The Gilded Cage by Blaze Ward Page B

ships coming and going every hour of every day, sometimes stacked up three deep in nearby orbit awaiting a docking bay.
    The comm was never quiet either, but Javier wanted them to think like cat burglars, and he didn’t want any transmissions close to Salekhard to possibly warn anyone what they were up to.
    Seriously, Javier. Who’s going to see this coming?
    But she kept her own counsel. Suvi’d been an officer and a gentlewoman, a scout, a pilot, a warrior. She’d never been a thief.
    It was kinda cool.
    She gave a little burst of power. Not much. Mostly to redirect herself down and sideways, just enough to tug Javier and Wilhelmina into line with the secondary engineering airlock she had picked out two hours ago.
    A game of galactic billiards.
    Contact imminent.
    Suvi flared her lifters just enough to counter the mass of the two humans behind her. Bring them in to almost a dead stop relative.
    It was all in the English you put on that ball, folks.
    Javier landed like a cat. Wilhelmina was…
    Oh, crap.
    Has this woman never done an EVA? That looked like a gymnast in gravity.
    Oh, right. Human reflexes. This was something you trained for. Nobody was born with it.
    Well, Dragoon Sykora might have been, but that just proved the rule. That woman was scary good .
    Radio? No. He’d been specific .
    And he can’t reach her .
    And I’m out of position .
    And…Hey, what are you doing, Javier? That’s my tether line. Stop pulling me closer, I need to go get Wilhelmina and bring her back .
    Suvi let her lifters go slack before she pulled him off the hull as well. He had magnets, but they were for walking, not holding them both down if she red–lined things. The last thing she needed was both of them floating loose out here, where someone might look out a porthole and raise an alarm, even in dock.
    She waited while Javier grabbed her body with both hands, tied the line to his belt, and then pushed her softly at Wilhelmina. She felt like a game–winning free–throw, spinning slowly backwards.
    Nothing but net.
    It’s a damned good thing I don’t get airsick, bucko, or I’d have to blow electronic chunks all over you .
    And worse, Javier missed.
    She was going to fly right by Wilhelmina, about a half meter out of reach.
    Now what do we do?
    Javier tugged on the rope and snapped his arm to one side.
    Great, now sideways torque as well? Are you trying to make me heave here ?
    And then it dawned on her. As the whip snapped her to one side and around Wilhelmina’s back.
    And I’m wrapped around her like a lasso .
    Oh.
    Right.
    Maybe he has done this before.
    I’m going to sit here very quietly and pretend like I planned it that way.
    Perfect.
    Ξ
    The airlock door slid open with a minimum of noise. Javier preferred it that way.
    In dock, he knew engineering would generally be on minimum shifts with everything powered down. Unless they were rebuilding something big, in which case it would be wall to wall people and noise and he’d be caught in about two minutes.
    Darkness.
    Well, dimness.
    Engines shut down. Jump drives off. Auxiliary power reactors on baseline. Life support dialed down as the ship drew fresh air off the station. At least, fresher air.
    Stinky with a different set of trace volatile organics, at a minimum.
    Salekhard was a freighter. She wasn’t flashy. She certainly wasn’t fast. Victims came to her.
    From the drunken conversation with Tamaz, the ship had lost a pair of cargo holds during the massive up–gunning refit that turned her into a Q–ship. Space lost had been turned into banks of generators and batteries. The center of gravity of the engineering crew had shifted well forward when that happened.
    Engineering was a ghost town.
    Javier grinned.
    Starships in space were never shut down, but humans were humans. You set your bio–rhythms a particular way and left them there. Eight hours of duty in a twenty–four hour shift. Couple three hours for food. Couple hours personal recreation. Time for