Samson stifled a flash of panic. What if they manoeuvred the scout ship away from them? Any detonation would be useless more than a few dozen metres away. The fragments of the small ship might do some superficial damage to the warship, but nothing near what would be needed to destroy it. There was nothing he could do about that now, though. Either they would pull him closer or spit him out of their way as they approached the depot with the intention to destroy it.
Once again he turned to a vigil on his datapad. It was limited to its own positional sensors now, which were great on a planet’s surface but pretty patchy out in space. They could give him a rough idea of his heading, but their accuracy was in the hundreds of kilometres, rather than the metres the depot’s sensors had been able to give him. As best he could tell, he was still headed for the alien ship—it was certainly getting bigger on the viewscreen—but the lack of certainty was driving him to distraction.
Samson tried not to let himself think of the things he could have done differently—a mechanical connection to the detonators so he could set them off once he was already moving away from the ship. A dead-man’s switch of some sort to make sure it went off if he was killed. But none of it mattered now, and stressing over it was a waste of energy.
He tried to think of something, or someone, worthwhile as the alien warship drew him toward it, but there was nothing. His mother was long dead, and his father—a naval officer himself—had all but disowned Samson after what he referred to as ‘the Fifth Fleet Disgrace’. There had been a few short romances during his time at the Academy and before the mutiny, but nothing since then. There was no one for him to send a message to, no one who would care or notice his passing beyond an alteration to his entry in the naval list.
He cast a glance at the alien ship. It was close. So close Samson felt as though he could reach through the viewscreen and place his hand on it. Instead of moving closer, it looked as though he was now moving along its hull—perhaps toward a docking bay? He braced himself against the hull, grabbed onto something that looked solidly attached to the ship, and played the alien’s voice command again. The airlock opened, causing the ship’s atmosphere to rush out. It tugged at Samson, but he’d picked his spot well and after a moment the tempest was over, the ship was evacuated, and he could be about his business. He peered out of the open hatch, which revealed the pinpricked depths of space. He had to catch his breath as a sense of vertigo threatened to overwhelm him and turned his gaze back to the detonator control. He flipped up the protective cover, and thought through the process Price had shown him. There were two switches—one to power up, the other to start the timer—and a keypad, all beneath a small screen. Power on, set the timer, hit the detonator, jump, he thought. Simple, really. He reached for the power switch.
No sooner did he do so than the ship rocked violently, throwing Samson out of the airlock. He caught the edge of the lock with his fingertips as his body swung out into the cold vacuum of space. His heart raced as he could feel his inertia pull against his tenuous grip. His fingers slipped under the strain, millimetre by millimetre. Then they stopped, and held firm. He took a breath and prayed to the gods of the coefficient of static friction that he had enough hold to get his body moving back toward the ship. Slowly, he started to move.
With his feet firmly back on the ship’s deck, he took a moment to settle himself, then realised he didn’t have that luxury. He looked out of the airlock at the warship’s fuselage only a metre away, and hoped no one had seen his unintended extravehicular activity. As he looked at the ship, he realised something had changed. It looked as though his trajectory was starting to diverge. He was drifting. He checked his datapad. The signal that had taken over the ship’s systems was gone.
The only possibility that he could think of was that instead of running, Harper had brought the Bounty back in to distract the alien ship once they realised it had taken control of Samson’s bomb ship. He couldn’t see what was going on, but on a divergent course he didn’t have much time to put his plan in action.
He stood with his heels over the edge of the airlock, hit the power button, keyed in five seconds, and hit the detonate button. Then he squatted down and launched himself back out of the ship with as much strength as he could muster.
Samson spun away from the ship, rolling feet over head. There was nothing but inky darkness before him, the stars blurring past his visor. The sense of vertigo made him dizzy enough to think he was going to puke. There were a great many life decisions he regretted at that moment. He felt the
