Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) by Kevin McLaughlin Page B

asked Acres.
    “You’re asking me?” he said. “This was your brilliant plan. I’m just along for the ride.”
    I hadn’t thought much further than boarding and capturing the ship. That had seemed hard enough without worrying about what to do with it once we got it. But getting aboard had been insanely simple. Probably because someone would have to be nuts to try it in the first place.
    If we went forward, I could maybe hack the main computer, activate the drives, and get clear of the station. But by the time I did we’d have marines crawling all over the ship. They’d have an even easier time getting in than we had. It wasn’t a workable plan.
    Just firing the missiles while we were docked might do something. We’d blow the hell out of the station for sure, and maybe take out a couple of the nearby ships if we got lucky. We’d also almost certainly blast ourselves to bits in the process though. I didn’t feel like blowing myself up was the best plan I could come up with.
    “Let’s move forward to the cockpit,” I said. That would give me some time to think, anyway.
    “Lead on,” Acres replied, waving an arm.
    I hooked the helmet onto my suit and pushed off down the corridor. We floated past a series of little hatches as we went. Those were entries into the missile racks. On a cargo ship, they could be used to inspect the contents of the containers. Here they were probably used to do repairs of the launch equipment and inspections of the missiles.
    The nose of the ship was a spartan place. Bunks for four. A small mess area, well stocked with rations. And the cockpit itself which had seating for two.
    “Looks like four, maybe five crew?” I said.
    “Could be as many as twelve,” Acres corrected. “If they share bunks, they could work in two on, one off shifts. But with the size of this ship, I think they’ll be running a light crew.”
    They wouldn’t need many people. Two in the cockpit and two down in engineering. I examined the control panels, all dark and powered down. If I powered those up we could try to bust free from here, but they’d almost certainly know on the station the minute I activated anything.
    I moved on. There was a small weapons locker near the bunks. It was padlocked shut. I shook my head. “Can’t hack that,” I said, annoyed. “Who still uses a padlock?”
    “Grunts do,” Acres growled. “To keep out people with more gadgets than sense. Move over.” I slid aside and he pulled a cutting tool from his suit. There was a short flash of light, and the padlock came loose in his hand.
    “You’re not the only one who brought along toys. Hold on to that,” he said, handing me what was left of the lock. He opened the box and peered inside.
    “Small arms only, but they might be useful,” Acres said.
    He hauled four pistols out of the locker. Two of them he slipped into pockets in his suit, and he handed the other two to me. I took them, slipped one away and examined the other. They were light caliber weapons. I checked the loads - frangible ammunition, which was good. It would break apart if it hit something hard like the wall of a spaceship. You usually didn’t want your bullets to make holes in the hull when you fired a gun on a spaceship.
    Acres took the lock back from me and replaced it over the box. He ran his laser cutter over the lock, carefully welding the padlock back into place again. By the time he was done, you wouldn’t be able to tell it had been cut unless you looked very closely.
    I looked back at the pistol in my hand. We were armed now. The lock box for the crew’s weapons was empty, which meant they would be unarmed. I was starting to feel the beginning of a plan. One which might not involve our dying.
    “You still remember how to use that, right?” Acres asked. I’d been staring at the pistol a while.
    “Yeah,” I replied. After the close combat experiences I had with the pirates, I’d made sure to keep up on my marksmanship skills. You never knew