Page 33 of Until the Stars Fall

I joined Beck in the airlock where he was already attaching his tether, and Summer shut the vault behind me. The roaring hiss of the airlock depressurizing and our suits’ responses sent my heart pounding. Just minutes ago, I was inches from kissing Beck in the forest. How were we about to go on a spacewalk?

Summer's voice appeared inside my helmet. “Can you guys hear me okay?”

“Yes,” we replied in unison.

Beck threw a thumbs up at the camera then ran his finger along the tablet embedded on his suit’s arm. “Gemma, I’m sorry I’m being an ass. I’m just scared. Thank you for coming with me.”

I glanced up from checking my tether to recognize he was only talking to me. I adjusted my own tablet to the private channel. “Of course. We’re in this together, right?”

He reached out with his fist, and I bumped it. He exploded his on the way back, and I chuckled as I set my tablet back to all comms.

“Are you tethered?” Summer asked.

“Yes,” we both answered.

“Okay, those suits will last you an hour, but we’ve only got fifteen minutes until we overshoot our course correction. Airlock opening in five...four...”

I glanced up at the monitor to see nearly all the denizens of the ship standing around in the bridge, including three of the cats. Zola appeared beside the others, one hand on her hip as the other gesticulated wildly at us.

My hands were ice, and my heart skipped and bounced around in my chest like I’d downed two cans of Berserker Energy Drink. I took deep breaths and stepped beside Beck, resisting the urge to grab his arm for comfort.

“One!”

With a grating hiss, the airlock opened. My feet left the ground, my stomach lurched, and I checked my tether on reflex. Beck had already propelled himself out of the ship. I followed, trying to ignore the hazy glow that marked the boundaries of our shield, about two hundred feet away, and the stark dark of space beyond. Squeezing the propulsion trigger at my thigh, I shifted my direction to land beside him on the hull, reaching out for the metal rungs of the access ladder. I grabbed on, suddenly enamored with the rivets of each rung, those beautiful fasteners that gave me something solid to hold onto with the vast nothingness of space at my back.

“Don’t look out, don’t look out,” Beck repeated quietly.

“I’m not.”

“I’m reminding myself,” he said.

It took us a few minutes of climbing to get to the hyperplumb panel. We hooked our arms and feet around the access rungs, and he pulled the powered screwdriver from his pack. Within seconds, he’d unscrewed all six screws from the panel, and I lifted it off.

“There’s the problem.” I reached down into the box to disconnect the wires of the broken plumb and pulled it out. He stuffed it into his bag and came back out with the replacement, which I took and carefully attached.

I hooked the meter to the panel and watched the numbers fluctuate on the screen. “It’s got electricity, but it’s not calibrating.”

The formless worry that I hadn’t been able to name barreled up my throat. We looked at each other and spoke at the same time.

“Interference from the solar sails!”

“Shit,” he said. “I was worried that was gonna happen.”

“So what about the solar sails?” Summer said over the coms. “I don’t want to rush you or anything, but we’ve got ten minutes till.”

“Alright.” He crunched his eyes closed.

I did the calculations in my head. The numbers on the screen were what I’d expect to see if the sails were shorting. But should they detect the sails?

“Are the sails serving any functions still? Our antimatter drive’s working, and we’re on the highway, so we shouldn’t need them, right?”

“I was thinking about that,” he said. “But I’m afraid to detach them. If we upset the balance of the ship, we might have adverse effects to the shield, based on the spells we have supporting those systems.”

“What if we disconnected their power supply?”

One side of his face pulled up. “That might work, but I can’t remember if it’s upline from anything.”

“It shouldn’t be. Even these old ships weren’t primed for electromagnetic navigation, so the connections on the sails shouldn’t affect anything, right? What am I missing?”

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