Murmansk-13

Disembodied laughter crackled through Tor’s intercom as Peralta reached the ragged maw. Falmendikov’s entrance. The high tensile steel lifeline the Chief Officer had used writhed listlessly in the solar wind. Tor supposed it had chaffed against the serrated edges of the impact site. Striated scorch marks formed at the edges of the torn plates in shades of brown.

Tor spied the rifle, jury-rigged to Mihailov’s life support pack and recounted Nilsen’s dread aura. Ahead of him, Peralta’s helmet disappeared into the total blackness of the docking ring. As if he’d dipped his head into a pool of black ink. Nonsensically, Tor imagined Peralta’s headless body drifting away from the murky gash.

“Twenty more meters and then there looks like a subsection bulkhead with an emergency airlock,” reported Peralta. “I think I see manual controls space side.”

Carefully, Peralta lowered himself into the obsidian shadows. Over the intercom, Tor heard the reassuring plink of another magnetic cam being secured to the docking rings internal bulkhead and then a loud ping. A strident hiss burst through the helmet speaker that Tor first mistook for static before his visor was sprinkled with disparate ice crystals.

“Shit!” Mihailov tugged violently on Tala’s buddy line, pulling her towards him before pushing her forward.

Tor could now see Tala’s suit venting pressure or oxygen into space as Mihailov accelerated toward him. Tor positioned himself to shoulder barge Mihailov, readying to push both feet downward. As Mihailov met him, Tor bodychecked him toward the station, simultaneously releasing his boots. The buddy line pulled taught and Tor was tugged toward the station.

“My suit,” Tala gasped. “One of the couplings.”

The lifeline fell limp in Tala’s hand as high tensile steel wound around Mihailov’s left hip, the second officer was unable to unspool the wire fast enough. Tor felt his suit defy the increased pressure around the back of his utility belt.

As they spun uncontrolled toward the jagged opening in the docking rings plating Tor saw the great red supergiant glint and whirl across Peralta’s gold shaded visor, the ageing bosun’s arms wide open to receive his prone comrade. “Hang on Tala.”

“We need to get back to the station,” Tor cried, arms and legs splayed out wide. He could hear Tala hyperventilating over the intercom.

“No time,” shouted Peralta. In one fluid movement he gathered Tala and pulled her further into the darkness, then propelled himself after the gaseous contrail left in her wake.

Mihailov, now almost bound in steel, brushed past the jagged opening and disappeared into the blackness in silence. Tor gulped and closed his eyes, praying his suit wouldn’t be dashed against the cleft metallic teeth.

Mihailov landed with a dull thud and grunt. Tor, overcome by vertigo, tried to orientate his magnetic boots downwards. Instead, his hip thumped into the bulkhead, then his head was thrust forward in his helmet. For a second he wondered if he’d lost consciousness or whether his eyes were just closed.

Head swimming, Tor opened his eyes to a wall of opaque fog. He stifled a scream and uselessly tried to clean his visor. Gauntlets chinked silently against glass steamed from the inside. Tor was paralyzed by his blind deafness and claustrophobia, insensately he grappled for his gauges and indicators, bashing them into his visor as hands scrambled around him. Between breaths an alien script floated past his visor.

“Is it working?” A mechanical voice squealed close to his ear.

“It has to.”

“It hurts so bad.”

“Just hang in there Tala.”

“Is he OK?”

“Concussed, maybe.”

“Come on!”

“It’s working now.”

“You hear that Tala, you’ll be OK.”

“I just hope it’s pressurised on the other side.”

So many strange synthesised voices rattled discarnate around his helmet. Rotating yellow lights refracted through the frosted particles and condensation on his face mask forming a kaleidoscope of dancing colours.

“You feel that?”

“Hell yeah.”

Tor felt heavy again, corporeal. Then he plunged to the deck.

Chapter 5

Tor rolled onto his side as shadowy hands slid across the fogged glass of his visor. He felt the clink of metal couplings parting and a surge of panic washed through him. The word ‘no’ caught in his throat as he heard the tinkle of his helmet falling away from him. He waited for the hard vacuum of space to bloat his body and freeze or suffocate him to death.

Neither occurred. Instead he found his head lying on the epoxy coated deck of the space station, his body spent of strength. Little convulsions writhed through his exhausted muscles. The cold felt good on his sweat covered cheek.

“Murmansk-13,” Mihailov said, cryptically. The Bulgarian was knelt beside Tor, but his attention was elsewhere.

“What?” Asked Tor, the word deformed by his proximity to the floor. Spindrifts of dust whirled about his lips.

“The station, she is called Murmansk-13,” Mihailov looked down at the Captain. “How you feeling, Captain?”