Murmansk-13

The door burst open. Tala fired a single shot into empty space and scuttled backwards on her haunches. Two soldiers had taken position either side of the jam. A volley of shots chipped the tiling at her feet, throwing ceramic shrapnel into her face. Tala dived toward an office door, slamming hard against the glass. She could hear the lock rattle in situ.

Behind her, unarmed, the rest of the group ran for the far side of the deck. They would be trapped between the infected and the gunmen. Completely open, Tala loosed three rounds on her rump, forcing one soldier back into cover just as the other moved forward drawing a bead on her, using the door for protection. They knew they could keep drawing her fire, deplete her ammunition. She scoped the forward moving soldier and pulled the trigger, feeling the weapon jar in her hand. Wide eyed she stared down at the cartridge jamming the ejection port as the soldiers, sensing their advantage, slid across the threshold.

Tala closed her eyes as the pointman levelled his gun to her position, heard footsteps bounding from behind her and assumed it was Katja – hoped it wasn’t. “No,” she whispered quietly to herself.

She heard a colossal metallic boom and for a millisecond thought the trigger had been pulled heralding an eternity of darkness. Then she was tumbling backward, her body unusually heavy as she slid across frictionless and homogenous tiles, bereft of handholds. Her neck muscles locked against the rising gravity, Tala looked up at the Central Command dome as the stricken station began re-orientating itself in space and realised she was accelerating toward the far bulkhead against which Diego and Katja were already being crushed. Tor was a little distance behind her, scrambling for purchase to cease his fall.

Indeed, they were falling now, the bulkhead becoming the deck and vice versa, the metal structure of Murmansk-13 squealing against forces far exceeding its design parameters. Whatever Nielsen had set in motion was gathering momentum and relegating all within to mere passengers. She imagined the stabilizing thrusters firing madly, woefully underpowered to right the vast station against such an impossible catastrophe as the station lurched once more, catapulting her sideways and over the restraints of the balustrade.

She braced for a shattering impact and felt bile scorch her gullet as gravity failed, sinking from several G to nothing in an instant. The two soldiers eddied across her field of vision, disorientated and desperately seeking sanctuary, the sound of their squawking panic lost against the din of grinding metallic plates. What had been up became down, below her the structural ribs supporting the dome were at least a hundred meters away. If gravity returned now, she would plummet to her death, dashed across the apex.

Above the clusters of infected that had milled about the foyer now hung like moribund shoals of fish in mid air. Whatever physiological driver kept the infected operative, struggled to recalibrate in the zero G environment, the sneering mob of pitiful creatures pawed the air trying to reach their breathing prey.

Tala felt something reach out, brushing against her shoulder. Instantly reviled she tried to beat it away, turned, and found Tor screaming at her. “Grab my hand!” His voice was tiny against the grating aluminium, but his eyes were alert. She grabbed his hand and he pointed at the balustrade.

Uselessly they swam in the absence of gravity. Tala twirled around to see Diego and Katja floating listlessly out across the emptiness of the foyer. From her position she couldn’t tell if either were conscious, but neither seemed to struggle against their weightlessness, nor the rising tide of desiccated, gnarled hands reaching out toward them. Slowly they were descending into their clutches. As the station continued through its inexorable somersault, Tala felt her body become substantial again.

Gravity returned with crushing force and an instantaneous thud as Tala and Tor smashed into the foyer deck. All around bodies fell from the sky with a melancholy wail and a waft of decay. Tala picked herself up quickly, ignoring the numbness that wracked her right arm and shoulder. Tor lay motionless for a second as she wheeled round to where she’d last seen Katja. Other than herself, nobody was on their feet. The scene was like a battlefield abandoned to time, twisted individuals in various stages of decomposition littered the deck, then gunfire shattered the solemnity.

Backed into a corner by the first onrushing infected, the two hazmat wearing soldiers lay down a volley of fire. Forgotten in their desperation, Tala thought to step out across the carpet of bodies just as the remaining hoard began rising, falteringly, to their feet. She heard the crepitus of broken bone as the abominations picked themselves up, then their incessant moan began anew, only occasionally shrouded by bursts of gunfire and settling shell plates.