Murmansk-13

“As we loaded up the trucks to head back to the barracks, I slip away. I wasn’t alone, but I wanted to be. I lose the other deserters and travelled into the hills near the Tajik border. I felt sick and betrayed by motherland, but I had nowhere else to go – to escape the bloodbath. The night’s were cold, I almost died I was so unprepared and… didn’t care. I was captured by the Mujahedin after three days and nights in desert, by then completely disorientated and dehydrated. I spent next two years a slave in their compound. Some of my fellow prisoners turned native, converted to Islam and stayed, but I was never a religious man and even less so after the army. I returned to Belarus hoping I would be forgotten POW, instead I was arrested on the border and a year later found myself on Murmansk-13. But I already lose everything, my pride, my honour and my soul a long, long way from here.”

Tala held her breath, unfelt tears traced shimmering lines down her cheeks. Behind her Katja had turned back and sat in rapt silence. “Why do you want to leave here?” Katja asked, the first fragile words to part her lips since District Four.

“Sergei Borovsky, he sergeant who ordered the slaughter of cows, then kill boy,” cold fire lit Oleg’s eyes, but his voice was now steady. “If somehow I can slip into Russia, I find him. I want him to look on me, when I put a gun in his mouth. I want him to know terror.

“Every night, when I close my eyes I hear the screams of that farmer’s wife and I see the blank, dead stare of that little boy. When I pull that trigger, I hope it brings me peace.”

The conduit was still, the air heavy. Tala could hear Katja’s shallow breaths against her back as silence enshrouded them once more. For all the terror and travails wrought upon Tala in life and during her time aboard Murmansk-13, the truest, most personal horrors seemed a long way away in that moment. Tala felt Katja, grasp for her hand, fragile, cold fingers enmeshing with hers .

Sensing the draining catharsis of Oleg’s tale, Jamal slumped against the furry insulation of the conduit wall. “We’ll be safe here, maybe we should rest up for the night.”

☣☭☠

“It’s fucked, Chief.” Hernandez eye traced an imperfect line across the gold coupling ring of the helmet. The acidic tang of vomit emanating from the headwear made Hernandez heave.

Slumped against a bulkhead, the helmets temporary owner Sammy, sat shivering and whimpering to himself. The yellowy effluence of his stomach still mottled his face and slicked his hair. Rinds of part digested food rations textured his skin.

Much as Tor had before, the old steward became spatially disorientated in the crossing to Murmansk-13. However, where unconsciousness kept Tor’s claustrophobic panic in check, Sammy’s had reached fevered levels. As the internal airlock door parted, Sammy stumbled out, dragging the rest of the team still tethered together. Madly he had tore at the vomit filled helm, before tossing it to the deck.

Tor had cringed as the helmet clattered loudly to the floor, part of him expected to see the same decayed faces, pressed against the airlock viewport awaiting his return. Where they’d gone or how far the infected ranged Tor could not know, but he didn’t want to draw their attention ever again and especially while they remained in one large vulnerable group.

Tor looked at Sammy, he was a sorry sight. “Diego, look after him and keep him quiet. We have to keep noise to a minimum.”

Diego baulked at the bedraggled steward, but knelt beside the old man, hand on shoulder trying to calm him. Tor was pleased to see some of the crew still recognized his seniority, if not his command.

Nilsen joined Hernandez as they inspected the helmet. “It won’t make a seal now Chief, I can try beating it flush.”

Hernandez motioned to bash the helmet coupling against the frame of the airlock. “No!” Hissed Tor.

Nilsen gave Hernandez a withering stare and took the wretched smelling helmet from him. “This is a precision spacesuit Hernandez, not your eses dinged lowrider.” Gently, the Chief Engineer placed the helmet on the deck. “We’re just going to have to find a second escape suit.”

“That’s assuming Tala is alive and able to rendezvous with us, Chief.” Pettersson said, studying the crude plan of the station he’d recreated.

“You don’t know that chick, she is fucking bombproof,” Hernandez replied, rearranging his hair and staring into the darkening curve of the service corridor.

Tor hoped Hernandez was right, the bosuns death already weighed heavily on his conscience, he couldn’t lose another crewman. In the chill of the service corridor, Tor removed his gauntlets, inside the rolled laminated plan of Murmansk-13 he had secreted a marker pen and a piece of paper with the Saudi Shipping letterhead. With shaking hands, he wrote Tala a message: