Star Wars - Scoundrels 001 - The Great Heardship Heist by Daniel Wallace

Author:Daniel Wallace [Wallace, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1997-11-19T02:10:46+00:00

Dawson stood in the airlock, struggling to keep his breathing under control. Can’t back out now, he reminded himself. Cold fear lay coiled in his stomach, threatening to bubble up into his brain. He forced it down again, and slowly, meditatively, exhaled. The sound echoed noisily in the claustrophobic confines of his vacsuit.

Ritinki’s personal ship, the Asaari Wind, had docked at an exterior airlock instead of landing in one of the open hangar bays. When they’d discovered this fact, he’d cursed out loud. The only way into the yacht’s interior was through the airlock s circular hatch and the hatch was guarded by a pair of snorting, drooling, vicious-Iooking Gamorreans. The swinish aliens were too stupid to bribe and any attempt at a con was likely to get you neatly halved by a vibroaxe. Sonax had been ready to give up, until Dawson had a flash of insight. Both berths on either side of the Asaari Wind were unoccupied.

They’d broken into this airlock, one slip over, which was vacant save for a maintenance locker and a row of dangling Ithorian vacsuits. With a great deal of effort, Dawson had donned one of the oversized suits, hitching up the baggy fabric and cinching it with engine tape around the elbows, knees, and waist. Sonax, however, was another matter. The serpentine Sluissi could not fit into any of the bipedal suits without an amputation or a miracle. After a short but heated argument, she’d agreed to climb into an equipment sled that he sealed behind her. She was curled up in there now and likely hating every minute of it. Dawson didn’t feel much better himself.

The tiny light next to the outer hatch winked from green to red, indicating the chamber had reached total vacuum. With one bulky, long-fingered glove, he pushed down the manual release lever. The round hatch ground sluggishly upward, revealing an ever-widening slice of star-speckled blackness. His breath quickened involuntarily. Moving quickly before he could change his mind, he stepped to the edge of the airlock and shoved off.

He had only drifted a few meters when the tether around his waist extended fully, stopping him with an abrupt jerk. Puzzled, he twisted his head around inside the elongated hammerhead helmet. The equipment sled, secured to the other end of the tether, was still resting on the airlock deck, held firmly in place by the Song of the Clouds artificial gravity.

If the suit had allowed it, Dawson would have slapped his forehead in disgust. Idiot, he thought. You should have pushed it out first. He considered reeling himself in and starting over. No, wait. Maybe I can still pull it loose.

He looked down at the rectangular control panel on the suit’s left forearm. Like any standard zero-gee vacsuit, this one was equipped with maneuvering jets located just beneath each shoulder, positioned out from the body so they could be aimed in any direction. After an extremely unpleasant bout with vertigo nearly six years ago, he’d avoided space walks like a hive virus.

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