"We're not out here to fight a war."
"Please," she snorted. "I could win a war with seven."
They were close to the edge, as likely to run into a Primacy ship making a foray into Confederation space as a Confederation ship on patrol.
"Eight should be aces, but there's only one way to find out for sure." He opened the air lock's inner door. Promise's interior lights shifted red-they were now a lot closer to vacuum than the ship's sensors were happy about. "After you."
They used the heavier grapple to first tether the ship to the largest piece of wreckage and then to winch them closer, the wreckage winning the mass sweepstakes.
Standing beside Craig on the edge of the deployed pen, Torin couldn't see his expression through the helmet's polarization, only her own blank silver reflection, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he gestured at the massive triangular piece of metal above them and said, "Race you," as he released his magnetic soles and pushed off.
She considered jerking back on his safety line. Didn't. But it was close.
In the end, she won only because her suit was newer and, when she flipped, she remagged her boots at full charge, allowing them to drag her down past him. She was moving fast enough at impact that she was glad she had her tongue tucked safely away from her teeth.
Landing beside her two seconds later, Craig grunted, "Cheater."
"Don't start with me, Ryder. Usually, there's a three count before a race."
"Just assumed, you being an ex-gunnery sergeant and all, you should be handicapped to make it fair."
She grinned and flipped him off. "Handicap this."
They were standing on a piece blown out of the outer hull, roughly eight meters by four meters at the longest points, and half a meter thick-the two visible Susumi contact points on the metal no longer radiating.
"You don't find that odd?" Torin leaned over to check that the information on Craig's sleeve matched hers. She didn't completely trust his aging tech. "Given the initial radiation readings?"
"Dispersal," he said absently, his attention having been pulled deeper into the tangle. "Damn! Take a look there."
"You want to be a little more specific?" There covered a lot of ground.
"That piece, the blue-green one just past the cable end." His voice was as animated as Torin had ever heard it. "That's Other… Fuk it, Primacy tech. Premium scoop, babe! We get that out and we're building a deck."
"Babe?" Love she could cope with. Lines had to be drawn.
"Heat of the moment." She heard the grin in his voice.
One hand gripping the edge of the hull, Torin turned until she could pull herself headfirst a short distance into the debris. "Piece we want looks fused to that link section, but I can't get a good enough angle on it to see for certain." With the magnification on her faceplate at maximum, she could see pitting caused by tiny pieces of debris but still couldn't see the point where the Primacy tech butted up against the link.
They were going to have to blast it clear.
"Do we tag it for later?" she asked reaching for the tagging gun strapped to her thigh.
"We tag it for now." Craig pulled one of his charges from the pouch. "This, we don't wait for."
Maybe she was a little more excited about that than she needed to be, but so far, the crazy, dangerous life of the civilian salvage operator had been a bit dull. "They're both suited up and climbing around the debris, Captain. We can go on your order."
"We need Ryder." Cho gripped the edge of his board. "He's the registered CSO. Doc says the woman was Corps long enough for it to mark her, so cut her free when we take him." Only a fool brought that kind of trouble on board and Mackenzie Cho's mama had raised no fool.
"You got it. Or him." Dysun made a small adjustment to her scanners and sat back, looking pleased with herself. "One of them is enough larger to account for Human gender differences and is in a significantly older suit. The smaller one, she's wearing a Marine design, no more than a year old. Sending specifics to cargo."
"Almon?"
"It's enough data to aim the net around him if you can get him out in the open, Captain."
Dysun answered before Cho could. "I take out their tethers, and send the next shot into the debris. That'll shake them loose. That is if Huirre can keep us pointed the right way."
"I could fly this ship right up your ass," Huirre growled.
"Promises, promises."
"Move in fast," Cho snapped. "Dysun, you take out the ship as soon as their proximity alarms go off. We don't want them getting back to it and fukking dying on us. Then take out the tethers, then hit the debris. If you've got a clear shot at the woman, take it. Get her out of Almon's way."
"Aye, Captain." The ends of her hair flipped back and forth
This was going to work, he could feel it. This time, Craig Ryder would give them the information they needed. Cho could see the armory opening. He could almost feel one of the Corps' ubiquitous KC-7s in his hands, bucking back as he switched it to full auto and squeezed the trigger. Ships in orbit could EMP more complex weapons but no one on either side had been able to dream up a way to stop a basic chemical reaction from happening. Armed with KC-7s, they could take over any station they docked at.
This time, nothing would go wrong. "Dysun, whatever happens to their drive, happens to you."
Her hair stilled. "Aye, Captain." "The fuk!" As Promise's proximity siren screamed through his suit's comm link, Craig, slapped his last charge down, and worked his way backward along the path of his tether as fast as possible. Unfortunately, as fast as possible was too fukking slow, but a hole ripped into his suit by a jagged edge would slow him more. "Torin! Have you got a visual?" He didn't have to shout to be heard over the siren, the comm would take care of volume levels, but it felt good. Like he was doing something.
"Negative. Still obscured by wreckage."
"It's probably the wreckage that set it off." He jerked his line off a twisted cable end. "If we got it moving…"
"Not unless you've been putting on weight," Torin snorted. "Four meters and I'm out."
He could see the patch of stars that marked his entry to the clump's inner labyrinth. "I'm out in three."
They emerged at roughly the same time. Torin popped out and kept rising at about 120 degrees to his zero, clearing the slab of metal cutting up like a fin out of the tangle and then remagging her boots to snap down onto the upper edge. "I've pinged the Promise. The debris hasn't moved."
"Then what the fuk…" His boots demagged, he pushed off, grabbed a loop of piping, swung around it until he pointed the right way, then bent his arms and shoved off. As he landed three meters from Torin's position, the top of the Promise's cabin blew off, debris spraying out as she decompressed into vacuum.
He didn't remember moving, but Torin's grip on his ankle said they both had.
"Let me go, damn it!" He had to get to his lady. She wasn't answering, but he knew she wasn't dead. Holed, yes, open to vacuum, but nothing crucial had been hit.
"Craig! Listen to me! There's a ship…"
The next shot took out the line holding Promise to the wreckage.
In order to set the charges around the piece of tech, they'd both tethered to the grapple head. With that gone, the only thing holding him in place was Torin's grip.
He could see the incoming ship. Ex-Navy with a cargo hold attached like half the small freighters in known space. But the guns said…
"Pirates!"
"No shit!" The next shot slapped into the slab of metal just under Torin's boots. Craig whipped backward as her knees buckled, but she hung on. "They want the salvage! We need to get clear!"
"No! It's not the salvage they're after!"
"Damn it, Torin, you don't know…"
The next shot slid behind the slab and into the wreckage.
The clump shuddered.
He felt Torin's grip shift as her body adjusted to the movement under her feet.
Then the charges blew. Shards of debris flew past. Hit his shoulder. His suit absorbed most of the impact, but it fukking hurt.