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16

Marshall noticed the difference in his suit as soon as he pulled on his cooling garment, a set of long johns covered with loops of tubing that circulated water around his body. Gone was the “new car” smell of synthetic fabric blends, half of them coated in urethane. It now carried a distinct odor of old perspiration that wet wipes couldn’t fully cleanse.

The rest of the suit, officially known as an Extravehicular Mobility Unit because no government agency could bear using simple English that couldn’t also be distilled into an acronym, had fared better since it was mostly protected from direct contact with him by his cooling garment. Antimicrobial underwear notwithstanding, spacewalks were strenuous and all of that perspiration had to go somewhere.

Watching Rosie and Riley inspecting each other, he marveled at how they managed their own gear and workload. If they weren’t out doing “hard hat” work on the spacecraft, they were running rescue drills. Did they like having something they relied on so completely to have that lived-in feeling? Was it reassuring? Did it create a sense of familiarity, and was that a good thing? It simultaneously made discrepancies easier to find while becoming complacent about them.

He found the internal bellows of the elbow and shoulder joints had more play, though the gloves hadn’t improved. His fingertips were still raw from the other day’s jaunt, so he was content to remain a “safety observer” instead of doing any actual work.

Just as well, he decided as he watched them climb hand over hand down the service railing. Officer or not, he was still a greenhorn and they were in a hurry.

They stopped at the first tank, a bright white barrel with ellipsoid domes at each end. Its brilliance struck him as not being tactically sound—but then, what was there to camouflage against? With no atmosphere to blur light or absorb heat, everything in space stuck out like a sore thumb. A ship painted flat black might be harder to see but there’d be no avoiding the heat signature, not without absurdly large radiators. And everything gave off electromagnetic radiation as well, though EM signatures could be easier to mask.

The Borman was not technically a warship, though classifying its weapons as “defensive” was an exercise in absurdity—that depended entirely on which end you were facing. Their loadout was meant as a last resort, either for clearing the space lanes of dangerous debris, or for deterring “bad actors” from controlling them. Either way meant directing fire on a target that would then be turned into more debris—exchanging fire with another ship threatened to create a cascade of shrapnel which could make whatever orbital plane it occurred in unusable for years.

That all was of course still hypothetical. In the same configuration, Borman could’ve been commissioned as something akin to a naval frigate and other spacefaring nations would’ve lost their minds. Make it a “safety patrol” ship for Orbit Guard, up here in full view for everybody’s protection, and they mostly kept quiet. It seemed to him like a distinction without a difference.

Riley’s voice crackled in his headset, interrupting Marshall’s wandering thoughts. “We’re on station at tank one’s interlink. Can you take up our slack?”

“Roger that.” He followed their umbilical lines as they snaked out of the open airlock, into space and along the length of the ship to disappear amongst the hydrogen tanks. The two spacers would’ve been difficult to spot were it not for their high-visibility saffron-yellow suits. Marshall grabbed one line and methodically coiled up its excess before securing it with a Velcro strap. He repeated it for the second line. “How’s that?”

“Peachy,” Rosie said. “Thanks.”

Standing in the hatch atop the spacecraft’s dorsal spine gave him an unobstructed view of their work area and the two pale yellow figures, over fifty meters away, bouncing and hovering over the gaps between three enormous tanks. They would be passing into darkness soon and their helmet lamps switched on, dazzling against the tank’s already brilliant white skin. “How’s your access?” he asked them.

He could hear the grunts behind Riley’s voice. “It’s a tight fit, that’s for sure. I don’t think they planned on anyone working around these things in orbit.”

“We can see the crossfeed lines and bellows, but it limits our reach to the sensor conduits. Might be doing some of this by feel,” Rosie said, which he assumed was a joke. They wouldn’t be “feeling” much of anything.


Simon Poole’s attention was spread thin between monitoring the EVA, coordinating with fleet control, keeping up with their departure prep, and running the ship in general. He didn’t notice the chime of an incoming message packet from the flight station behind him.

“New software uplink from Ops, skipper,” Flynn reported from the pilot’s station. “It’s the navigation plan we were waiting for.”

“About time,” Poole said. “How long to QC it?”

“Ran a checksum as it was loading, sir. Bits and bytes are all accounted for.” Which was one, but not the only, indication that the new guidance package was ready to run.

Poole eyed the chronometer as it counted down the hours and minutes to their departure. “Program the primary FDC, but keep the others out of the loop until it’s validated.”

“Aye, sir.”


Riley waved at Marshall as he emerged from between the tanks. “First inspection complete,” he said. “Moving across to outboard two now.”

“Rosie handling this next one?”

“You’d better believe it, sir. This was a little too claustrophobic for me.”

“Can you unsnap my line, sir?” Rosie called. “I’m about to head over.”

He pulled her coiled umbilical free. “You’re all set. Go for it.”

Marshall watched her deftly move along the handholds to the outer edge of the tank, then push off to fly across the spine of the ship and come to a stop at the opposite tank. Looking back down to where she’d started, Riley was fussing with his own line. “Need a minute on mine, sir. It’s tangled up near this thruster quad.”


“Uplink complete,” Flynn said.

Poole pulled up behind him. “That was quick. Sure you got the whole package?”

The engineer tapped the screen, as if coaxing it to offer more information. “About the normal upload time, skipper. Maybe the nav solutions aren’t as complicated as we thought.”

“You’re forgetting the first rule of spaceflight,” Poole cautioned. “Everything is more complicated than we thought.”

The skipper had lots of “first rules,” Flynn thought, every single one of them being the most important at that moment. There were too many ways to get seriously dead out here. “The initial state vectors agree with ours.”

Poole looked over his shoulder. “The big question is what happens next. That’s going to be a long burn. Blow a trim angle, and we end up half a million miles off target.”

“I still need to let the FMC run the program and plot it.”

“Agreed,” Poole said. “See where it takes us.”

“Aye, sir.” Flynn’s fingers danced around the menu buttons embedded in the screen bezel, selected the PREFLIGHT-SIMULATE menu, then punched EXECUTE. There was a rattle of thrusters and the deck pitched up abruptly.


Marshall bounced hard off the lip of the airlock as the ship moved beneath him, knocking the wind out of him. A fountain of gas erupted from a thruster quad off to his left.

“What the hell?” Rosie exclaimed. “Why are we maneuvering?” she shouted into the intercom. A major safety precaution to protect spacers during an EVA was to limit controls to the reaction wheels so as not to have thrusters firing off around vulnerable spacewalkers.

Marshall caught his breath and reflexively patted down his suit, checking for any tears. “No idea!” he said, and felt a stabbing pain in his ribs. That would have to wait. The ship pitched again, this time falling away from him. He grabbed a handhold.

“Control, EVA One!” Riley called. “Cease maneuvering! We are still outside. Repeat, team is still on structure!”

Flynn’s voice shot back. “We know! Overriding—”

There was a shout from Riley, and he disappeared behind a cloud of gas from a nearby thruster quad. When it cleared, a sinking feeling overtook Marshall as Riley tumbled away into space, his severed umbilical trailing behind him in a cloud of escaping oxygen.

Off structure!” Rosie shouted. “Control, EVA One is off structure!” She was moving to go after him even though she was bracketed between active thruster quads.

“Stay there, I’ve got him!” Marshall said. “Control, EVA Three is in pursuit. Hang on, Chief!” He activated his emergency maneuvering and life-support pack, unhooked his umbilical and squared off to face Riley. He crouched down, took a deep breath, and jumped out of the airlock.

The ship fell away, disappearing behind him as he focused on the writhing figure dead ahead: a yellow mass thrashing against the depthless black. His visor’s field of view, previously so much more expansive than the tiny portholes on Borman, now felt hopelessly limited—if he were experiencing tunnel vision, how would he tell the difference? There was no sense of depth perception: Riley could’ve been a child’s toy he could simply reach out and grab. The sudden sense of isolation was beyond his experience; he was keenly aware of his now-heightened senses. The sound of his own breathing pushed the cacophony of voices in his earphones to the background. He fought the reflex to turn and find the ship for reference, desperate to not lose his bearings.

Riley’s form grew larger as Marshall rapidly closed the distance between them. “Almost there, Chief!”

Why wasn’t he answering? These guys practically drilled safety protocols in their sleep. If an umbilical somehow became disconnected, the suit fittings had redundant backflow valves that would stop any venting. His suit should’ve held pressure long enough for his emergency air supply and SAFER pack to guide him back to the spacecraft. Come to think of it, his suit looked awfully loose . . .

Oh.

Marshall swallowed. “Control, EVA Three. Have you been able to contact Riley?”

“Negative, Three. EVA One has not responded.”

“Yeah . . . looks like he may have lost pressure. Stand by—”

He was suddenly on top of Riley. Marshall held his arms out to catch him just as they collided, the jolt from his rib cage signaling that something was torn or broken in there.

“Got you!”

Marshall pawed at Riley’s suit and hastily clipped a D-ring onto his harness, lashing them together before he could bounce away. The tether went taut and snapped them back toward each other, bringing them face to face. He reached out to lift the chief’s sun visor, finally getting a look at him.

His eyes were closed, his mouth hanging open. His breath had condensed and frozen inside of the visor.

Marshall’s eyes widened. He mentally went down each step of the emergency assessment checklist he’d been drilled on—victim unresponsive. Okay, check suit condition.

Step one: check his chest pack. Pressure was low. Real low—the needle hovered around one pound per square inch. They normally breathed pure O2 at five psi instead of an oxygen-nitrogen mixture at normal pressure. The lower pressure made the suits more flexible but that required pure oxygen to breathe.

This was close to vacuum. He had a breach somewhere. Step two, check for signs of leaks. The shredded umbilical was a big hint, but again, at least one of the backflow valves should’ve plugged that hole right away. It was a passive safety feature, no human intervention required at all: if a hose were somehow disconnected, the negative pressure would slam the valves shut. They couldn’t not work.

So there was a tear in his suit somewhere. Okay, torso and upper body first . . . Marshall turned him over quickly, looking for holes. It’d have to be fairly big.

Nothing. He moved down to his waist, then his legs . . .

There.

“Control, this is Three. One’s suit is breached in two places. Right upper thigh, each one about an inch around.” He pulled out an emergency sealant kit from his utility harness and began opening the patch.

A firm voice answered, Poole himself. “Three, this is Actual. Stand by on that seal. Any signs of burn-through?”

What? They wanted him to wait? Marshall’s instinct to keep it clipped and professional kicked in with the boss on the other end of the radio. “Actual, Three . . . burn-through. Please advise. What am I looking for?”

“It won’t look scorched, like from a flame. Look for blistering.”

“Copy blistering. Checking now.” The outer layer of yellow ballistic fibers did look like a couple of bubbles that had burst, as did the inner pressure layers of latex-coated fabric. The severed end of his umbilical had numerous blisters. “That’s affirmative, sir. Immediately surrounding the two holes, and all over the umbilical.”

“Did it burn through his cooling garment?”

Marshall focused his helmet lamps on the two holes and pulled at them carefully. He could see the white elastic fabric and the edge of a cooling hose. “Looks intact, sir. Can I tape him up now?”

“Affirmative, Three. That’s good news. He’s not completely screwed, but that’s exhaust residue. It burned through his umbilical and tagged his pressure suit, too.”

“Understood, sir.” Fear gnawed at him as he wrapped sealant tape over the holes. The thrusters burned hydrazine, an exceptionally toxic and corrosive compound. Breathing in a few droplets of the stuff could destroy a person’s lungs, something he tried not to think about as he plugged Riley’s suit into his own life-support pack and began sharing air. How much residue did he now have on his own suit? Could either one of them come aboard now without contaminating the airlock?

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Poole said calmly. “First, are you stable?”

Marshall closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them, he was looking at the heads-up projection in his visor. The horizon reference was motionless, no drift. Relative velocity was zero. The SAFER maneuvering pack had worked while he took care of Riley. “Affirmative. We’re stable, and Riley’s suit is patched. I’ve got him plugged into my air supply.”

“Good. You’re not coming back to the utility airlock. I need you to head for the emergency lock, straight to medical.”

“Understand medical.” Marshall unfolded control arms from either side of his backpack. Puffs of compressed gas surrounded him as he spun about to face Borman. It looked a lot farther away than he thought it would be. How far had they tumbled together? He tapped both controllers forward. “Three is Oscar Mike.” On the move.

There was another unnerving jolt, this time at his back when Riley’s mass pulled against the tether joining them. He goosed the thrusters again to keep them moving, steering them toward a yellow beacon that had begun flashing atop one of the forward modules. That would be the emergency airlock, a massive door two meters square meant for the rescue spacers to move incapacitated passengers aboard in a hurry—not unlike what he was doing right now.

There was a weak groan over the radio. “Good, you’re up,” Marshall said. “Stay with me, Chief. We’re on our way back to the barn.”

“Closing—” A cough. “—too fast.”

“I know. Trust me.” As they closed the distance, Marshall caught movement in his peripheral vision: Rosie, scrambling hand over hand along the length of Borman’s central truss.

“Rosie, I could’ve sworn I told you to stay put.”

“No disrespect, but get bent. Sir. Ship’s stable. I’m no spectator. See you at the med bay.”

“Copy that.” He let the sideways rebuke go. She was definitely not one to stay on the sidelines. And now that she’d pointed it out, he realized the RCS quads had stopped pulsing. No doubt there’d been an epic screwup somewhere and Captain Poole would be looking for somebody’s head on a plate later, especially if it had harmed one of his crew.

As they drew closer, he watched her brace against the end of the truss and push off for the medical module. She flew across the last ten meters or so and absorbed the impact with her arms, her body swinging about as she pulled herself to a stop against a handrail. Her umbilical looped and coiled around her, which she scrambled to gather and get out of the way. He could sense the frustration in her movements despite the cumbersome suit encasing her. “From now on I think we stick with the MMUs,” she grumbled. They’d saved time prepping for this spacewalk by not having to prep the self-contained maneuvering and life-support units, but the cost of being tied to the ship was now painfully apparent.

Marshall tapped back against the hand controllers, which brought him to a stop. Without a word, he unhooked the tether connecting him as Riley’s form went sailing by. Rosie reached out to stop him as he flew into the open hatch. “How’s your O2, sir?”

Marshall looked down at his chest pack, confirming its gauge against the display projected in his visor. “Fifty percent.”

“Good. You might need it.”

“For how long?”

She clipped Riley to a restraint. “Depends on how much hydrazine residue I find, sir. Hold the chief still for me, please.” He heard a sharp whistle in the background as she unhooked the lead for her umbilical. As she plugged the hose into a nearby port, he took the loose umbilical line and pushed it out of the way. They could gather it up from the airlock later.

Rosie punched the quick-release latch to open up a small orange locker marked HAZMAT RESPONSE and took out a testing kit. She activated its chemical sniffer and began sweeping it over Riley’s still form. She then went to remove a pair of heavy shears from a nearby first-aid cabinet.

Marshall was alarmed. “You’re cutting him out of his suit? We’re still in vacuum!”

“Have to, sir. Gotta get the contaminated bits out of here first.”

“He could lose his leg!”

“That damage is done, sir,” she said calmly. “If he breathes in hydrazine residue, he’ll lose a lot more than that. Now keep him still, please.” She jammed the open shears into the outer shell just above the patch Marshall had applied, then moved to cut completely around his thigh. “Okay, now you pull away.” She grabbed his boot and tugged in the opposite direction. Dual layers of the outer shell came free which she tossed outside in one smooth motion. Riley’s leg, now in his exposed inner pressure and cooling garment, hung free. She circled him at arm’s length, searching for any other signs of blistered fabric and making one more sweep with the chemical sniffer.

She then turned to Marshall, looking him up and down. “You’re next, sir. Spin for me.”

Marshall pushed against a wall with his fingertips and turned about, holding his breath as she swept a fresh testing kit over him.

“I think you’re good.” She reached for the big hatch and slid it into place, then spun down the latch. “Barn door secure. Pressurizing.”


The next day, Marshall checked up on Riley in the med bay. He’d thought it impossible to make the area any cleaner than it already was, yet his spacers had somehow managed. Its ever-present antiseptic aroma seemed especially sharp now, and he wondered how they’d found time to scrub the place down with all of the other activity going on. Had some crewmembers come in here to prep the compartment while they’d been scrambling after Riley outside? One of their own—their chief, no less—was about to become a patient. Of course they’d wanted the space squared away.

Riley floated in a sleep restraint mounted along a wall, a tangle of hoses and leads snaking around him in zero g. The thin line of a nasal cannula looped around his head and beneath his nose while an inflated sleeve encased his injured leg: oxygen therapy for his vacuum- and chemical-damaged tissue.

His violaceous leg ballooned against the transparent therapy sleeve, a result of burst capillaries from exposure to vacuum. Marshall deliberately averted his gaze from Riley’s swollen limb, focusing on the chief’s tired face instead. The chief’s eyes were bleary from either sedation or exhaustion; Marshall decided the distinction didn’t matter.

“How are you feeling, Chief?” A stupid question, and the only one that came to mind.

“My lungs feel like sandpaper and my leg’s one giant bruise but other than that I’m good, sir.”

Marshall eyed his leg and grimaced. “No marathons for you for a while, I think.”

“I hate running anyway. Only reason I do it is ’cause they make me. I keep hoping they’ll add fishing to the annual fitness test, but it never happens.” He looked Marshall square in the eye. “You shouldn’t have come after me, sir. At least not until they got those thrusters isolated. That was foolhardy.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” Marshall said. “You didn’t activate your SAFER pack.”

“I would have, just as soon as I got my suit patched.”

“You were passing out, Chief.”

Riley closed his eyes in submission. “Okay, so there’s that. Still, we could’ve lost two people out there, sir.”

“Three, sir. I had to stop Rosie from going after you while that quad was still firing.” The Chief looked alarmed. Before he could say anything, Marshall held up a hand to stop him. “Would you have done any different?”

“You got me again.” Riley stretched against his restraints and winced. He took a labored breath. “Do they know what happened yet?”

Marshall shook his head, wincing at his freshly wrapped ribs. Bruised, though he couldn’t imagine how they’d feel if broken. “They’re still troubleshooting, but obviously some fail-safes were missed in the ground sims. The guidance routine took over, tried to orient the ship as if it were executing the program live instead of running a QC check.”

Riley lowered his voice. “Skipper’s got to be pissed.”

“Epically pissed,” Marshall said. “He’s going to have someone’s ass for sure when we get back. Flynn was in the seat when it happened, and word is he’s being sent back to oversee the beatdown.”

“About that, sir . . .” Riley patted the sleeve around his leg. “If he’s going, you realize this means you’re staying. I sure can’t, especially if we’re expecting rescue sorties.”

Marshall’s eyes widened. “Nobody said anything to me,” he demurred. “I just figured Commander Wicklund would end up back on the crew roster.”

“The XO’s a good fleet officer,” Riley said, “but they’ll need EVA specialists on this mission.”

“I’m not one of those either.”

“You are now, sir. That was some real Hollywood shit you did out there.”

“Captain Poole’s going to want more experienced officers. I’m not getting my hopes up,” he said, embarrassed to admit it had been something he hoped for. Between Riley’s injury and Flynn’s misfortune it was a huge opening, and why wouldn’t he want to go in either man’s place? It would be their first mission into interplanetary space, sent to rescue a couple he’d been following near obsessively since they’d left Earth nearly two months ago. Yet this wasn’t about what he wanted—it was deadly serious work, as he’d just experienced firsthand.

As if reading his mind, Riley gave him an equally serious look. “What’s more important is the other spacers like you, and you’re earning their respect. Have you checked the manifest lately?”

Marshall pulled out his tablet and looked up the latest mission plan. When he tapped the manifest icon, his name appeared at the top of the list.

He was going.


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