Jamal tried to calculate how long it would take the sixteen men of District Four to get to the ship, it was closer to them, but the corridors were a no go, a thoroughfare for the infected. Sixteen men would be a lot of noise. He could go alone, stowaway, but he owed Gennady, he owed all of them or at least most of them. They could have allowed their prejudices to turn him loose, instead they valued him. It was the same relationship as he’d tolerated at high school with his coach, he was a commodity to be protected and vaunted, serious injury made him disposable. It wasn’t family, wasn’t even close, but it was a bond, a bond that without he would probably be dead. Or worse.
He thought of his family, Moms was dead, his Dad had been a gangbanger, an early member of the Crips and equally dead, he’d died a teenager and Jamal had never met him. He wouldn’t be surprised if his brother had gone down that street too. What was left was millions and millions of miles away. Sisters and headstones.
Vertigo stirred him as he looked up at the racks, a dull pummelling of bulkheads put his senses on edge. The infected were near. Supplies could wait, he couldn’t delay relaying the news. Jamal lifted the compacted, light canvas backpack and hoisted it onto a shelf beyond reaching height, brass clasps tinkled in the darkness. He could come back for it if necessary, but not before exercising this chance.
Smoothly, Jamal transitioned back into the shadows and steeled himself for the twenty hour return journey wishing he’d at least found some sachets of emergency water.
Chapter 3
Tor looked at the headshot attached to Nikolai Falmendikov’s personnel file. The face staring back possessed a new Soviet authoritarian exterior, ashen cheeks and dark ringed grey eyes. A neatly trimmed, greying moustache embellished tightly closed lips. The picture could almost be in greyscale were it not for the Red Banner background. A hammer and sickle watermarked the picture.
He lit his penultimate cigarette and placed the pack and lighter in his shirt pocket. Tor savoured the taste as he surveyed the sea of papers that avalanched across his desk. Port entry declarations, port exit declarations, crew lists, crewing changeover documents – the job of a deep space merchant vessel Master was little more than a paper exercise. Myriad checklists, logs and legislative paperwork required his signature. It could all wait till later, always till later when the paper exercise became a week long sprint prior to sign off.
He smiled as smoked curled from his lips; there were at least some upsides to their current predicament.
Tor kicked his feet onto the desk – casting a slew of possibly important papers onto the deck – and reclined his office chair to such an angle that he could retrieve the solitary can of Coca Cola from his mini refrigerator. It was tepid, but would do. Auto routines were only just booting back up non-essential systems. Nilsen’s report was likely to require such luxuries were placed back into standby. This was probably as cold as the can would ever get.
Nikolai Falmendikov had been on his second trip with the company, an early defector from the Motherlands state owned merchant space fleet. This had been the first trip Tor had flown with him, prior experience had barely taken Falmendikov out of Sol, little feeder ships carrying replen to the Soviets numerous grandstanding Solar service stations. Most were dilapidated and bypassed these days, although Tor had spent a fair few days aboard them in his early space career. Dire, humourless places for shore leave. Old hookers and red tape.
He’d undertaken a series of extraneous training programs between his first and second trips, grounding him for two years. Electronic Navigations Systems and a Deep Space Helmsman’s ticket. The former was necessitated by some companies, even for a payload specialist such as Falmendikov, but the latter was frankly bizarre. Able bodied spacefarers way below his pay grade required a helms ticket, not CO’s. He’d probably never handled a rig like the Riyadh during his Solar Coaster career, however.
Two years at home spent entirely in training between two three year trips. A divorcee… figured.
Falmendikov had clearly been planning this, could not have believed his luck when they ended up in the Reticuluum system. After all, there had to be some reason they were now here. Wherever here was.
Tor let the file drop to his lap and ran his free hand through his hair. He slowly closed his eyes and let his head rush with nicotine and sugar. He hadn’t slept since waking from cryosleep seven hours ago and already he shuddered with fatigue.
The body becomes detached from the usual circadian rhythm that dictates the human cycle after months in cryo. That sense of detachment is only worsened by the eternal darkness of space and the absence of Sol’s sunlight. Typically the body yearns for sleep, natural sleep, for days after emergence. Each crewmember would also spend several hours beneath a sunlamp.
Neither of those normalizing tasks seemed likely to occur in their abnormal situation. Tor felt his eyelids flutter then woke with a start as his chin hit his chest. The half can of viscous coke had slipped from his hand and emptied between his legs, pooling on the mock leather office chair and dousing his cigarette. Tor jumped up, casting Falmendikov’s papers onto the deck with a slew of other documents.
“Dritt!” Tor spun round searching for some paper towels. Instead he settled for a laser faxed memo from the Saudi Shipping Inc. Syrupy brown slowly seeped through the green and white letterhead. Unable to sit, Tor paced up and down his cluttered plastic cubicle, the bulkheads little more than beige flecked Formica veneers covering rudimentary wiring. His mind was racing and alert but his theorems and hypothesis were disjointed half dreams half forgotten. He retrieved Falmendikov’s file.
Falmendikov was quiet, not a confident English speaker. He’d mentioned children and a home in Gorky, a dispute with his ex-wife, hints of money troubles. He cast a downbeat figure. Tor had taken to avoiding him once they’d secured their cargo of Exotic Matter Particulate at the EM plant at Reticuluum One, frequently arriving late at mess to escape the Russian’s grim pall. Unfortunately, Falmendikov was an adherent to old school protocol and would sit in stoic silence behind a long empty plate until the Captain had finished his meal, pushing Tor’s dinner later and later. Only in his final week, after the service stop in Reticuluum, did Tor succeed in out waiting him.
‘A strong candidate for suicide.’ Nilsen called him.
If his mind had been elsewhere, he never showed it, pulling a near unbroken forty-two hour shift during loading at Reticuluum One. A US matter factory in the heart of Soviet Deep Space, a thorn in the corroding Soviet Deep Space Colonisation Program and the counterpoint to the Soviet owned FTL drive technology.
Falmendikov had carried out his pre-arrival conference, loading plans and structural stability calculations with no indication of distraction. A pro that Tor could find no fault in except the black hole that formed a placeholder for his personality.
Tor stared at the mosaic of emergency flowcharts and company posters that dotted the space around his office porthole. A multicoloured frame for the dark empty space beyond. Oil slick colours shimmered in the blackness, early warning of an ionic storm. There was a light knuckled rap on his door.
“You OK Tor?” Jan Nilsen’s wiry frame occupied his office doorway. Tor placed Falmendikov’s file atop the mountain of paperwork and resumed his pacing behind his desk.
“I’d offer you a seat, but I’ve poured Coke on it.”
“Sounds like a party,” Nilsen remarked before retrieving Falmendikov’s file. Idly, he poured over it. “Not slept?”