Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner

He lived in fear of the tether coming loose, of drifting out the yawning hole that a cargo-hold hatch no longer sealed, into the deadly hail of relativistic interstellar muck.
    He forced himself to stop shouting, to breathe slowly and evenly. Gradually his hearts stopped pounding. The battery-powered lights he had rigged scarcely managed to ease the gloom, and shadows moved ominously whenever anything—himself included—shifted in the zero gravity.
    He had been alone before. Solitude did not bother him. Much. But
this
solitude was different. He was light-years from any help, his predicament unknown. Other Pak ships would come to investigate the unexpected energy release of the neutron bomb. He wondered how long he had before they arrived.
    He had exactly that long left to live. . . .
    Flare shields had activated almost before Achilles noticed the bright green light. An instant later there was a flash of orange, as quickly vanquished, then blue, then normal shipboard illumination again. He screamed at Roland, “Get us out of here!”
    The human stood, cursing, dueling with lasers with the not-so-dead Pak ship. “Flare shields are holding,” he called out. “It’s just another automated defense, like the ramscoop field. Probably also triggered by our people going aboard. I’ll have it off in a minute.”
    Achilles sidled toward the pilot’s console. The shield blocked the visible light from solar flares. The hull itself would stop the particle flux from even the biggest flare or coronal mass ejection. The shield adaptedautomatically to ambient light—not all flares were equally hot, hence their color distributions varied—but that did not mean it was agile enough to adjust to—
    Another blaze of color, this time fiery red. It seemed longer than the last flash. Then blue again. Then, not any light Achilles could see, but a sensation of heat. Infrared. “Visible” meant something different for every species, and General Products hulls were transparent for all its onetime customers.
    “We have to get out—” A stunner blast to the deck made his hooves sting.
    “A few seconds more,” Roland snapped. “The ramscoop field is down now.”
    The flare shield could not keep up with these frequency jumps. Why should it? There was a sensation of light
behind
Achilles’ eyes—ultraviolet?—then that bright green again, then heat. So
much
heat! He dove for the pilot’s couch.
    Roland screamed and—
    Discontinuity.
    Vacuum! Achilles was shrieking, his chest in agony. He had to spew the air from his lungs before they exploded.
    Except for dim emergency lamps, the bridge was dark. Something struck him high on a flank. He turned, still soundlessly screeching. It was floating debris, one chunk among countless many, nondescript in the gloom.
    It, or something like it, may have saved his life.
    The pilot’s couch had a stasis-field generator. Inside stasis, time stood still. Nothing could harm him. Had some bit of flotsam not nudged the control, he would have stayed inside, unaware, as the field protected him from the vacuum.
    Until, inevitably, more Pak came to investigate.
    The gushing from his lungs was weaker now. He was freezing, and yet he thought he could feel his blood starting to simmer. The bridge seemed even darker than a moment ago. A few emergency lamps were lit, and shadows moved unsettlingly. With an eerie distant warble, faintly heard by sound conduction through his body, the last gases erupted from his lungs.
    He was drifting!
    He lunged at a padded neck rest of the pilot’s couch, biting it so hardthat his jaw throbbed. His body kept moving, until it gave a tremendous yank on his neck. Somehow he managed not to scream. To lose his grip was to die.
    With his other head he tore open the pouch at the base of the couch and extracted the emergency pressure suit. Any other vacuum gear aboard, unprotected by the stasis field, would likely be in tatters and shreds—even if he could find it before his blood