Page 141 (1/2)

She backed out, closed the access panel, opened the hatch, and took off her helmet

“Light,” she said to the eht”

Thefor her password It just fit past the lip of the access panel, and filled the space between the hulls with light so dim, she couldn’t see colors in it Shadows of struts and spars made deeper darkness all around, and shapes she couldn’t make sense of She had forty-five seconds before she had to head back It was the fifth ti on the wires In a real ship, it would all have been protected by conduit On this piece of crap, the wiring had all been fixed directly to the hull with a layer of yellowed silicone epoxy On the one hand, it was a blessing On the other, she was horrified that she’d ever trusted her life to the ship If she’d inspected between the hulls before they left Ceres, she’d have been sleeping in an environment suit the whole way to the Pella

The coating peeled free Thirty seconds She took a bit of salvaged wire and shorted the circuit A fat spark leaped out and the world lurched Across the space, ht went a sideways With the extra illumination, she could see the round, tree-thick body of theherself against a steel strut When she pressed her helhost-quiet radio She reached for the wire, broke the connection, and the rumble stopped

Out of ti, then She had no way to kno quickly, but the Coriolis was enough to make her stumble on the way back

With the panel closed, the hatch open, and her helain, she sat still until her balance ca carefully, drunkenly, she scratched the new infor a crudetrack of all she learned She was tired enough not to trust her memory From the count she’d started, she knew she’d been on thirty sorties Now, for the first ti It was only one thruster, but the ship was spinning now, tu ahead in a line All the acceleration would be bled into the changing angulartoward Jiht a little tirown up in the Belt and on ships Coriolis – and coping with the sick dizziness – was nothing new to her She knew that the feeling of power and accomplished, but she grinned all the same

Thirty sorties Two and a half hours just of ti the air in her suit or planning out the next run Maybe five hours total since she’d started this She was exhausted She felt it in her muscles and the pain in her joints She hadn’t eaten – couldn’t eat She was thirsty with the first strains of a dehydration headache co on There was no reason to think she would survive this So she was surprised to notice that she was happy Not the powerful, irrational, and dangerous joy of a euphoric attack, but a kind of pleasure and release all the same

At first, she thought it was because there wasn’t anyone there with her, guarding her, judging her And that, she decided, was part of it Butwhat needed to be done without having to concern herself about what anyone else thought Even Ji in the world more than for Jiood ravity – but there was a part of her that was also expanding into the silence of sihts, no guilt, no self-doubt tapping at the back of herelse had happened to her while she’d been paying attention to other things

This was the difference, she thought, between solitude and isolation And now she knew so about herself she hadn’t known before It was an unexpected victory, and all the better for that

She started getting ready for the thirty-first sortie

She had al up the co back down It was the sort of thing she’d have realized much more quickly if her mind hadn’t been a little on the compromised side

The co strips of metal tape lashed the transht as if they’d been o – nunostic handset Not that she could speak into it, but she e But despite the fact that handsets like that were standard and required, there wasn’t one

It had taken her soether a backup plan

For hours, the loopedon the back of residual charge “This is Naoe, please retransmit Tell Ja I have no nav control Please retransmit…”

Thirteen seconds long, and barely louder than the sound of her breath, even with her head less than a meter from the transmitter With the leads to the transh It had to be enough that it wouldn’t be mistaken for random interference She pressed her head to the hull to distract fro of her inner ear