Murmansk-13

“Hey man, you look like you could use a drink,” Hernandez lifted an air cold bottle of Pilsner from behind his back, Aidan stood with his neck crooked to the side behind him. “Captain’s donated them to the crew and that looks like it’s me, you and the kid.”

Diego did need a drink and he needed company and he sensed Hernandez did too.

And that was how he and Aidan were drawn into Hernandez’s usually private sanctum.

Hernandez had already cut his first line when Diego cautiously stepped into the cabin, so decidedly at odds with his prudish dwelling. It was then that Diego learned of the return of Tor’s party.

“They brought Mihailov in, that’s when I had to bounce. His hand was fucking ice all I could see were tendons and shit that looked like frozen meat chunks and I’m pretty sure his skeleton, man,” Hernandez motored through the recollection. “Me and the kid here just left, they gave Aidan some painkillers and we bounced man, right out of the medical bay. No point staying there any longer, we didn’t need the help like he did. His suit man, just fucking covered in blood.”

“How is he now?” Diego asked.

Hernandez looked away, Aidan tried to bow his head but couldn’t, his neck was covered in livid purple and black bruises that contrasted heavily with his fair freckled complexion. Instead he stared at the beer label and spoke in monotone. “Sammy said he’s getting sicker, he said that people are ill over at that station. Captain told him.”

“Ill?”

Hernandez just shrugged and started pacing his cabin. “We ain’t got no doctor to look after him, either. Sammy and the Chief have turned Florence fucking Nightingale. I’m sure if sec were awake that would inspire his confidence.”

“Where’s the Doc?”

“I guess that was who was on the lifeline when that debris hit us,” Hernandez stopped and looked at Diego with a surprising absence of malice. “Nice catch with that one by the way, cabrón. A heads up would have been appreciated.”

Hernandez turned away with a smirk and resumed his pacing. Diego resisted the urge to defend himself with a flurry of inadequate excuses circling his mind like a Wheel of Fortune. He knew none would suffice, instead he recalled the person on the lifeline, struggling across the clamps before the Chief arrived on the bridge. Was it that distraction that had caused him to miss the debris? Or the Chief startling him? “Why did she go over there? Did she make it?”

“How the fuck would I know, man,” Hernandez spat, “and I’m damned if I care, that whore abandoned us. Fuck her.”

Diego pressed himself into the sofa and away from Hernandez’s aggression. It was only then as he sat there, slowly coming to terms with his surroundings and the sequence of events, that the conspicuous absence of Peralta and Tala occurred to him. The Captain’s party had returned, Hernandez had said so, hadn’t he? “Where’s Bose and Tala?”

Hernandez stopped dead. Even the pained cadet, on the brink of sleep and dosed up on codeine, managed to shoot Hernandez a blanched look. “They didn’t make it back, man.” Hernandez replied quietly.

Diego felt his lip wobble, he quickly pursed the beer bottle to his mouth and swigged. Warsteiner clotted at the lump in his throat. He coughed. “Didn’t make it back?”

“That’s what I said, yeah.”

Suddenly, the silence of the ship grew loud. Diego felt blood pounding through his head, the sharp fuzz of tinnitus returned as if the debris had struck anew, only now, Diego was absolved of responsibility. He forgot the inadequacies and grief that had consumed him in the wake of the impact. Now it was he who was aggrieved, the sense of loss was still burning, but it was no longer burning out of sympathy for himself. Diego realized he had not grieved for Stewart, but his hand in Stewart’s death. He tried to scold himself for his selfishness, but he couldn’t. Instead he thought of Tala.

“Diego,” Aidan spoke sleepily, “Tala isn’t dead. She’s still on the station. I overheard the Chief and the Sammy talking about it.”

“You sure?”

“He’s sure,” replied Hernandez, cutting his second line of speed.

Diego felt his grip tighten around the neck of his beer bottle, his mind rushing with jumbled thoughts. That same beer had grown hand warm like the crucifix from his cabin as Hernandez music drowned out the silence and gloom.

“We have to do something,” Diego shouted over the raw music, slamming his beer bottle down on the speed dusted cabin table, white powder whipping away in little spindrifts. Pilsner frothed out the top like a high school science project.

Panicked, Hernandez grabbed toilet paper from his bathroom and tried to contain the spill. “Watch my gear, pendejo!”

“No, fuck this,” Diego turned the music down. “We can’t just sit here drinking beer, getting smashed. Not if Tala is over there, we have to do something!”

“Oh fuck you, man. Just because you gotta boner for her.”