Jupiter's Glory Book 3: The Obsidian Slavers by Adam Carter

Author:Adam Carter [Carter, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-03-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

So far it was working, which was something of a shock since Hawthorn had not believed they had much of a chance of the whole flak plan doing them any good at all. He trusted Hart, that was not the problem: it was more that he trusted the crew of the Obsidian to have been more observant than they were. Being in the business they were, and having discovered an imposter aboard their vessel, Hawthorn had expected them to have every crewmember physically looking out the windows. Having fired the flak missile, however, Hawthorn had seen no sign that anyone was even aware his small craft had made contact.

“Gordy, help!”

Hawthorn reached out a hand, grabbed Cassiel by the leg and hauled her back. They had landed their craft onto the side of the Obsidian, attaching with incredibly strong magnetic clamps. From there they had donned thin spacesuits and hopped their way to an access duct. The gravity within the Obsidian would be artificial normal, but on the outside hull the two of them were pretty much spacewalking. That the Obsidian generated a small gravitational force gave their suits something to latch onto, and the smart computers within those suits were able to fool the universe into believing there was more gravity here than there was. That was not exactly the most truthful explanation of how the suits worked, but it was precisely how Hawthorn had explained it to Cassiel.

Unfortunately, she had panicked and forgotten the first thing he had told her: never drift away from the hull. There was no gravity in the depths of space, and momentum would carry her away without any form of buffer. If he had not grabbed her foot to haul her back, she would have floated away forever.

He decided against giving her such a lecture and concentrated on getting her feet back onto the hull.

She collided with him and wrapped her arms about him as they tumbled. “You saved me, Gordy.”

“Do you have to call me Gordy?” He extricated himself and made sure they weren’t both now floating away from the Obsidian. Once he was reasonably certain they were not in danger of a long and terrible death, he re-evaluated their distance to the hatch and set off towards it. Cassiel clung to his arm, which impeded his ability to hop, so he compromised by holding her hand.

“Can’t we just walk?” she asked in a skittish voice.

“Walking takes too long. Dragging our feet might puncture the suits, too. Hopping is quicker and so long as we never go too far into the air we’ll be fine.”

“But it’s so dangerous.”

“You never saw the old Moon-landing footage from the sixties?”

“Sixty what?”

“The nineteen sixties. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin?”

“I heard Wraith talking about West Aldrin,” she said, perking up a little. “It’s on Ganymede, I think.”

“And named after Buzz Aldrin, yes.”

“Oh. Who were they?”

Hawthorn shook his head. “Without them, we wouldn’t be out here.”

“Were they slavers, then?”

“What? No, they weren’t slavers.

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