Obi-Wan jogged a few steps behind Grath and the rest of the kids. He was certain that one of the girls, Pel, was the one who had caught him in his “bathrobe” the night before. Fortunately she didn’t appear to be suspicious of him now.
The other girl, Nania, had a familiar-sounding voice. She must have been driving the shuttle Obi-Wan had hitched a ride on. But so far nobody had openly recognized him.
Obi-Wan kept waiting for one of them to ask him who he was and why he was following them. But they never did. Grath’s initial acceptance of him seemed to be all that was needed. Either that, or the Freelies were such a big group that they were used to not knowing one another.
It didn’t matter as long as the students continued to let Obi-Wan tag along. The more time he spent with them, the easier it would be to gain their trust. And the easier it would be to eventually convince them to do the right thing.
Though he longed to know where they were going, Obi-Wan didn’t want to risk blowing his cover by asking any questions. It would be better to listen. Unfortunately, nobody was saying much.
About a kilometer away from the school, the small band of Freelies turned in to a refuse facility. Flip and Nania began pulling scrap off a huge pile and tossing it aside. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what to do.
Wondering if the next prank involved garbage, he reached over to grab a piece of trash himself. Then Nania pulled a large piece of wreckage off the pile and Obi-Wan spotted something familiar underneath. It was the back of the shuttle he’d ridden last night. Apparently the Freelies kept it stashed here.
“Hop in,” Flip said, gesturing to the panel door. The kids piled in. Nania took the pilot’s seat and the repulsorlifts roared to life, dislodging debris from the viewscreen.
“Hold on,” Nania said over her shoulder. With a lurch and a shudder the small craft broke free of the garbage pile and zoomed out of the facility.
Flip, who obviously hadn’t been holding on tight enough, landed in Grath’s lap.
“So what do you think they’re doing in the Multycorp offices right now?” he asked, grinning at the older boy.
Grath pushed Flip off him with a laugh. “I don’t know,” he said slyly. “Dancing?”
Obi-Wan didn’t get the joke, but he laughed along with the rest of the kids. When the laughter had faded Grath spoke again.
“But they won’t be dancing tomorrow. Tomorrow they’ll be walking.”
Grath sounded serious, and the mood in the shuttle changed. The group was clearly ready to get to the business at hand. Whatever that business was.
There was not much light in the back of the craft, and Obi-Wan had to hang on to keep from being hurled about by Nania’s erratic driving. As he braced himself for the next turn he suddenly noticed something he’d missed before. The shuttle’s entire hull was lined with small, homemade explosives.
With a final gut-wrenching turn, Nania brought the maintenance shuttle to a stop inside a transport shuttle bay. Grath, Flip, Pel, and Nania grabbed armloads of the explosives and piled out of the maintenance craft. Despite his misgivings, Obi-Wan picked up several explosives and followed.
“Pel, Nania, you two cover the east wing. We’ll do the west,” Grath directed.
Obi-Wan watched uneasily as Grath crawled underneath one of the shuttles with the explosives. He needed to find out what they were doing and he needed to do it now. It looked like Grath and Flip were attaching the explosives to the undersides of the passenger compartments. Were they planning to blow up the crafts with passengers inside?
“So, I forget, when do we trigger these?” Obi-Wan tried to sound casual as he climbed under the shuttle next to Grath and began to fiddle with one of the devices.
Grath gave Obi-Wan a strange look. “Don’t worry. Nobody will be hurt. That’s one of our rules, remember? We’re hiding the explosives so nobody sees them during the evening ride. Then tonight, when the shuttles are back in the bay, we’ll trigger them by remote. So tomorrow, when everyone is ready to go to work, well… they won’t have their usual transportation, will they?” A smile spread across Grath’s face, but Obi-Wan was too concerned with all that could go wrong to smile back. This plan was dangerous, far more dangerous than changing numbers on a datascreen or giving computer systems false commands.
Grath noticed that Obi-Wan wasn’t smiling. “Don’t worry,” he said again more quietly. “We really aren’t going to kill anybody. We just want to wake them up.”
Obi-Wan forced a smile and a nod. “To work then?” he asked.
“Not tomorrow!” Grath laughed.
CHAPTER 11