Murmansk-13

“I’ll be OK. Just give me a minute.” Saliva pooled in his cheek, his voice sounded hoarse. Out the corner of his eye he could see Peralta administering to Tala. Mihailov patted Tor on the shoulder and joined them, his suit banded with silvery wire lubricant.

With what little reservoir of strength Tor could draw from, he rolled onto his back and tried to sit up. He felt his arms wobble beneath him, but managed to prop himself against an angled bulkhead. “How’s she doing?”

“She’ll be OK, just a bit shook up.”

Peralta had pulled Tala from her EVA suit. The little Filipina was sat in a thin white tank top and Spandex leggings, cradling her knees and shivering. Tor could hear the click of her chattering teeth. Her hard, masculine features had softened with mild swelling, her dark brown skin shining taut and her monolid eyes almost closed up. She probably looked worse than at any point in her boxing career.

Peralta ran a friendly hand through Tala’s hair and sat beside Tor, he looked drawn, his old eyes darkened and deep set. Moisture had gathered in the lines of his face. Peralta was unerringly quiet and Tor felt compelled to say something. “I’m sorry about out there. I guess I just panicked, Bose.”

Peralta nodded apathetically and stared at the opposing bulkhead. “That could have been a bad situation.”

They were sat in a bleak service passage, pentagon shaped and uniformly light grey in colour. The gently curving corridor was bathed in mottled, flickering emergency strip lights and neon signs. Most fizzed and crackled overhead, but few worked. It was cold, the temperature was above freezing, but only just, and the air was stagnant. The musty essence of burning dust and melting electrical wiring spun in the latent atmosphere.

“Captain, her suit is toast,” Peralta eventually said, turning to Tor. Against the grey backdrop, the paralyzed side of his face looked ghastly. “When it parted and depressurized the couplings for her gauntlet were bent beyond repair.”

Tor mulled the implications over in his head. Tala could not be returned to the Riyadh with her suit unable to pressurize. They would either have to send a team over with a fresh suit, despite dwindling numbers already remaining onboard, or leave Tala on the station and return with a suit later. Neither option seemed appealing and risks were inherent in both. Tor hoped they could determine the fate of Falmendikov and find schematics for the station in short order; now it seemed additional trips would have to be made, pushing the Riyadh’s life support systems to their limit.

At least, the station appeared to be pressurized and oxygenated, however stale the air. If they could find supplies and communications on the station, they might be able to use it as a giant lifeboat until assistance could arrive.

Still, the stations absence on the Riyadh’s star charts unnerved him. Why had Falmendikov brought them here, to Murmansk-13? A significantly sized Russian space station that was conspicuously uncharted.

Mihailov paced past the recumbent Captain, his focus fixated on the deck. With measured footsteps, he walked to the airlock door, then retraced his steps before stopping at the shaking Tala. He dropped to his haunches, then mentally revisited the short journey, his head turning from the airlock door to beyond the visible curve of the corridor, then back to the deck. Without a word he returned to his feet and followed the mental course he’d just mapped, disappearing around the corner.

Interest piqued, Tor tried to push himself upright. Planting his left hand down on the deck, he found himself groping a stiff plastic tube, housing three smaller colourful rubberized tubes. It was Falmendikov’s life support umbilical. He’d intended to leech the Riyadh’s life support systems to provide him prolonged oxygen, coolant and scrubbing in the event the station was deoxygenated. He would not have been able to bring it past the functioning airlock and it had been severed in three places . In any event it was not required.

“Captain. I think you better see this,” Mihailov said from beyond the curve.

☣☭☠

Mihailov had found Falmendikov’s EVA suit, abandoned and crumpled just metres beyond the airlock. A fine layer of dust coated it like grey fallout. With his umbilical severed, Falmendikov had ascertained that the stations atmosphere posed no physical threat and had decided to continue without the encumbrance of his suit.

For whatever reason, Tor believed it looked like Falmendikov never expected to return to the suit and probably never would now.

“We’ll only find a dead man here,” said Tala, surmising the same. They had let her rest, then suited her back up to keep her warm. She struggled to move within the confines of the damaged suit and although the swelling subsided within the equalized pressure, her cheeks bore livid purple bruises, her eyes blackened. Tor suspected her whole body was bruised as she winced with each movement; trying valiantly to conceal any indication of suffering.