Murmansk-13

Behind, Stewart, who Aidan imagined was little more experienced than he at EVAing, appeared to be walking through quicksand. In his rush to escape, the young radio officer stumbled against the counterintuitive double step mag boots. Aidan watched the station junk loom large in Stewarts visor and wondered what expression of fear the golden mirror shade masked.

Aidan turned to face the object. In the last second the great metal appendage appeared to change trajectory rising upward, although that was probably an optical illusion caused by proximity. In a final bid, Aidan flattened himself supine against the deck. The musculature of his body clenched in unison with his teeth. In perfect silence he felt the structure of the Riyadh quake beneath him, then the blinking lights of distant stars above blackened. He felt his head lurch sharply to the left, as if something was trying to rip his head from the neck, then impact detritus skittered across him; cleaved portions of the monkey islands railings and shattered aerials.

Aidan lay for a long time and felt the beautiful ache of his neck. He felt his chest rise and fall as the severed lump of station began charting a course away into space trailing pieces of the Riyadh that couldn’t keep up. A radiation warning sign with a portion of railing still attached twirled in unbalanced centrifuge, disappearing beneath the titanium horizon of his ship which appeared to be largely intact.

He traced two large gouges in his visor caused by great unseen metallic claws . Mere millimetres in the almost infinite vastness of space had spared his suits integrity. Gingerly he tried to turn his head and sit up, battling the aftermath of the junks passage. His wrenched neck muscles resisted, stiffly, in fact his whole right side was wracked with the agony of countless impacts. No small wonder looking at the drifts of metal detritus that had built up along the right side of his body.

Stupefied, Aidan surveyed the scoured and shattered remnants of the monkey island, littered with unrecognizable glinting shrapnel. The railings had been uprooted, great bolts pulled free from the vessels titanium plating which had buckled into jagged peaks, in other places clipped metal stakes were all that remained. The aerials, transmitters, receivers and radar scanners were all gone, cast into space or deadheaded to less than a half metre. Crazy cat-o’-nine-tails of gold plated wiring and multicoloured plastic flailed in the wake of the space junk like palm fronds in an ebbing hurricane.

Hernandez and Stewart were gone. The magnetic cam was partially torn from the deck, the loop to which their tethers secured had parted and twisted. A smashed karabiner lay a short distance away, collected by a peak of titanium plate. A few threads of high tensile steel fused around it. The airless vacuum of space was filled with little reflective viscous blobs, crimson in colour that coalesced with the jets of coolant, water and other fluids that had constituted the junks comet tail.

Aidan checked his suits pressure gauge, convinced its integrity had been compromised by the field of serrated debris he was now shackled too. There was a tiny leak, pressure was leeching slowly, the dial moving imperceptibly leftward. Not a problem if Aidan could free himself and operate the airlock in a timely manner, the latter an operation he’d never performed before.

He tried to slow his breathing, the reduced gravity doing little to dampen his shakes befuddling Aidan’s hands as he unconsciously worked the karabiners. He was slipping into shock as adrenaline fled from his system, his eyelids grew heavy and his thoughts unfocused.

Aidan contemplated lying down, his body robbed of its strength. A ravenous emptiness filled his core that only sleep or food could fill. He’d survived the impact, but the ambivalence that had coloured his life was leading him to somewhere far away. He thought of Addy, that late summers afternoon day when they stole into the backyard of her families restaurant. The fading sunlight slanting in golden bars through the thin canopy of trees. The goodbye, a hug and… so close. He tried to remember what her voice sounded like, how her hair smelt.

“Don’t you fucking die on me cabrón!” The static laced words cut through Aidan’s memories like a squall. He opened his eyes, unaware he’d sagged, ragdoll, forward. Hernandez was swimming through the remains of the Riyadh, freefalling and trying to find something solid to push off. “I’m going to need you to catch me.”

Aidan tried to form a cogent sentence as Hernandez tip toed across a sideways orientated stairwell of carnage. Instead, only slurred and senseless syllables escaped his lips and Hernandez made little headway.

Hernandez stopped, his suit limp. “OK, listen to me. You got me?” He sounded breathy and exhausted. “I’m going to be coming your way, ready?”

Aidan nodded, although he imagined the motion was meaningless to Hernandez.

“Please be fucking ready, man.”