Free Fatal Blade (Decker's War#3) by Eric Thomson Page A

hull.
    “That’s not actually a word,” she replied.
    “It is now.”  He shifted the panel and re-attached it to the hull.  “One down.”
    “Ah yes, the famous Decker dictionary.  In case you care, we’re no longer transmitting an ID beacon.”
    “Lovely.”  He wrestled with the second panel.  “It’s a fine thing we’re doing this out here in space and not on anything with a gravity pull.”
    “I’m sure you’d have been able to manage.”
    “Maybe, but I’d have added a few new swear words to the Decker dictionary.”
    “Don’t hold back now on my account.”
    “When I feel the need to curse, you’ll be the first to know.  Two down.”
    He shuffled backward and stared at the star-filled darkness above the curvature of the hull, feeling unaccountably drawn in by the abyss.
    “Zack,” Hera’s voice snapped him out of his contemplation, “is everything alright?  You went strangely silent there for a moment.”
    “Yeah.”  He shook his head.  “I'm all right, but I think the universe just reminded me how small and petty my life actually is.”
    “EVA has that effect on a lot of people.”
    He attached the handling frame to the third panel and continued working in silence until Chimera looked just different enough to fool most people, if not all algorithms.
    “Done with the hull plates,” he announced, wishing he could wipe his brow.  And scratch his nose.  He suddenly had an urgent need to scratch his nose.
    “Got the new marking overlays ready?”
    “Sitting in the airlock,” she replied.
    “Fun, fun, fun,” he muttered again, making his way back down the hull to the open hatch, where he found several large self-adhering carbon fiber sheets, rolled up and tucked into a bag.  He stowed the now folded handling frame in the airlock and clipped the bag to his utility belt before shuffling out onto the hull again, this time across a short pylon to the starboard hyperdrive nacelle.
    He carefully unrolled the first of the sheets and aligned it to the marks on the side of the housing.  Taking a rod from the bag, he ran it over the edge, activating nanites that bonded the new nameplate and registration number over the old one.
    After a long, slow walk back onto the hull, over it and out on the port hyperdrive nacelle, he had the markings in place.
    “Done.  You want to send out a drone to check that it looks right?”
    The itch on the tip of his nose was back with a vengeance.
    “Sure.  Give me a second.”
    Decker returned to the airlock where he found a small basketball-sized spacecraft waiting.  He picked it up and pushed it out into space, where its tiny thrusters kicked in under Talyn’s control from the bridge.  It vanished from his sight for a few minutes, then hovered just outside the airlock again, waiting for him to reach out and grab it.
    “The markings look good, Zack.  Well done.”
    “Let’s just get this airlock cycled so I can get out of the suit.”
    “Nose itching?”  She asked, sounding deliberately mischievous.
    “Like a son of a bitch.  And I desperately need a shower too.”
    The outer hatch slammed shut, air hissed into the tiny compartment, and soon enough, the inner hatch swung open to Talyn’s ironic grin.
    “Welcome aboard Phoenix , Ser Whate.  I’m Captain Pasek.  Have you ever sailed with us before?”
    “More often than I care to remember,” he replied, lifting the suit’s helmet over his head and handing it to her.
    Scratching his nose had never felt so good.
    “Come on, big boy.  We need to give ourselves a make-over.  The folks on Kilia Station might not circulate our portraits to the rest of the sketchy frontier tribes, but why take a chance?”
    “Can I not have long hair this time?  Feeling it on my ears bugs the crap out of me.”
    “Sorry.  The ID experts have decreed that long hair does a better job of turning you into not-Decker than short hair.”
    ***
    He took a healthy swig from his bottle and sighed