Murmansk-13

Despite the lowered lights, Tor could see sweat glistening Mihailov’s skin, even as his own breath fogged the cold glass. The medical bay was frigid. The muffled beep of the heart rate monitor was slow and irregular.

Periodically Mihailov would shudder, like a dog dreaming of a chase. His hand was redressed with clean bandages. No blood spotted the white gauze.

Running up and away from the wound, Mihailov’s veins blackened with coagulating blood. The little branches of necrosis faded near the elbow, turning to red infection and then a pallid, bloodless grey. Gangrene would claim his arm and the ship no longer boasted a medical professional amongst its crew. For somebody, a day’s intensive medical training would be pushed far beyond its limits.

Tor let his breath fog the glass a final time before leaving the medical bay.

☣☭☠

The elevator no longer worked, at least that was the consensus. Nobody cared to test the mechanism following the impact and besides, Nilsen would have closed down the elevator as a non-essential system. Only four flights separated the very lowest decks of the Riyadh, its stock rooms, refrigeration and medical to the uppermost serviced deck, the bridge.

Still, Tor eyed the stairwell wearily. His body had received little respite, but his legs seemed to possess a mind of their own. Sleep and rest had failed. Closing his eyes was no longer an option. Even in waking the silence of the ship was filled with the sepulchral moans indelibly imprinted in his mind. Now his body acted on autopilot, whether it was an act of self preservation or subconscious avoidance, Tor couldn’t discern.

He rubbed his hot, sleep starved eyes with the meat of his palms and paced forward.

Bones and muscles ground inside him as he padded up the Riyadh’s steps. His hand gripped the banister, hauling him forward as he’d hauled himself along the lifeline, Mihailov under his arm. Every other step, Tor swivelled his head. In the dimmed lights, shadows played within his peripheral vision, eidetic phantoms – memories of the infected in the stairwell of Murmansk-13.

Up had been bad.

The further Tor ascended, the deeper the gloom became, working spotlights growing scarcer in the sporadically used spaces of the ship. At the top a reinforced door separated the vessels conning station from the rest of the ship. Tor placed his ear against the cold steel, beyond he felt the heart of the vessel slow down as if it were an organism entering suspended animation. He opened the door.

The debris had struck the Riyadh on the starboard side, just aft of the vessels collision bulkhead, which of itself formed the dividing frame for the bridge and the rest of the vessel. In theory, the bulk of the crew could survive a bow docking failure in which the bridge was crushed with the rest of the vessel acting as a pressurized liferaft.

It had been a glancing blow, but severe enough to partially wrench the vessels emergency docking clamps askew of the docking ring. It also placed a pronounced kink in the clamping arms themselves and a colossal prang in the starboard shell plating. Fortunately the plating had held, save a few parted rivets and some torn aluminium which were easily patched before the vessel depressurized.

Tor noticed the curious realignment of the Riyadh during his escape from Murmansk-13, but in the terror and urgency of his line walk, he hadn’t completely registered it. Now, staring out at the new aspect of the station he came to realize how close his crew had came to complete disaster. How close he and Mihailov came to being stranded aboard Murmansk-13.

Forever.

Tala and Katja still were, he reminded himself.

The bridge was dark save for a distant binary pulsar occasionally scanning the windscreen with irregularly patterned pallid white light like a celestial lighthouse, silver lining the central console and radio station. All systems were placed on standby by the Chief Engineer, their CRT’s and LED’s dead. Even the chronometer was put to sleep.

Looking at the dead digital display of the chronometer, Tor felt time become even less substantial. If the ship had somehow been transported to Hell, he imagined the chronometer would show nothing but blackness. For eternity. The suspension of time caused chills to wrack Tor. For just a moment he forgot in space, time was a mere function.

On the deck, star charts, deck logs and space fairing publications littered the rubberized deck covering. In between, office stationary and navigational tools further cluttered the once orderly bridge. The disarranged objects cast angular shadows in the erratic binary starlight.