Katja was the larger of the two of them, taller and slightly broader. She’d once been overweight, but was now toneless and thinning but still bigger than Tala by a degree of magnitude. Yet she always felt small when pressed into Tala’s arms. Perversely childlike in a constant state of diminishment. She was a thing to be protected, fragile and beautiful in her own inimitable way. Tala had tried to push her away in the hope she would be rendered the medical help she required. It had failed.
As long as Katja was in danger, Tala knew she would continue to fight.
“Arty is dead,” Katja said quietly, big blue eyes looking up at Tala, before nuzzling into her neck. “They didn’t help me.”
Tala didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say. She just kissed Katja on the temple and stroked her hair, only vaguely aware of the wide eyed stares from Diego and Tor. Katja had rejected her rejection and now Tala had to figure a way to save them all. She couldn’t welcome death just yet, not as long as Katja drew breath.
Chapter 19
Engine room spaces are hot and noisy affairs, regardless of the medium for thrust or drive. For Hernandez, a third of his life had been spent in the cacophonous cauldron of deep space engine rooms, first as a wiper, then as motorman or at least that was what he liked to brag. In reality much of his time was spent in the air conditioned and soundproofed environs of the engine control room, only ever venturing out to troubleshoot problems that couldn’t be resolved remotely.
In fairness, in the nebulous days of deep space travel, in the goldrush to the stars powered by retro engineered Iban concepts, using Earth analogue materials, fuels and beta-tested rockets – that was most problems. Blue collar engineers were only just learning about their new technologies as they were catapulted into deep space. Trial and error intertwined with life and death.
Subsequently, he was surprised both by the comparative quiet and cool of the various compartmentalized spaces that kept the station orbital, aligned, powered and gravitational. That, and the fact that any of the equipment still worked.
“There is no way this station hasn’t been maintained, man,” Hernandez said, staring into the relatively clean chip cluster and motherboard set of the control panel. Nilsen and Pettersson assessed the giant stabilization reactor, entombed and oscillating behind meter thick plates of tungsten. The two senior engineers appeared hypnotized by the movement of the central mass. “I mean there’s corrosion here and there, tripped fuses and the like,” Hernandez continued to himself. “But this place would have spun down by now. Or blown up.”
Hernandez closed the panel and joined the other two engineers, his mag booted footsteps clattering across the plating of the catwalk and echoing within the blue hued recesses of the chamber. Beneath his feet a mixture of water and coolant lapped, the coolant evident in little rainbow wisps rippling across the surface. In the event of a meltdown the reactor could be instantly dipped in coolant and the chamber filled with a fast hardening, near concrete foam.
“She is spinning down,” said Nilsen. “But you’re right, it’s an order of magnitude slower than it should be.”
“You reckon there’s people on this rig, boss?”
“Somebody has been looking after her, at least in a manner that’s kept her functional,” Nilsen turned to Hernandez, he looked frustrated, his face washed with the lambent blue omitted from the reactor viewport. “But that isn’t our concern, maybe there are folk on here, maybe they’re sending repair crews out. I’m inclined to think it’s the later. All I want is to get the shit we need and get back to the Riyadh.”
They’d not found Syntin or an effective fuel substitute for the Riyadh’s rockets, neither had they found any exotic matter or cryogenic fluid. In truth, they hadn’t expected to. Stations didn’t need wormhole drives and stores of fuel for elongated periods of thrust. Crews were shipped in and out on set contracts negating the need for cryosleep. Instead, the closest analogue for thrust Murmansk 13 possessed were eight small rockets positioned for orbital alignment and spin correction that worked in tandem with the orbital stabilization reactor, effectively a gravity anchor that also provided the spin for centrifugal gravity. The system worked in an automated programmed loop, with the rockets firing whenever the gravity anchor threatened to drag. Then they would fire in short rapid bursts to rectify the misalignment before a problem ever materialized. It was a surprisingly simple, if over-engineered system that worked well because of the basic programming that spoke to the various mediums of stabilization requiring minimal human input.
It was also a system that was growing old and tired, the fuel lines they’d found in the thruster compartment were near spent, mere tens of tons of marine grade diesel remained in the gently rusting pipes. Once that run out no auto routine could rectify misalignment. Steadily, the station would part from her geostationary orbit and be pulled into whichever celestial body exerted the most gravitational force, either being sucked into the milky green planet’s atmosphere and breaking up, or being slingshot into space and disintegrating.
Hernandez closed his eyes and remembered the silent rush of the debris that almost killed him and crushed the Riyadh. Murmansk-13 was already breaking up under her own centrifugal duress, casting extraneous chunks of herself into space. At a steady rate of decay she would be a mere spinning top, skeletal by the time she smashed into the surface of some planet or moon.
Or burnt up in the necrotic bloom of the supergiant.
There ain’t no maintenance crews coming here, not now anyway. Hernandez thought, but chose not to bait Nilsen. The Chief Engineer was already harried, survival plan A was a bust. They wouldn’t be flying their way to salvation, all they could do now was find air scrubbers and filters that would hopefully fit the Riyadh and turn her into a giant lifeboat. Perhaps salvage whatever propellant they could from the thrust lines to provide a tiny dose of inertia and hope the Captain’s group found a bevy of stores.
Without cryo fluid, even survival would be hell. With no means of communication, save their mindless emergency beacons; every mouthful of rations would taste like a step nearer to starvation, each breath a breath less that could be taken later on. If salvation never came, they could drift for months, recycling their scrubbers, recycling their water production filters. The air would grow steadily staler as the scrubbers became less and less efficient drawing out carbon dioxide; background toxins would build up to dangerous levels. Meanwhile, the water would grow steadily less sanitary, they would have to revert to dumping their waste from the airlocks. All the while they would be weakening, their bodies slowly consuming themselves until they drifted away, like the ship.
Once the emergency beacons ceased broadcasting, the Riyadh would become a silent tomb, a derelict with a compliment of bodies on an endless mission into the deep darkness. Hernandez shivered.
“Hernandez, get the dollie.” Nilsen said, walking away from the eddying throb of the reactor. “Let’s see if we can’t find more life support systems than the Captain can find supplies,” he chuckled mirthlessly at the dark competition.