Page 23 of Solomon's Ransom

I would love, Sol thought at it,to be your friend.

NINE

Remma’s hardsuit held him at stiff attention as he watched Torru prepare to launch the bomb. If this job went off well, he was going to try to convince Denna to buy a softsuit. They were twice the cost, but Remma was sick of feeling like he couldn’t fully bend his elbows. Nobody could get work done like that.

“Careful with it,” he said, fretful as a new mother. “That cloaking device is really finicky.”

“I’m being careful,” Torru said, his voice laced with irritation. “Please let me do my job and I won’t tell you how to do yours.”

“Sorry,” Remma said. “I didn’t know you’d be so touchy.”

Torru muttered something rude that Remma pretended not to hear. The bomb slid into the firing chamber with a disconcerting rattle. A moment, a sharp sound, and then Remma could see it through the viewing port, gliding through the darkness to its resting point several kilometers away. Soon it was small as a distant star, and Remma could no longer see the light he’d attached to the cloaking device that would turn off if the device stopped working.

Hence the hardsuit. He’d have to go out there and monitor the bomb up close.

He didn’t get paid enough for this shit.

With the bomb launched, it was Remma’s turn. He and Torru walked down the corridor to the launch room. Well, Torru walked; Remma, encased in his suit, waddled.

Denna was waiting for them in the cramped launch room. There was one airlock for escape pods and another for people, and a bank of controls that Torru drew down from the ceiling. The blue walls seemed too close. A fourth person wouldn’t fit. There was barely room for Remma in his hardsuit.

“Don’t fuck it up,” Denna said. “If the bomb doesn’t go off, the job’s a wash, and you’re responsible.”

Great. No pressure.

“There won’t be any problems,” Remma said. He couldn’t guarantee it, but that was what Denna would want to hear.

Denna stood and watched as Torru did a few final checks and then nodded permission at Remma to enter the airlock. Remma pulled on the helmet of his suit without saying anything. He had no final thoughts to share.

The airlock hissed around him as he pushed through the membrane. Inside the narrow chamber was noticeably colder. He waited, listening to the tinny sound of his own breathing, and then the door ahead of him irised open and he was sucked out into space.

The stars were always the first thing he noticed: how many there were, a bright scatter all across his field of vision. He spun for a few bewildering moments before he was able to stabilize the suit, and the stars made a blinding smear that settled into individual points. He was out among them, alone with the ship growing smaller behind him as he activated the suit’s thrusters.

The suit was climate controlled, but he still felt the chill of space creeping in through every seam. Nothing felt more vulnerable than leaving the ship in a hardsuit. Out here, he couldn’t rely on anyone else to help him or save him. He only had his own wits and the few tools he carried with him, magnetically attached to the front of the suit. If anything went wrong, it was up to him to figure it out.

His breathing took on a harsher edge of mounting panic. He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly. Panic was death. He was going to be fine. He couldn’t die out here and abandon Sol on the ship.

If he got through this, he was never doing a spacewalk again. If that meant leaving the crew, so be it. He was tired of working for Denna anyway.

The suit sailed through the dark void. He couldn’t see the bomb yet, but he had the coordinates locked in, and the display in his helmet told him he’d be there in less than five minutes. Far in the distance, he could see a ship moving, maybe the Noszverru merchantman they were targeting. If so, it was right on time.

“Everything okay?” Torru asked through the helmet’s radio.

Remma chinned the switch to reply. “Okay so far. Waiting to get eyes on the bomb.”

“Let me know when you see it,” Torru said, and then silence.

Remma waited. The nearest planet glowed purple below him and to his right, a gas giant circled by countless moons and satellites. An orbital station, more or less the size of a moon but moving more quickly, came around the curve of the planet and spun away from him. He breathed in and out. Nothing like a spacewalk to make you realize the crushing insignificance of your own existence.

The bomb appeared at last, a small metal shape growing quickly larger. At the top, the cloaking device clung to the bomb like a crab waiting out high tide on a rock.

Remma narrowed his eyes. The light wasn’t on.

“Fuck, fuck,” he muttered to himself. Maybe he was wrong. He was still a ways out, but—no, he wasn’t mistaken. Sometime between the launch and now, the cloaking device had stopped working.

Well, he couldn’t say it came as a shock. He would have been more surprised if everything went off without a hitch. None of Denna’s plans ever did.

He had been hoping to avoid getting too close to the bomb and being caught in the EMP blast. He hated the thought of being helpless in his suit, floating there like detritus and waiting for Torru to rescue him. But there was no helping it. If he didn’t act, the whole scheme would unravel.