The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,8
to do anything but watch. Denver woke in the morning unsure which of them had suffered more from their shared dreams.
He ate a breakfast of flavorless mush, trying to not let himself dream of cinnamon or sugar or any of the other treats they could buy if this haul ended up being something remarkable.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Laramie said, without looking from his own bowl of mush.
He wasn’t looking for an argument. He wanted reassurance that they’d made the right choice. Denver squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Marit maneuvered the Jiminy as close to the object as they dared go, and ten minutes later, Denver was back in the airlock, waiting to be released into the void.
To say he was nervous was an understatement. He was better prepared, though. His belt hung heavy with both ends of the sling clipped to it, along with a laser cutter to help clear some of the rubbish away. And if a tracer popped up, he could lock the cutter in the ON position and throw it, giving the nasty little mines something else to destroy while he hightailed it back to the Jiminy.
The airlock opened. OPAL was already waiting for him outside. The spider’s thorax was only forty-five centimeters in diameter, but the eight dainty legs allowed her to scuttle easily over wreckages and space junk. The spider also came equipped with small floodlight and thrusters, allowing her to maneuver through space.
Denver floated for a moment, getting his bearings. Saturn’s rings cast long shadows, and it was getting darker by the minute out there. Another few hours and the battlefield would be nothing but a dark, deadly pincushion.
“You ready, OPAL?”
OPAL’s voice echoed in his helmet. “Fo’ shizzle, dawg.”
“I’m going to assume that means yes.”
He hooked one end of the sling cable to an anchor ring on the Jiminy, then pushed himself into space, making sure his trajectory was aligned with the location of the pod. “I should be close enough to see it soon.”
“No energy fluctuations on the scanner,” Marit said, her voice echoing in his helmet. “All the tracers should be inert, and there are no signs of new arrivals.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a good thing or nothin’,” Laramie grumbled over the shared comm line. Denver could almost feel his brother roll his eyes. “I swear, even if it is a pod full of more quality salvage than we’ve ever dreamed, you’d still find a way to complain about it.”
“I didn’t get where I am by being foolhardy.”
“Oh? Wait, it was being cautious that got you to the ass-end of the galaxy with a couple of guttersnipe salvagers instead of back in your cushy government job on Mars? My mistake.”
Denver sighed. This was exactly why Laramie usually stayed in his room during Denver’s space walks, listening to the feed, but unable to chime in on comms. He and Marit always found a way to argue even when they were on the same side. But this time, he’d decided it was more important to watch alongside Marit in the cockpit. Now Denver’d have to listen to them bicker.
As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.
“Guys—” he started to say.
“Proximity alert: fifty meters to the target.”
Denver had rarely been so grateful of OPAL interrupting a conversation. She turned on her floodlight, and now Denver could see it too. He slowed himself down, keeping the tow cable taut, reeling the sling in tight to keep it from getting tangled with his suit as they got close. The object was… well, right now it looked like nothing more than a fused lump of tracers. Some of them were blackened, or only partially there, like they’d tried to initiate their burn but were sucked dry before they could do much damage.
“OPAL, your legs are well insulated, right?”
“You are concerned. That is pleasant, and very adorable.”
Laughter filled Denver’s helmet. “It’s not—Laramie, shut up—it’s not concern. I just want to make sure you’re not going to get emptied and leave me out here by myself.”
“My legs are very well insulated, and I have backup copies of myself stored in several locations on the ship.”
“Good to know.”
OPAL fired her thruster and drew a little closer to the mass.
“What do you see?”
“Sensors detect no active tracers.” Her spidery legs bent as she landed on the object. She stepped daintily over the bodies. “Many of them are fused to the hull. I’ll remove what I can.” She used one spindly appendage to flick