Page 64 of Collision!
Transporting the resonark’s shroud to the supply hatch via two hovercarts was straightforward.Bracing through two more null cloud disturbances was mostly sideways staggering but still simple enough.
The hardest part was getting Mariah into an EVA suitwhileshe kept knitting.
Suvan did his best with the needles while Griiek affixed her gloves, all four Monbrakkan arms quick and precise.But the stitches loosened when he passed the needles back.
Fortunately, she’d gotten ahead of the unraveling, so she was able to catch up while he suited.But he saw the trembling in her hands.
“Almost there,” he murmured to her.
Because of the thick gloves, her stitches were open and airy, exposing more of the resonark’s fading polychromatic glow.With that unveiling, it was clear the anomaly was decohering.
Dying.
When the null cloud boundary had swept over the ship, he’d had a vision too.In that moment, he’d recognized all his formulas and fabrications, all the fixing and fine tuning and his finest flux spanner had been spun from the nothingness he’d once feared.The energy boosting his engines between stars was the same as the power in a kiss.
In Mariah’s kiss.
“Chief.”Delphine’s usually bracing tone sounded subdued; they’d all been impacted by the emotions more than the battering.“I’ve told the captain, if I take us any deeper into the cloud, the turbulence will likely collapse the ghostform.Our mask will be gone.”
“How close are we to the signal source?”
A hesitation before Nehivar said, “Not close enough.”
Suvan glanced at Mariah, how she had not faltered, every stitch looping to the previous.“I say we risk it.”
Another pause before the captain growled, “I would have bet every credit we earned on those freighter runs that I would never hear you say such a thing.”
“Save your credits,” Suvan said.“A chief engineer doesn’t gamble; he does the math…and then he does what matters.”
Griiek signaled the completed safety check.“Ready, Chief.”
“Helm, take us the rest of the way,” Nehivar said.
As the ship rocked on the battering waves, Suvan, Mariah, and Griiek clung to the unswerving hovercarts.With one free hand, Griiek toggled through external monitor views showing the crumpling ghostform, the relays snapping loose in all directions.
She croaked out a sigh.“All that work, for nothing.”
“Nothing is for nothing,” Suvan said.
Stuck in the supply bay, they had no view of the cloud except through Griiek’s datpad.But even that visual was imposing as the sleeting energies alternately blacking and whiting out portions of the overwhelmed screen engulfed them.
And he was taking Mariah out into that?
For a heartbeat, his brusque response to the captain mocked him.Because thiswasa gamble.
But when he turned to Mariah, a question on his lips, she was already watching him.“Griiek,” she said, “get to the inner hatch.We’ll be spacewalking soon.”
Suvan switched to their private channel.“Am I wrong to tell you I’d sacrifice love to not risk you?”
“Those aren’t the only choices, Chief.We have infinite chances.And at least some of them are mine.”When she smiled, the visor partly obscured her face so she looked like the little moon woven into the side of the bag she’d given him.“But it’s true, none of this was in the brochure.”
The ball of yarn they’d brought with them was quickly depleting as the atmosphere in the bay vented.Suvan checked their tethers and the grappler that Griiek had positioned behind the cart, ready to carry them out to…whatever awaited.
The dream teased him again, more a sensation than a vision of Mariah close against him.
If that promise awaited, he’d take any risk.
“Are you okay?”she whispered.
