Page 32 of Until the Stars Fall

“There has to be something else we can do.” I thought about the room full of astromech scraps I’d left behind at Noble Industries.

“We don’t have time to think of anything else.”

“Well you’re not going alone. I’m coming too.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, stepping in as the doors opened. “Your sister needs you, and Noah’d kick my ass if I let you go out there.” He pressed the intercom on the elevator wall and leaned in to speak. “Prep for a spacewalk.”

Summer responded. “Shit. Ten-four.”

“Noah recognizes I’m a grown woman who can do what she wants,” I huffed. “You don’t get to decide what I do and don’t do. And it’s not protocol for only one person to go. Why are you talking like this? Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

“Obviously you know what you’re doing.” He pulled his hair up with a pink hair elastic. “But Gemma, the suits we have are old. Not everything works on ’em. And I think you’re more crucial to the survival of this ship than I am.”

“That’s the sweetest line of bullshit I’ve ever heard.” I laid my hand on his arm. “Why are you throwing up ridiculous excuses?” I asked quietly.

His eyes on me were full of fear and something else. “You want the truth?” he asked, just as quietly, placing his hand over mine, moving closer to me and sending shivers skittering under my skin. “I care about you, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

My heart thudded, but I could only blink at him as the elevator dinged. He squeezed my hand and walked out, and I trailed after him.

Summer met us on our way to the dock off the bridge. “Are you sure there’s no other way?”

“I’m sure. Unless we want to overshoot our adjustment by twenty parsecs,” he growled.

I hadn’t been in the dock much, just long enough for Summer to prove it’d been thoroughly inventoried. Two airlocks, each not much wider than a gondola car, sat along the outer wall, and the side wall held cabinets of gear and tools. Beck pounded his fist once, hard, against the locker labeled “shitty astromech—RIP.”

Summer pulled a suit from another locker and handed it to him. “This is the best one we have. It looks like crap, but everything’s been tested to work.”

“I’ll need a suit too,” I said, digging through the lockers. Two doors down, I found a suit tagged “second best.” Comforting.

“Wait, you’re going too? No, no, no. I can’t have both of my engineers going on a spacewalk.”

“You don’t have a choice. It’s a two-person job, and anyway, EVA protocol is two people.” I whirled around to see Beck stripping down to his underwear. Damn, he was fine. I averted my eyes. “Don’t you want some privacy?”

“No it’s not,” he said. “Extra-vehicular activity protocol allows for unnecessary redundancy, especially with a crew this size. It’s a one-person job. And if you weren’t where you shouldn’t be, I wouldn’t need privacy. Summer doesn’t care.”

“Well I want privacy.” I stomped off to the cubicle curtain in the corner and yanked it shut around me. Why was he being such an ass? I rushed out of my clothes, not trusting him to wait for me.

The silence from the other side of the curtain was punctuated by the clicks and snaps of straps and locks, the hissing autofit adjusting the suit to his size. I tucked behind my ears stray hairs that’d come out of my careful bun, snapping them down with pins, and stepped into my suit. My autofit hissed around me as I inspected the propulsion, the com links, and the fastenings.

Beck looked up at the sound of my curtain rattling open, and our eyes met. His terror was plain on his face, and my anger softened.

“Look, I can go by myself,” I said, “even if it’s against protocol. I’ll reset the hyperplumb and be back before you know it.”

Hannah walked in while I was speaking, with Eyre right behind.

“You’re going out?” Hannah asked quietly, slipping a Chewy Bear into her mouth and the wrapper into her skirt pocket. She began to check all my seals and straps.

“Yeah.” I smiled. I’d caught the Chewy Bear bandit at last. “But don’t worry, Nannapie, I’ll be back before you know it.”

The corners of her mouth rose at the nickname. The room was a nervous kind of quiet as Hannah double-checked my suit and Eyre helped Beck load up his toolkit. Oby kept rubbing against Beck’s legs, as if he knew what was up.

Summer approached, pulling at straps on my suit. “Gemma, I can’t promise you that everything works right on this suit. I think this is the one with the latching issue.”

“Latching issue?”

“Yeah, the strap where the toolkit latches in is busted, so it’s compromised the rigidity of that area. It’ll hold, just don’t mess with the tether after you hook in, or you might have a real problem.” Summer positioned my helmet over my head as Hannah gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Ready?”

“Let’s go.” The vacglass came down, separating me from the others in my own life-preserving cocoon.

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