The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

"The hangar has an access hatch," Eow said. "Come on!"

He figured he didn't really have a choice, not with a shipload of pirates about to barge in.

Dirken gingerly set the sphere down, still wondering if it was a bomb, and looked at the remaining suits. Other than the centaur, the only one that hadn't been grabbed was tall and thin, probably for a lanky Tau Cetian. He started trying to put it on, but it clearly wouldn't fit. He couldn't get the straps around his muscular chest. "Damn it!"

"Here," Yiorgos said, already strapped into his suit. "Use the centaur suit. The part for the lower body and back legs will just have to flop around behind you." He pulled it off the wall and opened it up.

Reluctantly, Dirken stepped into the suit and latched it shut, then Yiorgos twisted the helmet on, activating the suit's life support systems and projecting a readout of suit stats onto the faceplate of the helmet. The air in the suit smelled like wet dog, and dozens of tiny scales clung to the inside surface.

Dirken felt like he was wearing a tent, and as he stepped forward to pick up the sphere, the "lower body" and back legs of the suit dragged along behind him. "I feel like a total idiot wearing this."

"Oh, suck it up, space jockey," Eow said, stifling a laugh. She was fully-suited and carrying the pulse rifle.

They stepped into the airlock and closed the inner hatch just as they heard a loud bang from the other room.

"They're through the door," Yiorgos said.

As the airlock evacuated, Eow pointed at her comm panel on her arm and flashed three fingers, indicating channel three. They each activated that channel on their suits. "Energize your magboots," she said through the intercom.

Dirken realized that, while the front magboots were needed for his own feet, the rear magboots would act as an anchor, seeing as how he wasn't a centaur. So he simply clomped the soles of the two rear boots together, conjuring an odd image of him as a centaur doing an Irish dance and clicking its heels together.

Eow opened the outer hatch. Each of them stepped to the edge of the airlock and crawled out onto the outer hull of the ship in single-file.

Beyond, the vastness of outer space wrapped its celestial arms around them, a billion starry eyes watching them step along the brigantine's hull.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EXTRA-VEHICULAR ACTIVITY

For many minutes (Dirken wasn't sure how long, since the time readout on his heads-up display was written in Aquarian centaur language) they clomped along the hull in silence. Dirken made a conscious effort to keep his eyes on the hull and not on the vastness of space, not just for the sake of his own nervousness "out there," but also because of the difficulties of wearing the ridiculously oversized suit.

He soon found himself sweating and huffing. For one thing, Dirken's magboots clung too tightly to the hull, requiring him to tug with each step. It seemed Aquarian centaurs had stronger legs. For another thing, the stupid lower body and back legs of the centaur spacesuit flopped and swung with every step as if he were being trailed by a giant mass of balloons. There was just enough mass to it to cause him to wobble every time the suit reached one extreme or another, and sometimes it wrapped completely around his torso. The physics of its movement seemed hard to anticipate. The combination gave his gait a ridiculous, clownish stride and threatened to trip him up.

"Come on, Dirken!" Eow said through the comm, glancing back. "They've surely discovered we're out here by now. We have to hurry!"

"Easy for you to say," Dirken muttered. His legs were already tiring and the trio had only gotten about halfway to the hangar.

Yiorgos hung back for a moment to wait for him. "You seem to be having some problems, Dirk."

Dirken swore he heard a little titter of laughter before the cyborg turned off his mic.

"Yeah.… Problems."

"Here." Yiorgos reached out his hands when Dirken was within touching distance. "I can take the Heart."

Dirken's first thought was to keep it and just charge to the end. He thought of the ancient North American game of football — or was it called foosball? — where a player with an oversized helmet would run a ball to an end zone, never dropping the ball or getting brutally slammed to the ground by other players. But then the rational side of his brain took over.

"Thanks," Dirken said, and started to hand over the Heart, slowing down.

The back part of the centaur suit wrapped around him just as he tugged up his right boot. The suit went under his leg as he stepped, tripping him, then the suit swept up between him and Yiorgos, hitting the Heart.

The sphere slipped out of his hands.

"Oh shit!" Dirken reached up as the Heart floated up and away from him.

Yiorgos tried for it too. His fingers touched it and slipped off, propelling the Heart faster.

"No!" Dirken shouted, then jumped as hard as he could. The boots came off the hull with a thwang. Then he was floating, slowly catching up to the Heart. His hands reached out.

"I've got you," Yiorgos said in the comm.

"No, wait!"

"Can't!"

Then Dirken grabbed the Heart, his palms clinging to it as hard as he could.

Then he realized he was no longer attached to the ship. He stifled a rising panic. His heart-rate escalated. His eyes darted up to the endless sea of stars. He was floating away! "Yiorgos!"

There was a yank on his suit. Dirken stopped abruptly. The Heart almost slipped out again.

He looked back and saw that Yiorgos held the EVA suit like a handle at the very tip end of one of the back legs.

"Got you." Yiorgos pulled him back down.

Dirken heaved a huge sigh and tried to control his breathing. It was a great relief when his boots contacted the hull. Yiorgos reached out for the