Again, this is Dicker’s problem and she gets huffy every time I bring it up.
“Any time now,” Dicker says. If she were human she’d make a big production of twiddling her thumbs.
But I don’t have the privilege of being annoyed. There’s too much at stake. “OK,” I say. “But you’re going to get me as close to the station as possible, right? I mean, it’s a long ways out. It would really suck to run out of oxygen before I even reach the ship.”
“You’ve complained about that seven times now and each time I’ve told you the same thing. I’m handling it.”
“Yeah, but specifically how are you handling it? Because it’s time for all parties to be filled in on all details.”
“The moment I’m clear and the clock starts ticking you’ll leave the rear airlock and quickly position yourself on the starboard side of the stern. Then I’ll whip around and use that momentum to fling you towards the station.”
“Fling? Did you just use the word fling in reference to my fragile human body?”
“You’re inside an exoskeleton.”
“What if you fling me the wrong direction?”
“That’s what the bot is for. He can course-correct. Right, strange-bot-who-should-really-make-sure-he-has-a-purpose-here-because-I’ll-fling-him-out-in-another-direction-if-he-fucks-this-up?”
The bot chirps enthusiastically.
“Great,” I mutter.
“That name is too long,” Dicker says. “We’re going to call him Fling from now on.”
“Funny.”
“Are you ready, or what?”
“I’m ready.”
“Good. Clip that bot to your exoskeleton and hold on. We’re going through.”
So here’s what happens next.
We go through the gate and come out the other side no problem. There are no blaring alarms or flashing red lights, so I take that as a good sign that we’re not immediately being targeted for attack.
I do my thing. We cycle through the airlock—which eats up fifteen precious seconds of our time limit—then I swing outside in space and realize… yeah. I’ve never done this before and looking out into the black darkness of the great nothing scares the shit out of me, and I freeze.
That eats up another five seconds and only Dicker yelling in my helmet comms snaps me out of it. But the bot didn’t freak out and tugs me along towards the back end of Dicker’s tail. There are no handrails on this ship because she’s this sleek monster-thing, right? So I’m thinking, This is the dumbest idea ever, just as she whips her body around, I smash against the hull, bang my fucking head, pass out for however fucking long, and then come to flying towards Lair Station just as a stream of plasma shoots past me and hits Dicker.
I see the whole thing go down in real time. She flickers for a moment. Just shimmers. And then…
Gone.
Nothing left.
She just… disappears.
I say, “Oh, fuck! That wasn’t in the plan!” just as the bot shifts into some hidden high gear and we go hurling towards the side of the station at a speed that is definitely not safe.
I don’t really understand how we got so close to it so fast, but there’s no time to think that through because I’m hauling ass now. Like… I’m fuckin’ booking it straight towards the side of the station and if I hit the side of that thing at this velocity, I’m a pancake.
So I yell, “Stop!”
But that’s even dumber than the plan we came up with, because there’s no stopping in space. So I yell, “Reverse thrust!” Because at least that makes sense.
The bot whips his little metal body around and does that, but I’m not actually holding on to him, just connected by a tether.
So I keep going my original direction while he goes the opposite.
Not for long though, because that tether is only two meters long, so when the tether snaps tight my momentum overpowers his momentum, and now we’re both flying towards the station and the fumes from his little thrusters are spraying onto the faceplate of my helmet and freezing over.
So now I can’t see anything. And who cares. I’m facing the wrong direction now, anyway.
I come to terms with the fact that I will smack into the station going ass-backwards and probably break both my legs in the process.
But seconds go by and we don’t hit the station, we actually do slow down, and I have a moment to realize we’re still a good distance away and things in space are not closer than they appear.
It takes several more minutes to actually reach the station and FlingBot hooks onto some random handhold meant for repair workers—I know this because there are several fucking repair borgs clinging to the station doing said repair work as we float by—and then…
Shit gets real.
One of them hurls himself off the station and comes at me with a giant tool and then I kinda overreact and start pushing those buttons conveniently located below my fingertips and try to send out a flash grenade.
I start chanting, “Third button is flash, fourth is shrapnel,” then confuse myself because I was joking with Dicker about this earlier, and second-guess, then finally just say fuck it and hit the first button.