by Jill Myles
Even though she’d been initially a little wary of sleeping with Kaden, she’d quickly found that they... matched. Very well. It wasn’t just the desperation talking, the knowledge that her life would be ending in two short days. It was that they laughed at the same jokes. Enjoyed the same vids, the same books. Shared the same views on so many things. That he didn’t seem to mind when she had a melancholy moment due to their situation. That he was unfailingly optimistic, even though she knew he was fighting real terror at the thought of the spacewalk, and was fighting it for her sake.
They just... fit.
In bed, he was amazing. It seemed to bring him just as much pleasure to make her come as it did to climax himself. She’d never had a partner so fascinated with getting her off—her previous relationships seemed to pale in the intensity of the last few days. And when he pulled her into his arms and held her close, stroked her skin, her heart did funny little things. She’d been attracted to Kaden before, in the way that anyone would be attracted to forbidden fruit, but now that she’d had a taste of their illicit affair... she regretted the last two months of celibacy. Deeply.
It seemed a shame that certain death had been the thing to bring them together. She would have liked to have had more time with him, she thought sadly. Maybe they’d vacation on Mars IV or Ceres 13. Go skiing on the slopes of Astra. Sunbathe on the beaches of Europa 13. Kaden had said he’d wanted to go there.
Or just cuddle up in his arms, in his quarters, content with the knowledge that no one had to go anywhere for days and days on end.
She would have liked to do a great many things with him. Definitely felt regret, she said to herself, and cradled her coffee mug in her hands. Zoey stared out the window at the wreck of the Yokohama. It seemed forbidding and ancient. The old ship was a thousand years old. To think that the technology they needed could be found in there was mind-boggling.
After a spacewalk, of course. She eyed the unwelcoming rings of the distant planet and decided she’d let Kaden sleep a little longer.
They had time enough, she supposed. If this didn’t succeed, it wouldn’t matter how much time they had left.
#
Time to go. Zoey feigned a calm she didn’t feel, ignoring the anxious twisting of her stomach, and smiled at Kaden.
“It’ll be an easy in, easy out,” she told him, double-checking the fastenings on his spacesuit again. Zoey kept her motions calm and easy as if this were a jaunt in the park. As if this was one of their practice runs in Zero-G, and as soon as he finished his drills, she’d give him his reward—a hot, wet blowjob. As if their lives didn’t depend on salvaging this wreckage.
She felt anxious. Tense. But she couldn’t let that show—if she did, it was sure to add to his anxiety, and Kaden was anxious enough.
He stood in front of her, his big body stiff as he adjusted his airtight gloves over and over again, trying to get the fit just right.
“You have the schematic downloaded to your helmet, right?”
He tapped it and gave a short nod.
She gave him a thumbs-up and double-checked her own helmet. A slow, focused double-blink of her eye prompted the motion-sensitive computer to pull up the interactive schematic, and it began to scroll down one side of her visor. Her target was highlighted in red.
Piece of cake.
Zoey turned and the quick movement made Kaden’s entire body tense. Oh, no. They hadn’t even gone out the airlock yet. She turned and gave him another bright smile, tugging on his belt. “I can go by myself.”
“You can’t,” he said, his voice tight. “The engine is enormous, and the compressor has to be unlocked in tandem on each side. It’s designed to be maneuvered by at least two people. We’re going to have a hard enough time with just the two of us.”
Well, wasn’t he just sunshine. But she ignored it, moving to him and clipping a loose belt around his waist. She didn’t like a tether in deep space because it removed a bit of control, but she didn’t want Kaden to feel alone out there. So she hooked it around his waist and an identical one around her own and fastened the rigging line between them.
“I’m ready,” she said when they’d double-checked their preparations one more time. “You?” The Yokohama waited, and every moment they spent here was another moment they might need to repair the drive.
He gave her a tight nod, his helmet bobbing.
Zoey pushed forward, moving to the cramped airlock. Normally space-walkers went out singly, but she was going to be extra-cautious with Kaden. So they crammed both of their bodies into the small portal room. She sealed the door to the interior of the Alcestis behind them, then looked over at the airlock in front of them. “Ready?” she asked again.
He gave her a thumbs-up.
She typed in the sequence that would open the airlock to space. The computer droned a warning. Thirty seconds passed and she forced herself to be calm, to not look over at Kaden. That would just send him in a panic.
The airlock hissed open and sucked them out with the depressurized air.
Zoey always enjoyed the little burst of speed that the depressurization gave them, the feeling of sinking into the cool nothingness of space, the wild tumble into the open. But Kaden’s hand clenched her gloved one, and she pulled him close. There was nothing to fear, and she’d show him that.
She loved the empty, open feel of deep space, of knowing that only her thin suit separated her from, well, the cosmos. It was a job requirement for all astro-archaeologists to be proficient in deep space. With so many wrecked ships (alien or otherwise), she was bound to complete many a salvage run in space. And she was a pro at it.
She blinked hard, twice, and the schematic zoomed onto the screen of her helmet again, directing her. They were on the port side of the broken Yokohama and needed to zoom in starboard. She gestured at her boots, then waited for his nod. When his hand grasped hers tighter, she turned on the thrusters of her boots, reversing their slow spiral into deep space and setting a course for the Yokohama. She felt the cord tense between them as the propulsion caught up and then snapped forward, tugging Kaden along with her.
She mentally winced. He had probably hated that.
But when she glanced back at him, he seemed calm. His hand clenched hers tightly, but he didn’t seem pale. That was good.
The Yokohama was a cruise ship. Or it had been, a thousand years ago when it had gone off course and on the edges of known space had careened into an asteroid. No one had made it back alive from her ill-fated voyage, and it had always been a dream of Zoey’s to participate in an exo-archaeological run to the infamous ship. It was a famous stop for many new astro-archaeologists looking to build their resume a little, as long as they didn’t mind a trip out to fringe-space.
Now, staring at the broken hull, she wished she’d picked something closer to home. Like, say, Pluto. Ah well.
With her boot-thrusters chugging, they moved along the outside of the miles-long hull at an easy pace. There was no sense in rushing, as overshooting their goal could cost them just as much as taking their time. A slower pace would keep her partner relaxed.
“The hull breach should be just up ahead,” she told him.
“Sounds good,” he said, and his voice was calm. She’d clearly made too much of his fear. With that in mind, she boosted her thrusters just a little, eager to get inside the wreck.
With the Yokohama being an archaeological mecca, it didn’t take long for Zoey to start to see signs of former teams’ visits. Chalk taggings and measurement inscriptions written on the hull. Flagged debris. And she looked for the inevitable, tiny red flag that would indicate that a corpse had been tagged by an archaeological team.
“Here we go,” she said in a light voice as they came to the gaping, broken maw of the ship. A sea of debris floated around them. Thirteen flight decks lay scattered, broken, cut in half.
A sea of red flags filled the debris, and Zoey stared. Bodies were everywhere, mixed with broken dishware from one of the ship’s restaurants. A fork f
loated past her visor, carelessly tumbling through the depths of space. Nearby, she saw the body of a woman clutching a bundle to her chest, and two red flags waved there. She turned away, swallowing hard. Somehow when she’d pictured the excitement of heading out on an expedition, she’d forgotten that this was the scene of a tragedy. One thousand years ago, people had died here.
It suddenly didn’t seem like such an exciting mission, given their own circumstances. Looking back, she had been so very naïve.
“Asteroid, huh?” Kaden asked as she slowed her thrusters, reversing the direction so they’d slow down. “How the hell did they manage that?”
“Someone destroyed the records,” she replied cheerfully. “Happened sometime between the time that they went off course and when they hit the asteroid. Because it was deliberately destroyed, history suspects sabotage. They think it was an anti-terraformation league, and the terrorists took down one of the heads of the league when they took down the ship. Others speculate that the captain was drunk.”
He chuckled at that, but it was a bit strained. “Option B sounds a little ridiculous. No one else was on deck at the time? The captain piloted this big old ship alone?”
“Who knows? It’s one of the great historical mysteries,” she said and couldn’t help the wistful note in her voice. Someday she’d come back and have time to study the Yokohama. Today, though, she just needed to strip it for parts. She blinked hard and moved her chin, directing the schematic with the subtle motion of her head. The compressor was lit up on her screen, but the reality of entering the broken, debris-filled Yokohama was a little overwhelming, even for her. “I don’t know as much about ships as you do,” she said to fill the void. “So what does a dark matter compressor do?”
“It cools the sprint drive,” he said. “The sprint drive overheats and becomes almost nuclear over time. Once it hits the maximum, it shuts down and over the course of about a week or so, the compressor cools it down enough that we can utilize the particle accelerator again. Right now, ours is still on the verge of nuclear meltdown. If we push it, our ship will explode. Of course, if we don’t push it, we die anyhow. So that’s why we’re going to steal the compressor from the Yokohama and attach it to the sprint drive from the Cephalon.”
“Sounds good to me. Why don’t you lead the way?” She stepped to the side to let him take the lead since he seemed to be relaxing.
Kaden moved past her, taking his time as they dodged scattered debris. Navigating in the clutter of the broken Yokohama was nerve-wracking. In between the mess of personal items floating free, she’d occasionally see a part of a body slide past, reminding her that this was a grisly tomb. It was one thing to read about a disaster in a book and another entirely to be fighting for your life, only to have a dead woman drift past.
They made their way through the destroyed deck, then up an elevator shaft. The elevator car was crashed at the bottom, but they didn’t need it; they just glided up the shaft with gentle pushes of their boot-thrusters.
They found the engine room past a hallway crowded with the dead, all piled together so closely that they hovered in a tangle, unable to separate and drift away like the others. Kaden pushed past the uniformed bodies and tugged on the door. It had lain open a crack and the heavy door slid to the side even without power.
Her heart hammered as they entered the massive engine room. Cylinders and cables lay scattered everywhere. It reminded her of her hovercar’s engine, only a thousand times larger and more complicated. In the distance, a faint red light flashed on the emergency-beacon panel, a warning a bit too late for the poor Yokohama’s crew.
Using the computer in her helmet, she checked the records for lifepods while Kaden moved forward, tugging her along their tether. Just as she’d always heard—not a single one remained. They’d all jettisoned at the time of the crash, though only half had been recovered. Shame. She’d been hoping they would catch a break.
“Here it is,” Kaden said, moving below another row of titanium metal boxes and running a hand over an enormous, rounded cylinder the size of a hovercar. “Get the latches on the far side.”
She moved as far as the tether would allow, drifting over the bulky compressor. She couldn’t reach the other side, not with the belt tying her to him. Zoey turned back to Kaden. “I’m going to need to unhook. You ok?”
“I’m fine.”
She quickly unhooked herself and pushed forward, drifting to the other side of the compressor and landing squarely on her feet. She crouched, examining the compressor’s anchor mechanisms. A series of clamps locked it in place on both sides. “I’m unlocking now.”
“Got it. Let me know when you have the last one undone.”
They worked together, a quiet, efficient team, none of their usual laughing and teasing at hand. When she got to her last lever, they timed it and freed the compressor together. The enormous box began to drift free, and she placed a hand on it to guide it. The damn thing had no handles; the sides were slick. “And we need to take this to the Cephalon, right?”
“Yes. It’s got two unjettisoned lifepods. I’d say we could rig this to Alcestis, but this drive’s an old one and not compatible with our ship. But we could rig it to the bottom of one of the lifepods because they’re made to have interchangeable parts. And Cephalon’s only one generation away from the Yokohama.”
Of course it was. The Cephalon had “gone down” on a retrieval mission of the Yokohama’s richest passengers and their bodies. The Cephalon had been little better than a contracted salvager that should have never been sent into fringe-space anyhow, and so the old ship had massive engine failure when arriving in the star system. The crew had waited fifty-three days before rescue had arrived, and the old ship was abandoned. Now it simply drifted in space next to the other one. The lifepods had never jettisoned because the crew on board had waited for rescue. Perfect.
That didn’t solve their current problem, though—getting the precious compressor over to the Alcestis so they could tow it to the Cephalon. They weren’t going to be able to do it tethered again. “Do you want me to stay on the far side, or do you want to take it?”
“I’ll lead,” he told her. “Just try to guide from behind.” As she watched, he took the free-dangling tether and looped it through the grid on the front of the compressor.
“Be careful,” she told him. She had a sudden nightmare vision of the compressor getting momentum and dragging him through the depths of space.
Through the helmet’s visor, she saw his grin, so close to his normal cocky self. “This thing’s our ticket out of here. If we lose it, it doesn’t matter if I’m tied to it or not—we’re both still fried.”
Of course. How silly of her. She felt her face flush. “Let’s just go, then.”
He pushed forward, goosing his boot-thrusters a little, and they made slow progress back out the main airlock, then into the berth of the ship. Zoey forced herself to concentrate on guiding the compressor, though she cringed every time a bit of flotsam from the wreck came close to hitting it. The last thing she wanted was to send everything spinning out of control and make it impossible for Kaden to guide them safely out of there.
The journey back through the Yokohama was grueling and slow, but they made progress slowly, surely. Zoey was grateful when the star-filled depths of space suddenly appeared in her visor again. The Yokohama was making her feel positively claustrophobic.
They broke free from the wreck, and there in the distance, like a gleaming white star, was the Alcestis, drifting in place, waiting for them. Good. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. “Almost there,” she told Kaden cheerfully. “Then we’re off to the showers.”
“Probably a good idea to break out that bath,” he told her and she could almost hear the strained chuckle in his voice. “I’ll even join you.”
“You’re welcome to,” she said warmly. A piece of debris was hanging perilously close, and she let go of the compressor for a second to go and bat it out of the way. It smacked into som
ething else, and she winced. “You’re doing awesome. We’re so close. We—”
A piece of wreckage—sent spinning by the object she’d carelessly pushed aside—careened onto the compressor, sending it spinning. The enormous cylinder began to spin into deep space. She tried to cling to it, but there was nothing to hold onto on her side, and it tossed her out into open space, her body flipping over and over again in the null gravity.
“Zoey!” Kaden’s scream echoed in the utter silence of space.
“I’m good,” she told him, keeping her voice calm. “Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.”
And then the shadow of something massive fell over her helmet, two seconds before she collided with an asteroid.
#
She smacked against the rock, hard, and every muscle in her body went tense when she felt the rough surface scrape her spacesuit. Just the tiniest hole and her suit would depressurize, killing her in a matter of moments.
Nothing.
She exhaled slowly, holding her arms out to try and stop her wild careening into space. A few quick, short thrusts of her boot-thrusters and she tried to slow her momentum. She was getting dizzy, the rings of Titan 34 zooming in and out of her vision repeatedly with her spinning.
“I’m good,” she said to Kaden, finally slowing her endless flipping just as an enormous second asteroid drifted past. Well, no wonder the Yokohama had looked so pitted. The asteroid that they’d hit must have broken apart on contact. “You ok over there?”
No response but static. She smacked the side of her helmet and got an earful of screeching static feedback and quickly shut off the radio. Well, shit. She must have messed it up when she’d cracked her helmet on the asteroid. Figured that of all the open space out here, she’d get clobbered by an asteroid. Her own damn fault.
She waited for the asteroid to lumber past. It was easily the size of a grav-ball field, and she didn’t feel like trying to navigate around it, lest she collide with it again. When it finally moved past, she zoomed back toward the wreck of the Yokohama, scanning the mess of debris for Kaden and the compressor. Kaden would likely be frantic that she’d fallen off the radio signal, and she wanted to get back to him fast, reassure him.