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She froze. Barely breathing.
One of the charges hadn't blown. A ping read it at 2.6 kilometers away at 320 degrees to her zero. Without maneuvering thrusters, it might as well be in the next system.
Three hours and thirty-seven minutes of air.
If she could get to the charge, she could use it to shoot herself at the ship.
Shoot…
Her brain must've taken more damage than she'd thought.
Forcing her arm down to her side, she slid the first finger of her right hand through the trigger guard and pulled the tagging gun free of the holster. Still ninety-seven tags in the magazine. She drew a mental line along the path the piece of debris carrying the charge would take. Another along the line she'd have to take to meet up with it.
Aimed the barrel back along that line.
Adjusted to account for the debris' speed.
Adjusted to account for her speed.
Adjusted to account for any additional speed that might be added by the tagging gun during the course correction.
Realized there was no way in hell she could do that kind of math in her head.
And pulled the trigger.
Better to die attempting the impossible.
A full magazine held a hundred tags. She'd used three while they set the charges. She used another twenty-two before her path looked like it would cross the debris' path. Maybe. Probably.
"Fuk it."
Three hours and four minutes of air.
Two hours and fifty one minutes.
It was going to be close.
Another six tags made it closer.
Moving slowly and carefully, Torin stretched out her left arm…
Two hours and forty-seven minutes.
… and closed her thumb and forefinger on the edge of the debris.
At this point, spin didn't matter-she'd have to aim herself at the ship regardless, so she moved as quickly as she could, arming the charge and then using the remains of her tether to strap the piece of debris across her back. By the time she managed it, she'd used up another forty-nine minutes of air.
Fourteen tags lined her up facing the Promise's lights.
Fifty-one tags left to adjust her course-she was aiming a projectile at a target almost a hundred kilometers away by eye-and to keep her from slamming into the ship at a speed that would do neither her nor the ship any good.
It all came down to whether or not the blast would supply enough push to get her to the Promise's tanks before her air ran out.
"Fire in the hole!"
Teeth together, tongue safely out of danger, she detonated the charge.
"Escape pods…" Captain Farmer slapped the curved metal of the pod beside her. "… are not designed for comfort. They are designed to get you away from your transportation and the battle that's destroyed it as quickly as possible. You will be pulling close to 4 Gs during the initial thrust, so if you've taken any injuries during the time the Navy has been getting the shit shot out of it, it's going to hurt." She smiled out at the training platoon. "Here in the Corps, we feel a little pain is preferable to going down with the ship."
When Torin came to, a nosebleed had gummed her lips together. She checked the time-she'd been out for twelve minutes-worked her lips apart, and licked them mostly clean. Good thing she'd never minded the taste of blood.
Most of the debris field had moved past her at this point. This was a good thing because slamming into random pieces of wreckage currently filled the top spot on her list of things she'd rather not do.
A ping put her at 84.6 kilometers from the ship. She'd traveled 14.4 kilometers in the twelve minutes she'd been out. That was 1.2 kilometers a minute and 67 kilometers an hour.
She'd reach the Promise in an hour and thirty-six minutes.
This left her a little better than thirteen minutes to get inside and hook up to the ship's tanks. At full magnification, it appeared that only the cabin had been holed, but she couldn't be a hundred percent positive the tanks were intact until she actually got there.
Decelerating would also eat up some time, but she had a plan.
If not for the concussion, she'd catch a quick nap-setting her comm to wake her in an hour. As that wasn't an option…
The Susumi radiation they'd read on arrival had undoubtedly come from the other CSO's ship, destroyed more thoroughly than the Promise. That explained why there'd been no answer. Nat, the cargo jockey who'd pointed them at this field, had been on station because her ship had taken a bad fold. Not a huge jump to suspect it hadn't been a bad fold at all but that they'd been caught in the blast radius. No one deliberately put themselves in the radius of a Susumi blast. The destruction had been an accident.
Rogelio Page's injuries told her they wanted information from a CSO.
The blast had destroyed any chance of them picking up a new operator.
So they'd had to look elsewhere.
Craig wasn't answering his comm or his implant.
There was always the chance he'd died when the charges blew.
Torin didn't think so.
Didn't want to think so.
Nor did she think she'd find him when she finally got to the ship's sca
The pirates needed him. They-Nat and her crew-had scooped him up and left her for dead.
She was more than a little pissed about that.
Turned out, an hour and a half later, her course didn't need much correction.
"Let's hear it for paying attention on the heavy ordinance range."
Torin took three shots to slightly change her angle of approach and spent the rest of the tags to slow herself as much as possible. She hadn't aimed herself right at the ship but just over it, her boots barely clearing the metal. As it passed under her, she took a quick look at the hole in the cabin. The control panel looked intact and the odds were very good the main cabin had been sealed off immediately from the rest of the ship. There'd be air. If she could get to it.
The moment her body cleared the ship on the far side, she remagged her boots. Full power. They slammed her down onto the ship working against her forward momentum.
To a certain extent, the foam continued to protect her.
Swearing seemed like a good idea except she had to concentrate on basic functionality. Given that she was in the cabin, she assumed she'd managed to stay conscious through docking maneuvers, but she wouldn't have bet her pension on it. And the tank hookup seemed stupidly complicated until she realized she still had the piece of wreckage tied to her back.
Things started to spin while she worked it loose and she only just got her mouth over the puke tube in time.
"You haven't had fun until you've had a helmet full of puke." Staff Sergeant Beyhn frowned down at her. "You're sucking carbon dioxide, Kerr. Get your gods-damned tanks in the fill position."
"Work… ing on… it, Staff."
"Work faster."
"Yes, Staff Sergeant."
She didn't so much push her tanks into the fill niche as collapse back into it.
"Lucky these things are idiot proof," the staff sergeant muttered.
Torin turned off the sca
The way they'd had Rogelio Page.
But Craig had something Page hadn't.
He had her.
All he had to do was stay alive until she came for him.