Page 108 (2/2)
On the bridge, Marco was no doubt being s the part of the Martian captain, reassuring everyone he could that everything was under control now that he was there They’d believe him too He was in a Martian ship with a solid, known transponder He was probably using Martianother than what he seemed would be as inconceivable to them as it was obvious to her
She wanted to care, but she didn’t She didn’t have time
The sound ofand the rees to the left, her couch hissing on its gi away from the needle If she’d been sure it wasn’t a sedative, she’d have waited for the injections Too late The couch shifted back to neutral position She hopped down to the floor and walked quickly and steadily for the corridor She kept her arainst the walls on either side, and slid her feet across the deck Knees bent, center of gravity low, she told herself
Be ready for the change when it comes The ship twitched around her The walls and deck showed nothing, her eyes pro was solid, quiet, and stable as her owntoward one wall and then the next, and then – worst – forhere there was nothing to catch herself against It orse than weightlessness The struggles of a ravity could be disorienting, but this was so else She rattled down the hallway like dice in a cup, ainst the walls when the motion was too violent
In the lift, she selected the ripped the handholds as the mechanism dropped her down the body of the ship A concussion rattled her The Martians fighting back That was fine Let thele her attention Not until hers was done
The machine shop was eh tolerance that when the ship lurched, they all rattled:to talk She went for the compromised toolbox, but the deck fell away under her She stuainst theseemed to recede She shook her head, and drops of blood pattered on the wall and the deck
Not a big deal, she told herself Head wounds always bleed a lot It doesn’t
The PDCs chattered, the sound h the body of the ship She found the toolbox, popped open the restraint, pulled it out, and sat on the deck, cradling it For a long, sick second, she thought the lock was different, solid, unapproachable, but that rong A trick of the ertips into the crevice that shouldn’t have been there, then pulled it wider, and pushed in again, driving her own skin and bone into it like a wedge It hurt like hell, but she ignored it The pressure of her body against the deck suddenly grew terrible They were accelerating She didn’t knohy Her back ached It had been years since her spine had been asked to support her body during a heavy burn Usually, she was lying on her back in gel around now
With an indignant pop, the latch gave The toolbox flew open, but nothing spilled All the wrenches, epoxy welders, voltage meters, and cans of air and lubricant were strapped in place She flipped through the close-packed layers to a line of Allen wrenches and plucked out the 10 es she had over Marco and his crew She’d been living in a Martian ship for years Knohat tools opened which access panels was like recognizing the back of her own hand She gathered up a voltage tester, a wiring cri iron and stuffed them in her pockets With any luck, she’d only need the wrench, but —
The deck drifted away under her, gravity suddenly gone She couldn’t tell if she was spinning through the air or the ship was turning around her She reached for the deck, the walls, but nothing ithin reach besides the floating toolbox That was good enough She grabbed it in close to her belly, then pushed it away as reaction rab the workbench Down came back, and the toolbox crashed down behind her as she stumbled Another low boo, she ran for the lift
Gravity vanished again as she got into it The PDCs were still chattering, but less now She didn’t remember the last ti down She willed the lift to travel faster If the all clear sounded and other people got out of their couches before she was done, then Holden and the Rocinante and possibly a fair percentage of Tycho Station would die With every slowup and then spilling out, a fire brighter than light that ate everything The ship h to bruise, then released her to float free again She killed the lift between the crew quarters and the airlock, bracing herself so that the deceleration didn’t leave her trapped in the middle of empty air
The access panel was fifteen centih and forty wide and opened on the h the center of the ship If she’d cut through all the cables there with a welding torch, all the traffic would have rerouted instantly to other channels Apart fro would happen That was fine She didn’t want to break the ship She wanted to use it Braced with both feet and one hand in the wall handholds, she worked the Allen wrench The screere integral to the plate and didn’t corip Three connections came off Four Five
Six
She could see the handset through the gap where the plate was beginning to co She squeezed the wrench in her fist, seeing it fall away down the shaft even though it wasn’t happening A thick red-black clot of blood slipped free of her hair, snored it Seven connectors were loose Eight She heard voices fro she couldn’tno Nine Ten
The plate cae The batteries were nearly full Connection read good She didn’t knohich circuit was the broadcast and the first one she tried threw an error code Cursing nosticIt seeh the report with her thu the D4/L4 protocols that the Rocinante did for broadcast She thumbed in the override code that would let her send thirty seconds of diagnostic tones out, then deleted the file that held the tones When the error came up, she told it to override to ht foot slipped, and she grabbed for the open access panel Her knuckles scraped sorunted in pain and put her annoyance aside No time