Aesop Cohen tightened the strap affixing the X-87 carbine to his chest. The vacuum suit gloves offered more dexterity than the previous generation, and had ingenious little hooks for getting underneath fasteners. The interior of the helmet smelled like a swamp sprayed down with copious industrial cleaner. The algae cultures in the oxygen pack were fresh, but over time the pond scum and ammonia odor would fade away, leaving behind fresh, clean oxygen. An escape, actually, from the desiccated air of the Condor.
A countdown cycled on his retinal implants, approaching zero as the hiss of air being pumped from the forward airlock dulled and went silent. Nothing but a soft shell of flexible composites stood between Aesop and vacuum now.
"Charge boots, set up the pulley," he said. His suit’s microphones picked up the subtle buzz of the electromagnetic boots of his squad translating through the floor, and he reached to the bulkhead, swiping down the controls to isolate the airlock from the ship’s artificial gravity field. Down vanished. Held in place only by energized pads on the bottom of his feet, he slid the hatch open, bathing the airlock in the artificial light of the tether.
"Target acquired, Sarge."
"Hold, Vega. We got a ship twenty-two hundred meters away and two thousand meters of cable to get to it. Let’s keep it in our pants, eh?" said Aesop. He leaned against the upper edge of the hatch, gazing down the length of the radiant tether to the drifting ship almost two miles away. The Condor was catching up slowly. From the hatch he could see the underside of the nose, stubby and dotted with sensor modules. One offered a view of himself, the video repeated on a screen in the airlock. There wasn’t much room to move around, but the marines were used to the cramped quarters. Every bit as efficient as any IDF unit he’d worked with planetside.
"Nineteen-hundred meters," Vega reported. Aesop tapped twice on the top of the airlock hatch with a gloved fist, and with that his marine fired the harpoon, carbon fiber coiling behind as the projectile passed near Aesop’s armpit. It took only a handful of seconds before he confirmed the hit with the sensor shack. The reel buzzed as it drew the line taut, then clicked with finality. He could imagine the sounds it made as he sensed its vibration through his feet and his glove, having heard it a half-hundred times at the practice range.
"Alright boys and girls, let’s go for a ride."
"Poor Cohen, can’t wait to get over there and find another alien to fall in love with."
Aesop grinned inside his suit, eyes still fixed on the Gavisar ship through the translucent shell of his faceplate. "Mags, you’re on the general circuit. I can hear you."
"Oh, look at that," she said, tone making it clear she knew exactly what channel she’d been on. She clipped her rider onto the line and threw a one-fingered salute as the device shot her out of the airlock. Vega and Singh followed close behind, then it was his turn to leave the Condor and enter the night sky of Juna.
It was impossible for viewscreens to ever truly represent the view offered by raw space. The curve of the planet and the luminous weather below dominated his field of vision. No matter how many times he performed spacewalks, each one was like the very first time. Wonder, excitement, and just a little fear. There was just so much space. Being on a planet, seeing a dozen miles in any given direction? Aesop would take the magnificence of orbit any day. The peace, too. Sure, the xenos squabbled as bad as Earth ever had, but here in the moment none of that mattered. Not even the thousand-strong fleet in orbit and between Pedres and Juna. Of those thousand ships, the old lady had elected to put him on one, ballsy move, that.
As he gazed at the Gavisari ship growing closer by the minute he felt a telltale shudder in his rider. "What’s the tension on the line at right now?" he asked. Numbers flashed across his retinal implants as Vega sent him the information. Aesop reviewed it with a cursory glance. "Dial it back twenty percent, yes?"
"We’re starting to introduce our own heading deviation," said Maggie. Another rumble translated through the cable as she spoke.
"Vega, what did you latch us on to?"
"What? The hull? The hell should I know, I look like a xenotech egghead to you?"
The Condor was running a full communications blackout, and Aesop’s eyes weren’t good enough to see what was going on. With one hand still on the cable rider, he loosened the straps on his X-87 and swung the rifle over his head, pushing the optics to their max magnification just in time to watch a sensor array pierced by the harpoon tear partly away from the hull with a shower of sparks and venting gas. The compartment on the other side must have still had some atmospheric pressure.
"Harah! Vega, cut the line!" said Aesop. Ahead of him the Gavisari ship began to rotate, less than a kilometer away now. The torsion pulled on the induction tether, and the whole ensemble began to swing closer. His eyes widened, and he frantically clawed at the release for his lanyard. He cut it loose just as the brilliant line of xeno alloy contacted the carbon fiber cable with an arcing flash, completing the circuit with the ship through the harpoon still wedged in its hull. The carbon fiber parted instantly from the heat of the contact. The tension on the line snapped back, whipcord ribbon disappearing as it sprang back and struck the outer hull of the Condor.
Mags hadn’t managed to release her own lanyard in time, and caught between the point of impact and the Gavisari ship, the voltage arced directly to the metallic components of her suit. She was maybe a hundred meters ahead of him, tumbling like a limp rag in the vacuum. All four of them retained their momentum, but now the rapid ride toward the derelict vessel became a high-speed free fall through the chaotic coils of molten-bright cable. Light assaulted Aesop from all sides as he engaged the EVA thrusters built into his heavy vacuum suit.
He passed Singh, who was using her thrusters to decelerate even as he built speed. Ahead of her, Vega was busy trying to stop a wild spin, the cabling having snagged his lanyard as it snapped.
Maggie Chambers had been first through the airlock, as she was any time she could get away with it. She’d put on more speed than she should have, and details on the derelict were becoming alarmingly visible as Aesop raced to her vacuum suit, grabbing on and arresting her spin as best he could.
"Cohen, six o’clock!" came Singh’s voice over his radio. He twisted, eyes widening as a searing loop of tether spread before him. Behind it, he noticed the Condor, visible only by the starlight it blocked, pulling away from the deathtrap. It had no way to get to them, and they’d just painted a huge target on the rest of the crew’s back with their fuckup. Cohen put his feet against Maggie’s armor, pushing enough to send them in opposite directions. The cable undulated between them, close enough for static to crackle through the radio in his helmet. Then it was gone, and too late to do anything to slow himself or Mags as they crashed into the hull of the Gavisari ship. His face struck the inside of the composite helmet. Everything went dark.
"Huian, get us in there for a pickup."
Victoria’s navigator shook her head. "It’s no good, Vick, computer can’t determine a safe course, the model is too complex."
Despite her words, Huian Wong increased the shuttered thrust, only to be rebuffed as the end of the tether swung dangerously close to the prow of the Condor. Victoria clenched her fists, resisting the urge to throw her coffee cup through the main viewscreen. Four personnel alone, exposed, and she couldn’t pull them out. Every maneuver with the ion engines increased the chance of detection, but that hardly seemed to matter now that they were waving a glowing, ten-kilometer banner across the upper atmosphere.
Victoria found herself in the worst position a captain can. She had no choice.
"Pull out," she said. The sound of the conn hatch closing brought her around to the silhouette of a broad figure in a black vacuum suit.
"Oh, I think my ears must be stuffed, Vick. I’ve got four marines down there."
Just what she needed. "Major, this isn’t up for discussion."
"Oh, I agree."
Victoria cupped a hand to her forehead. "Get the fuck off my conn, Red. Sensors, talk to me."
The open microphone crackled with Avery’s voice. Even he sounded shaken at having witnessed the catastrophic boarding failure. "Got two xenos decreasing bearing rate, Vick. Someone’s coming in for a closer look."
"And someone else, namely us, has a powerful reason to weigh anchor and be elsewhere. Huian, gain some distance."
"Victoria," started Red, but she wheeled on him.
"You think I want to leave four of my Vultures on that goddamned piece of shit scrap heap? Christ, Red, I`d throw you out the airlock after them if I thought you could make it without that cord cutting you in half. Now unless you have anything worth anything to spit out, get. The fuck. Off. My. Conn."
"Vick, please."
The Major’s voice was soft. Softer than she’d ever heard it. Red Calhoun had been a soft-spoken man as long as she’d known him. In Victoria’s experience, men his size said more with quiet confidence and hushed looks than with words. Victoria exhaled, the anger leaving her body as expended as the breath she’d been holding after her tirade.
"Break emissions control. Find out who you have left down there, Red. Don’t make me regret this."
He looked past her at the Gavisari ship growing smaller on the main viewscreen. His eyes met hers, defeated eyes, but some measure of relief glimmered there. He strode to the executive officer’s station without another word, helmet tossed on the seat. The Major was as well versed in the systems aboard the Condor as any of her officers, and it didn’t take long for his fingers to open the tightbeam channel to the Gavisari derelict.
"This is Major Calhoun. Emcon suspended. Sitrep, marines."
The only thing on the line was static for several seconds, but eventually a South American accented Kosso came through the receiver. "Major, this is Vega. Cohen and Chambers are down but breathing, requesting egress sir."
Victoria bit back a curse. "Negative, Vega. No way for us to get to you. We’re on track to break orbit in 20 minutes and regroup with the carrier."
"Hang tight, lad, we’ll swing back. Till then, you’ve a job to do. That’s not changed."
"You shitting me Major? "
Victoria closed the channel, cutting off whatever reply the major had been about to give. They’d broadcast enough, already risking detection. "Huian," she said, "time until we hit our return window?"
"We’ll be on the sunward side of the planet in fourteen minutes, Skipper."
"Make the necessary course adjustments now. We’re too close to the planet, I don’t want bounced light giving away our maneuvering," said Victoria. She locked eyes with Red Calhoun. "We’re coming back for them, Red. I swear to high heaven we’re coming back."