Murmansk-13

Nikolai Falmendikov sat overlooking Gorky below, the lights were blinking on in the city as the sun shrank from the sky. The horizon was hemlined by clouds, shaped like marching soldiers, stealing the last vestiges of twilight in a golden corona. He sipped from a heavy tumbler filled with amber liquor, listening to the distant commotion of car horns and raised voices both of reverie and anger welling up the hillside. Katja braced her arms against her chest, wishing she’d not removed her jumpers. The cold didn’t seem to bother her father. “Father?”

Her father turned to her, bleary eyed. A warm smile crossed his lips. “Hello Katja,” he said, then studied her face with renewed focus, sensing her anxiety. “Are you OK?”

Katja slid the balcony door too, trying to block out the sounds of the radio in the room beyond. “I’ve been given my placement,” she blurted out over the noise of the city and the radio and the buffeting wind that billowed around the net curtain tickling her ankles, the heat of the dining room washed over her feet.

Her father placed his tumbler on the deck and looked at her, he was a stern faced man, his angular bone structure gave him a stony appearance that betrayed handsomeness. “Where did you decide to go?” He asked, the artificial light from the dining room casting dark and light across the topography of his skin.

Katja gulped, even if she wasn’t stood in the rapidly freezing nights air she would still have felt the shudder of anxiety ascend her spine. “I chose the deep space program,” she answered quietly.

Her father closed his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. Deep space had been his dream, he’d joined the Soviet State owned Merchant Space Fleet as a cadet upon its inception, but like Katja had only ever achieved satisfactory grades, not exceptional. He’d passed out ninth of seventeen and been trapped on the solar coasters ever since, year long runs servicing the declining solar service stations as the scope of space colonization went interstellar. By most people’s standards he was a successful man. Except his own.