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Bobbie found herself glad she didn’t have a gun
She found another access hatch in the head and tore it open But to her surprise, the service corridor ended just a few feet above her head So her off Having never seen the Guanshiyin froht be But she needed to get another five decks up, and she wasn’t about to let this stop her
A ten-h the outer hull She’d torn off two inner hull hatches on two different decks, so if she got it open, those two decks would lose their air But the central ladder corridor was sealed at Avasarala’s deck, so her people would be fine And the whole reason she was doing this was the sealed hatch to the upper decks, which seeht about the sixSure, they’d shot first, but if any of them were still alive, she had no desire to asphyxiate them in their sleep
It turned out not to be a problem The hatch led into a small airlock chamber, about the size of a closet A h and she climbed out onto the outer hull of the ship
Triple-hulled Of course The lord of the Mao-Kwik e that wasn’t the safest hun of the ship extended to her outer hull as well While most military ships were painted a flat black that made them hard to spot visually in space, ray or were painted in basic corporate colors
The Guanshiyin had a mural painted on it in vivid colors Bobbie was too close to see what it was, but under her feet hat appeared to be grass and the hoof of a giant horse Mao had the hull of his ship painted with a rass When almost no one would ever see it
Bobbie h to handle the quarter-g thrust the ship was still under, and started cli up the side She quickly reached the spot where the dead end between the hulls began, and saw that it was an empty shuttle bay If only Avasarala had let her do this before Mao had run off with the shuttle
Triple hulls, Bobbie thought Maximum redundancy
On a hunch, she crawled across the ship to the other side Sure enough, there was a second shuttle bay But the ship in it wasn’t a standard short-flight shuttle It was long and sleek, with an engine housing twice as large as that of a normal ship its size Written in proud red letters across the bow of the ship was the na pinnace
Bobbie crawled back around to the eo bay and used the airlock there to enter the ship The military override codes her suit sent to the locked door worked, to her surprise The airlock led to the deck just below the bridge, the one used for shuttle supply storage and ein it were the captain of the Guanshiyin and his senior staff There were no security personnel or weapons in sight
The captain tapped his ear in an ancient can you hear esture Bobbie nodded one fist at him, then turned the external speakers back on and said, “Yes”
“We are not military personnel,” the captain said “We can’t defend ourselves fro to turn this vessel over to you without knowing your intentions My XO is on the deck above us, prepared to scuttle the ship if we can’t coh she didn’t know if he could see it through her helh-levelin my role as a member of her security team, I have come to demand that you deliver her i, at best possible speed”
She shrugged with her hands in the Belter way “Or, you can blow yourselves up Seeive the undersecretary her radio privileges back”
The captain nodded and relaxed visibly Whatever happened next, it wasn’t like he had any choice And since he didn’t have any choice, he didn’t have any responsibility “We were following orders You’ll note that in the log when you take coain “Then the ship is yours”