Providence - Max Barry Page 0,69

ago. She wasn’t terrific at anticipating the consequences of her own actions, if she was honest. A part of her would see disaster coming and embrace it. Why was that? Maybe she liked to have problems to fix. Maybe she was deluded. One more drink. I’ll be fine.

She swung into the wall. That was a surprise: She was supposed to be in a harness. There was a lot of noise from she didn’t know where and her hair was all up in her face. She pushed away from the wall with a free hand but it was difficult and slow, as if she were a child. She couldn’t move her left arm at all and was momentarily confused before remembering the medbag. She looked at her free hand again. She wasn’t supposed to have a free hand. She was supposed to be encased from head to toe in a protective blue inflatable.

Items were flying around. Containers and cables and, hello, a boot. And not only items she would expect to float if introduced to a gravity-free environment: items that shouldn’t float under any circumstances, like shreds of plastic and carbon fiber and twisted-pair metal. Items that should be part of the jet. And they were moving toward her. When the jet kicked, they heaved together, left or right or up or down, then resumed drifting in her direction, like she was pulling them toward her on strings. She swung into the wall again. She was getting annoyed with that. The express purpose of her harness was to prevent her from banging into things, and it was sucking at it. She twisted to see what was going on behind her. She couldn’t turn very far, but caught a glimpse of a flapping strap, the end torn, as if savaged by animals.

She looked forward again. Up front, Anders and Jackson remained safely ensconced in their harnesses, like sensible people. Jackson’s black braid stood tall, pointing straight up. They were shouting: She could see the cords in their necks, although she couldn’t hear their words. The screens were full of space and stars, all going around and around. One showed a jetpod spewing white gas. That jet looked pretty fucked, in Talia’s estimation. Whoever was on that thing was definitely going to die.

She shook her head, trying to beat back the chemical fog. There was a noise behind her that felt familiar but she couldn’t place it, couldn’t see it, either, because she was trapped by the medbag, which was strapped into the harness. It was the harness itself that was moving in a way it wasn’t supposed to, she figured out. She began to wriggle her shoulders. With one hand she worked the medbag down to roughly strapless gown level, creating the perfect outfit for Camp Zero tomfoolery, or, no, better, a hilarious feed clip, since she was always complaining to her followers about the uniform. They would die to see her like this. They would absolutely die. The next part was harder because the medbag gripped her torso, all the better to maintain positive pressure in the event of puncture wounds, an oft-overlooked feature of the modern medgown, and when she revealed her legs, the left was purple and swollen around the knee, coated in a thick yellow paste. She stared at it a moment, because it was pretty gross.

She blinked. Focus. She pushed the medbag free and gripped the straps. At last, she was able to twist around and see.

At the rear of the jet was a hole. Above it, vents blasted, fighting to equalize pressure, but also, she saw now, creating a cycle of air that pushed everything that was floating toward the breach. Her medbag flapped like a flag. Here she is! You found her! Since her station had been breached, she hadn’t been able to forget the void, and how about this, it turned out the void hadn’t forgotten her, either.

She grasped a handle and pulled herself away from the hole. She had been very superior about these handles before. She wanted to apologize for that. She gripped one and then the next and pulled herself toward Jackson and Anders. They didn’t notice her approach. They didn’t even know about the breach. They were flying the jet manually and the screens were terrifying. It abruptly occurred to her that her life was in their hands. That