Murmansk-13

Briefly, she watched Diego struggling to manhandle the recalcitrant and traumatised Captain while shouldering the semi-automatic. Tala had omitted instructions on disengaging the safety and wished Nielsen were on-hand. If they were engaged in a gunfight, she doubted it would be a long one.

She sighed knowing freedom was near, yet refusing to allow any chink of hope to pervert her mind and dilute the tired admixture of fear and inevitability that had gestated in the cells. That fatalism had hardened into psychological armour, manifesting itself in acts of bravery and preservation – not of herself, but Katja and her crew. Vaguely she wondered if they knew how much dread and regret were the drivers to her toughness.

The group looked up as one as she returned. “Three in the atrium, only cover is the consoles. We’ll head down to the right as we look now. We move as one and we move when they’re not looking.” Tala looked down at Tor, the Captain was gazing at her with glazed, bloodshot eyes. His features had become grey and drawn as if his very essence of life had been drained away. “We have to move fast and quiet. Sir, do you understand me?”

Tor stared for a moment, then nodded ethereally his eye never really catching hers.

“Captain, you will endanger us all if you can’t.”

Something about the word ‘endanger’ seemed to grasp at his conscience like a bur. A brief glimmer of cognizance and recognition lit up his eyes. For a moment, Captain Tor was pulled from whatever mental escape he’d sought to the very real escape before him.

Tala turned her focus to Diego. “Keep him close, if he starts to make a lot of noise or falls back we leave him.” Like he left me before.

Katja snarled at the instruction, her skin incandescent in the dark, but she remained silent, knowing enemies lay within an arguments earshot. Perhaps Katja wondered if that had been Tala’s attitude when she’d been struggling to pull it together; in those first days out of the morgue.

In a sudden rush of guilt, Tala realized it had been. She’d been ready to abandon Katja to her fate. Were she facing armed hostiles, maybe she would have done. In that moment she knew she couldn’t abandon the Captain, even if it meant risking death.

“I’ll take point,” Tala said, knowing that it would be so, regardless. “Stay close.” She paused, waiting to see if the Captain would remain still. He wavered in the dark, but looked ready to move. Silently, she padded out to the video screen again, this time her group in tow.

Once more, Tala peered into the atrium. The group hadn’t moved. Maybe they were debriefing, or simply talking, she chose not to give it much thought and dropped to her haunches, letting the strapped gun settle in the crook of her back. She turned and indicated for the others to do the same. The Captain struggled against his pressurized suit into a slouch. Tala wondered how withered he’d become, his body pressed thin under all those layers of synthetic material. Her gaze lingered on Tor for just a moment before she scuttled out from behind the video screen, darting behind the first console.

Nervously she looked back as the others followed. Diego had pulled the Captain down onto all fours and did the same himself. Tala had to concede, it was a good idea. Protected from the friction of the coarse, once orange carpet by their oxygen padded EVA suits, they appeared to float over the surface like balloons. The added benefit was they weren’t conveying themselves using their clattery mag boots.

Katja came last, Hernandez EVA suit drapped over her arm. She moved lithely in her blood spattered jumpsuit, but quickly realised she wouldn’t be able to fall in behind the console. The girl froze and dropped to all fours like Diego and the Captain before her, only she was exposed and lit up by the video screen behind.

Panic setting in, Tala grabbed the Captain and darted to the next console without looking. Silently she twirled to Diego and Katja, her palm held out in a stopping gesture. She raised two fingers on both hands and mimicked a hopping motion. They could only remain concealed in pairs, the consoles simply not big enough to hide them altogether.

Furtively, Tala glanced back toward where she’d last seen Smith and the soldier. The threesome remained in situ. Ildar slightly aside, he looked like a boyfriend watching his partner flirt with another man, to his side were stacked two columns of coolers. Most likely the vials Katja had spoken of, ready for handoff.

Tala glanced back to Diego. She pointed to herself and Tor, then the next console. She then pointed at Diego and Katja and indicated the console she was currently crouched behind. Diego nodded his understanding and limbered up, clipping his gun to a karabiner hanging unused at his waist. The Colt refused to be shouldered against the smooth material of his suit.