“Void,” Rake cursed. A small tug on the tether pulled on his stomach and twisted him around to face her. She looked at him from beside the hatch over two meters above. “By not participate, I didn’t mean let yourself drift off,” she chided.
His cheeks warmed. “Sorry.”
With the tether in hand, she carefully pulled him back toward her.
“Hold onto that.” She pointed to a handle bar, and he gripped it with both hands. Rake took another handle, then pulled herself from bar to bar across the bottom of the ship like she was in a weightless jungle gym. She stopped, releasing the tension on the tether enough to turn around and face him.
“Cav.”
Cav? She hadn’t called him that before.
“Cavalon,” she repeated.
“Yes? Sir?”
“You coming?”
“Oh, right.” With a shaking hand, he reached forward and grabbed onto the next bar.
“Just one at a time,” she encouraged.
So he did it, literally one at a time, getting a firm grip with both hands on each bar before reaching to grab the next. He caught up with her, and after a few endless minutes, they arrived at the edge of the ship. Rake let go and palmed her way up the side, then disappeared around the corner.
“Just let go,” Rake said. “I’ll pull you up.”
The slack in the tether disappeared. With a focused effort of will, he unclenched his fingers. He hovered free for a moment, then the tether pulled him forward and up the side of the ship.
Rake rested a meter up, arm hooked through a long handle on the side of the hull. She guided him up, and he grabbed onto the same bar.
He gestured to the MMU on her back. “Why don’t we use that thing to get around?”
“Safer if we don’t. Less chance of an accident.”
“Accident?” He barely choked out the word.
“It’s only for emergencies.”
He nodded numbly as a wave of warmth rolled through him.
“You okay?”
“It just … it feels so claustrophobic, you know?”
“I know,” she said, her tone patient. “It does. It’s normal.”
He let out a shallow breath. “Sorry, is it hot in here? Out here? Here?”
“No,” she said. Blood rushed to his head, and her voice grew muffled. “It’s actually very, very cold. Well, not technically, but you know how it works.”
“Right.”
Cavalon reached to wipe sweat from his forehead, but just thwacked his hand into the glass of his helmet. He squinted as a bead of sweat rolled off his brow and floated past his eye. He imagined the heart-rate indicator in his HUD would have been a particularly vibrant shade of red by now.
“I just feel like I shouldn’t be this hot,” he croaked, the words thick in his suddenly bone-dry mouth. He looked up at the endless black above him. Except it wasn’t up—there was no fucking up. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air had solidified. It caught in his throat and his windpipe constricted.
He needed out of this suit. It was suffocating him.
He reached up to paw at his neck.
“No! Bloody void, Mercer!” Rake gripped his arm and pinned it to his side, pressing him against the hull.
“Jack?” Rake barked.
“Go for North.”
“Cavalon’s vitals reading okay?”