The ten minutes or so of unpowered approach to the Songbird-class ship seemed as long as a human lifetime. Even though Jiang Ling could be considered a well-trained astronaut, she gradually became excited. The reserve fuel of the exoskeleton's RCS could only allow her to return to Unit 2 after being thrown away by the huge force, so if she failed once, she would never have the chance to reach the surface of the spacecraft again.
The shadow of the ship gradually filled her field of vision. Less than 20 meters away, she could finally see the external rocket booster damaged by the space mine. The sharp tip of the mine had plowed two scratches into the booster's hull, severing several important fluid pipes, and the heated, expanded liquid gas continuously leaked from that area. The mine itself was embedded in the observation window armor plate in the center of the ship. The electromagnetic pulse interference it generated was still very strong. Even though the exoskeleton had a certain degree of EMP resistance, the helmet display began to malfunction as the distance decreased.
Getting closer...
Before the collision, Jiang Ling grabbed a padlock of a safety rope with each hand, counted the space handrails she could reach, and prepared for the impact.
The second before each fateful encounter was always so long, but when faced with countless possible outcomes, she did not hesitate, but decisively fastened the padlocks on two different handrails.
In a split second, the immense inertial force drove the padlock, converting its kinetic energy into the elastic potential energy of the safety rope, and then suddenly yanked Jiang Ling up. Her exoskeleton withstood hundreds of gravitational accelerations, but one of the two mounting points suffered brittle failure.
"Ah!" Jiang Ling groaned, and his back hit the outer armor of the spacecraft with a "bang".
It is impossible to maintain a stable posture under continuous overload with only a safety rope, so her body inevitably collided several times.
Fortunately, she was lucky enough and the exoskeleton was strong enough, and those thrilling few seconds only scratched the anti-radiation coating on the surface of the exoskeleton.
When Jiang Ling was about to crash into the spacecraft again, she grabbed two other space handrails not far away. The three mounting points finally had an overwhelming effect, allowing her flying posture to gradually stabilize.
She couldn't relax just yet. She felt like she was back on the ground, and the distinction between up, down, left, and right became incredibly clear. Her body, having lived in a weightless environment for so long, hadn't yet adapted to this force. It was as if she were strapped to a weight, and any attempt to resist it became incredibly difficult. She felt like she was clinging to a speeding train carriage. If any of the three points of support failed, the consequences would be fatal.
She struggled to exert the strength of her waist and abdomen, lifting her lower body, which was suspended upside down in mid-air, to the surface of the spacecraft. Then she hooked each foot on a protrusion, freeing up one hand for complex operations. She carefully tested the holding capacity of several surrounding handrails, and then slowly and firmly clipped the remaining safety ropes to them.
Once all four ropes were in place, Jiang Ling finally found her footing. She breathed a sigh of relief and immediately began to think about the next steps. The most difficult issue of boarding the ship had been solved. Now, the remaining three goals were to seal the leak, find a way to reduce the angular velocity, and eliminate the source of the electromagnetic pulse interference.
In her opinion, the first two goals could be combined into one. After all, at the very least, she could manually separate the damaged booster. The more urgent goal should be the third one - once the interference source was eliminated, the spacecraft's control system and her own communication capabilities could be restored immediately. At that time, there would be many very efficient ways to stabilize the spacecraft.
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