15 - Isidro Chapter 2

It was the day of the mission and I had to admit that I was quite nervous. I was worried that Ash would hear my heart pounding as soon as she got in the shuttle, but if she did, she made no mention of it. She greeted me tersely and asked if I was ready to launch. A chorus of machine voices sang the ready checks into my mind. I tapped loudly on the hard case strapped to the side of the hold, then followed her up front to the command chairs.

Something was different about her that day; I was reminded a bit of the cold style she’d shown when I first met her. I think she’d been trying to disguise it back then, but her steely demeanor was obvious as we walked from that workshop back to her dorm. It hadn’t even surprised me when she pinned me against the door and bared her fangs. No, I had been surprised, but it was my own reaction that did it. I hadn’t expected to be so calm, so ready to be torn to pieces and so sure that I wouldn’t be.

As the shuttle moved off to the edge of the exclusion zone, a short trip closer to Earth where a network of classified satellites drew aetheric energy out of nothingness and beamed it down to the ground for storage, I tried to make small talk. My heart wasn’t in it though and my voice kept coming out tiny and unsteady. Ash kept giving mumbled half-responses that cut every topic short.

From the way she periodically swept her eye sideways to size me up stealthily, I assumed that she was concerned about me. It gave me a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling. Here was a legend caring about my existence. At the same time, I was disappointed that I didn’t have her complete confidence.

The shuttle’s gas jets fired off in a rapid beat that brought us into a parallel orbit with one of the distant harvesters. I was only linked to a few of my AIs through the shuttle; they murmured in unison to let me know we had arrived at the dropoff point. Ice started to flow through my veins and I couldn’t really think of anything to say.

“Let me say it again, I don’t think this is necessary or wise.” Ash turned to look at me as she pulled a helmet from under her seat. “Will you consider calling it off?”

“I’m definitely considering it,” I replied truthfully. “But if I can’t do this much, what hope is there for later? This should be a cake walk compared to what I’ll have to face if I go back down to Earth and mess around with the most closely guarded secret there is.” She nodded resolutely and fitted the helmet onto the suit she was wearing.

“Good luck,” she said, her voice being piped by the comms directly into my head. “If you need me, I’ll be there as quick as the autopilot brings me.” It was at least a little reassuring, even more so because I had given one of my more powerful bots free rein to take over piloting in the event of an emergency.

Ash followed me back into the shuttle’s hold and helped me assemble my gear. She patiently held air tanks and gas canisters in place while I clipped them onto my EVA harness. Like a priestess crowning a king, she gently slipped a rad-shielded helmet over my head. The dark visor made the shuttle into a nightscape.

Finally, all that was left was the Hand of Glory. Ash took it from its case carefully and presented it to me without any hesitation. In that moment I wondered what sort of significance the device had in her eyes. What feelings did she have coming into contact with it again? How did she feel handing it off to someone else? I hooked the gauntlet up to my wrist terminal and greeted the stony presence living within it.

“If you’re going to stop me, now’s the time.” But she simply knocked her helmet into mine in a gentle headbutt that sent me drifting backward. After checking all the connections one last time, I shut down the computers in my suit, gauntlet, and head. All the extra voices went silent.

I gave a thumbs up to Ash who returned the gesture, then flipped the switch to depressurize the hold. Violent hissing faded to dull, floaty quiet. When the light signaled green, I hit the hatch and found myself staring out into the vastness of space. I could just make out the pinprick glittering stars through my shaded visor. With measured movements I pulled myself to the edge of the hold and clung on to the precipice.

Fanget An! I called out in my mind.

Starting to hum to myself, I clicked one of my propellant triggers and drifted out of the shuttle. Darkness enveloped me. The program I practiced for the past month kicked in. Despite being tense enough to spring out of my own body, I controlled each breath precisely according to the rhythm of Walther’s song in the first act of Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg.

The mechanics of the space walk were simple enough in theory. I had to rendezvous with the harvester satellite by falling in ahead of its path and matching its velocity. With some sort of autopilot it would be no sweat, but making all the adjustments manually using mechanical valves on gas jets was a matter of precision. I’d prepared each pull of the trigger to coincide with a certain beat in the song. I also had to keep myself still so that I didn’t spin off in some random direction.

I couldn’t turn to look back at the shuttle and my target was too far away to be visible yet; I was alone in the great void with the sounds of my heart and lungs, the click and hiss of my propellant, and “So Rief der Lenz in den Wald.” I felt nothing of the usual sense of company from my menagerie of AIs. How long would Ash be able to see me before I drifted out of sight?

Repeating the tune to keep time, I ticked off each maneuver mentally while trying to remain calm. I had to succeed no matter what; I wondered whether it was more important to prove my capability under pressure to myself or to her. After dragging her back into the muck, as upsetting as it clearly was, I wouldn’t be able to face her if I failed. I felt that there was really no need for a rescue plan because I would just dash myself against the Earth’s atmosphere rather than crawl back in shame.

My training had included straying away from Galactic without a tether, but those EVAs had still been safe enough with all sorts of drones ready to scoop me up if I got lost. Inside the exclusion zone, I might not even get a military craft to come get me if I got into trouble. If the Hand didn’t work and I got stuck, I couldn’t rely on anyone else to get past the defense satellites to retrieve me. I didn’t have enough propellant for a return trip. Isolation, fear, and the thunder of my heartbeat threatened to shatter my composure.

Morgenlich leuchten im rosigen Schein, I shouted silently after five repetitions of the immature song. Walther’s Prize Song was the backdrop for my penultimate adjustments. Even after completing them, I hummed it over and over. The alternative was to wait for the satellite to show up in maddening silence, or to start talking to myself and truly drive myself mad.

Just as the waiting began to seem unbearable, the target came into view right on time. It was slowly gaining on me, approaching closer and closer. The harvester looked much like an ordinary communications satellite except that it was larger. What was contained within its boxy frame was a total mystery. I triggered my jets a few more times so that it couldn’t quite catch up to me. Relief and adrenaline flooded through my body.

I slammed a button on my thigh that awakened all of the electronics I was carrying. Immediately, an alarm sounded in my ears and in my head announcing my time limit in the exclusion zone. There was no telling how quickly the monitoring system would detect my intrusive presence so I wasted no time in raising my right arm and reaching out toward the target with the Hand. The gate on the back of the gauntlet slid open to reveal a hole darker than the sea of space in which I drifted.

Then it was over; a chime rang out notifying me that the scan was complete. It felt rather anticlimactic, but it was exactly how the thing was supposed to function. The distortions caused by the gravity waves were too minor for me to notice. I prompted the device to scan the satellite a few more times just to be sure we got usable data, then my time was up. A new warning went off that painted red words across my visual field. Detected.

I swung my right arm like I was trying to swat the harvester and flung both it and myself in opposite directions with the Hand’s power. The sensation of acceleration tugged at my flesh forcing me to the brink of unconsciousness. In fact I think I did black out for a short time. The machines took over and started to fire off propellant to decelerate me. I felt disoriented and nauseous, but I trusted in the systems I’d built.

A pleasant sort of alarm tolled like an afternoon bell a few minutes later. The journey into the exclusion zone that had taken over forty minutes had been retraced in less than five thanks to the gauntlet. I spun around and caught sight of the shuttle approaching quickly, or rather I was quickly moving toward it. Locking onto it with the Hand of Glory, I decelerated further so that I could reach out and grab for a handhold without being splattered.

Ash leaned out of the open hatch and caught my arm. She asked if I was alright and I found that I wasn’t quite sure how to speak. It was only after she pulled me inside and buttoned up the hold that I managed to reply.

“Are you okay?” She repeated.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Right?” For some reason I found it difficult not to tear up. I wasn’t particularly happy or sad or moved in any way, but I felt exhausted. She removed my helmet even though I was just going to leave it on forever.

“Looks like it,” she said with a small laugh. I think it was the first time I’d heard such a sound from her that wasn’t tinged with sarcasm or remorse. I smiled up at her while hanging limply in midair. All sorts of images and sounds were starting to flood into my mind from the AIs desperate to bring me back up to speed. Once again I cut the connecting circuits so that I could just be alone with Ash in that moment.

“Good job,” she said. “Let’s get back before we have to start dodging missiles.”

I laughed weakly and wiped away tears with the bulky sleeves of my EVA suit.