Murmansk-13

Tor thought it was a shame they weren’t going to make it. The warning whistle in his breathing set had been sounding for at least five minutes now, informing him that his oxygen supply had dwindled below twenty percent. As they pulled themselves further from the station, the encumbering effects of inertia multiplied; stifling their progress and sending bursts of agony through already spent muscles.

Coupled with the vague sense of detached panic brought upon by the whistle, Tor knew he would be breathing against a closed valve at least a hundred meters before he reached the Riyadh. That was if any of the debris windmilling from the station didn’t simply smash into the ship. Or them.

“I’m not going to make it, Captain,” Tala said, her voice sleepy and reconstituted, the whine of her warning whistle audible through the speaker.

“Just got to keep moving, sailor.”

They’d managed to clip onto the line as best as they could. Both suits were damaged after countless hours of misuse, scurrying through Murmansk-13, being smashed into decks from a height and shot at. The closing gate on Tor’s karabiner flapped flimsily shut, the mechanism bent at some point. With his legs flailing against the tumbling rotation of Murmansk-13 it would take very little for him to be whisked from the line.

Death, it seemed, was once more inevitable.

Tor digested the thought remotely as he shuffled his hands across the line. He pictured the sinuous fibres of his biceps and deltoids beginning to tear. The intensifying wrenching pain was otherworldly. He knew it was there, but he no longer sensed it within the physical domain.

Leading the line, Tor just had to keep moving forward. Even if it was useless, he was going to get as far as he could. The thought occurred to him that he would be better to simply let go, Tala was stronger, perhaps without him slowing her progress she could save herself.

But she too was flagging. Her movements retarding, lumbering. Perhaps she’d begun the crossing with less oxygen, her body succumbing to the first debilitating effects of hypoxia.

He cursed under his breath, damned that he would see another of his crew die before his eyes. Damned from the start of the voyage to a Hell that preceded death.

The Riyadh was flexing madly now, pivoting up, but mostly down on its docking rig. Flailing against the momentum of its host. Tor could see the hydraulic rams and telescoping joints of the clamping rig were twisted and mangled. The clamp itself vibrated against the crushed ring, almost disembodied from the rest of the mechanism. Gashed hoses blew viscous bubbles of hydraulic fluid that seemed to catch the wind and blow away. It was a visual trick, in reality the bubbles were stationary as the Riyadh tumbled away.

Then it happened. In a dreamy moment of calm, Tor was listening to the somniferous drone of his fading warning whistle when the shell plate sheared from Murmansk-13. Compared to some of the other debris being shed from the husk, this piece was almost inconsequential in size, yet Tor’s eye caught it assuredly as it arced, glinting from the curved exterior of the Central Command module.

Fluttering, free from the momentum of its parent structure, the plate adopted a trajectory that took only two seconds to fulfil. Eyes widening despite his fatigue, Tor watched as the plate scythed across the docking ring and smashed into the clamps with shuddering, violent silence.

“Oh God…” was all Tor managed to say, his voice slurred.

Biopsied from the wreck, the Riyadh fell away instantly. Tor felt the line beneath his gauntlets pull unfeasibly taut then part in his grip within milliseconds. Like an overstretched rubber band, Tor watched two hundred meters of winding high tensile steel twist elastically from where it had been anchored. Rushing to meet Tor and Tala.

Unable to turn away, Tor was sure the line would bifurcate them before wrapping itself around the Riyadh. Instead the frayed end curled away overhead, its force deadened by the opposing movement of the ship. The final fifty meters seemed to be closing up, drunkenly Tor imagined the Riyadh was reeling them in, freed from the virulent yoke of the station.

“Got to wake up Tala,” Tor said. Tala was dangling limply from the line beside him. When she mumbled into her mic, Tor couldn’t hear a whistle, his own hardly discernible now. Tor reached out and punched Tala in the shoulder. “Wake up!”

Tala straightened a little as the lifeline spooled up like a broken cassette. No longer secured, the line lost its reassuring tension, feeling flaccid even as it threatened to slip through their gauntlets. It became harder to discern the definite compass points Tor had set, the stars wheeling slower as they entered freefall in tandem with the Riyadh.