Juggernaut

We piled sandbags against the hatch. We didn’t want the heavy steel door to fly across the containment area and puncture the fabric of the bio-dome.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Ignatiev

Wire snaked from the sandbagged hatch, down the scaffold steps and across the polythene floor.

We crouched. I counted to three and touched frayed wires to the terminals of a twelve-volt battery. Sudden flame-flash and a shotgun roar. The sandbags absorbed the blast. The scorched hatch hung crooked.

I climbed the steps.

We dragged the hatch aside and lay it on the floor.

I held up the video camera and began to film.

A white-walled airlock, little bigger than a phone booth. The inner hatch was sealed. There was a pile of fabric on the floor. A space suit.

‘Switch on the camera. I want to see it all.’

A big helmet with a gold visor. A big, quilted backpack. A heavy pressure suit in white canvas. The suit was in two sections. It seemed to seal at the waist. There were gauntlets with big lock-rings.

‘Must be an EVA suit. That confirms Spektr has an occupant. There are a stack of hermetic storage boxes in the containment area with you. Pack the suit and seal it up.’

We packed the suit in a plastic trunk. We sealed the trunk with biohazard tape.

‘All right. Return to the airlock. My schematic says there is a mesh service plate in the floor.’

‘I see it.’

‘Grip the ring-latch. The plate should lift out.’

‘There’s a socket inside. A five-pin, high-voltage connector.’

‘Spektr had a bank of chemical batteries but they will be long dead. If we run electricity from an external power source, we can get the ship’s systems back online.’

We unpacked a four-stroke generator and set the motor running. We ran cable up the scaffold steps to the airlock. I twisted the connector into the floor socket and there was an immediate power-up hum. Lights flickered and lit the airlock interior brilliant white.

‘I’ve got a green panel light.’

‘The inner hatch is active. Open her up. Let’s look inside.’

I pressed the panel button and turned release handles. I pushed the inner hatch open.

‘Talk to me, Jabril. Describe what you can see.’

I resumed filming.

‘I’m entering a crew compartment. It’s cramped. There are storage lockers. There is some kind of porthole at the back.’

Hassim shone a flashlight through black glass. The empty hold. Payload doors held shut by heavy piston actuators.

‘The bay is empty,’ I told Ignatiev. ‘There is no cargo.’

A bank of winking red lights.

‘I think I have found the life-support controls. Russian symbols. Might be CO₂ warnings. Depleted oxygen.’

‘There should be another floor plate directly beneath your feet.’

‘I see it.’

‘Open it up. Don’t touch anything.’

I lifted the plate aside.

A status panel flashed red, first in Cyrillic, then in English.

WARNING

DESTRUCT ARMED

‘What in God’s name is this?’

‘About thirty kilos of plastic explosive. The standard auto-destruct mechanism on all Soyuz and Progress flights, manned and unmanned. If a craft fails to deploy correctly, if there is a significant deviation from the launch flight-path, then Mission Control has the option to initiate a de-orbit burn and bring the vessel back into the atmosphere over the Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands. They wait until the vehicle descends to an altitude of about fifteen kilometres then transmit the self-destruct code.’

‘How do we defuse it?’

‘Press the amber button. Flip the toggle switch.’

DESTRUCT DISARMED