The Myths of Twisted Felix Katt (Book 2)

(9) Not if I Jam It!

I figure if a girl wants to be a legend, she should go ahead and be one - Calamity Jane

Remember those tips and tricks I mentioned before about sealing a hole in the exterior of a ship? Yeah, pretty much all of those were completely useless with my ship’s surface trying to toss me away like a pair of panties in an amorous affair. I was tethered to the ship and I kept the lead as short as possible, but there was a trick to this I had to use. I could skuttle along against the skin of Destiny, and as long as I stayed glued to that small sliver of space, I wouldn’t get launched. It was a minute passage against the skin, a safe guard kept in place for just this kind of situation.

I’ve repaired Destiny from a hull breach before, so it’s not anything new to me, but this was the first time for me trying it in the midst of an asteroid storm, right after a Shuffle, with thirty passengers on board and while I was seriously short on air AND not sure of where the breach actually was. It was like playing Russian roulette, only instead of one chance for a bullet out of six, five bullets were loaded and I had only once chance to not die. Well, they say that anything worth doing is worth doing in style so I pulled up my metaphorical big girl pants and kept snaking along Destiny. The process of elimination gave me a general direction of where the breach might be at least.

It hadn’t been in my stretch of the ship or I’d have died already. I was certain that no debris was coming at me from the direction of the asteroid we’d anchored onto (or else we’d simply be dead) and I was threatening Murphy and the Goddess that it better NOT be in the area my Rorick was. So that left me with the area in and around my observation deck and flight deck. Now that would be ironic, if it had breached the flight deck, then I owed Rorick and Van a stiff drink and a full felt thanks because the only reason I wasn’t there was them dragging me away. I’d planned on staying behind so that I could reverse the push, unhook the anchor and launch us away from the asteroid we were tethered too as soon as the storm passed, and before another big rock could squash us in between and grind us into paste.

I was not amused to be once again going back over my steps on the outside of my ship, tracing a never ending back and forth between two points it seemed today. Still I couldn’t complain too much because it beat the alternative of just being dead. Ok, maybe I could complain all I wanted as I wiggled and dragged myself along by my fingertips, starting to realize that maybe all of Van’s fat ass jokes were a subtle suggestion that I drop a few pounds. Because it was not easy to do this, even in a frictionless place. When I reached the small observation window to the flight deck and still saw no puncture in the hull, I was grumbling even louder, angling my movements to the farther away observation deck. I was too fat and lazy for this crap, but with no one else in the right location to do it for me, I was stuck hauling my tubby butt over the next bend of Destiny.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again right? Except if you’re going skydiving, then you’re pretty much screwed. My first guess was a failure on where the breach was, and as I crawled into view of the observation deck, at first it looked like my second guess was wrong too. If it wasn’t here that meant either Rorick or Van and the others were very dead. That overwhelming horror that sometimes hits me when I have nightmares about exactly that crawled over my skin like a blanket of maggots and I almost threw up into my helmet. That would have been such a bad idea though, and really gross to boot. Instead of letting that despair win, I crawled forward, right across the titanium glass of my observation deck and finally spotted the miniscule breach a little farther past it. Oh good, I could collapse in relief later. Seeing where the damage was, and thankfully seeing that it was small enough the patch I had with me would work, I tear assed my way over to it and fought to get the patch in place.

Here’s where it got to be a lot of fun. The limited air in that section of my ship was trying to force its way out while I was trying to push a piece of patch over it and stop that from happening. Normally I would be losing this fight, but I tethered myself against my ship to keep from being frisbeed away and then eventually sweated, growled, cursed and bitched that patch over the gap. Once it was in place, I could see the alarm lights die out inside Destiny, the air pressure system restored as the patch sealed my ship’s skin again. I took a second and just rested against the observation window, feeling some of the panic and worry ebb out of me as the airlock doors rose, letting my crew and passengers know that eminent death had passed them by this time. And yes, some of that relief was simply in the fact that I knew that Van and Rorick were still alive.