Haven watched him suit up with a frown.
“You’re going out there?” She frowned, eyes darting up to the hatch then down to him again. Clearly worried. “There’s… there might be bodies. Or…”
“I imagine there will be,” he shrugged, unconcerned. He added a flood light to the top of his helmet, letting it connect to the suit. He grabbed the ladder that led up before turning and touching her helmet, wishing he could stroke her face. “It’s going to be dark and it might be dangerous to move about the debris field.So, stay here so you don’t have to deal with any of that. I’ll go find the shelter and hook it up to this pod so we can haul them out of here.”
Haven blinked, then tightened her jaw. “I’m coming with you.”
“You’re staying,” he told her.
She cocked a hip, giving him a look that dared him to tell her no again. “I can going with you now or chasing after you when you have already left. You picking.”
He glowered at her. She cocked her chin up at him. He wanted to kiss and spank her in equal measure – and would do so at his earliest possible convenience. But he knew he couldn’t stop her from following him as she threatened. There was a lock on the inside of the evac pod, but the hatch closure on the outside would not lock. He couldn’t keep her here, and he knew very well that she wasn’t giving him an idle threat.
“You stay on me,” he ordered, leveling a finger at her. “I mean it. Don’t stray from me. If you get lost out there…”
He couldn’t finish the statement. It wasn’t likely. The ship would be able to detect the envirosuit, so he should be able to find her if they got separated. But there was always a chance, and he was sick at the very thought of losing her to the void.
But she looked excited as she put on the pulsers. She strapped them to her feet and wrists the same way he had. He’s the one who put the light on her helmet. He stroked her shoulder one time before turning and pulling himself up the ladder. He only needed one hand. The other he used to unscrew the hatch and push it out.
Totally zero gravity, completely airless, freezingly cold. Kldyn’s suit was much better than Vytln’s had been, and he didn’t feel any of it as he pulled himself out into the void.
To his surprise, the area wasn’t completely dark. And he realized that, in the distance, there was a sun that was shining its light on them. It wasn’t as bright as when the exterior lights had flooded the area, but he could still see beyond the cone created by his helmet light.
Their ship and the Humility had created a debris cloud of metal and broken objects. The field was bigger than both ships combined, it went on in every direction. And it was impossible to tell what was part of one ship and what was part of the other. They were all just mashed and crushed together, most of it still moving apart, but the larger pieces had all bumped into each other, halting their progression, and were now just floating and spinning.
There were shards of glass. He saw a bed pod, the top completely broken and its contents empty. He was pretty sure that twisted, lump of metal was from the Humility, but it had been crashed into and fuzed with a cleaner wall from Kldyn’s ship. Well, it was white, but it wasn’t clean. It had been smudged and dirtied by something when it exploded outward.
And thanks to the sun shining brightly in the far distance, just a distance dot slightly bigger than the stars beyond, he could see most of the debris field. It was still a black void, but the shine of the metal reflecting off the light at least gave him an idea of what he was looking at.
“Come on,” Vytln said, looking at Haven who had climbed up after him and was looking around with a wide-eyed look of wonder.
He couldn’t imagine what was so interesting. The was nothing so fascinating about the void. But he showed her how to use the pulsers and, once she had the basic movements down, the two of them set off into the debris. He made sure to keep a strict mental map of where the evac pod was as they went from one clump to another, searching for the shelter room.
It took the better part of a mark to find it. They hopped from one large piece to another, eliminating them as possibilities, then making their way back to the evac pod each time. They made sure to move in straight lines only. To always go back to the pod. It easily doubled their search time, but he wouldn’t risk losing the pod’s location.
When they finally came upon the shelter, it was buried under a shell of warped, twisted, and broken metal.
There was a wall that had been wrapped around it from the force of one of the explosions. Vytln genuinely couldn’t tell if it was a wall from their ship or his brother’s. Either way, it was now concealing the familiar square room from his gaze. However, as he peered underneath it, he caught sight of the shelter he had helped build and he motioned to Haven.
“Here! This is it.”
Haven swung around and came to his side as he grunted and pushed, trying to move the metal out of the way. The cold of space had frozen it, even after the explosion had heated it up, so it was well and truly stuck in place. But it was also warped and weakened and, as Haven added her strength to his, finally began to move out of the way.
The hatch of the shelter room was still there. The floor tile that had once concealed it was half broken and the pieces were fragmenting away. Haven pushed them aside and put her handon the top. She cocked her head then, to his surprise, she knocked on the top. It wasn’t just random knocking either. It was five knocks in a pattern that he couldn’t help but note as being musical. He could barely hear it through the comms, but it was clearly deliberate.
Haven waited. But nothing happened. She pulled herself closer and put her head right on the side of the shelter hatch. She did it again, this time with the side of her fist. The same five knocks in the exact same pattern. He heard it through the comms better this time.
And he heard the two knocks that returned as well.
Haven gasped, pushing herself up.
“They’re okay!” She declared, beaming.
“What was that?” Vytln asked as she pushed herself up.
“Shave and a haircut!”
“What?”
