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He blinked. Draanth, he hadn’t gotten a good look at whatever the device was, and if there were no feeds from the suits, then they’d lost their chance to identify it.

“I’ll get Layla ready and waiting outside the airlock,” Stevie continued, her voice clipped now. “Give us a heads-up when you’re nearly there.”

He looked at the airlock directly in front of them.

“We’re already there.”

Catching the rail with one hand, he twisted and pushed B through the airlock ahead of him.

Letting go of her was one of the hardest things Rann had ever done.

She floated in the center of the airlock, and he forced his fingers open, catching her shoulder long enough to guide her against the inner wall before he turned back toward the outer door.

There was no way he was waiting for the automated sequence to close the draanthing thing, so he reached out, grabbed the handle, and yanked. The mechanism shrieked in protest as the outer door shuddered, then began to crawl toward him on its arc. He gritted his teeth.

It wasn’t fast enough. It wasn’t anywhere near fast enough.

Planting one foot boot against the wall, he tightened his grip and hauled again. It fought him, but eventually the arc got faster and faster until it slammed shut with a bang that reverberated through the tiny compartment.

For a second he stayed in place, breathing hard. Then he realized that a human wouldn’t have been able to close the door manually. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the small porthole window in the other door. No one there. There were no cameras in the airlock, and the suits didn’t have feeds, so no one had seen.

Good.

“Rann?” Stevie’s voice crackled through his helmet. “How the hell did you get back to the airlock that fast?”

His gaze went straight to B.

She was pale beneath the curved visor. Too still, dark hair drifting around her face. He moved back to her, crouching beside her as the airlock controls began the pressurization cycle.

“The blast threw us this way,” he lied easily. “Toward the airlock rather than away from the ship.”

A pause stretched over the comm.

“Well, thank Christ for small mercies,” Stevie said. “Is she breathing?”

“Yeah. Vitals look good.” His voice came out rougher than he intended.

Putting both hands on B’s suit, he checked it over methodically, starting at her helmet and then moving down. He checked the seals at her neck and shoulder joints before moving on to the hard plating over her chest and spine. There were no tears or ruptured lines.

But that did not mean she was fine.

He’d seen the panel clip her helmet, and then something else had caught her side as the tether broke, but he hadn’t been close enough to see what it had been.

His stomach knotted.

Had it cracked a rib beneath the suit? Crushed something inside her before he caught her?

He slid a hand over the armor at her ribs, gentle as he could manage through his own oversized gloves. There was no blood or obvious damage, no sign of anything except this draanthing suit in his way.

“Pressure’s coming up,” Stevie said. “Layla’s at the inner door.”

He nodded. “Good.”

The air pumps in the airlock hissed around them as numbers climbed on the wall display, green lights changing one by one as the compartment filled. He stayed crouched next to B, hands bracing her as gravity caught and he eased her down as much as he could.

The pressure finished equalizing, and the inner door unlocked with a heavy clunk.

Layla shoved her way through it, medical case in hand.