“Debris Avoidance Manoeuvre.” She whispered.
“Once we lost contact with Mission Control, we were always running the risk that we might hit some debris.” Flynn told Karpov. “And guess fucking what?!”
“Calm yourself, Major.” Karpov growled, glaring back at him. “We’re all in this together.”
“Not anymore, Mission Commander.” Flynn replied, taking on a sarcastic tone as he referred to Karpov by his title. “Thanks to your questionable decisions, three of us will be waving the other three off with nothing but a cold death in space to look forward to. I’ll tell you something, Karpov, it’s sure as fuck not going to be me!”
“We’re all scared Flynn…” Natalya reached out to him, trying to calm the situation down. He slapped her hand away.
“Get away from me.” He thundered, before pushing himself past us in the direction of the Destiny module, disappearing through the hatch and leaving us all speechless.
Day Sixty-Nine
“What are you doing?” I asked Aki as I pulled myself into the Destiny lab. She was floating in front of a control console, chewing her lower lip with concentration as she manipulated two joysticks.
“I’m checking the damage to the remaining solar arrays with a camera attached to the tip of the robotic arm on the top side of the station.” She replied, her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her as the camera panned across the surface of the grid of solar panels. “They seem to still be in a serviceable condition. Good news I guess, though I’d have sooner lost a couple more solar arrays than one of our two Soyuz.”
“I know. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse.” I mused grimly. “I wonder who will end up staying behind.” Aki glanced up at me. Her eyes seemed to have lost their usual sparkle, as if even her upbeat demeanour had finally evaporated in the hours since the latest devastating news.
“It’s a horrible situation for the three poor souls who remain behind.” She nodded. “One of the three to return to Earth will have to be either Karpov or Morrison who are the only qualified pilots. So there are two spots to divide between the five of us that are left.” I sighed deeply.
“It just keeps getting better and better doesn’t it?”
“Not what we all signed up for.” Aki agreed grimly.
“What will we do?” I replied. “Will Karpov select who goes? Will we draw lots, put it to a silent ballot, what?”
“Well I’d vote for you to stay right here, Carter.” Flynn growled, pulling himself through the hatch behind us. “You shouldn’t even be here. You’ve taken the place of a real Astronaut. A man who strived for this his life and trained for years, only for his place to be taken by a rich dotcom millionaire who saw Star Wars a few too many times and wants to see a nice view of the Earth. You have no relevant skill sets and are completely useless to us. All you are doing is using up our oxygen, food and water.”
“So that’s it, is it?” I glared across at the American. “That’s your beef? Petty jealousy?”
“Not jealously.” He said, barely keeping the bile out of his voice. “I don’t have a problem with your money. You just aren’t worthy. You simply don’t deserve to be here.”
“Well, as we are having this little heart to heart,” I shot back, “I think you’re an arrogant, self-satisfied, egotistical wanker.” Flynn was momentarily speechless and Aki couldn’t stop her herself from smiling. He pulled himself towards her, his eyes blazing.
“What about you, Takako?” Flynn sneered. “Your people can’t wait to kill themselves for the greater good. Why don’t you do the honourable thing and throw yourself out of the nearest airlock?” Aki’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“You fucking arsehole, Flynn!” A red mist descended and I propelled myself towards him, fists clenched.
“What are you going to do, you limey prick?” Flynn snarled, bracing himself with one hand and drawing back his fist with the other. “I’ve got years of military training while you fuck about with websites.” As I reached him, he swung hard, his knuckles connecting with my jaw, splitting my lip in a shower of floating droplets of blood and sending me crashing into the wall. I winced as the back of my head smashed into one of the experiment racks. Flynn smiled triumphantly.
“Knock it off, Flynn.” Karpov had heard the commotion and pulled himself through into the module. “That’s not helping.” Aki pulled a paper tissue from her pocket and pressed it to my lip, trying to stem the bleeding before finding a cloth and attempting to soak up the tiny droplets of blood floating in the air. Flynn glared around at us before disappearing through into the next compartment.
“He’s really starting to lose it.” Aki told Karpov. “His mood swings are one thing, but tendencies towards violence are quite another.”
“Tensions are running high.” Karpov replied thoughtfully. “That is only natural given the predicament we are in and yesterday’s development. We are each dealing with it in our own way. Some might say that Flynn is dealing with it better by getting it off his chest rather than bottling it all up. As for the punch, it looked to me like Carter was the aggressor and Flynn was defending himself.”
“Did you hear what he said?” Aki asked him, removing the tissue from my lip, seemingly satisfied that the bleeding had stopped.
“I heard.” Karpov replied with a sigh. “Look. I agree he was out of line and I will speak with him to try and calm him down. We know Flynn has a temper, but we’ve got to try and keep it together. We’re on our own up here and we’re going to have to trust and rely on each other if we are going to survive this.” I nodded at the familiar sentiment, but now that ultimately only three of us could survive, Karpov’s words had a hollow ring to them.
Day Seventy-Four
The red haze from outside the capsule obscured our vision outside as we began our descent through the Earth’s atmosphere. The heat shield on the underside would be glowing bright red as the hull temperature soared. I glanced across the tiny interior at my two companions. Karpov was at the capsule’s controls, while Natalya was seated on his far side. It was pretty cramped as we were all in our bulky pressure suits. Even through the helmet’s visor, I could see beads of sweat running down Karpov’s brow, which I was pretty sure had nothing to do with the heat outside. Karpov’s jaw was clenched and he seemed completely focused on the task at hand, while both Natalya and I looked on nervously. She caught my eye and I tried to smile, but instead I just grimaced. I felt as scared as I had ever been, and looking across at the obvious anxiety in the faces of both of my fully trained Cosmonaut colleagues did little to calm my fears. With mission control’s assistance, this was dangerous at the best of times, without mission control it was virtually suicidal. We all knew the risks, but it was either this, or a slow death in orbit. Sooner or later, we had to attempt to get back to Earth. We had decided to draw lots and attempt to return to Earth as soon as possible to reduce the drain on the station’s resources. That way, at least Morrison, Aki and Flynn had the maximum possible time remaining. The others had spoken optimistically about it giving us enough time to mount a rescue mission to recover them, but we all knew deep down that we were deluding ourselves. The human race would have been knocked back to the dark ages at best. There would be no launches into space for many years, if ever. I looked over again at Natalya, who now had her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her mouth moving silently, perhaps praying. I had been relieved when she’d pulled a long straw, even more relieved than pulling a long straw myself, as my own was tainted with guilt when I saw the ashen faces of the others with short straws in their hands, knowing they had been condemned. Looking again through the tiny window, the red haze had dissipated now and we were plummeting through the air towards the landing site. We had been aiming for the usual landing site in the deserts of Kazakhstan, but without mission control, we would settle for a land mass of any description.