Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,87

direction had to bleed off before a new vector could overtake it.

Unfortunately, there was more than one axis of movement. Even as I dealt with the oncoming nose of the massive vessel, the AI started to roll the ship. The spine of the ship was smooth-sided but that was a relative term. There may not have been any protruding airfoils or massive radar dishes, but the hull still had enough irregularities to turn my race along the side of the cruise ship into an obstacle course from hell.

I let my eyes lose focus, concentrating on my peripheral vision, operating more on instinct and gut than on the sensor data Sarah continued to feed me. An antenna came within a handspan of swatting me like a pesky insect. I avoided it by directing all thrusters momentarily back, filling my body with a muscle-tearing jolt of deceleration, slowing my mad rush just enough to escape the impact. A sensor dish followed, and I pirouetted past it like the world’s bulkiest ballerina. The ship moved beneath me like a thing alive—a malevolent monster that wanted to crush me by flailing its body in a titanic fury of pitch, yaw, roll, and thrust. I danced along the back of the beast until, almost without warning, I felt hull brushing the soles of my boots.

I was going fast. Too fast. But I engaged the magnetic locks anyway turning all my thrusters on a vector that would simultaneously slow me further and force me down against the deck. The boots gripped the hull, sliding only a little as the thrusters pushed down on me with their not-inconsiderable power. I folded at the knees like a pre-space paratrooper, though I made no effort to roll. With my feet clamped to the deck by electromagnets, that would have broken my ankles, at the least. Instead, I crashed butt-first into the hull, hitting hard and bouncing. It was like running full speed into a wall and I felt every muscle contract as my coil tried to absorb the impact.

Without the thrusters, the landing would have been impossible, even fatal. Even with the force of their imparted vectors, the tendons in my knees screamed, first from the jarring, smashing impact of touchdown, and then from the stretch in the other direction as I bounced. The thrusters and maglocks kept me from pulling free from the hull, but the strain on my ankles and knees had me sweating and panting against the wave of pain-induced nausea that swept through me.

And then I was down, at rest relative to the motion of the ship, locked securely in place by the magboots. I’d instinctively deactivated the thrusters when the upward—away from the ship—vector had vanished. For a moment, all I could do was stand in silence listening to my body tell me all the places I’d stressed and injured during the flight.

“Sarah?” I asked aloud. “Damage report.”

You have suffered a number of contusions and strains. There are microtears likely in both your anterior cruciate ligaments and medial collateral ligaments on both legs. Your Achilles tendon on your left leg has been hyperextended. There is likely damage to your coccyx from the impact with the hull. Your…

“Enough,” I said, cutting through the litany. It was only making the pain worse. I felt like shit, but I was still standing and a few exploratory bends of the knees, hips, and ankles told me that I could walk. Slowly, and with a large amount of pain, but I was still operational. Thank whatever god was watching when I got stuffed into this muscle-clad brute of a coil. My previous coil, or my original biologically issued one for that matter, would have been wrecked.

I keyed my connection with the shuttle and gave them a terse, “I’m down.”

The pain must have shown in my voice because it was Shay who responded. “You okay?” There was worry in her voice. And it was her voice, that sultry contralto that talked me through so many missions in the past, not the baritone of the coil she currently wore. I let myself revel in the sound of it for just a moment. “Langston?”

I snapped myself from my reverie. “Yeah,” I grunted. “Fine. Which is to say, my legs are pretty tore up and my ass hurts like you wouldn’t believe, but still functional.”

“Thank God for that,” came the reply. There was a short pause and then, with a smile in her voice, Shay added, “Though the consensus here seems to be