Elizabeth Bear - Worldwired

He could feel Casey and Richard computing trajectories and angles of thrust, aiming the shuttle after the two bits of flotsam that Richard's infiltration of the Benefactor nanonetwork revealed to be Dr. Tjakamarra and Dr. Forster. He relaxed, and let them do it. This part of the process was not Min-xue's job.

His duty was simply to go out there and catch them and haul them back inside. He wasn't worried about that. He'd act, and fail or succeed, and there would be no time for fear once he started. It was the waiting that was going to drive him mad.

“Piece of cake,” Jenny said, and he realized that he had been thinking loud enough for her to sense. Min-xue didn't answer. Instead he glanced down and visually inspected his safety lines one last time, as the shuttle glided in absolute silence through the bars of the birdcage, and Min-xue groped with Richard's senses toward Dr. Forster, who would be the subject of their first rescue attempt.

Min-xue braced himself in the doorway, watching the crystal bars of the birdcage slide past, and much to his own surprise managed to clear his mind. Casey's touch on the controls was feather-light; the shuttle turned within the length of its own hull, drifting, and suddenly all he could see was silver scattering, water shaken from a half-drowned dog, droplets smaller than his thumbnail with perspective that might in reality be close enough to reach out and grab in a gauntleted fist, or which might be as big as shipping containers, and a kilometer away. A quarter Earth glimmered behind them, flanked by an attendant moon. City lights shone far below, dulled by the pall in Earth's atmosphere, the birdcage picking up blue reflections from the moonlight and the earthlight.

Oddly enough, Min-xue thought of the shiptree and its presumed inhabitants, line of sight now blocked by the shuttle's bulk, and wondered at their aloof observation of the scurrying about between the birdcage and the Montreal. Maybe they're up there hoping as hard as we are that we learn this. Maybe they want to talk to us as badly as we want to talk to them.

Charlie's closer, and I've got him lined up pretty as a picture when I call down to Min-xue in the air lock. I'm surprised; this is nothing on flying medevac in jungle under fire. There's all the room in the world up here, and all I'm trying to do is not hit anything. Nobody's shooting at me, or at the people I'm trying to evac. Also, the psychic link with my ship, my target, and the retrieval team doesn't hurt in the slightest. Nothing like being able to mindread your buddies. This would have saved a lot of lives, back in Brazil. In fact, I bet if Charlie wasn't a bit fragile for that kind of treatment, I could scoop him up with the Ashley MacIsaac easy as a jai alai player scooping the ball into his basket.

I'm not quite cocky enough to call it a cakewalk just yet, however. The shuttle glides up on our target. Min-xue tenses as he makes visual contact. I see the white of Charlie's space suit through Min-xue's eyes seconds before I make it out with my own. He's got the better angle. Should, of course; I planned that.

“Is he breathing, Dick?”

“I don't know,” the AI admits, a moment's wringing frustration. “I don't see any vapor off his suit, but he didn't have this much oxygen either.”

“Can't you tell from the nanites?”

“No. I can't tell a damned thing from the nanites right now. They're all wonky.”

“That's a technical term?”

“Jen,” he says, weary and a little bit irritated, which is a tone I don't hear from him often. “Quit yanking my chain and fly the shuttlecraft, please.”

Sorry. And I am. It's reflex, the banter.

And then we're on Charlie, and Min-xue spins out of the air lock like a flyer in a trapeze act, except he's the catcher, really, if the metaphor is going to work, and I just bloody well keep my hands still on the controls and try not to screw him up.

I don't think we're going to get a second crack at this, not if we're going to come back and get Leslie, too.

Min-xue's flying, all right. Rush of inertia and sharp twinge of fear, metallic taste of adrenaline crimping his mouth as he lets the shuttle's momentum fling him forward and down, somersaulting, all his trust in the fragile safety lines and his mind on my mind like hand in hand, like dancing, except neither one is leading and I can almost feel Richard holding his breath.

Breath that's knocked out of all three of us when Min-xue hits Charlie's drifting shape amidships, misses the grab with his arms, locks both legs around Charlie's suit like a kid on a carousel pony, and kicks his attitude jets on a split second later, buying acceleration, equalizing velocity so he's moving the same way the shuttle is when he and Charlie fetch up against the end of the safety line like some idiot bungee jumping over Niagara Falls.

The shock when the lines snap taut brings tears to my eyes, and I'm feeling it attenuated, courtesy of Richard. Min-xue bounces hard enough that I think for a second his suit's ruptured— and how the hell would I explain that piece of brilliance to Riel? — but I feel him recover, and he keeps his grip on Charlie and starts hauling them both up the safety lines hand over hand, because the pulleys aren't quite doing it fast enough to suit any of us.

“Goddamn. Would you believe he pulled it off?”

“Very pretty flying, ma'am,” Min-xue says. Unsurprisingly, the next voice I hear is Wainwright, demanding our immediate return to the Montreal .

“In a minute,” I say. The cocky gets away from me, raw unholy glee big enough to fill a room. “We've got another man overboard, Cap'n. We'll be back once we've fished him out, too.”

Except it doesn't work that way at all. Min-xue tucks Charlie's unmoving space suit inside the air lock and clips him onto three safety clasps before we clear the birdcage. I swap ends on the shuttle, a gliding turn — front end slides left, back end slides right — not all that different from how you'd do it in a chopper, and get us lined back up with the birdcage as Dick says, “Jenny, are you seeing this?”

Yeah. We've got a problem, sir. “I think they just rolled up the welcome mat, Dick.” Because suddenly, unexpectedly, the birdcage has a hull. The baroque, open-to-space filigree is still visible like the raised outline of leaf veins, or like ribs revealed under skin, but the gaps between are covered by a taut, stretched membrane that bellies and ripples a little, like an opaque film of soap bubbles.

I can't fly through that. I don't even know what it is .

Shit . “What do we do now, Dick?”

“Casey—” Wainwright, and I don't want to hear it, but I know what she's going to say. She surprises me, though. Her voice hitches and goes softer. “Master Warrant, why don't you just come on home?”

The strips Wainwright tears off me are thin and she doesn't stop at half a dozen. She'd like to confine me to quarters, I'm sure, but it isn't quite practical when Patty and Min-xue were in on the mutiny, too.

And, after all, we almost got away with it.

Got away getting Charlie back, at least, and breathing, even if we haven't managed to prove that he'll ever regain higher functions. He shouldn't be breathing. The oxygen in his suit should have been exhausted long since, but something the Benefactors did seems to have put his in a state of hibernation, which kept him alive.

One of these days, the captain's gonna severely kick my ass. Right now, however, she's contenting herself with a catalogue of my sins beginning at “reckless” and ending with “mutinous,” with side trips through insubordinate, overconfident, obstreperous, and just plain too stupid to live along the way before she pauses for breath. I love the way Richard plays soothing music in my ear while I'm being dressed down by my boss.