The plate came over Astrid’s left shoulder, filling the visor while the Nexus pressed her hips the other way.
She held the opening in sight. A long tear near the plate’s centre widened as it turned, bright along one edge. She had room if she started now.
Her right hip cluster fired. The suit began to roll, and pressure travelled down her left side as the torn edge came closer. She let it build, waiting for the opening to turn across her shoulder.
The circlet tightened against her brow.
ATTITUDE LIMIT.
Her next pulse died before she had finished giving it. Palm jets caught the roll and the main pack drove her clear, pushing her into the gel as the plate swept beneath her boots. A blue ribbon curved around its far edge. The suit settled onto it.
Astrid tried to look back. The Nexus brought her heading forward, toward the recovery circle she was already entering. It turned green, with propellant to spare.
“Again,” she said.
The stars went grey. Something heavy unlocked behind her shoulders, and the cradle brought her upright with a low complaint she could feel through the suit. She waited for the floor to stop leaning before lifting the visor.
Lena stood beside the console, drawing a braid out from under the collar of her training liner. “You cleared it.”
“It took me round.”
“I saw.”
Coolant moved through the umbilical at Astrid’s back. She eased her left shoulder away from a fold in the liner, trying to work the fabric flat without opening the suit. Somewhere along the row, an instructor was asking a cadet to open his visor. The cadet kept answering over comms.
Astrid pulled her recording up over the console and dragged it back to the place where her hip jet went dark. At full speed the opening barely seemed to exist. She slowed the plate until she could follow the tear all the way round.
On the tram that morning, she had watched another pilot wind through it, shoulders and boots taking turns where the whole of him would never fit. She had nearly missed her stop.
Jace set a drink on the bench behind Lena. She reached back without looking and caught his sleeve before he could move away.
“They’ve changed the docking mass again. Can you check which one I booked?”
He bent over the other display. Astrid could picture his run without seeing it, how easily his biohuman body would take the load that left her shaking. Then he could go and fetch drinks. She restarted the plate.
“Leave the approach. Take the link off after the hold.”
Jace glanced across. “It passed you.”
“That wasn’t what I was trying to fly.”
He looked at the plate instead of answering her. She wished he had answered. There were things she could say to him that she couldn’t say to a green completion mark.
“Whose Kensei?”
Kierian straightened from the next bay’s service hatch to look over Jace’s shoulder. Astrid had mistaken him for a technician. The technician was still inside, talking to the bracket Kierian held in one hand.
“Mine, if it lets me finish.”
He watched her suit begin the aborted roll. “Show me the run you started from.”
Astrid brought up the recording. He stepped closer and turned the projected view, following the pilot out the other side of the plate. She had spent most of the tram ride watching the entry. From here she could see how long he coasted before arresting the roll. Her own feet shifted inside the boots.
“Can you leave that angle?” she asked.
He did. “You won’t get qual credit for that line.”
She left the manual request open. The technician called him back to the hatch.
Astrid ran the exit once more. If the pilot had arrested his roll a fraction earlier, his boots would have caught the edge with the rest of him already through. She looked down at her own knee seals before closing the recording.
Lena was looking at the booking strip. “You have six minutes.”
“One run.”
“Then I need the cradle.”
Astrid lowered the visor. The seal touched her jaw, and the room narrowed to the recycler blowing cool air across her mouth. Gel gathered under the fold she hadn’t managed to flatten. She shifted against it as the cradle lifted her boots from the deck.
Her wrist-comm nudged the inside of the gauntlet. Beneath its strap, the little sailboat lay flat where she had tucked it before sealing up.
The load frame took her through a short forward tilt. She braced too soon, squeezing an empty breath against the pressure along her spine. The sim always made her do that.
Earth returned beneath her. A white point ahead grew into the hold marker, and the Nexus settled her suit beside it, stilling the last movement through her palms.
She brought up flight assist and held her gaze on the manual confirmation until the cool pressure at her brow eased. The guidance ribbon remained, with a small prompt offering to reconnect.
Astrid dismissed both. Her suit telemetry stayed at the edge of the visor. When she flexed her right wrist, the palm jet answered with a brief tap and the hold marker began to drift.
She caught it with the other hand.
“Manual confirmed,” Lena said.
Astrid lined herself up on the plate and fed the main pack thrust. The training frame loaded against her back, pressing her deeper into the gel. She cut the burn while the tear was still a thin black seam and let herself coast toward it.
On the linked run, this was where the suit had begun to help. She waited for the faint easing at her hips, then caught herself waiting as the plate turned toward her.
She picked the peeled corner at the lower end of the tear. Sunlight reached it a fraction before the rest of the opening, catching a strip of metal bent back against the hull. That was what she had been watching on the tram, keeping time with her thumb against the comm.
She began the roll, pressure drawing across her waist as the hip cluster answered. The opening tilted toward her shoulder. With the ribbon gone, Earth kept trying to become down; she let the planet go past the edge of her sight and stayed with the bright strip. The plate was getting large enough that she could see old fasteners along it. Too large to start the wide turn now.
Her left calf loaded first. The haptics were drawing the approaching metal against her, the pressure creeping up toward her knee as the suit rolled. She wanted to pull the leg away. The same urge had put her heel through the plate in last night’s isolated drill. She held it aligned and fired the second pulse, carrying her shoulder through while her boots were still outside.
The gel squeezed a breath out of her. She tried to take it back too quickly and got hardly any air.
The strip of metal went out of sight while her hip was still coming round. She could feel the motion in the cradle, but the pressure along her calf had reached the knee seal and stayed there. She had to fire again before she could see whether it would clear.
Finish it.
She sent the third pulse, taking the load low across her hips. For a moment she was braced against it with everything she had, trying to keep her feet inside the turn while the suit carried her through. Her hands wanted to catch the roll. She held them open. The pressure at her knee sharpened, then slid down the outside of her boot and released.
She was still turning when the plate appeared on the aft display, its bright edge sweeping away from her heel.
Astrid drew enough air to work with and brought the palm jets in. Earth slowed across the bottom of her visor. She released the jets while it was still turning, letting the recovery circle come round toward her, then caught the last of the roll with a brief opposing pulse.
The circle kept sliding against the distant stars. She watched it for a moment before applying thrust to ease the sideways drift. Her mouth had gone dry. The recycler kept blowing across it.
She wanted the clearance figure. It waited in the corner of the visor, small enough that she would have to look away from the circle to read it.
The main pack answered her next command, firm against her spine. She rode the burn with her eyes on the approach, breathing around the pressure as the circle grew. At its near edge she cut thrust and brought the braking jets in. The load changed direction, drawing her forward into the suit’s restraint.
She stopped inside it and kept watching the marker, making sure it stayed there.
“Clearance?” she asked.
Lena’s answer came straight into her ear. “Nine centimetres. No contact.”
Astrid tried to swallow. “Link?”
“Off from the hold.”
She closed her eyes while the cradle took her weight back. The motor’s low note came through the shoulder mounts, familiar again. Her fingers were trembling inside the gauntlets. She let them, with the recording still running.
When she lifted the visor, Jace was standing beside Lena’s display. He looked up at her and smiled.
She had been ready for something else.
Lena reached for the cradle release. “Let your knees go.”
Astrid hadn’t known she was still holding them. She loosened slowly. The boots found the deck, but she kept one hand on the frame while Lena disconnected the shoulder coupling. Warm air from the bay moved over her neck as the helmet seal opened.
Kierian came back from the service hatch without the bracket. Astrid looked at him before she meant to.
He brought up the end of her run. The white suit was coasting clear of the plate, still rolling.
“You waited,” he said.
She watched her recorded hand jets catch. “Nearly didn’t.”
He replayed the exit at full speed. With her own weight on the floor it looked worse, the plate’s edge coming over the boots so quickly she almost felt the pressure return.
“Send me that?”
She nodded before he had quite finished asking.
Lena eased past him with her helmet under one arm. “Astrid. Out.”
“Sorry.”
She stepped clear of the cradle, carrying her helmet to the bench. The suit was still warm around her thighs. She sat with her boots apart and the helmet between them, working at the left gauntlet’s latch until Jace crouched beside her.
“Other way.”
She stopped pulling and turned it. The seal let go.
He put her drink within reach and returned to Lena, who had an arm raised for him to check the fit beneath her shoulder plate. Astrid drew her bare hand from the gauntlet. The sailboat slipped out against her wrist, leaving a small pale impression where she had pressed it under the strap.
Her run waited on the comm. Outside the observation glass, people were moving toward the tram, an older woman walking backward beside a child who was trying to finish a cup of noodles before they reached the doors.
Astrid sent the recording to Kierian. Then she found Eliah’s name.
Lena’s cradle lifted behind her. Astrid heard Jace ask for a second seal check and waited, watching Eliah’s name beneath the paused image of her suit. Her hands were steadier now.
She sent him the whole run, then picked up her drink and stayed on the bench while the others flew.
