One More Step

So... a friend of mine recently gave me a writing prompt/challenge to start a story with the sentence "one more step." Well, as I've been obsessed with The Expanse as of late, I decided to write a short story based within the Expanse universe  It's something I just kind of whipped together on my lunch hour the other day, so forgive any errors or continuity issue with the show/books. 

For these purposes, the story would be set around the same timeframe as Book 1, Leviathan Wakes, and Season 1 of the show. I purposely tried to keep specific reference to the series to a minimum, but picture the ship in the story being something akin to the Canterbury.

With that,  I look forward to your thoughts on One More Step: an Expanse fan-fiction short story.

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One more step. That's what you told yourself out there in the void. One more step. Then another. Then another after that, until the job was done and the airlock cycled shut behind you once you were back inside. You had to focus on the next step, and next step only. Looking too far forward, even just those few meters ahead, tended to elevate heart rates, blood pressure, breathing, CO levels, everything that, if left unchecked, could kill you damn quickly when you ventured outside. At least those were things you could control, though, if you were lucky. Where they were working at that moment, in the Belt, however… There were still far too many things out there that you couldn't. If you let your mind start drifting towards them? Then "one more step" might as well be a thousand.

 

Sure, there were mechs that helped with the heavy lifting, but when it came to the finesse work someone still had to zip on a vac suit and head out to do the job by hand. The task this time? Repairing a tear in one of the nets. Lana Granger manned the mech this time around, and had managed to at least keep the bulk of the haul from floating away. Still, the break in the net meant that anything more than maneuvering thrust could shift the whole load would shift and tear the netting to shreds. If that happened, the six months of salary that the ice in those nets represented would spin off into space without so much as an adios.

 

The work itself wasn't difficult as much as it was tedious. Once he confirmed that the repairs had held, and that the patch in the net was secure, he stowed his tools in his bag. With a deep sigh, Reese Harken began the long stroll across the ice back towards the airlock and the safety of the ship's interior beyond. Working the nets was pretty shitty, as work details went. Hull work, by comparison, was easy. He'd much rather repair a com antenna or thruster port than pull rigging duty. At least on the hull his mag boots afforded a bit of relative safety from flipping out into the void. Working out on the haul though, they were only effective if you managed to hit the metallic lace of the netting just right. Doing so usually meant having to leap a span of two or three meters with each step, and hoping you landed square. He'd done it a hundred times, one trip no easier than the last.

 

One more step.

 

Airlock 17b, from which he'd emerged hours prior, finally eeked its way into his sightline as he continued his arduous journey back across the ice. That was all it took to break his concentration, and he nearly missed a step before his eyes ventured back downward to his feet. Thankfully, his trailing foot connected and mag-locked before his momentum carried him away. He'd been fortunate; he'd never found his way out into a float. Others, not so fortunate, he had seen drift off three times prior.

 

These days it was all they could do to get the company to spring for vac suits that didn't need patching, let alone those that that were fully rigged with functioning thrusters. If you lost your footing working the haul, you relied on yourself the work crew out there with you; no one, and nothing else. On only one of those three, prior occasions had they been successful in saving their crewmate. She was lucky, very lucky; in that one instance only, someone in a mech managed to fire out a  line that just happened to pass into the their spinning crewmate's trajectory. Otherwise….

 

Such was the life of an ice hauler. So Harken did what he always did; he did the job, did it well, and counted "one more step" until he stepped them all back into the ship.

 

"Oye, Harken! Beers on you tonight, que si?" Granger called to him over coms.

 

"Yeah, but not for you, Granger. Beers are only for those of us that actually work out here, not lazy mech drivers!" he called back jokingly. Granger laughed and began to speak again when a sudden squelch cut off her com. Harken turned back to see what had happened, and wished he hadn't. Blood rushed out in a mist of frozen droplets through both the hole in her mask and the one blown out through the back of her helmet.

 

"Granger!" he yelled, though she'd already passed beyond the point of ever hearing his voice again. Then, in his periphery, he saw small chunks of ice suddenly explode outward from the floating berg nestled within the ice hauler Wellington's nets. To his right, another strike. And another still.

 

"Find cover!" Harken yelled into his com. He and those that remained out there in the void scrambled along the ice, desperately searching for any irregularity in the cargo's shape from behind which they could find shelter. More strikes came. From where, and how many, Harken would never know. When something goes wrong out there, it's the panic that sets in first. You start fogging your mask with your own hyperventilation. The edges of your vision go dark and the ringing in your ears drowns out any sense of reality. Then you close your eyes and try to center yourself, all the while hoping that when they open again it's you that opened them, and not the ship's doctor harvesting them before the rest of you goes in the recycler.

 

Somehow Harken has managed to wedge himself up against the same outcropping of ice that had created the tear in the net he'd gone out to repair in the first place. There he stayed. If you asked him then, or ask him now how long he'd been there, he would never be able to tell you. 

 

The strikes could have been from anything. A meteor collision. Random debris that had been on the float for centuries. Stray PDC rounds from a skirmish that took place a hundred thousand kilometers towards Ganymede just making their way through that particular expanse of space now. It didn't matter. Nor did it matter that the odds of dying that way were ridiculously slim. Slim, but never impossible. There was always something out there in the void that could end you at any given time. Always.

 

When the "storm" had passed, Granger remained the only casualty. A two-hour shift turned into six, pushing their suits' air stores to the max, as they repaired what damage the storm caused to the nets. Soon, the captain would have their pilot Antoine "Toni" Rochet thrusting the Wellington into position for their burn towards Ceres. Harken gave one last check to make sure that the nets and clamps would hold, and then it was time to go "home."

 

One more step.

 

~

 

The preceding is a work of fan fiction based upon and utilizing locations, characters, and/or plot points from the universe of 'The Expanse,' originally created by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck and trademarked under the pen name James S.A. Corey. The author hereof makes no claim whatsoever of ownership of the 'Expanse' name, characters represented, or the 'Expanse' universe generally. This work is created of the author’s own imagination and is intended for entertainment purposes only. It does not purport to be an “official” 'Expanse' story or part of existing 'Expanse' canon in any way. The author is not profiting financially in any way as the result of the creation or publication of this piece of fan fiction.