Mike Stellar (23 page)

My head still reeled. And my breath was coming in harsh bursts. There was only two and a half minutes before my air would be gone. The lack of oxygen was making me slow and disoriented. I forced myself to press on.

Remembering the blueprints, I positioned myself at the fourteenth panel from the right, very near the bottom of the
Sojourner.
This was the panel that held most of the wiring to the brig’s electrical box. Or at least I thought it was.

Now was the
tricky part.

I told the jet pack to hover and I looked around me. I planned the fastest way to get back to the
Spirit
and I held my breath.

This was it.

My plan was to just melt away the panel with the plasma torch and then melt all the exposed wires. It wasn’t very precise, but it should work.

I flipped the torch on and immediately the metal hull began to melt away, exposing clumps of wires. I went at the wires with the torch and they quickly turned to sticky gobs of goo. I didn’t know how many wires needed to be destroyed to kill the brig’s power, and the fourteenth panel was insanely big. Like electri-bus big. I was really running out of time.

I looked at my oxygen gauge. It was blinking red and counting down from fifty-nine seconds.

“Crap!” I yelled, and instinctively looked around, expecting there to be an adult to yell at me. I laughed nervously.

“Dang!” I shouted, and I noticed that when I yelled, my oxygen rate didn’t plummet quite as quickly.

“What’s going on with the oxygen?” I asked out loud, and again I saw that the diminishing amount slowed. Then I remembered something about firefighters singing when they went into burning buildings. The singing helped conserve the air in their tanks. It was when they panicked and began breathing heavily that their oxygen disappeared quickly.

So I began to belt out the
MonsterMetalMachines
theme song while I nervously kept an eye on my gauge and tried to melt wires as fast as I could.

“Gimme iron, gimme steel!” I sang. “Gimme strength and an even keel!”

I remembered Mrs. H telling us never ever to shake a plasma torch, because of its instability. I shrugged and figured I had nothing to lose. I shook that thing like crazy, and just like I’d suspected, the plasma came shooting out ten times stronger. It was hard to control, but I held on as best I could.

“Moooonster.
MetalMachines.
Moooonster
MetalMachines!”

I burned away more of the fourteenth panel’s hull and went at the newly exposed wires. “We’ll do anything to succeed! We fight to keep our spirits free!”

The now very unstable torch shot a stream of plasma about a hundred feet above my head and barely missed a porthole. I needed to turn this thing off before I breached the habitat layer. And I needed to get back to the
Spirit.
Now.

“Moooonster.
MetalMachines.
Moooonster
Metal-Machines!”

I immediately let go of the torch. I felt bad for littering space, but I couldn’t bring an unstable plasma torch back with me on the ship. I was smart enough to know that. Larc would be proud.

I pushed away from the ship. “Moooonster.
Metal-Machines.
Moooonster
MetalMachines!”

My oxygen gauge began a warning countdown for the last ten seconds of air. I yelled, “Forward! Max speed!” and crossed my fingers.

“Three … two … one,” the countdown blared in my ears.

“Moooonster.
MetalMachines.
Moooonster
MetalMachines!”

I was flying
so fast I almost overshot the flight deck capsule. Yelling, “Reverse immediately!” I slowed the jet pack just in time. With no oxygen left, and spots flashing before my eyes, I kicked the button to open the capsule hatch and clambered inside.

The hatch closed and I ripped my helmet off and threw it to the ground. I took huge gasping breaths and fell to my knees. After a moment I peeled the space suit off and left it in a clump on the floor.

My plan was to run to the nearest computer terminal. If I saw static from the brig camera, then I’d have proof the power was down and my mission was a success. I flew out of the flight deck, running at top speed. I rounded a corner and heard someone yell, “Here’s one of ’em!”

Before I had a chance to reverse course, a stiff arm grabbed me by the front of the flight suit and roughly dragged me out into the lobby I kicked and flailed and landed a nice loogie right in the guy’s face but he still held on tight. He dragged me over to a bunch of other black-clad goons. I saw Meridiani, almost normal-sized, sitting on the floor with a boot-shaped bruise on his face.

I continued to fight and flail and I hollered that they’d never get away with this. I swear, if I ever read something like that in a book, I would think it was terribly cheesy. But it turns out you really do yell things like that when you’re in trouble.

The goon gave me a swift slap in the face and it felt like fire. Wincing, I staggered back into the wall. I couldn’t believe he actually hit me.

Grinding my teeth with rage, I lowered my still-pounding head and ran full tilt toward the thug’s gut.

“Leave him alone!” a voice shouted from the distance. I stopped my attack to see who was yelling.

Dad!

“But, Dad, he
hit
me!” I protested.

“Not
you
, Michael. Him. You there!” Dad said, pointing at the man and walking briskly up to us. “Don’t you ever,
ever
touch my son again.” And with that, Dad slugged the dude right in the jaw.
My
jaw fell open. I couldn’t believe Dad just hit that guy!

“Albert!” Mom’s voice sounded distressed as she
came hurrying down the hall. Hubble was right behind her, as were lots of other people.

The goon looked like he was ready for a full-on throw-down with Dad, but luckily a couple of strong-looking guys from the crowd of
Spirit
and
Sojourner
folks came up and kept the goon from attacking.

With the
Spirit
and the
Sojourner
crews now combined, they easily outnumbered the Project goons.

“Mike!” Mom shouted from across the lobby. She charged toward me. Her nose was bloody and her flight suit was ripped, but she wore the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

“Mom!” I shouted. She bear-hugged me and I hugged her right back.

“Michael,” she said, cupping my face, “where have you
been?”
She let go of my face and held me at arm’s length while she looked me over.

“Nowhere, really …,” I said, and then the room tipped onto its side. I stumbled to catch my balance, expecting to see people flying everywhere. Did something just hit the ship? I didn’t think these big ships could turn sideways!

“Michael!” Hubble shouted, running down the wall toward me. Then I realized that Hubble wasn’t on the wall at all. Nothing was wrong with the ship. I was just extraordinarily dizzy.

“What have you been doing, Mr. Man?” Mom asked, her face swirling.

“Spacewalking,” I mumbled.

“Mother of donkeys, Mike,” Hubble said.

“I ran out of oxygen, after I melted the wires,” I said, feeling very groggy

“Melted the wires?” Mom looked incredulous. “Outside the ship?”

I nodded, watching black spots float in front of my eyes.

“We have to get him to the
Sojourner
sick bay,” someone said in a faraway voice.

Another voice said, “Gather up the prisoners and get them onto the
Sojourner
as fast as you can.”

I grabbed my head to try to stop the pounding.

“We need to abandon the
Spirit
and hop the next wormhole out of here,” Mom said in slow motion. “A salvage crew can—”

The last thing I saw was a sideways view of Mom’s boots and the dirty floor of the
Spirit.

“You have made
a terrible mistake,” Mr. Shugabert growled.

My eyes flew open.

Ugh.
I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. I lifted my head and zigzagging shots of pain exploded from eyeball to eyeball. The rest of me didn’t feel great, either.

“You have started a war!” Shugabert’s awful voice shouted.

Struggling through the pain, I sat up. Where was I? Did Sugar Bear have me at last?

“You’ll never catch me!” I yelled at him. Or tried to yell. My voice came out slow and fuzzy, like Preditator when his batteries are running low.

I tried to jump out of bed and then realized I was tethered by an IV. What the …?

A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and gently pushed me back into a pile of pillows. “Calm down, snotdog. You’re safe. It’s just the viserator.”

I was in a hospital room? On Earth? My eyes bugging, I looked down and saw that I was in my favorite
MonsterMetalMachines
T-shirt and boxers. Feeling terribly dizzy, but happy, I blinked a couple of times. As my eyes focused, I saw Stinky, Mom, Dad, Nita, and Hubble sitting at my bedside, watching the vis.

“Turn that irritating thing off,” Mom commanded, and Nita switched off the vis. Sugar Bear’s image, his hands and feet shackled, his face purple with rage as two police officers led him into a courthouse, flickered off.

“What?” I started. “What’s going on?”

“You’re home!” Stinky yelled gleefully, very gently socking me on the shoulder. “You’re back! And you’re a hero!”

I reached for the cup of water on a little table next to the bed. I swallowed a few sips and instantly felt refreshed.

“Added a little energy juju to that water,” Dad said, motioning to my cup. “Ought to help you feel better pretty quickly.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. My voice was already less fuzzy and more normal.

“Yeah, you better thank me. You’re being discharged
today. And if you’re up for it, you’re due back in school tomorrow morning.”

“School! After all of this?” I was incredulous.

“You know how important a good education is, Mike,” Mom said, ruffling my hair. “Plus, I managed to save your handheld for you. It looks like that report you were working on is finally done. Good job, Mr. Man.”

I looked from person to person, in a state of shock. “School? I have to go back to school?”

“Get your naps in now, champ,” Stinky said. “You’ve been laying around in this bed for four days. Mrs. H has a stack of homework for you that’s taller than me.”

I covered my face with my hands and tried to pass out again. No such luck.