Murmansk-13

Tala snatched away the 9mm from Diego who’d simply stared at the weapon, mouth agape. Dropping to her knee, Tala popped three controlled shots through the bars before the soldier regained her footing. Two clipped the bars and ricocheted away, the third pierced the hood of the hazmat suit. The soldier dropped to her knees, eyes sightless, then her body folded up on itself. She wouldn’t move again.

Quickly appraising the bodies strewn within arms reach, neither soldier appeared to have the cell key on their person. It was probably for the best, had Dr. Smith sought out the appropriate key she would have realized the other was absent. Still, it would have made escape quieter. Seven rounds had already been fired, further rounds would be required to breach the cell lock. Soon the teams lollygagging would be noted, especially after so many extraneous shots.

No matter, there was no choice. Tala ushered Diego behind her, and laid a semi automatic burst into the cell lock at point blank range. The first burst did little but peel back the metal surrounding the keyhole and shower Tala with ballistic slivers of shrapnel and debris.

Quickly she brushed away the tiny burning hunks of metal and swore. The second burst sufficiently deranged the internal locking mechanism to free the door; pins and tumbler propelled across the narrow cellblock passageway. Tala forced the door open, the motionless forms of the soldiers formed a plastic and flesh wedge.

Then she froze, Tala was improvising and encountering unaccounted hurdles with every step. They couldn’t all leave the way Hernandez had, the hydraulic antechamber was sealed and the Captain was in no position to navigate the vents. Neither was Katja.

“Shit, now what?”

Jamal peered through the bars of his cell. “If this place is anything like the jails in Russia, those guards will have an electromagnetic release for the doors. Hell, they must have. There’s no keypad on this side.”

The first soldier was still breathing, grating breaths could be heard through his Hazmat suit and BA set. Tala placed a flat palm over his throat and began patting him down. If he awoke there would be no time for mercy.

“Katja, check the other one. It’ll be some kind of key fob. Diego, get the Captain up. We need to move now.”

Katja nervously stepped over the male soldier and blanched at the sight of the dead female, the body unnaturally bent, anchored to the deck by her heavy oxygen cylinder. Tala could see the second soldier had been young, dark skinned. Israeli perhaps, pretty in a conventional sort of way, maybe ex-IDF just out of mandatory service. The bullet had entered through her temple, she looked at peace, eyes closed.

Better than what the crew of Murmansk-13 had received, better than the crew of the DSMV Riyadh too. Still it was another life extinguished by her hand. Ilya had been irrefutably evil, Tala would never feel remorse for her actions against him, but she could have incapacitated the soldier non-lethally. She would still have been armed though, Katja would still have been in danger. They were the enemy, they would have killed you knowing the secrecy surrounding the station granted them immunity.

Tala snapped from her reverie as she found a hard, teardrop shaped fob clipped at the waist of the man. “I think I found it.”

Knowing the outer PVC fabric of the hazmat suit would be near impossible to puncture through conventional means, and knowing that the duo would soon be checked upon, Tala stood up and discharged a single round through the lose fabric. Katja loosed a surprised yelp.

She’d fired to avoid the soldier inside, although Tala cared little if he was hit by the ricochet. She reminded herself, they’d been the enemy.

As it happened, the shot or shrapnel had nicked the flesh eliciting a thin ribbon of blood. Molten gunpowder residue singed little fissures around the bullet hole where Tala tore away the suit.

The fob was an unremarkable lump of grey plastic. Tala ripped it from the soldiers belt loop and whirled around. Jamal was gazing at the scene with inscrutable eyes.

“You better be going,” Jamal said, his voice recovering its warm, bass command.

“You could come with us,” Katja spoke hopefully from behind Tala. She was holding the female soldiers 9mm, the weapon looked big and alien in her delicate hands.

Jamal shook his head, slowly. “You’re wasting time. I’d only slow you down. And…” he gestured to Oleg. “Somebody has to be here.”