She was going crazy cooped up in her space suit for all these hours with nothing to do but drift. She was forced to wonder if maybe Vijay had been right six weeks back about her tolerance for the quiet life.True, there were four other Troubleshooters out here with her, tethered together in a quincunx formation, and she could talk to them through the tethers if she wanted. Unfortunately, their stealth approach precluded any nonessential power use. She could barely even see the others except as dark areas occulting the stars, since their suits were in full stealth mode, lights off, all surfaces tuned to wide-spectrum black, helmet visors polarized to block heat radiation. Kilometers-long superconducting nanofilaments trailed behind them to dissipate their body heat as diffusely as possible. Still, she was getting hot and sweaty in this thing. She’d slowed her metabolism as much as she could during the long approach—another effective damper on conversation—but now the target was in sight and they had to warm up their muscles for the fight that was coming.And it would be a doozy.
