Page 39 of Collision!
Though the caves where his people had evolved might’ve been utterly black, that had been many millennia ago; they had lights now, calibrated for Szauralithyn vision.
But space…
The void did not care about his literal vision or Mariah’s creative ones.Even though the outer bay had vented before the hatch opened, he felt the lingering pull of the vacuum trying to suck him out.Or maybe that was his imagination.
What a terrible time to discover his imagination.
“Chief?”
Griiek’s croak in his comm broke through his stasis.“I’m clearing the lock.Begin unloading.”
He had to be out of the way and ready to attach the relays as the fabrication locked into place.
“Chief.”Mariah’s voice was composed in the main comm.“Ikaryo and I are looking over the pattern again with Anoushka, who has a civil engineering background.We think there might be more structural support if you install the cannon mount section aft of the…um, nav scope?”
They were changing the plan when he was about to step off into space?
“Acknowledged,” he said through gritted teeth.
The nav scope was not readily accessible from the supply bay.He’d have to do that section last, but the fake guns were crucial to their disguise.
He got to work.
With Griiek’s four hands at the articulated manipulators, the fabricated pieces of the ghostform mask maneuvered into place one after another.Suvan kept his attention on linking the sections efficiently, spot welding in place, and testing each relay as he went.With the ship gone sensor-dark, only his helmet and glove lights created a pool of glare on the bulkhead.Beyond that light was…
Nothing.
“Last one,” the deck tech announced over the sound of a ragged cheer.
Suvan didn’t respond.
The counterfeit cannons were clutched in the bay’s longest manipulator arm, stretching partway to the nav scope.
But not far enough.
“Retrieving final component.”His voice sounded warped in his comm.“Griiek, release the grip.”
As the grappler end opened with barest momentum, the guns drifted free.Suvan wrestled the awkward bulk, arming himself like he was the universe’s most ruthless raider.
Except false.
Because now he had to face the emptiness.
The gap to the nav scope seemed a million lightyears away, and his tether suddenly felt as insubstantial as Mariah’s frailest yarn.
All his quill-scales strained in a stress response, and he imagined—again curses to his imagination—the spikes ripping through his suit.
Which wasn’t possible, but that apparently didn’t matter to imagination.
The EVA suit’s readouts flickered across his visor display, exposing his ratcheting panic, dimming as he held his breath to force the betraying numbers down—
“Chief?”
He couldn’t tell anyone.Not even Mariah, though they’d shared so much in the prismatic darkness of her stateroom.
Who would trust a chief engineer—the one who lived and breathed in the depths of the ship, whose absolute control of the engines kept them alive in the lethal emptiness of space—who was afraid of that void?
“Suvan?”Mariah’s voice was soft in his private channel.“What’s happening?”
