Murmansk-13

Of course, the Saudi Shipping company would ensure he was reimbursed for his passage. His meagre cadet wage would be extended to cover his back-phasing. All of this had been of little concern to Aidan. Before he’d flown out, a two-month passage in its own right to Snake’s Head, Aidan had feared he would be late to return to the space academy in Melbourne. Not for any sentiment to his classmates, a rag tag collective of macho boys pretending to be macho men. Nor for any anxiety of his career stalling in the small, competitive Australian pool of newly qualified, inexperienced spacefarers. No, his fear had been borne out in the nascent relationship he’d formed the Summer prior to his departure; mere weeks before he jetted out to the Galactic arsehole of Snake’s Head.

She was called Adelaide, which was an unusual name for a girl who hailed from Hobart. In truth her name was Thúy An, daughter of Vietnamese boat people. Aidan called her Addy. She was short, quiet and seemed unperturbed by his social dysfunction. He wasn’t like the other cadets, with their puffed out chests and peacocking machismo, he was tall, gangly and aloof, and she liked that.

At least, he thought she did. .

Aidan had never much fit in, an outcast in every avenue of existence. His propensity and subsequent tolerance for loneliness had made a career in space a logical choice over any bombastic pretence for adventure. Aidan’s parents had reacted to his enrolment with the usual ambivalence that had formed his and his brothers creed. “It’s your life son, do what makes you happy.”

While the academy never made him happy, spacefaring at least provided some structure to the canvas of disjointed greys his parents unobtrusive approach painted – and an escape from bleak suburbia.

Addy had complicated matters. For the first time Aidan’s life was coloured with something other than his parents attentive indifference. Where he’d joined the Melbourne Space Academy at sixteen because he had no good reason not to, Addy provided a very good reason at nineteen to drop out. Indeed, had their relationship been given time to coalesce into something less nebulous, Aidan doubted he would be sat in the suffocating inertness of space, trapped on a vessel where everything was rapidly going to hell.

He thought of Addy as Hernandez once again berated him about something, gauntleted hand tugging at the tool belt as static laced discourse buzzed like distant bees. Aidan was bookish, he sought escapism within stories. In joining, Aidan had romanticized the notion of spacefaring as an existential continuation of his escapism. Having soon encountered the apes of his academy, Aidan was unsurprised to find space a frontier populated by manful, monobrowed men like Hernandez.

It was a frontier that made him feel painfully androgynous.

With each new task set before him, Aidan gained only a drowning sense of inadequacy. Why would a girl like Addy, or any girl for that matter, wait for an impotent sexless excuse for a man like him? Hernandez, the hyena alpha male that he loudly divulged himself to be, picked at Aidan’s weaknesses to feed his ego, unknowingly stripping away any hope that Addy would still be waiting when he returned.

The sheer helplessness of his status, little bolstered by his brittle demeanour fuelled an internal fire of injustice. Nineteen months had passed since Addy and Aidan exchanged farewells and promises of how things would be on his return. Even then, when he looked into her dark brown, sincere eyes, did Aidan think she realized the gravity of her words and their enduring intoxication of his mindset.

Aidan sighed and stared out at the oil slick of an ionic nebular that smeared across the local galaxy in iridescent ribbons, behind it crimson and blue filaments of hydrogen dense dust seemed to chase it, remnants of some short-lived unstable star that had gone supernova. Refracted light from a winking blue star provided a shimmering kaleidoscope that danced incongruously across the matte grey of the ominous Soviet space station. Aidan supposed he should be overwhelmed by the grandiosity of the vista before him, in truth he was tired and fed up.

“Did any of you guys just use the Evac suite airlock?” Diego asked through soporific white noise.

“No, why?” Replied Stewart, rising from his crouch and exercising his legs to the extent of his tether.

“Chief says the airlock just got activated down there. And it ain’t the recon party.”

“Did he get a good look?” Stewart peered over the starboard flank of the vessel, Hernandez joined him.

“Na.. dzzz…. fin…. psss…” Diego’s frequency vanished behind a wall of feedback.

“I didn’t catch that.” Stewart placed his fingers on the knurled radio knob on his EVA suit. “Diego, come in?”

“Hey, cabrón. Thank God we have such a talented radio operator backing us up.”

“Switch to secondary channel.”