Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(103)

He tried again, harder. Was there a little give before his feet were sucked back down, hard against the hull?

Now, instead of standing flat-footed, he flexed the boots enough that he was held only by the toe portion of the soles. He pushed off, a little harder than before, and …

His legs shot out away from the hull.

His gloves’ grip on the bar didn’t even bend. He swung out as if his hands were a hinge, and then his heels and buttocks slammed against the hull on the other side. The nanooze caught and gripped him.

This is good. Stand on tiptoe and jump, and the nanooze on the Juke vessel will catch me.

Probably.

If I can aim well enough for any part of my body to touch any part of that ship.

No time to waste. Dabeet crawled along the surface of the hull until he was positioned directly under—across from? over?—the widest part of the Juke vessel. It was not an atmospheric craft so there was no nonsense with wings or fins. Just a fine smooth surface with two visible emergency airlocks on it. Very tall from top to bottom of the ship. He could reach it. Especially if he didn’t have to use a lot of force to break free of the hull of the station.

He tucked up his feet, one at a time, until they were under the trunk of his body. Then he let go of one hand and balanced himself on boots flat against the hull.

It took ten seconds to persuade himself to push away with the other hand.

It took a lot of strength to organize his body to stand upright instead of swaying and wavering. Then his suit understood what he was doing and suddenly it was as if he were in a pillar attached to the ground at a ninety-degree angle. No wavering. His body was pointed directly at the Juke vessel.

Maybe I should have tried to jump so I’d land like a belly flop in a swimming pool.

Maybe I could never push off accurately in that position. So I’m doing this. Now.

No he wasn’t. The nanooze wouldn’t let go of his flat feet at the same time.

He rose to his toes. But the suit maintained his balance perfectly. All he had to do was try to stay in that position, and the suit, reading the tiny adjustments in his muscles, did the rest. Whoever designed this suit, thank you. And whoever died so that they would know these refinements were necessary, I honor your memory, because maybe I’ll live through this because of you.

He pushed off gently. As if he only meant to jump a couple of centimeters from the ground.

The nanooze let go. He drifted upward. He tilted his helmet back to see where he was going. Just like swimming. Just like diving. He wasn’t going up anymore, he was falling down toward the ship. Straight toward the ship.

He splayed out his gloves to make maximum contact with the nanooze. Then landed. They stuck.

I just freefell ten meters through space from one vessel to another. To the kids who were adept at maneuvers in the battleroom, this would have seemed like nothing. They made this jump from walls to stars in the battleroom all the time, and longer jumps, too, while shooting weapons. But for me this was, this is, unbelievably good luck.

Sorry for breaking your rules, Monkey. If I did break them. I mean, I didn’t walk, I didn’t run. But I kind of did let go of one handhold before …

I’m alive. That’s a passing grade even if I broke some rules.

There were no friendly corner gaps on the Juke vessel, either, and the nanooze didn’t feel as if it was holding him as tightly. But by moving carefully, he had no trouble making his way to the aft airlock, farthest from the dockbridge. He had no idea what alarms would go off inside the ship, but if he was arrested or killed the moment he opened the door, at least he tried to do something useful. It might turn out to be incredibly stupid, but he didn’t leave it all up to the others to clean up his mess. And it was possible, wasn’t it, that with him in custody the others might be safer, right?

The airlock worked more quickly than the clunky old design of the station airlocks. Zip, in. Zip, door closed. Whoosh, atmo recharged. Zip, inner door open. He didn’t have to push a single button or any other kind of control once he had called for the outside door to open. An excellent design, since a person in serious trouble in space might not be able to push a sequence of buttons. Just push the one button, and the airlock itself would do the rest.

And here he was inside the enemy ship, wearing a spacesuit. The display told him he could breathe without the suit, so he took off the helmet and set it near the airlock. He took two steps and then climbed out of the suit. He was too clumsy while wearing it to handle this reconnaissance as rapidly and thoroughly as he needed to. Wearing it wouldn’t save him a moment of time if he had to run away, because a butterfly could catch him while he suit-lurched his way back to the airlock.

To his surprise, the suit and helmet interfaced with the recharge connections beside the airlock. A standardized interface that they hadn’t messed with in half a century or more. Very nice.

There seemed to be nobody in this area, which looked to be a cargo bay. Like the cargo bay he and Zhang had inspected together months ago, helping with the tally. When they first discovered evidence that somebody was smuggling contraband through Fleet School.

The trunks were large, about as big around and half the length of a coffin. Could they be loaded with weapons? Dabeet had no idea. They didn’t look long enough for rifles or automatic weapons, but who would bring projectile weapons into space?

They were all firmly lashed to the shelves and frames. And because the boxes clung to the shelves, Dabeet realized: The ship was fully equipped with gravitics. There was no hint of freefall inside this space.