrest was suddenly a boy who rescued prisoners. And he kind of liked that Jonah.
Now he just had to figure out how to do it.
He heard a door slide open with a whoosh. It seemed most of the doors worked in the crew’s quarters, unlike in the rest of the ship. Sally said they had power-supply issues to much of the Squirrel but that the crew had managed to maintain the power lines to their own section. She’d seen them fusing a line together once in the engine room before she’d quickly scurried back into the safety of the shadows.
They were watching the hallways from the air duct when heavy footsteps suddenly approached the grate. Jonah leaned back just a little, being sure not to get his face too close to the light. As in the lower levels, the grates were mostly obscured by tight metal panels, but you could get a glimpse from certain angles. And so he bent to take a look just as she walked by holding a small pile of food bars.
Space Witch.
“Stout” was definitely the word for her. Her legs were as thick as tree trunks, and her faded brown pants strained and pulled with every step. Jonah bent down a bit lower and saw that she wore a white tank top with a black jacket, revealing a bit of a belly and bulging arms that were almost as thick as her legs. Her hair was a greasy mess of brown strands pulled back into a very tight bun. Her face was flushed red and scarred and pulled into a ferocious scowl.
Jonah was still watching her when she suddenly slowed her pace. Her dark eyes flicked around the hallway. She knew she was being watched.
Jonah quickly pulled back, propping himself against the wall of the air duct. He waited, listening to the slow, scraping footsteps in the hall as the Space Witch looked around. If she pulled open the grate, they were finished. The seconds ticked by.
Finally, the Space Witch continued down the hall, and Jonah slumped in relief.
“Was it her?” Sally asked.
Jonah nodded. “And she really lives up to the name. Let’s get back to the main duct. I don’t want to be here when she comes back.”
They crawled back into the main air duct and sat beside each other, bent awkwardly in the small space. It was time to come up with a plan.
“Have we learned anything?” Sally asked.
Jonah paused. “Well, we know how many there are. We think. A crew of nine, including the captain and Leppy. All with nasty-looking guns strapped to their hips.”
“Yes, that’s an important point,” Sally said. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “So we know who will be killing us if we get caught.”
“Right,” Jonah said.
“You sure you want to do this?”
He nodded. “We can’t leave them in there. I owe Martin. And I told someone else I’d save her brother if I got the chance.”
“Was it a girl?” Sally asked.
“Maybe.”
She rolled her eyes. “Pretty?”
Jonah felt his cheeks flush. “I guess. I don’t know. Didn’t really think about it.”
“Boys,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re all the same. One bat of the eyelashes and you’ll take on a ship full of pirates.” She batted her long black eyelashes at him. “Just don’t forget about the space princess. I’m so very helpless.”
“We should make a plan,” Jonah said, trying to change the subject.
She smiled a toothy grin. “Fair enough, Jonah the Now Blushing. Any ideas?”
Jonah ignored her. “Well, they don’t seem to feed the prisoners on a regular schedule. Not that it would matter if they did, because we don’t have any way of telling time. We also don’t know the password for the brig door, which is definitely a problem.”
“This is great so far,” Sally said.
“So even if we wait until they’ve just been fed and everyone seems to be either asleep or at their stations, we still have absolutely no way of opening the door and rescuing them. Unless we figure out the password.”
“Or if we don’t need a password,” Sally said slowly.
Jonah glanced at her. “What?”
“Why do the doors automatically slide open here and not anywhere else?”
“Because they have power,” Jonah said. “Oh.”
Sally smiled. “Yeah.”
“Do you remember where that power line was?”
“I think so,” she said. “The rest of the Squirrel is in some sort of emergency-power mode. A few lights work, but no automatic doors and limited heat. I’ve heard them talk about it before. That’s to conserve power. But if we knock out that power line leading to the crew’s quarters, we should shut everything off. Lights, heat, and door controls.”
Jonah nodded. “Then let’s go turn off the lights.”
• • •
“That’s the one,” Sally said, pointing at a green power line.
They’d followed the power line all through the service shafts and back to the engine room, and they stood there now on the highest walkway. The power line plunged directly into the core and was surrounded by a boxy steel casing that was within an arm’s length of their walkway.
“How do you know?” Jonah asked, frowning.
She pointed at a ring of melted green rubber on the power line. “Because it was damaged before. I heard them arguing about the lights. It’s definitely the one.”
“All right,” Jonah said. “Now we just need something sharp—”
Sally rolled her eyes. “You’re going to cut a power line? Have you thought of what might happen to the person who cuts it?”
Jonah paused. “Right.”
He looked around the room for inspiration, though that was pretty hard to do when looking down made him queasy. He shuffled to the edge of the walkway—after taking a quick look for super rats—and peered over the side. Then he saw it.
The giant pile of bonkers.
“There,” he said.
Sally looked at him. “You want to hit it with a metal pole instead? I don’t think you understand—”
“Not hit it,” Jonah said. “Throw bonkers at it. If we get a direct hit, we might be able to knock that casing off. Or at least damage the wire.”
Sally examined the casing skeptically. “It’s possible.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
She sighed. “Let’s go get some bonkers.”
It turned out to be a fairly difficult process. Eventually, Jonah ended up tucking his pants into his socks and filling the pant legs with bonkers, which allowed him to slowly climb back up again. Sally shook her head, but she did the same thing.
After a long, slow climb back to the top, Jonah yanked his pants out of his socks and started pulling out the bonkers. He’d managed to get four in each pant leg.
When the bonkers were out, he turned to the green wire.
“Do we aim for the wire or the casing?” he asked.
“I don’t throw bonkers around very often,” Sally muttered. “Try both.”
Jonah nodded and picked up the first bonker. He had never been much of an athlete. Actually, he’d only ever played sports when he was forced to in gym class. And usually he was the last one picked. Well . . . always. He really should have participated.
He pulled the bonker back and threw it with all his strength. It missed by at least five feet. And he was only ten feet away from the wire. The bonker plummeted do
wn the spiderweb and clanged loudly off the floor far below. Sally burst out laughing.
“That was the worst throw I’ve ever seen,” she managed through her laughter.
Jonah grimaced and picked up another bonker. “It went pretty far.”
“Yeah, downward,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Wow. That was good.”
“It won’t be when we alert the entire ship we’re here,” Jonah said. “You try.”
Sally took a few steps forward. “You better join me, noodle arm.”
Jonah rubbed his arm self-consciously and stepped beside her. “Let’s see how good you are.”
Sally immediately pulled back and threw a bonker. It hit the steel casing full on, denting the metal inward, and then the bonker flew right back toward them, whizzing past Jonah’s head. He stood there for a moment, eyes wide, and then looked at Sally.
“Maybe try hitting the wire next,” she said. “But that was right on.”
“We were also closer,” Jonah muttered.
He missed his next throw again and tried to ignore Sally’s snort of derision. She threw two more, managing to hit the wire once, but it didn’t have much effect. The bonkers kept clattering off the metal floor far below. Jonah knew the sound would echo down every service shaft on the Squirrel. They had to hurry.
He threw three more bonkers and managed to hit the engine core itself, the far wall, and nothing at all. It sounded like a clanging drum set in the engine room. Sally wasn’t having much luck either. She hit the wire again and again, but it didn’t break free of the engine. She threw her last bonker extra hard, but again, the wire didn’t move. Jonah tried another bonker and missed completely. He only had two left.
“You must be a baseball player,” she said.
He frowned at her. “Two left. You want one?”
“It’s useless,” she said, shaking her head. “The wire doesn’t move.”
“No,” Jonah said thoughtfully, “but the casing did.”
He walked closer to the steel casing—only a few feet away. The edge had dented right into the power line from where Sally had hit it and was pressing against the green exterior. If he hit it again in the same place, it might just pierce the line.