Page 41 of Collision!
“Without the threat of weapons, our mask is meaningless.”Suvan held the welder in place, the searing metallic glare too bright even through his automatically darkened visor.“Three contact points and a relay to go.”
“Chief—”
He deliberately cut the main channel.
It didn’t count as mutiny if he couldn’t hear it.
“Suvan?”
Ah.He hadn’t silenced the private link with Mariah.
“Don’t ask,” he warned.
“I won’t.But just so you know, all the other relays test nominal.As soon as you connect, we will light it up while you get your ass back here.”
He wanted to ask her which other parts of him were invited, but he didn’t have the time or attention.He could only lock down on the bolts.At least he’d perfectly aligned the contact points.“Two more,” he reported.
In the bulk of the suit, all his movements seemed choked.The welder guttered, and he had to pause to swap out the diode.“One more to go.”
Before he reignited the welder, a hard glint from the corner of his eye brought his head up.
Vertigo would have knocked him adrift if not for his boot magnets.
“Mariah, tell them the unidentified ship is right outside the debris field, off the bow.”
“We’re tracking, Chief.Never mind the last bolt.Set the relay and get back here.”
Such command.Maybe she really did want to get him back.
Abandoning the last bolt, he fumbled at his tool belt for the fist-sized relay.It had been designed to snap easily into place despite bulky gloves, but if he lost his grip…
He had never lost his grip, and he would not do so now.
Along with flux spanners and having a goblhob to stand guard over his privacy, blocking out distractions had always been one of his most used tools.He called upon that ruthless focus, as unfeeling as space itself.
Releasing his magnets again, he stepped out along the narrow framework of the ghostform jutting past the nav scope.The empty relay socket was positioned not quite at the far end.Under his boots, the fabricated material was slick.
If there was a part of him shaking in fear with each skidding step—of the oncoming ship, the swirling debris, the risk of losing Mariah if this didn’t work—he crushed it, and his hand was steady as he fit the components together.
“Relay complete,” he snapped.“Open the circuit.”
Before his order had cleared the comms, power surged down the line behind him, the relays firing one after the other.Backscatter phased and polarized along the non-linear optics grid he’d added to Mariah’s design, and the camouflaging cloak engulfed the Love Boat I in an interference wavefront sweeping toward him.
Like pulling on a particularly bulky imaginary sweater.
With fake guns in front.
“Ghostform engaging.”His eyes burned from the glare.“I’m coming—”
The energy hit the front array, and the fourth strut that he’d left unbolted bowed hard.The fabricated outline absorbed the shock, bending like Lub about to leap…
Suvan had just enough time to say, “Fu—” when the rebound surged back.The strut slammed into his shoulder and flung him off the ship.
“Suvan!”
Lights and darkness smeared into chaos as he spun out.
Even as he fumbled for the booster controls, his suit tether snapped taut, jolting him into a sickening whirl the other direction.But the reinforced line held.
