Murmansk-13

Tala heard the Doctor nearing, pulling the trigger against the empty clip as the soldier crumpled to the walkway, droplets of blood speckling the inside of the perforated faceplate obscuring the dead man inside. The anchor-like cylinder clattering against the aluminium grating. Momentarily stunned, Katja and Tor stared at the corpse before them.

“Go!” Tala screamed as she darted past the still dazed Diego, wrenching the gun and karabiner clear from his belt as she went. She overtook Katja and Tor, almost ripping the door from its hinges as she channelled her panic into forward momentum, her legs wobbly beneath her. “Move now! We have to move now!”

The personnel corridor beyond was dark and alien, emergency lights had just begun to kick in as Tala waited, allowing her bewildered group to follow. Diego was pushed through first, his suit still depressurizing with a flabby sounding hiss. Then Tor and Katja followed, Katja slamming the door in her wake.

Tala assumed point, scanning the corridor with the muzzle of her gun. She was acutely conscious that Dr. Smith might follow and occasionally peered back. All around the coving mounted lamps flickered silvery light, tossing deceiving shadows the length of the passageway, robbing the horizon of its depth. Once more the station lurched, Murmansk-13’s aluminium structure gave a plaintive groan. Tala was thrown at once forward and then back as if caught by a surging crowd, behind her Diego fell to the deck in the rumpled remnants of his suit.

“What’s happening?” Katja asked, helping the Captain pick Diego up. Her quailing voice reached down the throat of the corridor.

“I don’t know,” replied Tala, hushed. “I think the Chief has done something to the reactor.”

“What does that mean?”

Tala shrugged, not averting her gaze from the corridor ahead. “I guess it means we don’t have long.”

Then the distant squeal of suit speakers pierced the gloom, each word or sentence punctuated by a burst of static feedback. She supposed they didn’t typically use hazmat suits for stealth operations. That would be in their favour.

“They’re coming,” said Katja with breathless anguish.

Tala ignored her, she knew they were coming. She surveyed the corridor for cover and found none, only ephemeral shadows. There was no knowing how many soldiers were on route, but if they were communicating with one another through local radio she knew they were already outgunned. Trying to quell her rising panic, Tala slid to the bulkhead, the group falling in behind. She remembered seeing a side door when they’d first been led down the corridor, not far from the entrance to Central Command. Tala was sure they hadn’t passed it, but as the scatter of mechanically sharpened discourse grew near she found her strength of conviction weaken.

“Four… Mission critical… to kill.” The robotic sounding words drifted closer, voices and accents indistinct. She could hear the faint pad of plastic boots against linoleum. Then she saw the shapes, toneless boxes in the juddering light. At least three.

Her mouth was dry and her cheek ached. Finally Tala scoped the door, nary ten meters down. “Door!” Was all she said, pointing to the faint inconsistency in the bulkhead.

“There they are,” one synthetic voice cried out.

Tala wheeled around at the sound, strafing the darkened recesses of the corridor before darting into the transient shadows. She heard a static laced sob of pain as her shots were met in double time. She managed to pull open the door, providing her group cover as bullets shredded through the empty air of the passageway, snickering into deck plates and bulkheads. A couple of slugs lodged into the Formica door in her hand sending mini shockwaves through her flesh. It was a miracle she wasn’t hit.

Katja, Tor and Diego ran across the corridor as if it were hot coals, big loping steps as they disappeared through the door. Tala loosed another burst of gunfire before following them. She heard the returning volley of shots impact against the Formica as she sealed the entrance.

“Shit, we’re fucking trapped!”

Tala pivoted around at Diego’s exclamation. They were on a balcony overlooking the Central Command foyer, to her left office modules loomed, their black tinted glass walls only intersected by the occasional doorway. To her right an opaque glass balustrade curved the length of the cantilevered deck. Set back from her position, Diego, Katja and Tor flitted in a hysterical frenzy. She trained the muzzle of the submachine gun on the doorway, awaiting their pursuers ingress. “Find a stairwell, there has to be one!”

But that hadn’t quite been what Diego meant. The pungent stench of decay hit her last. Putrescine and cadaverine intoxicated the air around her, cloying and asphyxiating. Tala wretched. “How many?”

“A lot,” replied Tor, neutral.