Quoted By:
You decide against using the guideline. Maybe it costs you time. Maybe it even costs you your life. But you are not a fucking mark. No one but you is entitled to what you find out there, regardless of whatever the Hell the rules say. You -
You stop yourself, and after making a point of taking several deep breaths, you remind yourself how this is simply not the time and place to get worked up – over this, over any of your other grievances, over anything-at-fucking-all. Realizing that you are still a little worked up, you take another set of several deep breaths. Before you can have a fully-fledged meltdown, you get the suit on, and run the built-in diagnostics to check that you got a good seal. When that comes up clean, you check the levels in the tanks – the air tank, the tank for the suits’ boosters, and the torches’ twinned tank, one which has the gas, and the other which has the flux.
When you get the readouts you were looking for from the tanks, there is nothing left to do but wait. You sit down on the cart and just stare at the airlocks. At several points, you get the sense that someone is watching, but when you look at the growing crowd in the staging area, some of which have also suited up already, you cannot see anyone staring. Eventually, it is time for the first call. Rather than listen to stuff you already know, you head across the Hangar to the locks with your tools. Several other wreckers have managed to suit up already and are heading over as well. One of them is wearing one of the new-model suits, which presumably means that they are going to be working in the <span class="mu-i">Highest Heaven</span>, though because of the tinting on the visor, you cannot tell if it is another newly certified wrecker, or it is one of your seniors. Well … does it matter? You aren’t working with them either way.
It is probably another ten minutes before enough wreckers have suited up and made their way over to the lock for there to be a full load for the ferry. The kiosk for the time-cards lights up, indicating that the ferry is ready to go. You are the first to punch your card, the first to receive your tags, the first to get in the lock, and once it has cycled, you are the first to get onto the ferry.
For the safety of the <span class="mu-i">Commissioner</span>, the boneyard is kept at a distance, so it takes a minute or so for all of you to get out there. On arrival, those who have elected to do net duty disembark and start puttering around as their shimmering nets trail behind them like sinuous tails. Before you know it, the ferry is moving again, and the trawlers are getting swallowed up by the enormity of the hulks that they are flittering around, just as the hulks are getting swallowed up the enormity of the Endless Night.
You look away, down at your hands. As much as you like working EVAs, you have to admit that there is something deeply unsettling about space, completely separate from its inherent danger. Something that is best left unsaid, unarticulated.
