Murmansk-13

The arterial corridor at the bottom was quiet and dank. The Riyadh seemed to drain of life in sympathy with Hernandez her emergency lights pale and flickering. The backup generator had entered fuel conservation mode, non-essentials would slip from background to standby modes and essential power drains would be divvied up into those that had variable power settings and those that didn’t. It hurt Hernandez to see his girl in such a state of disrepair. He’d doted on the Riyadh and she was suffering, her own lifeblood siphoning away. Another victim of the sickness that radiated from inside out Murmansk-13.

And still a seed of that sickness wandered the corridors of his ship.

Hernandez eyed the pressure bulkhead and the heavy door set within it sternward. Beyond lay the narrow tube that linked the forward superstructure with the aft machinery spaces. The corridor threaded between sixteen glistening, chromium steel cargo tanks designed to stow and preserve Exotic Matter. Like the lightweight spaceframes that cradled the tanks, the corridor was designed to flex under stress.

Every waking day, several times a day in fact, Hernandez routinely walked the one hundred and eighty one steps (counted under an amphetamine fuelled miasma) that separated the accommodation structure and the engine room. Each journey was mired by the same irrational image of the ship inexplicably snapping in half, or parting under a meteor strike, casting him into the hard vacuum of space.

He’d accepted life in space was fragile, but Hernandez always believed the agent of his demise would be wholesome and natural. Now he suspected the brittle tube and the heavy door at its terminus was all that segregated himself from the big man.

Hernandez pulled his eyes from the door and focused on the stairwell that led to the lower deck.

A merciful necrotic numbness overcame Hernandez as he traversed the final stairwell, knowing he would never go back up. The Medical Bay was dark and the chemical tang of astringent and old cryogenic fluid clung to the frigid air. Beyond the rows of disused cryopods was the ward viewport. A single figure stood behind the Perspex, lit up by blue strip lights that sapped the space of life.

Mihailov stared at the sad remnants of Hernandez, jaw in a hyper extended gape, head cocked to the side. Lazily he pawed at the viewport, leaving thin finger streaks through the film of filth that rimed the Perspex. The orangey-pink fluid partly obfuscated Mihailov, rendering the viewport translucent in patches.

As Hernandez shuffled closer he could see condensation run down the Perspex, carving narrow runnels through the putrescence. The Medical Bay was deathly cold and yet the quarantine ward beyond seemed to cook. Whatever virulence had initially taken hold had given way to a rapid chemical reaction. Hernandez got the grim impression Mihailov was fermenting inside the ward. Boiling away.

Hernandez met Mihailov’s eyes. Dead, bereft of recognition. Only voracious hunger was transmitted in the glare. “What the fuck did this station do to us, cabron?”

Mihailov emitted a dull keen and stumbled into the glass, his withered body pressing into the gore. Above, Hernandez could hear the faint whir of the pressure bulkhead door peeling back. Ursine footsteps clomp along the arterial corridor. Breath held, Hernandez discerned the big man’s forward movement stay, pictured him staring at the blood trails leading into the Medical Bay. Briefly Hernandez wondered if the big man would investigate – as if to answer a bulky step thudded on the stairwell. A hefty shadow bore down the faded cone of light that washed weakly across the deck on the far side.

Mihailov’s head lifted revealing the corded musculature of his neck, rust brown and exposed. Hernandez thought he saw the remnants of tissue around his nose twitch.

Another heavy step. The shadow grew larger.

His body was so weak now. In the clinical blue light, ribbons of blood dried or otherwise cast black paint splashes over his ashen flesh. Desperately, Hernandez willed himself to stand, eyes fixated on the ward keypad. Pain receptors began firing on overload as he tried to jerk himself upright, trying to press away his consciousness. Soon, he thought. Soon we can let all the pain slip away. 

Hernandez remembered Jamal in the cells, boosting him up to the grate. His leg septic with nascent gangrene, his shin bone holed and splintered. Jamal had helped free him so Hernandez could save his crew. So far he’d failed. Worse than failed. Aidan was dead and the Riyadh ostensibly hijacked. He had to do something. Had to do this.

The final step reverberated densely in the cold Medical Bay atmosphere. He was behind him now, but Hernandez wouldn’t turn around.