Murmansk-13

The effort to stand was herculean. In that singular moment Hernandez felt his body shutting down, cables being pulled from the consoles of his mind. The lights of his life began blacking out, big industrial strip lights extinguishing with a satisfying clank. Memories, hopes and dreams being closed away – guttering out and insignificant. Hernandez hadn’t heard himself bellow, a deep atavistic grunt as he staggered upright on blood drained legs, he grasped the keypad, his fingers white.

In the ward, Mihailov’s eyes widened. Close up Hernandez could see the total ruination of the man. The Bulgarian stripped back to sinew, cartilage and bone. He roared into the Perspex, the inside of his mouth chewed up, tongue masticated into a nub by smashed teeth.

“There you are,” the big man said, unperturbed. Approaching steps reverberated with an echoic click. “Thought you were dead.”

The passwords were always birthdays. Nielsen had set the quarantine. His daughter was called Freya, she was at school or university. Useless knowledge. Her birthday was in May. I fucking know this, how many times… The twenty-first. He punched in 0521. INCORRECT PASSWORD splashed across the liquid crystal display.

“I can see you,” the big man said in a thick, gruesome singsong. He worked the bolt on Nielsen’s rifle. “I’ve figured out how to work your ship.”

Fucking European date form. 2105. ACCESS GRANTED – OVERRIDE QU-TINE. Yes, fucking yes. Hernandez mashed the enter button on the keypad, his head pressed uselessly to the frosty bulkhead, fringe lank across his face. He could hear the little pneumatic bars securing the door, slide back in their runners.

“You should probably stop what you are doing.” The big man chambered the round.

Hernandez last memory was of the night he and Tala spent together. It was loving and pure in a way that was neither romantic, nor primal. It had transcended labels and exceeded anything Hernandez could ever hope to achieve with another human being. It had been a product of years spent in isolation, cohabiting within a tiny micro society, existing beyond the spectrum of human experience. An existence repeated millions of times over throughout the galaxies tonnage of deep space vessels, solar coasters and even on the seagoing ships of Earth.

Within the bell jar of a deep space vessel every possible emotion is magnified. Love, hate, anger, joy… Between each citizen inside the fragile metal can, an unseen thread is formed containing a history of emotions and memories that become trapped and cultivate like bacteria in agar jelly or wheat in soil. Most equal out into a grey equilibrium, the optimal status for coexistence. Others colour red and anger wells, like opposing magnets they drag apart.

For Hernandez and Tala there had been a carefree blue. Kindred souls who were too scarred to exist in the real world, too fundamentally eroded to mesh as a true couple. They’d been friends, shared a friendship that was adamantine. They had experimented that night to test their friendship and it had held.

It had held. That was Hernandez final memory. A friendship that held. Tala.

“Say hello,” Hernandez began, his voice slurred by his ruined jaw, “to my little friend.”

Hernandez heard the hermetic seal of the ward door part. Too late, the big man realized what was being unleashed upon him. Mihailov tore, naked of flesh, ravenous and feral from behind the door. A sepulchral scream parting a lipless mouth as he charged his prey.

If the big man ever screamed or loosed a round from the rifle, Hernandez never heard it. He was already gone.

☣☭☠

“How do we get in?” Diego nervously prodded the interlocking sphincteral plates of the airlock like a cat pawing a carp lake. The strange membraneous material appeared metallic to the eye, but bowed to the touch. Soft and organic. Repulsed, Diego stepped back. “Do we want to get in?”

All around the stations structure squealed against the increasing strain. Shell plates pulled against their rivets threatening to tear; braces and frames designed to support Murmansk-13 in hard vacuum in an upright orientation and against a steady self-imposed centrifugal movement began to crush beneath inertia far beyond its design parameters. Murmansk-13 and the horror within was a station out of time.

“What choice do we have?” Katja replied, bracing herself against the jury-rigged hermetic docking compartment. The Iban arc would have been a hugely unconventional docking for a station designed to twin with Soviet modules. Once secured to the outer ring and the locks mounted, there would have been significant doubt over the seals compatibility. Subsequently, a docking compartment had been constructed on the station side to avoid any potential depressurization of the module.