“Nope,” Bobbie said, reaching for her helmet with one hand and a spare bottle of air with the other. “But it’s got really good mag boots and gloves.”
Alex checked his seals and got ready to open the Razorback to the void. “Don’t see how that’s going to help.”
The prime minister’s cabin showed it was sealed. On the monitor, the figure – Naomi – signaled Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard. Bobbie yelped, took a deep shuddering breath. Her voice was coming through the EVA suit’s radio now. “God damn, it’s been a long time since I was on the juice. This is some powerfully unpleasant shit.”
“Bobbie, we’re running out of time here. How are mag boots going to get you to Naomi?”
Behind her helmet’s visor, Bobbie grinned. “How good’s your control on those missiles?” she asked.
Chapter Forty-seven: Naomi
L
eaving the airlock this one last time was the most peaceful thing Naomi could imagine doing. As soon as she’d cleared the outer door, the sun and stars had stopped their gut-sickening whirl. She had taken her tangent from the whirling circle of life, and now her path was a line. Well, not a tangent, really. A secant, and doomed to cross paths with the ship again, only maybe not in her lifetime.
For a moment, she let herself enjoy drifting. The sun pressed against her back, the light radiating past her as she cast a shadow on whole stars, galaxies. The sense of whirling faded a little, and she wondered where Alex was, out among all these stars. She remembered to start counting. One thousand and… how long had she already been out? Seven? Eight? Well, she might as well think the worst. One thousand and thirty. Why not? She lifted her hands over her head. Danger. Then Do not approach. Then Explosion hazard. She felt like she was trying to warn the stars. The Milky Way. Don’t come here. Stay away. There are humans here, and you can’t trust them.
She stretched with every motion, letting it all go. She should have been scared, but she wasn’t. She was going to her death, and that sucked. She would have liked to live longer. To see Jim again. And Alex. And Amos. She would have liked to tell Jim all the things she’d been so careful for so long not to say. One thousand and sixty. Time to change her signs. Four minutes left. Four minutes and a lifetime.
Somewhere out there, Filip was with his father, the way he had been for years. Since he was a baby. And Cyn, poor Cyn, already as dead as she was going to be because he’d seen her in the airlock and thought stopping her would have been saving her. Thought the life she had with Marco was worth having. She wondered what would have happened if she’d stayed. If the Chetzemoka had flown without her. Would Jim have set off the bomb? She had to think he would have. He wasn’t a man who reined in his curiosity well. The stars shuddered, blurred. She was weeping. Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard.
If the suit had been powered, it would have been screaming alerts at her. She was almost glad now that it wasn’t. She wasn’t even light-headed yet. She’d seen people pass out. As long as her CO2 scrubbers kept working, it would be a peaceful way to go. No choking, no panic. Just a moment’s disorientation and then, softly, out. Here she was, after so many years, throwing herself out another airlock. She could still remember that first one, back on Ceres. It had been set in the floor, of course, but she could still conjure up the feeling of pressure on her fingers when she’d told it to cycle open, still believing that it meant her own death. And even then, she hadn’t wanted to die. She’d just wanted it to be over. To be free of it all. For the pain and guilt to be over. And the feeling of being trapped. She might have been able to stand all the rest of it, but not the sense of being caught.
This death wasn’t at all like that. This was throwing herself in front of a bullet so that it wouldn’t hit her friends. Her family. The family she’d chosen. The one built from people who had risked their lives for her. She wished Cyn could have met Jim. Could have understood how far she’d come from the girl he’d known on Ceres, back in the day. How much she wasn’t just Knuckles anymore.
She wasn’t religious, but she’d known any number of people who were. Explosion hazard. Low air. Three minutes. She wondered whether they would have thought what she was doing now was sinful. Giving herself over to the void in hopes that Alex would see her, would understand, would save himself.