In the present, Amelia stood in the witchpit and shook her head, feeling more weary than she ever had in her life. All she wanted was to sleep, but if she took even a short nap, she wasn’t likely to wake up on time and there was still too much work to do. Many tools had been secured to her waistline by the adjustable loops, as well as a pair of sturdy hinges.

  For the next task, she had to work quickly, but first, a few precautions were in order. Stepping into the entry bay, she took a sturdy rope that had been looped and hung in a clamp on the wall. She tied one end to the ladder on the floor, then tied the other around her waist, just as she’d done for her first spacewalk.

  She sealed the hatch between crew quarters and the entry bay, then stepped back into the witchpit. She spoke in the witch’s tongue, using the words for ‘mast’, ‘hold’ and ‘air’, imagining a bubble of force that would hold an atmosphere around the ship, running from the masts and backward along the hull, until the lines of force met behind it.

  She stepped back into the entry bay, laid hold of the door and cranked the handle, opening it just a few inches, forced to hold on for dear life as air rushed through the gap! When the atmosphere of the two rooms and the bubble outside equalized, the handle of the door turned more easily, fully lifting it out of the doorway in the wall. Once it was fully raised, it was easy enough to roll it sideways.

  She crouched and pulled herself around the outer edge of the ship, just as she’d done before, managing to position herself on the underside of the ship. The masts glowed slightly white, with streamers of energy flowing between them, like the multicolored reflections of a soap bubble.

  It was tiring holding that magic in place, but if she was to have any chance at rescuing her sisters, she had to practice the spell. Nearly as important, she needed to open the rear cargo bay, without blowing the tires of the war wagon in the vacuum. They were rugged and designed for combat, but exposing them to an exterior pressure of zero would definitely destroy them.

  She hurried down the hull of the ship, until she was standing between two of the control fins. She eyeballed the distance from the back of the ship to roughly where the cargo bay door was, a little frustrated she’d hidden it with an enchantment to make the metal seamless.

  First, she pulled a set of four reasonably flat samples of magnetite from the things she’d brought with her, setting them out in a rectangular arrangement on the hull, where they stuck.

  Pulling a hammer from her collection of tools, she rapped where she believed the first corner of the hatch was and the entire hatch became visible, though it was still locked in place. She repeated her tap on two more corners, then returned to the second one she’d smacked, which was between the other two. She wedged the claw of the hammer under the edge and hauled back, producing a hiss of gas. That was definitely the wrong way to open it, but it was a decent way to equalize the pressure without the door blasting itself into space.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She walked around to the opposite corner, which she hadn’t touched, and gave it a rap with the hammer, which caused the last of the hidden latches to half release. She applied the hammer’s claw under the edges and wiggled, until the panel popped loose and floated free. It nearly drifted away, but she was quick enough to grab it.

  She woman-handled the panel onto the waiting magnetite, which kept it from drifting away.

  Looking into the cargo bay, Amelia shook her head, wishing she’d turned it over back in Dugaria, but there hadn’t been time. She crouched and used the edge of the bay to haul herself inside, until she was able to get a foot on the side of the wagon. From there, she got the other foot on a wall and used her grip on the hatch frame to pull herself off the wagon, getting both feet firmly planted inside. She walked to the forward end, where the winch mechanism waited.

  She’d emptied the water from the engine in the workshop that ran the winching mechanisms, forcing her to use the hand crank, but since there was no gravity, it was just a matter of time, taking about twenty minutes of turning a fairly large handle to slowly move the heavy mass of the wagon. First, the tracks it was mounted on lowered from the ceiling, then it slowly rotated, before the tracks lowered all the way down to the floor of the cargo bay, on which Amelia stood.

  She walked onto the wall down one side, giving the curved, tail end of the track a series of whacks with the hammer, to release locking pins attached to little chains. With the pins out, the curved portion was freed to move, revealing it was actually articulated. Amelia put her hammer away, then worked the pins back in, one at a time, while she held the track against the floor. Then she repeated the process for the other side.

  The end result was that the track had been entirely flattened and now lined up with the very edge of the cargo bay hatch frame.

  Next, Amelia climbed back out and hauled the hatch in place, locking two of the corners down with the hidden latches. She produced one of the two hinges she’d prepared and set it near one corner. Since she was getting tired, she eyeballed it, then spoke the witch’s words for ‘metal’, ‘melt’ and ‘join’. The spell welded the hinge in place, then she did the same with the other one.

  Stepping around to the other side, she lifted the panel up, quite pleased the hinges were working, despite how quick and dirty her work had been. Finally, she closed the hatch. As it latched, the seams vanished, while the hinges appeared to turn into external structural supports.

  Amelia slowly released her atmospheric bubble spell by imagining a myriad of small, but balanced holes in it, to avoid thrust she hadn’t planned for and was relieved to have that mountain of weight off her shoulders. Having confirmed her new spell worked, Amelia revised her chances of success from five percent to fifteen. She still didn’t like her odds, but experience told her there was more to life than numbers.

  More importantly, she had faith she would succeed. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she was also utterly exhausted and probably not thinking straight, due to mild hypoxia.

  She used her rope to steady herself as she walked back to the door, staring into deep space, her mind wandering once again to the past…