Murmansk-13

In the middle, Oleg and Tala bore up Jamal. Across her back, she could feel his arm quiver in pain. The bullet had shattered his shin bone, he bit at his lip drawing blood in a stoic bid to defy the agony. Aboard Murmansk-13 he’d defined himself as a runner. Now hobbled, he was like a race horse with a broken leg. Tala wondered what his prospects would be if returned to the care of the outer districts. In nature, crippled animals didn’t survive.

“I don’t understand what’s happening, I don’t understand what’s happening.” Over and over, Captain Tor muttered the same phrase, the seams holding his sanity together unpicked. He’d watched his retiring bosun have his throat ripped out by the teeth of his feral AWOL Chief Officer, only to see the bosun returned and infected to kill his steward. Now Tor existed in a purgatorial fugue state. Tala wondered what continued to drive his feet forward down the corridor.

“I’ve seen you move faster, Tor you shitfuck,” Dr. Smith nonchalantly lifted the barrel of her revolver to the back of his head. “Speed up or I’ll drop you.”

Oh, that. Who the fuck was this woman? She’d apparently traded her Hippocratic Oath for a revolver, although to what end Tala couldn’t fathom. Tala had had little to do with the ship’s doctor, even when it had been the curmudgeonly Pole, Tomarczyk and even less with this one.

Truth was, Tala didn’t like to fly with other women. Not because they were of a differing sexual proclivity, because in fact it was about fifty-fifty with the heterosexual portion often open to experimentation on long voyages. But because they usually had less in common with her than her male crewmates and with every arrival of a new female onboard the dynamic would shift, long time friends would become enemies, rumour mills would shift into hyperdrive and the girls would flit in the limelight, wilfully unaware of the corrosion their presence created.

Not that Dr. Smith had ever given her that impression, she’d been an acidic wallflower. Aloof and sharp faced, she was like a dichroic crystal, in certain light classically beautiful, in others lustreless and rough. She rarely left her office in the fortnight between her signing on and cryo and while she was distant, she’d always seemed professional and driven.

Now it was apparent the direction of her drive had not been the same as that discussed in the crew dayroom as her horny colleagues lamented at her unapproachable demeanour – then rated her a solid three out of ten.

Tala had rated her a five, apparently one of the few who could see passed the ageless plain and angular veneer. Now her five was pointing a gun at her head and leaving her wondering why she hadn’t simply killed them in their cryobeds. It would have been kinder.

Momentarily the corridor morphed into a Plexiglas skywalk, bright lights sinking to the abandoned dim that had grown familiar in the service corridors and conduits of the station. Beneath them, Tala could make out the deserted monorail that once served to connect the various districts of Murmansk-13. Boxy cars, still coupled together, sat at an empty and unlit stop awaiting passengers that would never come. The monorail had probably been shutdown long before the epidemic began killing the skeleton crew, yet the scene still struck Tala as eerie. She could picture a fleeting moment of noisy panic and rapid evacuation, of the living scurrying to their lifeboats or into the arms of the infected while the inanimate players, the monorail cars and station furniture, were forever left behind in silence.

Murmansk-13 was a tomb. As Tala squinted into the darkness she was sure she could see a solitary figure lurching between the rails below. Before she could double take the Plexiglas meshed into opaque white Formica and the corridor narrowed.

There had probably once been a more orthodox entrance to the command hub, one for visiting dignitaries and high ranking military personnel, perhaps even for regular workers from the outside districts. It would have been large and open and difficult to defend.

This innocuous corridor terminated at an innocuous door with a keypad, similar to the one they’d entered through from the service corridor. Центральная команда was stencilled in splotchy red paint, the corridor having most likely served the stations janitors, vendors and security personnel when operating at maximum capacity. It was now a controllable bypass for the likes of Arty and Dr. Smith.

“Same code as before pisspants.” Dr. Smith called down from the rear. Tala watched Diego’s shoulders sag as he punched in the code. A click indicated the code had been accepted, Diego paused, reluctant to open the door, unsure what lay beyond. He stole a look over his shoulder, beyond Tala to Dr. Smith. The skin beneath his eyes was raw from crying. “Just open it.”

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