Juliet was reclining in her acceleration couch, getting ready for some shuteye, when the lights turned red and staccato clangs rang and vibrated through the plasteel wall beside her. It was sudden, and though she thought she heard dozens of concussions, it was over so quickly that her brain had trouble processing what was happening. Luckily, Angel didn’t suffer from the same confusion.

“Something impacted the ship! Get ready for emergency damage protocols!”

As Juliet caught up with reality and began to clamber out of her bunk, Alice’s voice came through comms, “We just crossed paths with a micrometeor cluster. I’m not seeing anything alarming on system checks, but they impacted the hull near the H-3 coolant system. I’d feel better if we got eyes on it before we flip and start our deceleration burn tonight.”

“I could send a drone,” Aya said, her name lighting up on Juliet’s AUI.

“Nah, I wanna get one last EVA in. I’ll check it out,” Bennet’s voice said through comms.

Juliet smiled and shifted to lie back down into her acceleration couch. “Sounds like they don’t need me,” she said, groaning softly as the gel moved to enfold her limbs again; she was sore and tired but feeling very good about the work they’d done earlier that day. Bennet had wanted to separate part of the engineering compartment from the reactor and drive access hatches, insisting most of the space in there was wasted. With that in mind, he’d enlisted Juliet to build a proper tool room. They’d worked all day, welding in plasteel panels and making a door to separate his new space. “That welding I did today was damn good, wasn’t it, Angel? Even Aya was impressed.”

“I thought it looked excellent; I’d struggle to replicate your work. I’ve read that welding plasteel is tricky.”

“It’s hard to get a smooth weld, that’s for sure, but if you have the right flux and a good tip, it’s not that bad. God! I’m so ready to have gravity back. I mean, it was fun at first, especially when we had time to practice in the cargo bay, but everything is a pain without gravity. We’ll be able to get the weights out again, and won’t it be nice not to have to use pouches for all our food?”

“I imagine so. However, I didn’t have any of those problems.”

Juliet chuckled, “All right, let me amend my question: won’t it be nice not to listen to my complaints?”

“Yes!”

Juliet smiled and closed her eyes, meaning to let exhaustion pull her thoughts away from reality. On top of the work she’d done with Bennet, they’d also lifted weights, and after dinner, she’d spent an hour with Dr. Ming, talking about Murphy’s betrayal and Juliet’s desire to please someone she viewed as something of a parental figure. Juliet had argued at first, saying the idea was absurd, but the more she spoke with Ming, the more she began to realize he was right; Juliet’s mother had hardly had anything to do with her for years.

Her last really happy memory of her mother that didn’t involve one of her mom’s “dates” or her sister’s accomplishments was a fleeting, almost dreamlike recollection of a day spent gathering colorful rocks in the foothills of Mount Lemon when she was thirteen. She’d tried to remember what brought the trip on, why they’d gone up there, but she couldn’t. It was just a random, happy memory that seemed to precede years of unpleasant ones.

Juliet frowned, wanting to sleep rather than think about her counseling session. She supposed Dr. Ming would be happy, though—she was meant to spend the next few days “processing” their discussions. She closed her eyes and tried to remember that trip, that hike, looking for stones with chips of green and blue turquoise in them. What had her mom wanted them for? Was it something to do with her grandma? Wasn’t she . . .

Oh, shit!

The thought intruding into her mind was so loud and sharp that it sounded like Bennet was yelling right next to her. Juliet’s eyes shot open, and she pulled herself out of the couch again. She had a horrible feeling in her stomach and an impression of Bennet flailing through space. Had she “seen” something as well as “heard” it? Things were blurry and confusing in her mind because she’d been close to falling asleep, but . . . Juliet jammed her feet into her boots and, still wearing her tank top and some athletic shorts she’d taken to sleeping in, she charged out of her room and toward the lift.

Juliet selected Bennet’s icon on her AUI and said, “Is everything all right out there, Bennet?”

“I’m not getting Bennet on comms,” Alice said in the ship channel, then added, “I think we’re still in the tail of that micro meteor swarm; sensors are messed up. Radiation is a bit high. Bennet?”

“I’m checking,” Shiro said.

Juliet was riding down the lift by then, and the panic in her gut hadn’t faded. She still felt connected to Bennet, as though she could sense him, and it seemed like he was growing more distant. When she charged, click-clacking with her magnetic boots toward the cargo bay, she saw Shiro putting his hand on the biometric lock. “Close it after me!” Juliet yelled, racing for the door. Shiro glanced up at her as she ran through, beelining for one of the welding rigs. “Close it and have Alice open the cargo bay! Hurry!”

“Lucky, what’s going on?” Shiro asked in comms.

Juliet ran toward one of the scraped-up, orange, plasteel exoskeletons, choosing the one she’d practiced with earlier; the hatch was still up and open. She was clambering into the rig, pulling the canopy closed with a thunk, and flicking on the power switches, causing the air to cycle and hiss, when she replied, “I think Bennet got knocked off. I’m going for him. Open the bay doors; I’m taking an exoskeleton—no time to get a suit on and go through the airlock.”

Juliet watched all the LEDs light up green, then subvocalized, “Angel, you’re going to have to help me fly this thing—I think it’s going to be a lot different than cruising around in the cargo hold.” She’d spent part of the previous day doing just that, learning to maneuver the rig with its bigger, more powerful version of the air jets on the EVA suits.

“Lucky, wait!” Shiro said, clearly not instantly onboard with her plan.

“Yeah! Wait!” Aya chimed in. “I’m on my way from Engineering.”

“Bennet is going to die if I don’t get out there. Alice, please open the bay doors.” Juliet flipped off the magnetic locks on the rig’s feet, and then she was floating into the air. She maneuvered toward the still-closed bay doors, firing the jets, taking note of all the green indicators for battery levels, oxygen levels, and cabin pressurization, trusting Angel to step in if she went too fast and was about to crash.

“She’s right,” Alice said on comms, and then red lights began to flash in the cargo bay. A klaxon sounded, and she knew Alice had locked the interior door and was cycling the big bay doors. “I just got a ping from Bennet’s PAI. It was brief, but he was a hundred meters off port. He’ll be gone in seconds. Hurry!”

Alice didn’t need to tell Juliet; she could still feel Bennet and the terrible urgency in her gut as she steered the exoskeleton through the surge of hissing air ripping out of the bay into space. She would have worried about the weights and rack flying out, but she, Bennet, and Aya had secured them before the ship dropped out of acceleration. She wasn’t an expert on space physics, but she imagined objects turning into bullets as they shot into space. Looking back through her rearview camera feed, expecting to see just that—bits of debris rocketing after her, she was surprised and pleased to see the few loose things in the hold, including the lid to the crate with the EVA suits, drifting very gently near where they’d been prior to the door opening.

“I can feel him,” she subvocalized. “Help me pilot this thing in the direction I’m pointing.” Juliet’s left hand was in the waldo glove, and she manipulated it to push the rig’s grasping arm out and to her left. She felt the maneuvering jets fire to move her in that direction. A sobering thought hit her as she began to fly to where she could “feel” Bennet. She was in space, already dozens of meters from the Kaminari Kowashi, and she didn’t have a tether. If something went wrong with the rig, it wouldn’t just be Bennet dying in the black emptiness.

“Lucky, there’s high radiation out there. Try to hurry,” Alice said, though her voice was crackly and unclear.

“Like I’m not going to hurry,” Juliet muttered.

“Plug in your hard line,” Angel said suddenly, “My wireless connection to the rig isn’t clean. Hurry! I need zero latency to make this work.” Juliet quickly yanked her cable out of her arm and jammed it into the data port on the rig’s console. “Better!” Angel said, her voice less panicked.

Juliet closed her eyes and tried to picture Bennet, and the feeling she had intensified. She could sense him closer now, so she pointed the rig in the right direction, and Angel fired the maneuvering jets at full blast, taking her toward him. She nervously watched the percentage of air in the rig’s tank tick down, but it was still reading eighty-two percent when she laid eyes on Bennet, flipping head-over-heals, his tether line wrapped around him like a giant, loose spool of thread.

“Get us close,” she breathed, opening the plasteel, articulated claw on the end of the arm she was pointing toward Bennet. She heard the jets firing like mad all around the rig as Angel worked to slow her down and match Bennet’s speed and trajectory. Another glance at the air percentage showed her she was down to sixty-four percent when she finally drew close enough to reach for Bennet. Ever-so-gently, with the touch of a true expert with thousands of hours in a very similar rig, she wrapped the claw around Bennet’s ankle.

As soon as she grasped him, the maneuvering jets fired again, and Angel said, “Making a direct run at the cargo bay door. I think we’ll make it.”

“Lucky? Bennet?” Alice’s voice crackled through comms.

“I’ve got him. Coming back; he’s out, unresponsive.” Juliet could see through the rig’s display screen that Bennet’s eyes were closed, and his face was ashen. The queasy, stomach-flipping urgency and need to act were gone, though, and Juliet wondered just what the hell had happened. Had she made some kind of psionic connection to Bennet in his panic? Had she subconsciously reached out to him when she’d heard his outburst and felt his dismay?

She flipped the vid display to show her the ship, and Juliet caught her breath at the sight. They were deep in the black of space, but something was shimmering and sparkling around the Kowashi like it was cutting through some kind of atmosphere. A reddish-orange halo was streaming around the squarish front of the ship, flowing along the sides to sparkle away behind it, dissipating into the black.

Juliet looked at the air level and saw it was in the forties, but also that they were rapidly approaching the still-open bay door. She was going to make it. “Great job, Angel,” she whispered, then, as she cleared the opening, she said aloud into comms, “Close it. We’re in.” The red lights still flashed, but Juliet saw the doors moving together. As soon as they touched, Alice began to pressurize the hold—great gouts of white air blasted out of the vents.

After she’d locked the rig’s magnetic feet to the deck, Juliet carefully brought Bennet down next to the rig’s sturdy orange leg. The red lights continued to flash, the air continued to hiss, and then she began to hear the klaxon again as the atmosphere was recharged. “Did you copy my message?” she asked into comms again. “I’ve got Bennet, but he’s unresponsive.”

“Copy,” Alice said. “Can’t open the doors for another two minutes—equalizing the pressure. I’m getting Bennet’s readings now that you got him on the ship, and he’s alive. His pulse is steady. Good work, Lucky.”

“We’re flying through something,” Juliet added into the crew comms. “The nose of the ship was covered in a red halo. Sparks were flowing over the sides.”

“Yeah. It’s the tail of the micrometeor swarm, I guess. I thought we were through it after the impacts, but it was like the eye of a storm. This dust is radioactive, and something bigger must have hit Bennet. Do you see any injuries?”

“I’m bringing the trauma kit!” Aya piped in, her voice high with strain and worry.

“Sec,” Juliet said, then she carefully manipulated the rig’s grasping claw to begin unraveling the tether from Bennet. She might be unable to get out of the rig for a couple of minutes, but that wouldn’t stop her. She carefully walked around his prone form, pulling away the tether, layer by layer, and she sucked on her teeth when she saw how Bennet had been knocked off the ship. “Shit,” she said into comms, “his left leg’s mangled below the knee. The suit closed itself off, though, filled with foam and clamped down on his leg to stop the bleeding.”

“Damn,” Shiro said into comms.

“At least the suit worked how it’s supposed to,” Alice added. “Forty seconds.”

“What about his tether, though?” Aya asked, and Juliet, not having anything to do while she waited for the air to cycle, traced the tether she’d unraveled, now floating toward the center of the cargo bay, and saw that one end of it was blackened and frayed.

She replied, “Whatever hit his leg hit the tether. I guess it probably hit the ship, too. Any alarms, Alice?”

“Yes. We’re losing coolant for the H-3 reactor.”

“Goddammit,” Shiro hissed. “How long ‘til we’re out of this dust? Lucky’s going to need to decontaminate as it is.”

“Maybe not,” Juliet said. “I feel fine, and there aren’t any alarms going off in the rig. It’s got radiation sensors, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Alice’s voice was quiet as though she were talking while her mind was elsewhere, and then she spoke again, “The dust out there—it’s electromagnetically charged. No wonder it messed up the sensors and comms. I don’t think there’s any harmful radiation associated with it; I’m not reading anything much above baseline in the cargo hold.” The red lights stopped flashing, and Alice added, “Doors unlocking; pressure equalized.”

Juliet popped the canopy on the rig and started to climb out, and she could hear the door hissing open behind her. She barely clambered down and stepped toward Bennet when Aya and Shiro bounded onto the scene. Aya reached for Bennet’s helmet, but Shiro grabbed her hand, “Woah! Not yet. Let’s get him to the infirmary—let the suit’s pressure keep his bleeding down.”

“Right!” Aya said, lifting Bennet’s weightless top half while Shiro grabbed onto his foot. “We should get the drive going, too—gravity is better for healing.”

“First, we need to see about that coolant leak . . .”

“I can do it,” Juliet said, hurrying over to the crate of EVA suits. “I probably just need to patch a line and the hull, right? Easy.”

“That’s what Bennet thought . . .” Shiro started.

“She has to go,” Alice cut in. “If she doesn’t stop that leak in twenty minutes, we’ll have to jettison the core, and we’ll be dead in space, cruising at this speed forever until someone brings us a new one or we crash into something.”

“Shit. Help her, Aya. I got Bennet.” Shiro grabbed ahold of Bennet’s belt, then, with the unconscious engineer floating beside him, started click-clacking toward the inner bay door. Juliet didn’t stand around waiting to see what Aya would do; she was already pulling on her EVA suit.

“I’ll need an angle grinder, some extra hull plates, some coolant tubing, and the spot welder with a cutting tip, a welding tip, and plasteel flux,” Juliet said. “Can you get it together for me?”

Aya paused, having reached into the crate for an EVA helmet, then she set it down and hurried over to a set of cabinets by the airlock, “You head out to the breach, and I’ll go down to engineering so I can shut off the correct line when you identify it. We can keep the reactor stable with partial cooling until you patch it. I hope.”

Juliet felt a lot better now that Bennet was inside the ship, and they knew the radiation in the dust wasn’t harmful. Her sense of urgency remained, but the panic was gone. She clicked her helmet into place, waited for Angel to set up the camera feeds on her AUI, then hurried over to the airlock where Aya was loading up a satchel. She slung the bag, weightless despite its cargo, onto her shoulder, then, with a thumbs up to Aya, she stepped into the airlock. Juliet let Angel provide the access code, flipped up the safety cover, and punched the cycle button.

While the air hissed and the red light flashed, Juliet waited, trying to plan her route to the affected area, looking at a wire-frame, three-dimensional model Angel displayed for her. She had to go left out of the airlock, then over the hull to what was currently the top of the ship. “Should I just use the jets?”

“That’s very risky, and you have plenty of time to traverse the hull—it should only take you three minutes to reach the area where the leak is.”

“Right,” Juliet nodded, tapping the gloved fingers of her cybernetic arm against her thigh, impatiently waiting.

As the red light turned green and the outer door clicked open, Alice said, in a private channel with Juliet, “Lucky, how the hell did you find Bennet out there?”

Once again, Juliet stepped outside the ship in the enormous black expanse of space and started clicking her way over the hull, leaving her tether spooled up inside the air pack on her back. “How do you think I earned this handle, Alice? I got a feeling, and I went with my gut. Once I was away from the ship, my PAI scanned my optical feed for signs of Bennet, and, in a stroke of luck, I’d gone in roughly the right direction.” She figured some truth mixed with some bullshit would put Alice’s queries to rest.

“I read you fine; I think the dust is clearing.”

“Yeah, I don’t see the halo at the front of the ship anymore.” Juliet glanced to her left just as she rounded the corner of the ship and stepped onto the “top.” It was very dark out there, a few lights along the hull, primarily red and amber, all her retinal implants had to work with. Still, it was enough; Angel or the software built into the implants took that dim light and somehow made the metallic terrain bright and clear.

She scanned the hull to her right, toward the drive cones, and she saw the stream of coolant spraying into the void, breaking apart into big bubbles of blue-gray liquid that floated away into eternity. Juliet started toward it and said, “I’m twenty meters from the leak.” She studied the hull, and Angel highlighted the damage, “Are you guys seeing this? I see a four-meter scrape, about half a meter in width. It’s deep near the impact mark where the leak is coming from, but I only see about an eight-by-forty-centimeter breach.”

Angel also highlighted a spatter of red on the hull plating, and Juliet knew that was where Bennet had been injured. She didn’t think that needed mentioning, though, and when she finally clicked her boots onto the hull next to the damage, she knelt beside it without a word. She pulled the portable torch out of her satchel, checked to ensure the cutting tip was installed, then dialed the mixture up. She sparked it to life, trusting Angel to protect her retinal implants.

With the precision only a great deal of practice could provide, Juliet carved away a square section of the hull plating around the leak. When it came free, she sent it spinning into the void, then reached into the hole, pushing aside cables and tubes until she found the leaking coolant pipe. She wiped away decades of dust and grime until she could read the number printed in bright orange all along the line. “It’s line C12. Shut it down, please.”

“On it,” Aya replied. Ten seconds later, the spray of coolant petered out, and Aya said, “It’s off. Reactor temp is rising, but we should be good for a few . . .”

“I’m hurrying,” Juliet said, then she tucked her welder into her pouch, pulled out the angle grinder, and, with its diamatex blade, she snipped through the crimped, torn coolant pipe on both sides of the damage. “Damaged section is out; now I’m going to weld in the patch.” Juliet did just that, swapping in a welding tip on the torch and dialing down the temp to work with the pipe's thin, light plasteel alloy.

Two minutes later, sweat dripping down her forehead, Juliet pointed a nozzle on her suit’s wrist at the welded pipe and jetted out some of her precious air, rapidly cooling the red-hot welds. She said, “Turn it back on. Let me check for leaks.”

“Already?” Shiro asked, cutting in.

“Yeah.”

“Line C12 is back on. Any leaks?” Aya asked.

Juliet studied her work for a few seconds, knowing full well that Angel would have instantly spotted a leak. Still, she waited for a count to thirty, then said, “Looks good. Patching the hull now.”

“Damn good work,” Alice said, relief heavy in her voice. “You’ve definitely earned your pay today, Lucky. I’m heading to sickbay; Shiro says Bennet’s conscious but surly. Can you come by too? We should debrief.”

“Right. Gimme twenty to finish up out here, then I’ll head down.” Juliet pulled a plasteel hull plate out of her satchel and held it over the hole she’d cut, ensuring it would cover it up.

Almost on autopilot, she tacked it down and started laying a smooth weld around it while her mind buzzed with everything that had happened. She’d flown outside the ship on a welding rig, rescued a friend, and now she was clinging to that same ship with a couple of magnets doing some space welding. Half an hour ago, she’d been lying in bed getting ready to sleep. “Life’s crazy on a ship, Angel.” Juliet smiled; it was true, life was crazy, but she wouldn’t have it any other way, not as long as she could keep rising to the occasion.