Independent Flight (Aquarius Ascendant) by K.L. Tremaine Read Free Book Online Page B

spaceship was one of the Service’s great privileges. She’d spacewalk-trained in boot camp, of course, but she hadn’t been in vacuum since then.
    The door cycled and she gazed out on deep space. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out onto the corvette ’s fuselage, walking on the skin of her home. She knew that she was technically inverted relative to the ship, but her perception didn’t see it that way.
    “ Okay, now disengage your mag boots and jet over to the probe over there.” The big three-ton space probe contained both passive and active sensors, and could detect a space warp of a one-hundredth gee within two AUs.
    Natasha took another deep breath and clicked off her grav boots… and nearly laughed with the joy of feeling herself float free of the hull. Engaging her suit thrusters, she gently squeezed forward at a mere one m/s 2 , cautiously approaching the probe.
    “ Now, stand clear of the probe at four meters, and we’ll let its externals deploy on their own,” came Yeboah’s voice over the comm. She was approaching at 4 m/s and did a quick backflip to put her thrusters in the right path to bring her to a stop next to Natasha.
    Yeboah seemed to have no problem floating next to Natasha but inverted relative to her. Suits tended to homogenize everyone’s body language but somehow Yeboah’s casual elegance came through just fine.
    “ Skipper, we’re ready to begin probe antenna deployment.”
    “ Roger that EVA-1, EVA-2, how’s your first spacewalk coming?” Veronica’s voice sounded tinny over the speaker, which annoyed Yeboah slightly. They had more than enough bandwidth for crystal-clear audio transmissions, but somehow Fleet wanted radio communications to sound… different. Like a spacewalker wouldn’t remember that the person talking to them wasn’t right next to her? She thought it was ridiculous.
    Natasha swallowed a little. “Exciting, nerve-wracking… beautiful. I can’t believe I’m out here, like this.”
    “ Well, you two have fun out there, but don’t forget to wipe your feet when you come back in.” Yeboah could hear the dry, arch humor in Veronica’s tone.
    “ Yes, Mom,” chorused the two women.
    Yeboah sent a signal to the probe and it began unfolding. First the high-tech flower of its high-gain antenna, irising into position. Then came the antennae of the sensor systems, thorn-like.
    “It looks like we’ve got a good deploy,” said Yeboah.
    From the ship, Kellie’s voice responded, “Good sensor feeds on this end, we’re ready to send Probey the Probe on his merry way.” The small probe boosted off downrange at a mere 8 m/s 2 , not even a measurable percentage of its mother ship’s amazing speed, “You two want to stay outside for a bit? We’re a half-hour ahead of schedule, we’ve got the slack to do it.”
    Yeboah was about to demur, but she saw the look of wonder on Natasha’s face. She remembered her own first spacewalk, and how she’d never wanted to go back in to the claustrophobic reentry capsule for descent back to Terra. It was a totally different feeling than flying about in a starship, and Leblanc would have plenty of time to come to see EVA as a hassle. Let her have the wonder.
    “ Let’s take advantage of that half-hour, Skip.”

    Chapter 6
     
    Unseen by any member of Avenger ’s corvette wing, the freighter Arrant Knave dropped from faster than light to slower, and headed in-system. Jonah Ress found it slightly inconvenient, or more accurately just a little bit too convenient in Duke Ifrit’s favor, that Ifrit’s own repair yards had undercut by twenty percent the price estimates of every other yard on the planet. More worrisome was that he hadn’t been allowed to check the contents of his hold until just before takeoff, a stipulation which had almost convinced him to scotch the whole deal. But in the end, they didn’t really have a choice, did they?
    First Mate Benjamin “Matt” Mattingly was more concerned with the fact that they