Orbital Decay

by Malcolm Cross

  “She’s on one of the portable units,” Rolan muttered. “No way to tell where she is.”

  “Split up.” Krister pointed up towards the Russian section. “I and Alvin will try there, you try down here. We just keep looking until we find her. Don’t hurt her. Use the intercom when you find her and we’ll join you, alright?”

  The other three nodded, and Alvin climbed up towards the PMA, the tense feeling of being swallowed up overwhelming as he pushed through the cramped space between the bungee-secured white fabric bags. He popped through ahead of Krister, and silently made his way into Rassvet, where Matvey had died.

  The fans were running, but the space was tight, cluttered with loose baggage and cabling that snaked through the module to the Soyuz docked beyond it.

  Skin crawling, he edged up to the half-cones of the Soyuz’s airlock ajar over the hatch, and called out, “Charlie?”

  No answer.

  He touched the cold metal of the airlock door, and gave it a shove. It bumped down into the upper part of the Soyuz’s storage module, above the actual re-entry capsule. Both were empty, but the Sokol suits—light space suits to wear in the Soyuz itself on launch and re-entry—were loose.

  He pulled them apart, but there were only two, not the three white suits that there were supposed to be, one for each passenger. He checked the name plates on each. R. Petrov, and Y. Utkin. Charlie’s was missing.

  “Shit,” Alvin breathed.

  Space Station was big. Big enough that Alvin lost track of Krister while searching the Russian section, spotting him once in Zarya, then losing him as he went back up to Zvezda. She could be hiding anywhere. Alvin popped his head through into Zarya and called for Krister, waving him over when he finally showed his face.

  “Okay. I think she has her Sokol on.” He bit his lip. “You don’t think she’s outside, do you?”

  “Not in a Sokol, and I don’t see how she’d cycle the airlock herself.” It was true—if she’d just opened the external airlock door without someone running the pumps for her, the blast of decompression would have rung through the whole of Station.

  “Go back to the US section,” Krister said. “I’ll keep searching up here.”

  Alvin nodded. The American side of the station was larger than the Russian side, after all. “Good luck.”

  Krister smiled thinly. “Good luck,” he said in turn.

  The baggage roped down in the PMA was starting to come loose, jostled out from under the bungee cords. Alvin was forced to push one of the tightly packed bags out ahead of him, sending it tumbling into Unity as he slipped out to search each of the side modules in turn.

  The PMM, packed thick with food and yet more supplies. Tranquillity, with the Cupola’s covers closed, throwing the module into darkness. The American EVA airlock, space suits limply in place and covered up in cloth.

  He found Yegor in the Columbus module, his grey hair tousled, matted up around the drill bit lodged in his skull, blood winding up the furrows in the drill’s sides.

  Black and scarlet specks covered the walls, red droplets flying free with gore-and-pink gobbets of Yegor’s brain dancing in twirling patterns of bloody fluid. The bits of flesh left smudges here and there when they bounced off the engineering work station, where the toolkits had spilled open and Velcro-tabbed tools were jostling with the gore in a slow, unhappy race to the air vents’ suction.

  Yegor’s face was the wrong shape, now, and his open eyes were bruised, the whites mottled with blood from broken capillaries. The line of his brow, so thoughtful, had turned Cro-Magnon with the shift of the now loose plates of his skull.

  Wicking surface tension was, even as Alvin watched, gradually sucking the blood and mulched brain from Yegor’s skull up into a neat wet ball around the drill bit’s grooves.

  The taste of tin-foil in Alvin’s mouth had been replaced with the tang of blood. He’d inhaled the flying spray.

  Somehow, he swallowed back his vomit.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “YEGOR’S DEAD,” ALVIN spluttered into the intercom. “Someone. Killed him.” He covered his face with his hands, forcing himself to keep swallowing back the slimy feeling in his mouth. “He’s in Columbus.”

  Rolan got on the intercom first. “What? What the hell have you done, Charlie?”

  Her voice was hoarse. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Bullshit! Yegor accuses you of exposing us to the virus, and now he’s dead! The crazy bitch is going to kill us all!”

  “I didn’t do it!” Charlie screeched.

  “Where are you? Come out!”

  “What, so you can kill me?”

  “Rolan, Charlie. Calm down,” Krister said, cutting in. “No one is killing anyone. We’ll gather in Unity. If we’re all together, whoever killed Yegor and Matvey can’t harm anyone else. There will be witnesses, three against one. We’ll be safe.”

  “Okay. Okay, fine. But I haven’t exposed anyone to the virus. I swear!”

  “We—we need to handle Yegor’s body,” Alvin murmured. “Do we even have two bodybags on Station? Christ.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Alvin. We’ll figure it all out.” Krister’s voice was ice. “Let’s just gather in Unity, and be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Yegor’s body drifted slowly. Alvin knew he should touch it. Stabilize it. Latch it down so the old Russian didn’t float into anything. But his hands shook, so instead he crawled out of Columbus, clinging to the walls as nausea seeped into him, and carefully picked his way from rail to rail and bar to bar, stopping to breathe, swallow down his spittle until he was ready to continue into Unity.

  The gentle hum of the fans greeted him. His mouth tasted horrible, filthy, so he pried an empty liquids packet from the wall rack and moved over to the small galley they gathered around most nights, and filled it at the water dispenser.

  He swirled the water around his mouth, body shaking. Could Charlie have done it? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think any of them could have done it. Krister was trying to keep the mission going, Rolan and Yegor were friends, countrymen. Charlie didn’t need to kill anybody. But the way she was talking... What she’d said about the virus, the brain. The way she’d been acting, the way those crazies talking about the Cull in Houston had acted.

  She hadn’t infected herself, had she?

  Looking around at the carefully picked pastel pinks of Unity’s walls, that very calming colour, Alvin realized that he’d been furthest away from Unity, all the way in Columbus at the most distant end of Station, but he’d arrived first. And he was still alone.

  “Hello?”

  The air fans hissed away, refusing to answer him.

  He didn’t know where to go. The PMA’s throat was choked with drifting bags, an unanchored bungee slowly twirling across the gap.

  Panic took him in the gut. Idiot! Whoever was the killer had him alone now, and everyone knew exactly where he was.

  Alvin threw himself back down Station’s central modules, back towards Columbus, where Yegor was dead, where the toolkits had been turned out, where he could grab the Russian EVA hammer—a vicious thing like a dead blow mallet, the head hollow and filled with a pound of steel shot, the base of the grip ending in a nasty double-pointed pry bar.

  He stopped cold, grabbing a handrail and jerking himself to a stop, a cold trickle of realization flowing down his spine. There were far better weapons on Station. He looked up, staring at the dark throat of the PMA. Past that was the Russian section, the two Soyuz capsules. And in the Soyuz survival kits, all kinds of survival gear stowed in case they came down in the wilds of Kazakhstan and had to make it on their own for a few nights.

  There were wolves on the Kazakh steppes.

  There was a single handgun in each of the survival kits.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  He shoved his toes against the nearest bar, and launched himself back into Unity, past the pastel pink, and into the PMA. He fought away the loose bags, sl
apped the bungees aside, and fought his way through into Zarya.

  “Fuck! It’s gone! They’re both fucking gone!” Rolan’s voice spilled from the hatchway to Posik—the Russian EVA airlock, and the second Soyuz docking location.

  “Calm down.” Krister was just inside the hatch, hands extended placatively. “Put the machete back into the survival kit, Rolan.”

  “No. I am protecting myself. Both of my countrymen are dead.” He pointed with the triangular cleaver-blade, first at Krister, and then at Alvin, as Alvin edged into view at Posik’s hatch. “You had better watch out, hm? Now both of you, get out of my way.”

  Krister looked over his shoulder at Alvin, briefly, without concern. “Rolan, arming yourself will not resolve the situation...”

  “Well unless Alvin has the guns, clearly it isn’t going to resolve the situation, because that crazy bitch has both of them!”

  “Rolan...”

  “No! Don’t get any closer, Krister. Just back off, and get out of my way.” Rolan shoved the machete toward Krister’s face.

  Krister gave ground, but not much, backing up to the hatch and no further, body spread across it, making himself into a barrier. “Rolan, what are you going to do?”

  “Get the damn guns back.”

  “I can’t let you hurt anyone, Rolan.”

  “No? Two of your crew are dead, Krister.” He pushed forward with the machete, lifting it until it touched Krister’s face. “Now are you getting out of my way, or not?”

  Krister released his hold on the sides of the hatch, unhooked his toes from their niches, and held his hands up and open, letting Rolan push him aside. “Okay, okay...”

  Rolan squirmed past, shouldering Krister’s gut, derisively snorting as he passed the machete from hand to hand. Neither he, nor Alvin, noticed Krister’s arms snaking around his neck. At the first brush of contact, Rolan raised a hand, as though to push Krister further aside, but then Krister tightened his grip.

  Krister’s hands were close together, as if in devout prayer. But his elbow was hooked under Rolan’s throat, and in an instant, he had clenched his hand around the other arm’s wrist, and begun to choke Rolan.

  Rolan swung blindly with the machete, his grunting turned into strangled choking as Krister flung himself side to side on Rolan’s back, trying to evade the knife’s twists and turns—suddenly Krister brought up his legs, hooking them around Rolan’s chest, one heel dug into Rolan’s side, knee lifted and braced under the armpit.

  It was getting harder and harder for Rolan to get in a good swipe back at Krister, harder still as Krister twisted about, like a zero-g monkey, kicking his knee into Rolan’s armpit. The machete was an awkward right-angled triangle of a blade, its tip a flat edge instead of a point. Not a stabbing weapon at all, more like an art-deco hatchet. Rolan swung harder, harder, but for all his effort all he could do was chisel divots of flesh out of Krister’s arms with the tip’s square-angled back edge.

  Krister roared, twisting his body against Rolan’s, releasing Rolan for an instant to ward the machete away, barely enough for Rolan to gulp down a half-breath. “Help me with him, damnit!” Krister shouted.

  Alvin was frozen. Staring. He hadn’t hit anyone in twenty years, since middle school.

  Rolan struggled to breathe, weakening, but even so, Krister’s arms were bloodied, his face scratched, and he had to twist away unnaturally to keep away from steel and fingers. That gave Rolan an opportunity to suck down another breath.

  Head cleared, Rolan explosively kicked out at one of the walls, rocketing him and Krister backwards into the hatch edge. The small of Krister’s back hit the metal ring first—he cried out, and Rolan carefully passed the machete from hand to hand... gripped to turn the sharp edge toward himself and Krister.

  Before Rolan could go from taking divots of skin out of Krister to something altogether more lethal, Alvin leapt forward, grabbing hold of Rolan’s wrist, pulling hard, planting his feet on Rolan’s chest to wrestle the blade away. The machete bumped into his chest once, twice... a third time, but the chisel-like edge needed more force than that to bite into him.

  Rolan blinked wounded betrayal at Alvin, and Krister tightened his grip.

  At last, Rolan went limp, and released the machete. Unconscious, Alvin thought for a moment, but he croaked from within Krister’s grip. Krister slackened his hold briefly once Alvin had knocked the machete away.

  “I give up,” Rolan whimpered.

  Krister’s face relaxed, although his palm against Rolan’s cheek, grinding his throat against the inside of his elbow, stayed firm. He re-locked his legs around Rolan’s chest. “Get the tape.”

  Alvin snatched away the roll of grey tape from its string at Rolan’s waist, intended for restraining Charlie, and gladly wrapped up Rolan’s ankles, then his wrists, panting down frightened breaths.

  Krister drifted away, grabbing at the bungee loose in the PMA.

  “You have made a mistake,” Rolan groaned. “I am not the killer.”

  Alvin struggled to swallow back the acrid taste in his mouth. “You were going to kill Charlie, Krister too.”

  “I am defending myself!” he shouted, struggling for a moment, just a moment, before letting Krister wrap the bungee around his arms and chest, binding his elbows to his stomach, then Alvin helped to haul Rolan out through Zvezda and into Zarya, using the bungee’s hooked ends to hold him on one of the handrails well away from any of Station’s control panels.

  Krister drifted back, wiping his face, the wounds on his arms. The blood hadn’t really flowed in the lack of gravity, though it had drawn trails on his arms as he’d fought, drops clinging to his skin and rolling across it.

  “Here,” Alvin said, pulling open one of the bags bungeed down on Zarya’s ‘floor.’ He passed an unopened, shrink-wrapped box of wet-wipes to Krister.

  “You need to scan the bar codes, if you’re taking it out of inventory.” Krister laughed, faintly.

  Alvin smiled back, without any enthusiasm. “I’ll do it later.”

  “Insane bastards,” Rolan muttered in guttural Russian. “Are you just going to leave me hanging here while that bitch is running loose on Station? She’ll kill me.”

  “No one is killing anyone,” Krister said.

  “Not so long as you get away from that hatch,” she said.

  Charlie hung in the dark space of the PMA. Her eyes were bloodshot, behind the sights of the Makarov pistols in each hand. The white of her Sokol suit matched the storage bags drifting out around her, her legs still wedged between them. A drill floated away behind her, modified into an impromptu centrifuge by taping cleaned-out plastic bottles to the bit.

  So that’s where she’d been hiding. No wonder the PMA had seemed so claustrophobic. She’d burrowed her way in behind the baggage to finish her work, undisturbed.

  Clear plastic bags were lashed to her wrists. One held the sample container, the other, a sheaf of syringes held together with rubber bands.

  “Get away from the hatch, Krister. I’m taking the samples home, now.” She clenched her jaw, throat working slowly.

  “No, you’re not.” He slipped between her and Rolan, hands out to the sides. Placating, just like he’d been with Rolan.

  “Yes,” she growled. “I am.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” Krister went on, nudging a foot against the wall to drift closer. “You’re going to turn over the guns, and everything is going to be fine. The situation is under control, no one’s going to hurt you, no one’s going to get hurt...”

  “Back off, Alvin.” She swivelled one of the guns in Alvin’s direction, pointing it at his gut... but her eyes were on Krister. Her hands steady.

  Alvin froze where he was. He hadn’t reached out to her, he’d just started edging towards one wall of the module, to her side. He hadn’t been doing anything threatening, he’d just—

  “Get away,” Charlie hissed, “or I’ll kill the both of you.”

  “See? See!?” Rolan yowled. “She’
s going to kill all of us.”

  Alvin scrambled backward. “Charlie, calm down, please, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “You aren’t going to shoot anyone. Are you?” Krister reached out for the gun, slowly, gently, unthreateningly.

  The gunshot was the loudest thing Alvin had ever heard, louder than the rockets at launch, louder than anything. The blast of gunfire reverberated off every surface, the pressure wave throbbing within the pressurized environment of Station, tearing through his ears until the roar faded out on Krister’s screams. He was twisting, shaking in the air, blood pouring out of his arm, feet scrabbling for purchase on the walls, trying to find something to hook against but simply pushing himself away and up and into an agonizing spin, while Charlie simply glared.

  “Actually, Krister, yes,” she murmured. “I am going to shoot anyone I fucking please. Now stay away from me.”

  NATURALLY, CHARLIE WAS in charge of the schedule now. The first thing she made Alvin do was check for an exit wound. The second thing, since there was a crater in the back of Krister’s arm where the bullet had torn out of him, was to find the bullet. Krister, working under gunpoint, helped Alvin comb the section until they found the pockmark in one of Zarya’s storage lockers, and the bullet ‘safely’ nestled in a blown-open package of air sampling units. Only then, certain that Station hadn’t been holed, did Charlie order Alvin to patch up Krister’s arm.

  Rolan had been moved down Station to Matvey’s old sleep pod, given that he refused to stop shouting at them, leaving Krister to clutch his arm and watch, bug-eyed and bleary on painkillers.

  “Charlie, please, I want to go home too...”

  She ignored Alvin, one gun strapped to her wrist in place of her precious bags, the other duct-taped to her suit. She pulled away another of the cables hooking the Soyuz into Space Station’s power supply, and shoved it through the hatch, glaring at Alvin hovering so far above her. “If you come down here, I’ll kill you, Alvin.”

  “I didn’t—I’m not going to—Charlie, you know me better than that.”