“I’ll come in case I have to fix some of their operating systems,” Zea said.
“Alright,” I said as I stood. “Paula, Kasta, Zea, and I will head out. Do we have a tow line we can attach to the cruiser? I’d prefer for you all to drag it out of the debris while we are inside working on it.”
“There should be one in the hold,” Juliette answered.
“Paula and Kasta, do you have a drone that can fly out there and?--”
“Nope,” they both answered.
“We only brought our dragonflies,” Paula sighed. “They need air to work. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll attach the towline, and then Juliette can drag us out of the junk.”
“I’ll go help you find it,” the redhead said as she swung her long legs out of her chair. “Eve, can you take over as the pilot for a moment?”
“Of course,” the vampire said, and then she smiled at us as she took the chair. “Be safe everyone. I will pray for you.”
Everyone but Eve crammed into the elevator, and then we rode it back down to the lower hold level. Zea, Paula, Kasta, and I found the lockers where the space suits were, and Juliette, Aasne, and Elana searched for a tow line. By the time Kasta had helped all three of us figure out how to put on the suits, Juliette, Aasne, and Elana had returned with the orange colored towline in their arms.
“It’s one and a half kilometers,” Aasne said as the three women set the line down. The material looked like braided plastic, but it was about as thick as my middle finger.
“You’ll need to hook the end to the… where is the end?” Juliette asked, and the three women glanced down at the rope until Elana pulled it up.
“It needs to go on the tug hook at the back of the corvette,” Juliette finished. “Try not to let the rope knot up.” As she spoke she looked down at the mess of cord that the three of them had dragged over. It looked like a hundred bowls of orange spaghetti that someone had dumped on the ground, and I imagined that it was already knotted a hundred times.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said as I turned to Zea, Paula, and Kasta. “You ready?”
“Yep!” Kasta and Paula said as they each raised the tool cases in their hands. Zea also nodded, but her face looked a little pale as we all pressed the button to open the airlock.
“Wait,” Aasne said, and then she ran around the corner and returned a few moments later with two rifles in her arms. Zea and I each took one, hung the strap over our shoulders, and then turned toward the room that would take us out into space.
The four of us stepped into the airlock, and then we helped Aasne, Elana, and Juliette pull the towline in. Then everyone cross checked to make sure that our space suits were working, and Kasta engaged her Aegis. The armor dripped over her body like silver wax, and then covered her jeans, boots, chest, arms, and face with polished metal. The armor looked thin, and I remembered Sivaha speaking about how it would have to evolve.
“How do I look?” Kasta said as she turned to us. “Am I sexy?”
“Yeah,” Zea said. “It looks really cool.”
“It does,” I agreed as I looked up and down the beautiful android’s metal body. There were slight impressions of tiger stripes on her legs, chest, shoulders and arms, but the really striking area was her helmet. It looked like a tiger’s head, but while Sivaha’s visage had looked like an organic mixture of flesh carved out of metal, Kasta’s looked angular and rigid, like a tiger-robot. Her eyes glowed blue through the helmet, and the jaws of the armor actually seemed to move a bit when she spoke.
“Do I have those cool thrusters on my back?” she asked as she spun on her toes so we could look at her backside. The metal of her armor seemed to shift and ripple slightly when she moved her legs and arms, but that could have just been my imagination.
“I don’t see them,” Zea said.
“Darn,” Kasta pouted. “I guess they have to evolve. I’ll hang onto Sis so that I won’t float out into space.”
“Just hang inside of the airlock until I get the tow line attached,” I said as I hit the button to open the airlock to the outside. “Then we’ll all just hang on that. It will be safer.”
The three women nodded as the door opened to the vacuum of space, and I pulled the end of the tow line.
Then I jumped out of the craft and into infinity.
The last time I was in space was when I had saved Madalena and her crew from dying in their space station. I didn’t have my hands then, and it felt a lot less stressful to be doing a spacewalk with my fingers wrapped around a tow line.
With my free hand, I found the controls for the suit’s thrusters, and I quickly maneuvered myself to the rear of the ship and found the anchor point where the towline connected. As soon as it was hooked in, I climbed hand over hand back to the open doorway of the airlock and gestured for them to push the rope out of the room.
“Can this thin rope really tow the cruiser out?” Zea grunted as she pushed and I pulled on the rope.
“Sure,” Kasta said through the corvette’s transponders. “The hard part will actually be getting it to stop, since there isn’t any gravity out here.”
“Ahh,” Zea said. “That’s right.”
“I want you all to hold on to the line,” I said as I pulled the rifle down on my back so it was a bit more comfortable. “Watch out for the shrapnel. Some of it can be moving fast.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I started to reconsider the plan. I could see a few holes in the spinning metal, but there was just too much flying around.
“Yeahhh, this isn’t going to work,” Zea squeaked. “We should just fly the ship in.”
“Negative, Blondie,” Juliette said over our transponder. “If we get hit hard, then we’ll be stranded out here. Someone needs to go and attach the tow line so that we can try to yank that beauty out. If you can’t figure out a way to do it, then we are better off just continuing to Nseling - 24 - f.”
“I’ve got this!” Kasta said. “You don’t have to worry. Let me be at the back. I can actually calculate their trajectory and tell everyone when we are good to go forward.”
“Oh, that’s useful,” I laughed, and I felt a bit of my tension ease.
“I’m useful for more than just jokes and math, husband,” Kasta laughed. “You’ll find that out as soon as you let me in your bed.”
“Ehh, wait in line,” Zea laughed, but I knew her well enough to know that her laugh was nervous.
“I’ve been waiting! Everyone has had a ride now except for Sis and--”
“Focus on the mission please,” I said, and Kasta stopped talking. “I’m going to engage my thrusters. We clear?”
“Yep,” Kasta said. “For about two hundred meters, then the first pieces of space trash are gonna be floating around us.
“Alright,” I said after I took a deep breath, and then I slowly engaged the thrusters on the back of my suit and began to stretch out the orange cord.
I’d been out in the void of space several times in my life, but I still wasn’t anywhere close to being used to the experience. Looking up, down, or to my sides was just an endless field of stars that looked beautiful until the brain realized that they were all lightyears away, and all it took was one misstep to be forever lost amongst them.
I guessed that Zea was starting to have similar thoughts because I heard her breathing start to become labored as we neared the cloud of twisting metal.
“You all are looking good,” Juliette said over our transponders. “You are about a sixth of the way there. Nothing on the long range scanners.”
“Everyone make sure they are closer to Adam on the rope,” Kasta said, and I glanced back to see Zea, Paula, and Kasta choke up on their grips so they were grabbing right below me.
“Shit, some of those pieces look sharp,” Paula wheezed.
“It’s okay,” Kasta said. “Adam, increase our speed a bit. I see a hole we can fit through.”
“How much?” I asked as I pressed on my button a bit more.
“Tiny bit more. There! That’s good!”