Murmansk-13

Pettersson watched him from the barrier, pushing back whenever the infected surged. Once more the gap was widening in the heavy blast doors. Alone, Pettersson was losing. Quickly, Nielsen helped buttress the doors, resituating the heaviest of the obstructing items. “We’re not getting out of this, are we Chief?” Pettersson asked, his voice thick.

“No Oscar, I’m sorry,” Nielsen replied, honestly. “I can’t let this get back home, can’t let what’s happening right now to us play out millions of times over.”

“OK,” Pettersson said, gulping back his fear. “What’s the plan?”

Nielsen felt a surprising lump in his throat, an unexpected welling of pride for his Second Engineer. He’d barely missed a beat as Nielsen consigned them to their fate. Nielsen had always thought of the Swede as obsequious and toadying. A self interested jobsworth. He’d been wrong. Nielsen thought to say something, eulogize his bravery, the significance of his sacrifice as Pettersson braced the doors.

“I’m going to overload the reactor, spin her right up,” Nielsen said instead. “ The core is already degraded, if we apply enough force she’ll either shut down or meltdown.”

“All that centrifugal force, Chief,” Pettersson paused, breathless. “It could throw the Riyadh off… tear this place apart.”

“I’m going to load it up now, begin circumventing the safeguards,” Nielsen unzipped his EVA suit, it wouldn’t serve him again and he wanted to be able to enjoy the natural movement of his joints one last time. “I won’t activate it until the very last moment.”

“What do you need me to do, Chief?”

“Hold them off for as long as possible, anything breaches the door, use this.” Nielsen sloughed the EVA suit free from his shoulders, the rigid rubber suit peeling away from his long johns like a caramel coloured flower blossoming. He pulled a revolver from his waistband and handed it to Pettersson. “Six shots, save one for yourself.”

Pettersson paled at the command but understood as another mummified arm extruded itself briefly through the breach, grasping wildly, unhindered by the blast doors pressing down on the flesh. “I’ll hold them for as long as I can.”

Nielsen began backpedalling toward the reactor chamber, the sepulchral noise of the infected diminishing as he abandoned Pettersson to the inevitable. The depth of the engine compartment created a cavernous resonance that meant he could never truly escape the presence of the infected, it was a pity he thought.

“Chief!” Pettersson called from the barricade, his raised voice lessened by the clamour behind him. Nielsen turned. “I don’t think I can kill myself.”

Nielsen shrugged, the gesture probably unreadable in the dim light of the access way. “Chances are we’re both going to die today. We’ve both got a choice as to how we go out. I can’t make it for you, Oscar, but you saw Mihailov.”

He could see Oscar nod, glumly. Nielsen hit the manual override button for the reactor chamber, knowing they couldn’t have shut it down from Central Command, knowing once he stepped through the blast doors he wouldn’t see Pettersson again.

Or anybody, ever.

As the doors parted, pouring a shimmering indigo iridescence into the passageway, Nielsen made a conscious decision not to turn to his Second Engineer. Now it had to be just him and the reactor. This was the only way he could protect his daughter and Emma and there could be no place for sentiment, sentiment only cluttered thought.

Nielsen stepped into the chamber, felt the synthetic throb of the oscillating drive plates from inside their tungsten casing, and let the doors close behind him. For a second he closed his eyes, feeling the faint warmth radiating from the reactor against his skin. It was a sign the reactor was in the early stages of breaching its containment, but Nielsen pictured it as a bright Autumn sun cutting through the morning cold. Then he stepped to the gantry control panel, wishing he was at peace.

☣☭☠

There were many reasons why Hernandez had never wanted to be a navigating officer, why he preferred the comparatively hostile environs of the engine room. Firstly, no space academy in the entire Mexican republic would ever except a candidate with a criminal record as long as his, then there was the fact he never graduated from secundaria, choosing to play truant instead of studying the likes of mathematics and science for which he had little aptitude. But perhaps most crucial was his complete and utter lack of direction.

Many if not most of the scrapes he happened upon aboard partisan space stations and service stops were due to a wrong turn landing him in stationers gang turf or a bar frequented by chest-puffing starship trooper types. Even with the distinctive landmarks familiar to Hernandez in Tuxtla, he could get lost. Lest the anonymous plastic veneers and drab metallic bulkheads of an infrequently visited spaceport.