Murmansk-13

The compartment was a small archway, built to accommodate one brave or expendable crewman. The fact its inner port was cutaway suggested it was never needed and never completely removed. Whether a product of half-assery or abandonment, the part deconstructed frame emanated human failure. We tried to plunder them without care or forethought and they punished us.

Now she and Diego stood before it. The arc that had bore infection, began the decay. Had it been a trap? As the scout party fell ill some scurrilous tech likened their decline to the mysterious Curse of the Pharaohs that plagued Egyptologists. Some scoffed, others put forth the hypothesis the infection had been contracted by the Iban’s, forcing them to abandon their arc – perhaps the infection itself had precipitated the launch of the generation arcs in the first place. In truth nobody knew, both arcs were found drifted through space abandoned, jumping along a predefined course to a destination they would never meet. Ageless and extraterrestrial Mary Celeste’s.

Behind Katja and Diego the darkness of District-12 weighed heavily against their backs. They’d crossed the lightless rotunda, steps reverberating in the shadows, unhindered. With the secrecy that shrouded District-12, Katja had been almost disappointed to find the module bore the standard hallmarks of the rest of the station. The same essence of incomplete desertion.

At one point they’d heard harried footsteps. Organized and human. For a second Katja let her heart leap. Imagined Tala bursting through the corridor, ready to reassume control of their escape and her wellbeing. Diego had held her back, said it was probably Dr. Smith’s team bugging out. Katja tried to pull free of his grip, angry and adamant. Then the static peel of their hazmat speakers squawked along the corridor, breaking the spell. As the footsteps faded, Diego stared at her with hard eyes before stalking away. He would leave her to her impetuousness if she faltered again, she was sure.

The further outboard they travelled the greater the gravitational forces became and the faster the tumbling station spun up. The highest G loads began to press against the consciousness. Coloured spots and darkness bloomed against the backs of scrunched shut eyelids. Near pulverizing forces threatened to collapse the bond between mind and ravaged bodies.

There was nowhere else to go. Katja had brought them here and now she wavered. Would death be preferable to what lay inside the arc? Would their flesh rot away, their brains atrophy like the used up abominations that haunted Murmansk-13? For a millisecond Katja tried to imagine a mindless ravenous existence, instead she pictured her father and his dead eyes. The total lack of life displayed within. She held back a sob and wished she’d been left to the morgue.

Diego was also at a pause. “My Mother always taught me to be a gentleman,” he said, gesturing for Katja to lead the way.

“A gentleman holds open the door,” Katja replied with stilted levity. “This feels like a really bad idea.”

Diego scratched his cheek and placed the gauntleted hand to his upper chest where a gold chain terminated beneath his suit. Shadows thrown by the emergency lights in the docking corridor, splashed down and across his face. The shadows squared his jaw and cut masculine troughs in his cheeks. His eyes vanished in blackened sockets beneath a strong brow bone, part ghoulish, part handsome. As the crushing force of gravity beset them again, he replied in a considered, strained tone. “Seems like the only idea left.”

“How… how do we go about this?” Katja asked.

Diego shrugged. “I ain’t got much experience cracking open alien airlocks.”

The heady excitement warranted by the nascent plan had weathered into trepidation. Their escape hinged on something fundamentally inhuman. A harbinger of disease or curse still tethered to the very station they were trying to escape. Reluctantly Katja stepped beneath the remnants of the docking archway, her fingers brushed against the alien membrane. It felt like aluminium flesh, cool but alive. Something pulsed through the whorls of her fingerprints. Sensual, almost sexual.

Like a radio signal buried within a frequency band that suddenly gained crystal clarity, Katja realized she’d been compelled to this point. Drawn to the arc – a moth to a flame.