The ship – his ship, sounded dead. They were running on auxiliary batteries and the reassuring, ever present hum of the engines was now absent. Nilsen had decided on the measure after the impact, weary of running Syntin through jolted fuel lines. Nilsen intended to do a full inspection of the engine post impact before running her again. The Riyadh wouldn’t be moving anywhere any time soon and the silence was suffocating. Tor fought away the unreal sound of the infected that filled the void like virulent tinnitus.
On the deck, frozen crimson beads of blood slowly thawed in tiny pools, spreading as they warmed. Nilsen and Sammy had taken Mihailov to the medical bay. Sammy then diligently returned to hand his Captain a scarce cup of coffee. Tor gave Sammy his leave as the tendrils of steam began to dissipate. There was a certain banal criminality allowing one of the last cups of coffee to go to waste, but Tor didn’t want to experiment with hot fluids against his ailing strength. He’d never felt so fundamentally drained.
Around the blood, playing cards scattered the deck like heraldic mosaics. Faces and backs now lay inert having been tossed from the table when a chunk of the godforsaken station clipped the ship. Another tear moistened Tor’s motionless features.
At some point, Tor had stripped his starlight warmed EVA suit down to his waist. The heavy garment hung limp behind him. Heat was bleeding out of the ship and Tor could feel his skin cool. Like the coffee before him, the Riyadh was growing cold. In two days, if the engine was damaged, they would expend the auxiliary battery and the Riyadh would become dark. Just like Murmansk-13.
Tor pictured the station reaching out and grabbing his ship. In entropy they became one and the same. Tor knew he had to fight it, but he also felt his eyelids grow heavy. Somewhere between shock and exhaustion he almost found sleep.
“How you holding up, Tor?”
Tor’s eyelids reopened. A renewed blaze of light scoured his retinas. Nilsen stood in the Evac Suite entrance. Tor formulated a sound that wasn’t a word, he knotted his brow trying to remember what he was going to say.
“You look like you could use something a little stiffer.”
Nilsen entered the suite, Tor stared stupidly at the little ceramic cup. “It’s gone cold.”
Nilsen nodded and gave Tor a moment to marshal his thoughts. He pulled a sterling silver hipflask from his shirt pocket and placed it carefully on the coffee table. Tor watched Nilsen’s fingerprints fade from the precious metal as he sat down and regarded Tor with sleepless, small eyes. “I imagine if Doctor Smith were here she would say you shouldn’t drink whiskey in your condition.” Nilsen unstoppered the flask and poured the cold, copper coloured bourbon into already cool coffee. “But, she isn’t.” Nilsen looked up, a tight grimacing smile puckered his face.
“She is not onboard?”
“No.”
“I see.” Tor sipped the tepid, liquor laced coffee. “Do you think she made it?”
Nilsen leaned back against the padded seat and took a heavy breath. “I don’t know. She was out there when the debris hit. When I picked myself up off the deck, she was gone.”
Tor’s eyes flicked to the empty hermetic wardrobe, the one whose content was not removed by his boarding party. “Do you think we’ve been setup?”
Nilsen rubbed his eyes with the meats of his palm. “Something was going on. I don’t know if it was Falmendikov who arranged it, or the Saudi’s and the doctor.”
“I just haven’t had time to process it. Any of it.” Tor bowed his head and fell silent, but he could feel Nilsen looking at him.
“You can’t blame yourself, Tor.”
Tor sighed, but didn’t look up. “Yeah, I’m a regular victim of circumstance, Jan. I’m the Captain of this clusterfuck. Good men are dead, Tala saved our asses twice back there and for all I know she’s dead too.” Tor looked at his friend. “I hold myself responsible. Me. And you damn well know the courts and inquests will too.”
“James died on my watch,” Nilsens usually calm, monotone voice crackled. “We’re all responsible.”
Tor let his eyes close again, his voice quietened. “I’m going to leave the apportioning of responsibility to the authorities. Right now all I want is to get the remaining crew home without losing anyone else.”
“We can’t do that without parts.”
Tor hammered the table with his fist. Displaced coffee lurched over the cups rim, forming a circular stain at its base. The hipflask fell on its side. Nilsen regarded Tor with steely eyes, but Tor did not see that. Tor could only see Peralta’s look of sheer panic as blood gushed from his severed arteries, remembered the way Falmendikov’s broken neck had lolled from side to side, could feel his body swelling as he was gradually exposed to hard vacuum. Tor doubted he could ever return to Murmansk-13 and maintain his sanity. He also knew he had no choice. “I’m sorry.” He said raggedly, shaking hands reached for the mug. Nilsen passed him the flask.
Tor swigged back a draft of bourbon. He allowed the viscous liquor an overlong tenancy in his mouth, filming his tongue and cheeks before swallowing. Tor felt the warmth bloom down his oesophagus, enveloping his lungs and then his trunk before replacing the top.
Tor suspected he would be hearing plentiful sympathetic platitudes if he made it back to Earth.
If.
Tor had often wondered when reading accident reports how such a seemingly benign situation could so rapidly escalate. Now he was beginning to appreciate for every seemingly benign situation, a dangerous undercurrent flowed beneath. Still, most of those spacefarers had only a nascent idea they were in any sort of danger before their FTL or EM drive vaporized them, or they were blown apart by sudden explosive decompression. Tor felt that would have been preferable to the cancerous decline facing his ship and crew, slowly being absorbed into Murmansk-13’s decay.
“How is Mihailov?” Tor finally asked to break the tension, he’d seen the Bulgarian only twenty minutes before. He knew he wasn’t good.
“Unconscious and in shock. He’s lost a lot of blood and looks feverish. We bandaged his wounds and elevated his legs,” Nilsen sighed. “There’s not a whole lot more I’m trained to do, Tor. We ain’t got anything for a blood transfusion, just a few plasma bags. If he wakes and he’s in pain I can sedate him, maybe see if I can get him on a drip to replace fluids. I don’t know, I’m just reading this from a book.”
“How about Hernandez and the cadet?”
“They’re OK. In shock I guess, but I let them go back to their cabins. They didn’t want to get in the way when we brought Mihailov in anyway. They were damn lucky.”
“Too bad James didn’t get some of that luck.”
The room slipped back into the unerring total silence of the Riyadh. “I’m sorry, I know he was your boy.”
“He was a damn good cadet, best this company had since I became a Captain. Fucking diligent and hardworking. I wanted to make sure he got a job.” Tor shook his head, his eyes glistened. “The only reason he was on this fucking voyage was because I insisted.”
Nilsen made to say something, then stopped. If he says it isn’t my fault, I’m going to fucking pop him. Nilsen remained silent.
If you work with somebody long enough an understanding is formed. You learn to adapt and to compromise. You learn when to push and when to hold back. Like any kind of relationship, for it to be successful there has to come symbiosis, particularly in space. You don’t get to go home and vent every night.