Ever since boarding the Riyadh at Snakes Head, Aidan had been going through the motions heartsick and angsty. As far as he was concerned the crewmen that had formed his shipmates were an interchangeable set of faces drawn from the four corners of a distant planet. Like an automaton, he’d carried out the tasks required of him in his training book, then slipped away to his cabin to mope. He’d bonded with no-one and from various accidental interactions, realized many of his shipmates didn’t even know his name, just cadet. To them he was another face as well but less experienced, somebody to tease and overshadow.
That had changed in the last couple of days. A part of him now wished he was suiting up, to enter the breach with Diego and Hernandez, to save Tala. It was romantic and heroic, Aidan would be aiding his ship and his crew, helping bring them all home and him closer to Addy. It was quite at odds for the reasons he joined the academy in the first place. In his abstract pursuit of loneliness, he’d found camaraderie.
But then Aidan rubbed his neck, every sinew and muscle felt swollen and pummelled. Every fibre twitched sparks of fire from his shoulders to the base of his skull. It couldn’t be, like a cadet he would be left safe and aboard. And alone.
A gauntleted hand rested heavily on Aidan’s shoulder. The cadet jumped, wrenching his neck. He grimaced.
“Sorry, Aidan. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Chief Engineer Nilsen was suited up, his helmet cradled beneath his arm. He’d aged a decade in less than a week, his stubble betrayed tufts of greying hair. Hard lines ran from the corners of his bloodshot eyes. Those eyes looked at the rivet gun. “You know how to use that?”
Aidan hefted the warranty-voided device to his face. “Aim and press the trigger. Hopefully I don’t have to use it.”
“Hopefully,” replied Nilsen distractedly, then leaned into Aidan, lowering his voice. “Don’t let Dr. Smith aboard this vessel. Whatever happens, I don’t want her back onboard. Nobody comes back here you don’t recognise, that clear?”
“Yes, Chief,” Aidan replied, he felt the hairs on his arms bristle.
“Look after yourself and my ship. You’ll have some stories to tell when you get home.” Nilsen’s attempt at levity fell flat, his lips smiling in a tight line. He nodded and walked away.
Aidan watched Nilsen walk over to the Captain, who dressed alone and purposefully in the corner, away from the rest of the crew and free of assistance. Everybody appeared to be keeping a safe distance from the Captain with the exception of the Chief Engineer.
The senior officers appeared spooked and that scared Aidan most of all, whatever happened to the Captain aboard the station was still wrapped in riddles and mystery. That he was no longer whole was a mere echo of what awaited his shipmates. The Captain’s cold fearful words in the mess hall couldn’t halt the inevitable, Falmendikov had left them no choice. Aidan felt his hands tighten around the grip of the rivet gun.
Hernandez and Diego were the first to enter the airlock, the remaining crew filtering behind. Were it not for the affected joints of the EVA suits, Aidan imagined they would be walking like the condemned.
Nilsen’s instructions about the Doctor had stolen away notions of heroism. Remembering the unstoppable chunk of Murmansk-13, etching tiny lines across his visor at a thousand miles an hour, Aidan no longer envied his companions, only wished circumstances had been different. That Diego and Hernandez had remained as alien to him as he was to them.
Now Aidan imagined his friends stood in the airlock waiting whatever fate had deranged the Captain, sickened Mihailov and killed Peralta. Like the soldiers of World War One, stood at the ladders of their trenches awaiting their turn to go over, the romance and adventure long dead.
He hoped they’d return.
Nilsen and Tor were the last to enter the airlock. As the internal door closed, Nilsen turned to the viewport. In the whiteness of the Evac Suite, the cadet stood, his long neck bent at a painful angle, watching the remaining crew preparing to leave. The gangly lad looked oddly young despite his height, surrounded by the emptiness of the Riyadh and in civvies that singled him out as a painfully average looking teen.
Nilsen gulped, if they all failed to return the cadet would linger for months on a ghost ship. “You know I had no choice, right? Someone had to take control.”
The other men had donned their helmets, even Sammy, who appeared close to a panic attack when Diego affixed his. Only Nilsen and Tor were helmetless. Tor worked to secure the final cinches in the lifeline that would tether them. They’d put Sammy in the middle. “I know, I lost it there for a while. I just hope you’re happy taking this much responsibility for this fucking mess.”
“I’m not,” said Nilsen, securing the line to a karabiner at his belt, he and Tor would bring up the rear of the line, “but I have a wedding waiting for me and a daughter. A life. We have to try something.”
The airlock was cramped with so many crewmen in it and two hover dollies. For those unaccustomed to spacewalking, the claustrophobia of the airlock and the suits would do little to stifle their fears. In the tight space, Nilsen took Tor’s helmet. “What made you think about… Sammy found a noose in your cabin.”
Tor winced, his breath caught. “My boys grown up without me, Jan. My wife loves my wallet and what awaits me if we even get home? Dead crewmen, a ruined cargo, a smashed up ship. It’ll be years of enquiries, criminal negligence cases and prison,” a nascent tear glistened in the corner of Tor’s eye, “what I saw was bad, Jan, over there, but this whole fucking thing has ruined me.”
“So why come with us now?” The other crewmen had turned to look at Nilsen and Tor talking, the interminable wait for whatever was aboard Murmansk-13 being drawn out further.
“An old Captain once told me, you’re always one bad trip away from a prison cell or a coffin,” the teardrop slid from his eye as a smile curled Tor’s lips. “What else do I have to lose now?”
Chapter 17
Numb, the survivors of District Four listened in apathetic silence as the sepulchral moans of the infected shivered through the grating and into the wiring conduit where they sat. For Oleg and Jamal, their haven of safety for the last four years was gone, buried beneath a roiling sea of decay. The man they’d looked toward for leadership and direction dead.
Gennady had died to save Tala, in doing so he’d charged her with leading the remains of his men to safety and to care for Katja. Barely alive, the porcelain faced girl stirred against Tala’s shoulder, but remained senseless, oblivious to the countless infected yearning to reach them just meters away, unflinching to their calls. She trembled in a mind space far away.
They sat insensate until Oleg observed the hoard, recklessly piling on top of one another, their rotting bodies forming a clamouring putrescent pyramid in their desperate attempts to pry open the grate. As the first skeletal fingertips feathered the aluminium access panel, they decided to move. Gently, Tala woke Katja, her eyelids fluttered open to reveal unfocused eyes. “We have to go, Katja.”
Without direction, they wended through the tight conduit, their pace set by Katja, her body ravaged. All of them just wanted to be away from the essence of putrid flesh, the metallic tang of freshly spilt blood and the ceaseless drone of the massed infected. Incrementally they headed downward.