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“Aha!” she said when she got about halfway down.

He moved to the side so he could see as she used the flat tool to prise something loose from under the vent.

“Here’s the little asshole,” she announced with a grin, holding up the smallest piece of space debris he’d ever seen. It was no bigger than a pebble, easily held between her thumb and forefinger.

“It had gotten itself all jammed up in the joint back there.” She frowned as she looked at the vent again. “Wonder how it got all the way up in there. Anyway, at least it didn’t bend the fin, just stopped it from opening.”

Shrugging, she flicked the little rock away. Automatically, his hand snapped out and he plucked it out of the ‘air’ as it tumbled past him.

She whistled. “Good reflexes, especially out here. But you can toss it now; we don’t need it. Vent’s all good.”

“Souvenir,” he said with a shrug as he shoved it into his thigh pocket and smoothed the flap shut. “My first proper spacewalk on tethers.”

Her jaw dropped as she looked up at him. “Seriously? Christ, I wish you’d told me that before we came out here, handsome.”

Packing the toolkit away, she hooked it under the tank on her back as she moved away from the vent.

“Okay, Stevie,” she said over the main comm. “I’m releasing the lock on the starboard engine ventral vents. Run a forced purge for me, would you?”

Rann took a step backward as B unclipped her tether from the rail around the vent, ready to clip it to the first rail of the set he was on. The movement changed his position on the hull and his line of sight along with it.

Something caught his eye and he frowned. There was an odd protrusion on the other side of the vent housing. He wasn’t an expert on human ship design by any stretch of the imagination, but their designs tended to have a specific flow and format to them. So much so that terran ships were instantly recognizable. But whatever that was, tucked away back there, it didn’t fit the normal design pattern.

“B, there’s a⁠—“

That was all the warning he managed to get out before the side of the ship exploded.

Fire and debris burst outward in a violent spray. For one heart-stopping second, all Rann could see was white light reflected in B’s visor and fragments tumbling through the black.

He lunged forward as the blast tore a panel free from the vent housing and spun it straight toward B’s head, throwing up an arm. He winced as it slammed into him hard enough to rattle his teeth.

But it wasn’t enough. He might have caught the first panel, but as he watched, a jagged length of housing sheared through the guardrail where her tether was clipped.

Metal screamed over the comm, then the rail spun away in pieces. B jerked hard as the line went taut, her body twisting end over end away from the ship as her free hand reached for nothing.

Then another fragment struck her across the side and his whole body went cold.

No.

“B!” he screamed, pushing off the rail toward her.

Too slow. He was too slow.

The toolkit tore loose from her belt, tools scattering like moons around a planet as she spun farther away, her body limp.

Draanth. He didn’t think. There was no time for thought.

Hauling on his tether, the one furthest away from her, he tore it away from the clip, and launched himself after her. The draanthing suit fought him, pulling tight across his chest and crushing his balls.

But none of that mattered.

All that mattered was B.

His heart hammered as he reached out a hand toward her, trying to make his bodyline more compact and streamlined.

“B? B!” he yelled over the private comm channel they’d been using. “Answer me, draanth it!”

Nothing but static crackled in his helmet.