“No, it’s not far.” Tor said, Nilsen turned to look at Tor, his expression sympathetic. Tor found it patronizing. “I need to know the way ahead down there is clear. We did not scout this far before.”
Behind them Diego and Hernandez totted the dollies, spaced by Tor so they would not collide, but not so far that they could catch one of the poorly illuminated supporting spaceframes that bracketed the extremities of the corridor. Nilsen had tolerated Tor’s micromanagement in stoic silence, Pettersson had rolled his eyes.
“Where is Sammy?” Pettersson asked, looking at the dolly handlers, then back down the passageway. Tor had barely seen Petterson’s head out of his hand drawn map since they’d entered the station, but now he mentioned it Tor couldn’t recall when the erratic wheezing of Sammy ceased to provide background noise.
“He was tired,” replied Diego, unconcerned. “He stopped at the warehouse, when we passed District Six. That’s where we’re going back to, right?”
It was apparent Tor’s mouth agape appearance quickened Diego’s response. “We can’t wander off on our own here, we have to stick together.”
“Captain, he’s really struggling with the weight of that suit…” Diego whispered, but his voice now shook with uncertainty.
“Fuck… Fuck!” Tor pictured the old Steward, torn apart by those hoards. Another dead crewman, all his fault. He hadn’t even realized the old sod had dropped from the party. Why hadn’t he said something?
Tor felt the weight of Nilsen’s gauntlet on his shoulder. “Go back to District Six, we’ll be fine.”
Tor clenched his eyes shut, trying to stop the brighter light pouring from the Central Command passageway burn into his retinas. A pounding headache was forming in the meat of his brain.
Nilsen barely paused to await a decision, Hernandez and Pettersson swept passed, following the Chief into the well lit, wide corridor. Tor watched as they became shadows, dancing across the opposing bulkhead as they ventured toward Central Command. Tor wondered if he would see them again.
“Sorry, Captain. He was…”
“Tired, yes.” Tor turned from the light, Diego stood pensively behind the hover dolly positioning it between himself and the Captain. Tor tried to massage his eyelids, the eyeballs beneath felt grainy. “Let’s go find Sammy.” Tor said, and hope he’s in a better state than Falmendikov or Mihailov.
The wide passageway toward the central superstructure was perfectly flat to the eye and yet Nilsen couldn’t shake the impossible feeling he was walking downhill. It was clear the further they walked from the service corridor the weaker the centrifugally generated gravity became. The problem was endemic with all centrifugal stations and the primary reason most counter-rotating ring stations housed only a drive at their core.
Murmansk-13 was peculiar, the Central Command superstructure served as both the engineering core, where the inertial drives and stabilizing thruster compartments could be found, but also as a kind of conning station akin to the bridge of a ship. “They must have needed an artificial gravity generator inside the superstructure,” Nilsen thought out loud, assuming both Hernandez and Pettersson were experiencing the same effect. It stood to reason, the station was vast, so vast in fact that an off-centre control position would have been impractical, unmanageable and difficult to police.
“So when is it going to kick in then?” Hernandez asked trying to control the hover dolly. They were notoriously difficult to handle in any atmospheres above 0g but below 1.
“Maybe they shut it off,” Pettersson surmised. “Before they abandoned the station.”
“Then why draw all but the emergency power to the core?” Nilsen said, his hooping voice echoed in the curved deckhead above, he’d never liked how his voice sounded when he spoke in English.
“Keep the drives alive, perhaps the Russians are remotely controlling the thrusters, trying not to scuttle her. Maybe they’re trying to sell her.”
“I don’t buy it, Oscar,” Nilsen said, not looking at the second engineer behind him.
“You think someone is here?”
“Where did our good Doctor go?”
Pettersson never answered and Nilsen never expected him too.
Not looking, Nilsen imagined Pettersson scrunching his usually manful, chiselled features up as he realized he’d overlooked the obvious. It wasn’t an unusual look for the Swede. Pettersson exuded professionalism with his permanently neat trimmed hair and immaculate coveralls, but it was all a facade. Pettersson had earned promotions through sycophancy and coercion within the Saudi fleet and often found himself in way over his head as a Second Engineer aboard the Riyadh. His preoccupancy with recreating a floor plan of Murmansk-13 lent him a veil of distant calm Nilsen found dangerously misplaced as the ship died around them.
In many ways, Pettersson reminded Nilsen of Tor when the Captain first joined the company. A shoegazing fop who’d ascended the ranks by virtue of his ability to adlib competency like a talking doll mimics emotion. While he was bereft of Tor’s charisma, his quiet self-assuredness made him a more trustworthy figure to the tight buttoned manning agents back home, more employable and in Nilsen’s estimation far more dangerous than the Captain who recognized his own faults.
Unfortunately, Pettersson had also become the only crewman Nilsen felt he could truly rely on in any capacity and his immunity to the cancer that swaddled the Riyadh had been reassuring.
The broad steel doors that had punctuated the horizon of the empty corridor since they’d left Tor – demarking the transit from outer ring to Central Command – loomed before them. Close up, Nilsen realized they were several-inches-thick steel built to survive a significant pressure loss situation with automatic servos discreetly placed at the sides. They were also, predictably, closed.
Above and beside a large extraneous sign welcoming them to Murmansk-13 in several languages, a single cylindrical surveillance camera stared lazily toward the way Nilsen had come. He’d monitored the camera the entire distance of the arterial corridor, it never moved and yet Nilsen could not shake the feeling he was being watched back.
“Shall I get to work?” Asked Hernandez, the Mexican parked the dolly and removed a cankered looking electricians screwdriver from a beat-up tool belt. Hernandez sighed at the state of his replacement tool armoury as he approached the door keypad.
Sammy lent breathlessly within the recessed entranceway to District Six, half shrouded by shadow, his cheekbones etched in darkness. The old steward looked pale, even in the scant light of the service corridor, his chin resting against the gold helmet coupling on his EVA suit.
“He doesn’t look so good, Cap,” said Diego, quietly enough so as to not offend the steward.
In the wan emergency light, Sammy looked waxy, his skin moist with sweat or vomit. Tor found his anger with both Diego and Sammy diminishing as he neared the steward. Sammy did indeed look ill. In many ways, Sammy and Tor were kindred, of the remaining crew, it was Sammy whose sanity came as close to tearing. The elderly stewards friend died during the scouting mission, the rigorous routine of a ships galley, Sammy’s life, was in disarray. He’d been unable to adapt.
“Sammy, are you OK?” Tor’s voice hissed through the empty corridor, Sammy didn’t respond, they were less than fifty meters away.
In the pit of his stomach, Tor felt lightness grow into sickness. Trepidation denied urgency. A grim familiarity tugged at the back of his mind, Tor looked at Diego and pointed to the small hunting rifle bequeathed by Nilsen, gesturing for the AB to hand it him. Diego raised an eyebrow, his face perplexed, reluctantly he pulled the rifle free from its gaffer tapped scabbard.