Lights in the Deep by Brad R. Torgersen

eyes. I mopped at my face with a towel and blinked furiously, not daring to take my eyes off the instruments as I thrusted, the fuel dwindling down to near-zero and the Chiron—which had originally brought me here—drifting away to become a small light unto itself.
    GCBV-7004 looked relatively undamaged as I neared it.
    My thruster fuel was past the point of being dangerously low.
    The bozo package—a collection of radio and computer equipment taken from the Gemini assembly line and cobbled together into a “brain” for the unmanned Chiron—was resting solidly in GCBV-7004’s docking collar. With no way to radio the Chiron and order an automated jettison, I put my helmet back on and depressurized for yet another EVA.
    When I popped my torso out to take a look, there was a similarly-garbed figure sitting astride the bozo package, staring directly at me.
    For a fleeting moment I wished for a weapon.
    The figure waved at me. Stupidly, I waved back, and wanted to yell for the intruder to get his ass off United States property.
    Just meters apart, the figure and I considered one another for a moment.
    I raised my visor. Then he raised his.
    “Holy shit…”
    • • •
    It took us a few minutes to get our radios synced. Her name was Raisa Zaslavskaya. I think she was even more surprised to see a brown face than I was to see a woman. Whatever unease we might have had between us—as competitors in the Long War—seemed a small thing compared to the unease we now felt over gender and ethnicity.
    “Amerikanyetz,” she said, “where is your co-pilot?”
    Her English was far superior to my Russian.
    “Dead,” I said matter-of-factly. “Yours?”
    “Da. Same.”
    “Is your spacecraft capable of Earth return flight?”
    “Nyet.”
    “Mine is, but only if you haven’t damaged the Chiron.”
    “I have not touched. Hope to salvage.”
    “Then it seems we’ve both got the same objective.”
    “Da.”
    Long silence. Too long.
    “Have you had any success understanding American equipment?”
    Pregnant pause. “Nyet.”
    “Let me help you.”
    “My government will not sanction it,” she said.
    “Do either of us have a choice?”
    Another pregnant pause. “Nyet.”
    “Then listen to me, because this is what we have to do….”
    • • •
    Getting the bozo package off was easy. It was finding a way to get her into the Gemini that was hard. The Russian suit’s umbilical wouldn’t mate with the Gemini’s life support system, and neither the Russian flight nor mine had packed the newer, backpack-independent models that we’d be using for eventual lunar landing. Unnecessary mass on a circumlunar mission—a decision made on the ground, which now proved maddening.
    I held up a roll of duct tape between us as we hovered in the open doors of my spacecraft.
    “How long can you hold your breath?”
    “Long enough,” Raisa said, her eyes fearful but determined.
    I then held up the end of the umbilical that Vic had been using during the accident. If we couldn’t get her hose to work with the Gemini, we’d have to hope we could get the Gemini’s hose to work with the Russian suit. Again, the couplers wouldn’t mate, but if we could get a solid seal, and oxygen flowing, that would be all we’d need. The trick would be getting both her and me back into the Gemini and closing the hatches, then re-pressurizing without the jury-rigged connection failing.
    I spent many minutes fumbling with the tape in my clumsy, suited hands, eventually stretching out several long strips, which I stuck to the hatchway of the Gemini. Then I held the hose ready while Raisa reached down and grasped the umbilical that lead back to her damaged capsule, her hands visibly shaking.
    “We’ll count down,” I said.
    “Da. Chyetirye, tri, dva, adeen! ”
    She rotated, then ripped her hose free, squinting her eyes shut in the process.
    The Russian hose shot away, bleeding air like a jet. I jammed the Gemini’s hose into the now-vacated