“Oh no, you're-”
“Afraid of heights! That wasn't in my intelligence jacket? Guess you spooks don't catch everything, do you?”
“Guess not,” Jason chortled. “Just focus on your safety line and what you have to do.”
“What do you think I'm doing!” She moved carefully along the support rod, one hand moving above the other rhythmically and methodically. If for some reason the hook or lines gave way she could always hold on to that rod until her suit could form a bond with the smooth, hard underside of the platform. Her breath caught in her throat as the rod she was attached to ended. The blueprints said that the support rod went all the way to the end of the platform, not that it bent inside the metal above then came back out several meters later.
Her instinct was to look around in an effort to find something else to attach her safety line to. She looked in the wrong direction first. Peering over her shoulder and down into the yawning depths of the dark inner station landing pit, her heart leapt into her throat. Landing platforms jutted out from the sides like shelves and spoons leading to hangars, transit ways and hallways. Her eye was drawn mostly to the shadowy depths in the center. The bottom was a thing imagined and not seen, a place where her mind's eye painted her crushed and ruined. “Jason, I'm sorry I snapped at you,” she whimpered.
“It's okay. I understand.”
Ayan laid her forearms and shins against the underside of the platform and her suit started to form a bond with the metal. Her heart felt like it was going to break free of her chest, she just wanted to stay right where she was until someone else could come get her, come save her. Her military training was winning, however, even if just barely. “The support rod ends, I'm going to have to use the climbing tech in the suit to get across,” she whispered in a hurried, panicked tone that surprised her when it echoed in her ears. She'd only heard herself sound so frightened once before.
It was during her first tour on the Sunspire, before she met Jonas Valent. Her Captain had ordered her and a few of the engineering crew into the reactor core to shield them from a massive electromagnetic burst that killed everyone else on board. The darkness, filled with drifting corpses who had been her friends, and the possibility that their enemies could return to salvage the ship, to kill her and everyone else who had survived was something she'd never forget. They managed to get the ship back to Freeground, but for weeks she couldn't so much as look at an image of that ship, it was enough to send her into tears.
At first she thought being put in charge of the Sunspire's recommissioning by Freeground Fleet Command was some kind of cruel joke, but it was an opportunity for her to advance her career, to prove that she could survive one of the most horrifying experiences any technician in the fleet had survived in recent history. The ship still felt wrong somehow until Jacob Valance was given command and they changed the name.
It was like he gave the ship and crew purpose, direction, made it a place where people could accomplish something. He was out there somewhere, or at least someone who had all his memories, who would probably want to meet her, someone she needed to meet. He wouldn't have trouble getting through this. The thought crossed her mind as the display on her headpiece confirmed a lock with the underside of the landing platform.
“We can try to send someone else, maybe a bot to just cling to the bottom away from the cable cover,” Jason offered.
“They'd be detected for sure, I have a chance at this and it's just a little further,” she replied hurriedly as she slid her splayed body, one forearm, one leg at a time. All the while she watched the indicator on her visor to ensure that the surface of her suit was firmly bonding with the metal. Several centimetres of her left shin wouldn't bond and she thanked God that she had managed to remain flexible thanks to a regular yoga regimen as she spread her knees out to the side and let the suit bond a good portion of her thighs, stomach and chest to the platform.
In theory she could hang by one shin and hold half a ton, but with the dark void just waiting for her to fail, to fall, she couldn't bond securely enough. It was slow and before she had gone five meters she was breathing heavily because of the exertion of the act. Ayan's vacsuit didn't have a problem bonding to the metal of the platform, but sliding upside down, doing anything upside down, took a lot more effort than crawling normally. Now this is something I should add to my workout regimen. Maybe at a height of four feet, but still, this is anything but easy.
“You're almost there, four more meters and you should be able to see where they burned through the platform side mooring cables.”
Ayan looked up along the underside of the platform and to her relief she spotted a pair of eye hooks for fastening servicing equipment right beside the box that hung under the landing gear clamps that forced a power and data connection to the ship and prevented it from lifting off. She crossed the distance and carefully pulled one arm away from the platform underside to fasten her hooks to the heavy metal loops made for supporting several tons of equipment. “I'm at the box, linking into the port now,” she reported as she drew a slim cable from her command and control unit and plugged into the multi-purpose port on the side of the heavy white box.
The display on her command and control unit reported that the codes Yves had given them were working and that the ship was still linked to the hard connection on the landing platform. “They didn't cut the interior cables,” Ayan said with a relief.
“Fantastic, can you get the box open?”
“Yup,” the access hatch on the side of the box flopped down and plummeted past her. For a second her eye followed it and she momentarily froze before shaking her head and focusing on the data and power lines that once led to the spaceport computers. She disconnected them with a quick turn and gentle pull and hurriedly pulled the power and data line that was attached to her leg free, firmly seating the end in the socket. “You should see a good connection to the ship now.”
“There it is! Now get back here so we can start causing some damage,” Jason exclaimed excitedly.
Ayan pulled the small data cord leading from her arm unit free and started back, hesitating before detaching herself from the heavy support hooks. She was crawling backwards, watching the surfaces of her shins, knees, thighs, arms, chest and stomach hold fast to the metal surface of the platform's underside. Most of her suit was working properly, but fear drove her as much as anything until she made it back to the support rod and attached herself to it.
She moved as quickly as she could without getting herself tangled with the cables that shared the cramped service space with her and at long last her feet came out of the thinly sheathed service shaft into open air. The main service conduit was almost beneath her. It was built out of heavy braced metal grating and led back to the main platform above. Her boot touched the solid edge and she unhooked herself from the support rod. As she removed the second safety line hook everything shook so violently that all she could do was grab for the support rod. Her attempts to secure herself failed as she was flipped onto her stomach atop the thinly walled, creaking cable sheath.
Everything was creaking, quaking, bouncing her around inside the small space violently enough to force sections of her suit to harden, keeping her from seriously bruising or breaking bones and the sheath was rattling loose, giving way under her weight and the twisting pressure of the sudden motion. She quickly tried to turn so she could face the underside of the platform again and only made it half way before the cable cover gave way and her body started to fall with it into open space.
An instinctive grab with her left arm caught the support rod. Her right hand joined it as her body swung free, dangling out over the yawning pit with the safety of the interior service tunnel just two meters away.
The world was still shaking and she hung on for dear life, her grip, her sanity tested as she prayed she wouldn't be killed in a tragic fall. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the support rod as hard as she could. When the shaking stopped she scrambled, thoughtlessly, desperately to grip hand over hand to the service crawlway and safety. The safety rod ended prematurely, leaving her to cross the last half meter on her own. She didn't give herself time to think about her options; instead she fortified her grip and swung her lower body away then towards the opening, letting go at the last second and hurling herself into the meter high service passage. She lay on her back, just catching her breath for a moment when a though occurred to her. I could have taken that slowly and bonded my suit to the metal of the structure, made my crossing that way instead. Would have been safer. Hey, maybe I'm getting over my fear of heights after all. She turned over and brought herself up into a crouch, looking over her shoulder at the sheer drop behind her before starting into the much safer service tunnel. Vertigo threatened to overtake her at even that slight glimpse from relative safety. “Nope, definitely still afraid of heights,” she chuckled to herself nervously.
“Are you all right Ayan?” Jason asked.
