down the steps, but just ran. Remi stopped at Central Ops, and Ava just kept going. Finally, they made it down to the bay on Deck 1, where Ava started to put on her suit. Vance did the same, and they both stopped short of the helmets.
“Come on, Remi’s going to need hers, too,” she said.
When they reached Central Ops, they found Remi sitting on the floor, looking at something on her handheld. “It looks like we aren’t getting any power from the primary solar array.”
“What? What happened?” Vance asked.
“It looks like the auxiliary batteries ran dry. Some of the secondary solar cells are running, but they are just enough to power the lights.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with the solar array?” Ava asked.
“No, I’m able to confirm that it’s still there, but that’s it,” she said. “You’re going to have to go out there.”
“Don’t you want to do it?” Ava asked.
“Yes and no,” Remi said. “By all rights, I should be the one to do it, unless one of you has a background in welding that I don’t know about. But the truth is that the thought of working out there in the void scares the hell out of me. I can hook the station into your comms, though, I’ll guide you through it.”
The thought of working out there scared the hell out of Ava, too, but she didn’t want to say anything. Vance was helping Remi into her suit, and told Ava that he would catch up to her on Deck One.
In the basic toolkit that she had purchased, she found a bandolier that with clips and loops filled with things like wrenches and screwdrivers. It stood to reason that they would need a welder, too, and so she unpacked that, pulling it carefully out of its padded case and attaching the straps and battery. By the time she was finished, Vance had made his way down. He was had his handheld at eyelevel and appeared to be talking to himself.
“Ava, can you hear me?” Remi’s voice said, from speaker concealed in her suit.
“Yeah, you?” she asked.
“Loud and clear,” Remi said.
“Is the picture coming through all right?” Vance asked, his voice amplified by her speaker. He pointed the handheld’s lens at Ava.
“Yep. Ava, don’t look so worried,” Remi said. “Things are going to be fine.”
“Do you want to do the welding?” Ava asked Vance.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” he said. “You?”
“I’ve helped Remi with her projects before, I think I can do it,” Ava said.
“Don’t worry,” Remi said. “Welding is pretty simple, I’m sure you can handle it.” Ava found the confidence in Remi’s voice very reassuring, and hoped that she was right.
Ava put the welder on the ground and put her helmet on, snapping the latches around the neck shut. The air pressurized inside of the suit. She looked over and Vance had done the same. She clipped the welder’s safety strap to her waist and picked it up.
Vance opened the package containing the rope that she had bought, and looped the coil over his shoulder. It was a few hundred yards long, and about half the diameter of her pinkie. It was weirdly light, but the packaging had assured her that it was designed for the sort of thing they were about to do.
She pressed a button and the inner door of the airlock cycled open. They stepped inside, and it cycled shut behind them. “You ready?” she asked. He gave her a thumbs up and a big fake smile. She pushed the button to open the outer door.
The airlock door opened, and there were just stars, separated from her by nothing more than her EA Suit and more empty space than she could wrap her head around. The rope ended in a heavy clip with a screw-lock on it, and she held on to the stanchion while Vance attached the rope to it. Once he had finished, they threaded the rope through loops in both of their suits.
“So Remi, where are we headed?” she asked.
“Straight up,” Remi said. “The connection for the main solar array is by the edge of the atrium window.”
“You heard her,” she told Vance, and they started to walk across the outside of the station.
The outside of the station was a smooth, gently curving matte black surface punctuated only by circular windows. She was glad to have the rope. If something were to happen and they weren’t tied in, there would be absolutely nothing to grab. As it was, she kept a hand on the rope and tried not to think about it too much.
There was a bracket at the other end of the station, at the border of the atrium. Vance wound the end of the rope through it, leaving maybe ten meters of slack. Ava was glad that she hadn’t gone with the shorter one.
Vance was panning the handheld across the surface of the station. It all looked the same to Ava, just a large expanse of outer hull. That was when she realized that she didn’t see any actual solar cells. Then again, she had never seen any solar panels in person, and didn’t even know what to look for.
“Stop!” Remi said, her voice sounding thin through the comms. “Right there, do you see that panel?”
“I see it,” Vance said. “Hey Ava, can you open this up?”
She moved so that she was next to him and saw the rectangular outline in the hull. She slung the welder over her shoulder, and knelt down to get a better look. Along the edges of the panel were regularly spaced screws with hexagonal indentations. She pulled out the box that had all of the bits for the driver and found one that fit. A couple of minutes later, all of the screws were out, clinging to a magnetic patch on the bandolier.
She couldn’t get her fingers into the crack to pry the panel up. She looked up at Vance, who just shrugged. “Any ideas?” she asked.
“Try pushing against one of the edges,” Remi said over the intercom.
After a couple of tries, the plate rocked in, with the opposite edge sticking up enough to grab. The panel didn’t come off, but hinged up and was stuck open revealing a shallow cavity with a thick cable running through it. Ava reached in and grabbed the cable. Before she had even started to pull, it came loose. She looked at it, and could see where corrosion had eaten through the braided wires.
“Let me see,” Remi said, and Vance brought the handheld closer to the cable. “You’re going to have to cut the end of that off and weld it back into the connection.”
“Okay,” Ava said. The shears that came with the toolkit were just barely big enough to fit around the cable, and she had to use both hands to get them to cut through it. Vance grabbed the piece that started to float away. Ava used the shears to cut through the casing several centimeters up from the cut and then stripped it off. The welder had a wire brush that detached and she used it to clean out the connection point in the panel.
“Now reattach the cable and weld the connection shut,” Remi said. Ava hoped that she was imagining the wheezing sound in Remi’s voice.
Ava replaced the cable in the socket, making sure it was tight, then turned on the welder. Vance gave her the cut section of cable and she pulled the casing off of it, putting the remaining metal into the welder’s chamber.
“Here goes,” she said. She touched the business end of the welder to the connection and pulled the trigger. A spark jumped from the contact of the welder to the cable. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the station go dark. “Oh shit.”
“Remi, are you there?” she heard Vance ask, but there was no response. She could see his eyes go wide and his body stiffen up. He wouldn’t last much longer.
“Come on, we need to get this done,” Ava said. She finished the weld and wrapped a new rubber boot around the connection, pulling off the protective film as she did. The chemical in the rubber did its thing and fused itself in place.
She closed the panel and replaced the screws as Vance unhooked the end of the rope from the bracket, and they started to pull themselves along it back towards the airlock. The control panel for the airlock was dark, and though they both tried to get it to work, nothing happened.
The suits had rebreathers, and Ava’s gauge read that she had another hour of air left at current consumption. She looked
at Vance. He had relaxed a little, but his eyes were focused downward, looking at the same numbers. When he did look up, he gave a halfhearted smile and reached out to squeeze her hand. She tried to smile back.
Out there in the void, there was nothing for them to do while they waited for some sign of life from inside the station. She thought about the events of the past 24 hours. The day before she hadn’t had a future, there was nothing waiting for her but a drone job with the hope of maybe saving enough to retire comfortably. Being in control of her life, had been a great feeling, and even the prospect of dying as a result of it could not dim that.
“It’s going to be OK,” Vance said. Ava realized that she had been crying, and tried to wipe her eye, forgetting that she was wearing a suit and bumping her hand into the hard visor. Vance tried to hide his smile, but failed.
“You know, the only thing that I regret is getting you two into this,” she said.
“What, do we smell bad or something?” He asked, miming sniffing his armpits. “I am no responsibility of yours, and at least out here, I’m alive.”
She moved to hug him, both of them clumsy in their padded suits.
“Hey,” he said, and she saw the light reflected in his visor.
The outer airlock door had opened, and they looked inside to see Remi, waving at them from behind both sets of airlock doors. “I know you guys are having a shared moment out there and all, but I just can’t let this go any further. It’s just sad,” she said