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Alex nodded once, looked like he wanted to say so else, then spun on his heel and went to the crew ladder and up toward the cockpit Naomi descended the same ladder a few moments later, and Amos came up from below a short time after that

Nao enough for Holden to recognize the barely concealed fear in her voice

Holden paused to take two o see if we can’t drive it out the cargo bay doors Get them open for us”

“Done,” she said, and headed up the ladder to ops

A him, a speculative look in his eyes

“So, Cap, hoe ‘drive it’ out those doors?”

“Well,” Holden replied “I was thinking we shoot the shit out of it and then take a flaear up”

Amos nodded “Damn I feel like I just took that shit off”

Holden was not claustrophobic

No one who chose long-flight space travel as a career was Even if a person could soical profiles and sih to separate those who could handle long periods in confined spaces frofuck and had to be sedated for the trip home

As a junior lieutenant Holden had spent days in scout ships so small that you literally could not bend over to scratch your feet He’d climbed around between the inner and outer hulls of warships He’d once been confined to his crash couch for twenty-one days during a fast-burn trip fro crushed or being buried alive

For the first time in his decade and a half of nearly constant space travel, the ship he was on felt too sly constricted He felt trapped, like an animal in a snare

Less than twelve meters away from where he stood, soo bay And there was nowhere he could go to get away fro of confinerunts called the full-body condom It was a thick black bodysuit, el, and the sensor network that kept track of his injury and vitals status Over that went the slightly looser environel to instantly repair tears or bullet holes And finally, the various pieces of strap-on arh-velocity rifle shot or ablate the outer layers to shed the energy of a laser

To Holden, it felt like wrapping himself in his own death shroud

But even with all its layers and weight, it still wasn’t as frightening as the powered armor that recon Marines ould have been What the Navy boys called walking coffins The idea behind the nah to break the armor would liquefy the marine inside, so you didn’t bother to open it You just tossed the whole thing into the grave This was hyperbole, of course, but the idea of going into that cargo bay wearing so that he wouldn’t even be able to th would have scared the shit out of him What if the batteries died?

Of course, a nice suit of strength-aug to throw monsters off the ship

“That’s on backward,” Ah

“Shit,” Holden said Aht He’d been so far up his own ass that he’d screwed up the buckles on his thigh ar focused here”

“Scared shitless,” Amos said with a nod

“Well, I wouldn’t say—”