The outer airlock door cycles open, and the silence of the Erendary System swallows the mechanical groan of Aurora’s internal bulkheads. There is no sound out here, only the hiss of my own recycled breath inside my helmet and the heavy, rhythmic thud of my blood rushing through my ears. I step out onto the station’s exterior plating, my magnetic boots engaging with a sharp vibration that climbs up my shins. Far below, the station’s main habitation ring glimmers, a fragile crescent of artificial light suspended against an ocean of absolute, indifferent black.
“Anchor one engaged,” I say, my voice tight and clipped over the comms channel. I do not look down at the lights, and I definitely do not look up into the endless dark. I keep my eyes fixed on the gray, pitted metal of the abandoned comms crown.
“Copy, Alvarez,” Alak’tok murmurs in my ear. His voice is a low, resonant thrum that always seems to bypass the helmet’s tinny speakers and vibrate directly against my spine. “I am stepping out. Securing my primary line.”
I wait by the dual-tether hub, a heavy, glowing mechanism bolted to the hull that coordinates shared lines for deep-exterior work. It pulses with a soft amber light, indicating it is ready to receive our umbilicals. I unspool my tether, my gloved hands moving through the checklist with frantic, practiced efficiency. Check the carabiner gate. Twist, lock, pull. Check the load-bearing weave.
Alak’tok emerges from the airlock. Even in his heavy EVA suit, he moves with a fluid, liquid grace that belongs to a different gravity well entirely. His suit is custom-modified to accommodate the thick, muscular tentacles that form his lower appendages, the armored plating articulating smoothly as he glides across the hull to stand beside me. From the wrist-cuff of his suit, a secondary, faintly glowing biological filament extends—a natural adaptation of his species that he uses for fine-motor control in vacuum.
As he clips his heavy tether into the hub alongside mine, that luminescent blue filament wraps delicately around the braided steel of his second line. It pulses, a slow, rhythmic throb of light that syncs perfectly with our movements.
“Hub locked,” I say, staring at the point where our lines converge. My chest tightens. A shared tether. I hate shared tethers. The manual says they distribute load and prevent drift in case of a micro-meteoroid strike, but my body remembers something else. My body remembers the violent, catastrophic snap of a line pulled too taut, the sickening recoil, the silence that followed.
“Maria.” Alak’tok’s voice drops a fraction of an octave, shifting from supervisor to something softer, though the professionalism remains ironclad. “Confirm your anchor and intention.”
“Anchor secure,” I recite, falling back on the safety of the protocol. It is a shield, a litany I can hide behind. “Intention: traverse the comms crown to the sensor shadow. Visual inspection of the secondary coolant lines. Return.”
“Proceeding to waypoint alpha,” he says. “Pace is slow. You will verbalize every anchor transition. Understood?”
“That is remedial protocol, Alak’tok,” I protest weakly, my gloved fingers flexing against my thighs. “I have logged four hundred hours on this hull. I don’t need a hand-holding exercise.”
“You are hyperventilating, Maria,” he replies, completely unbothered by my irritation. “Your suit telemetry shows a ten percent spike in your heart rate since we locked the hub. We will use the remedial protocol. Confirm transition to the first spar.”
I grit my teeth, hating that he can read my vitals, hating that he is right. “Transitioning to first spar. Anchor locked.”
We begin the walk. It is agonizing. Usually, I can sprint through an EVA, letting muscle memory and sheer momentum carry me across the hull before my brain has time to process the terrifying reality of where I am. But Alak’tok refuses to let me rush. He turns the traverse into a slow, deliberate ritual. Every step, every clip, every shift in weight must be acknowledged and confirmed.
“Left boot engaged. Moving right,” I mutter, forcing the words through a tight throat.
“Copy. I am at your flank. Line tension is nominal,” he answers. His glowing filament slides along the tether, a visual heartbeat in the dark. It is hypnotic, and strangely grounding. It anchors me not just to the station, but to him.
We move past the last active sensor pylon. The artificial lights of the station fall away, blocked by the massive curvature of the comms crown. We step into the sensor shadow. Out here, Aurora’s systems cannot track us with optical cameras. We are entirely alone, dependent only on our suit telemetry and the amber glow of the dual-tether hub spooling out behind us. The darkness presses in, dense and suffocating.
“Transitioning to the vertical strut,” I say, my breath catching slightly. I recite a checklist under my breath, barely audible. Suit pressure green. O2 mix nominal. Battery at ninety-four percent.
“Take your time,” Alak’tok says. He moves up beside me, his massive, armored form blocking out a swath of the starfield. He does not touch me—he knows better than to break my physical concentration out here—but his proximity is a heavy, reassuring blanket. “The structure is sound, Maria. I have you.”
I clip my carabiner to the vertical strut. As my boot magnetizes to the metal, a faint, erratic vibration shudders through the soles of my feet. It is not the steady, rhythmic hum of the life-support compressors. It is a ragged, localized tremor.
At the same moment, my helmet lights catch a sudden, ghostly shimmer in the vacuum. A fine, glittering sleet of frozen particles drifts horizontally across our path, sparkling like crushed diamonds against the black.
“Coolant dust,” I say, my voice flattening into total detachment. I lock my knees, fighting the sudden, violent urge to scramble backward toward the airlock. “We have a micro-fracture in the secondary line.”
“I see it,” Alak’tok says. He does not panic, but the warmth vanishes from his tone, replaced by razor-sharp focus. “Hold your position.”
I freeze on the spar, my hands gripping the metal so hard my knuckles ache inside my heavily padded gloves. The vibration thrums again, stronger this time. A deep, horrible resonance that climbs up my legs and settles in my stomach.
Snap.
The phantom sound echoes in my memory, loud and violent. I squeeze my eyes shut. Behind my eyelids, I see the old, frayed tether parting. I see the explosive decompression of a faulty suit seal. I see a man spinning away, arms flailing, tumbling end over end into the abyss while I stayed clamped to the hull, perfectly safe, perfectly useless.
“Maria.”
My eyes snap open. Alak’tok is leaning close, his helmet just inches from mine. The reflection of his glowing filament dances across my visor.
“I am taking a reading,” he says softly, though his hands are moving with swift, clinical precision over his diagnostic pad. “The vibration is localized. The pressure variance is minimal. We are not in immediate danger, but this section of the hull is degrading faster than Jared’s official reports claim.”
“Jared only cares about the margins that keep Central Command off his back,” I say, my voice trembling. I try to mask it with bitterness, but it comes out thin and reedy. “Log the variance. We need to patch it or scrub the line.”
“I am logging it,” he says. He pauses, his dark, multifaceted eyes searching my face through the polarized glass of our visors. “Your grip on the spar is locked. Your breathing is shallow. Are you injured?”
“No.” I force my fingers to uncurl, one by one. “I am fine. It’s just the vibration. It startled me.”
“A station this old speaks in vibrations, Maria. You know this.” He tilts his head. The glowing filament wrapped around his tether tightens, pulling the slack from our shared line. “You did not just startle. You braced for a catastrophic failure. Why?”
“Because a coolant leak can compromise the structural integrity of the spar,” I recite automatically, rattling off the manual. “Because a sudden depressurization of the line could cause a kinetic recoil.”
“That is the textbook answer,” Alak’tok says, his voice a low, steady rumble. “It is not the truth.”
“It is the only answer that matters out here. Protocol keeps us alive.” I refuse to look at him. I stare at the stream of frozen coolant drifting past my boots. “Are we done with the diagnostic? We should head back. The sleet is increasing. I don’t want it coating our visors or fouling the carabiner gates.”
Alak’tok studies me for a long, agonizing moment. The silence on the comms is heavy, thick with everything I am refusing to say. Finally, he taps the screen of his diagnostic pad and clips it to his belt.
“Diagnostic complete. The anomaly is documented,” he says, his tone returning to that clipped, professional cadence. But there is a subtle undercurrent of protectiveness now, a quiet vigilance that makes my throat ache. “We are returning to the airlock. Reversing the route. You will lead. Confirm your first transition.”
“Transitioning to the horizontal deck,” I say, my voice hollow. I unclip and move, desperate to put distance between myself and the leaking spar.
The walk back is faster, but no less tense. The vibration in the hull follows us, a low, ominous hum that vibrates through my boots with every step. I keep my eyes fixed on the amber glow of the dual-tether hub in the distance, treating it like a lighthouse. If I can just get back to the hub. If I can just unclip my line and sever this physical connection between us, I can breathe again. I can lock the memory away in the dark where it belongs.
“Check your tether slack,” Alak’tok murmurs from behind me. “Keep the tension even.”
“I know how to manage a tether,” I snap, the fear finally bleeding into frustration.
“I know you do,” he replies calmly. “But a shared line requires coordination. The load must be distributed equally, or the anchor points bear unnecessary stress. We discussed this in the pre-walk briefing.”
“I read the briefing, Alak’tok. I know the physics of a shared load.”
We reach the edge of the sensor shadow. The artificial lights of the station wash over us again, harsh and blinding after the deep dark. The dual-tether hub sits ten meters ahead, pulsing steadily.
“Then why did you flinch?”
His question stops me dead. I freeze, one boot magnetized to the deck, the other hovering in the vacuum. “What?”
“In the airlock,” Alak’tok says. His heavy boots thud against the hull as he closes the distance between us. He does not stop until he is standing right beside me. “When I mentioned the shared tether loads during the briefing. You flinched. You closed your eyes and recited a checklist under your breath. You did it again just now, when the spar vibrated.”
“I am focused on the procedure,” I say, my voice tight, defensive. “I take my job seriously.”
“You take your survival seriously,” he corrects, his voice dropping into that low, resonant register that vibrates against my spine. “But this is not about the coolant leak. This is about the tether.”
I reach out and grab the glowing handle of the dual-tether hub, desperate to ground myself. The metal is cold through my gloves, but the amber light is steady. “Drop it, Alak’tok. We’re at the hub. Let’s unclip and cycle through.”
He reaches out, and for a second I think he is going to stop my hand. Instead, his glowing biological filament unspools from his wrist and wraps gently around the heavy carabiner of my tether, resting right next to my glove. It pulses, a warm, rhythmic blue light that contrasts sharply with the station’s harsh amber.
“I have read your official file, Maria,” he says quietly over the open channel. “I know what Jared’s scrubbed reports say about your second month on this station. An unfortunate training accident. A solo maneuver gone wrong. But the math never made sense to me. The sheer force required to snap a primary umbilical cannot be generated by one person drifting.”
My breath catches. The air in my helmet suddenly feels thin, inadequate. I stare at his glowing filament, unable to look up at his face.
As the vibration thrums faintly through the spar and the coolant flecks drift past like ground glass, Alak’tok asks over the open channel, almost too gently, why I flinched at the word ‘shared’ — and I freeze, fingers locked on the glowing dual-tether hub, unable to answer while the station’s hum and the dark between the stars press in.