Those were a long time ago, though.
Diego rubbed his eyes and snapped the manual closed. He could feel little rivulets of tepid sweat forming rims around the headphone cups. He pulled the set off but could not escape the constant hiss of white noise that accompanied him in the dark, still bridge of the Riyadh. The red giant was behind them and only the lambent blue of the closest B-class star provided illumination, the small bright dot peaking like a distant spotlight from behind the monolithic space station and a haze of ionic disruption.
He left the VHF set on autoscan and walked around the Riyadh’s radio station, trying to shake the nervous anxiety that pooled like lactic acid in his muscles. Something about the Evac suite airlock activation had unnerved him… further. Unconsciously he tapped his thumbnail against his teeth as he paced around the conning equipment and apprehensively peered out of the triple glazed windscreen.
Unflinching, he grabbed a pair of binoculars situated in the familiar mahogany box beside him. In the years since rising from spaceship galleys, he’d often been called to lookout when his vessels transited busy space lanes or when entering or leaving dock. The textured rubber coating of the binoculars had become a natural extension of his fingertips.
However, tracking vessels, lights and scanning for space debris had become his forte, rare was the occasion he was called to lookout for an EVA’ing colleague. Regardless, it didn’t take Diego long to find the offender, following the newly affixed lifeline to the stations docking ring. Making aggravatingly slow progress, the crewman scaled the side of the Riyadh’s docking clamp with the grace of a wing-clipped crane fly.
“What are you up to?” He whispered to himself.
Behind him, the elevator doors parted, blanching the bridge and startling Diego. Furtively he returned the binoculars to their box.
“Why are you not at the radio station?” Chief Officer Nilsen’s wiry silhouette stepped from the elevator.
“Sorry, Chief.” Diego scurried back to the leatherette chair behind the bank of radio equipment. The elevator doors closed with a quiet chink and the bridge faded back into wan blue. Diego cringed at the moistness of the headphone cups as he re-donned them.
The Chiefs precise, pensive footsteps cut through the wash of cosmic noise. The autoscan had not been able to exhume the maintenance crews signal. Nilsen assumed Diego’s position at the windscreen, looking down, as he had, at the interloper on the lifeline. Slowly he spun to face Diego who pulled the headphone from his right ear. The sets headband strained in extension.
“Have you managed to communicate with the crew up top?” Asked Nilsen. He sounded tired.
“They come and go. I capture them for five or ten minutes, maybe less. Then the interference kicks them off.” Diego looked at the frequency indicator as the white noise peaked and wobbled, then returned to its numbing equilibrium.
“We should get them down,” said Nilsen, wringing his hands behind his back. “They’ve been up there too long.”
Diego watched Nilsen nervous pacing in and out of the conning station. He appeared drawn, even in the dim light and his physical restlessness was an avatar to Diego’s own mental ill ease. “Any word from the Captain?”
Diego gulped. “None, the guys topside had him on the intercom until they entered the station. Then…”
“Then?”
Diego shook his head and Nilsen’s narrow shoulders slumped further still. The Chief slouched over the ships radar display summoning a luminous green nimbus around himself. Diego hesitantly held the headphone from his ear. “Who was that in the airlock, Chief?”
Nilsen didn’t respond, instead he peered down intently at the radar screen. “Have you been monitoring this?”
“No sir,” replied Diego uncertainly. “I’ve been sat at the radio the whole time.”
“Except when I came up.” Nilsen’s response was distracted, not corrective.
“Except when you came up, sir.” Diego could do little but agree, he hadn’t been tasked with monitoring the radar and hadn’t really seen the point, the screen a lurid wash of nonsensical multi-path interference caused by the proximity of the station.
Nilsen’s long, stubbly head bobbed up and down from the screen, peering out to starboard with every upward glance. He returned to the windscreen, but this time his gaze was furtive, scanning. Diego could feel his blood cool as the Chief Engineer stiffened.
“Get the guys off the monkey island now,” he said, not averting his gaze.
Panic bristled through Diego. “Chief I don’t.”
“Get them off the damn roof. Now!” Nilsen’s small eyes were large in his skull as he cut Diego off.
“I don’t know how,” Diego said paralyzed. Reflexively he flinched at the equipment that suddenly seemed of another world. “How?”
Nilsen, long-legged, strode across the bridge and punched the large red button in the centre of the VHF console. Distress. “Brace!” Was the last thing Diego heard before everything went black.
Aidan struggled with the karabiners at his hip. He gurned and grimaced into his mic as he tried to free himself. Vaguely, he was aware of Hernandez and Stewart trying to scramble from their stooped positions, encumbered by their EVA suits. Aidan thought he could hear the grinding of convoluted suit joints over the intercom.
“Fuck!” Aidan screamed, his gauntlet covered fingers unable to pop the spring loaded gate. Frantically he tried to pull himself up from the deck, each time thwarted by the tensile steel cables keeping him from floating away into space.
Hernandez was now on his feet and helping Stewart up. Painfully slow, too slow thought Aidan as unexpected tears of anger or fear welled in his eyes. He looked to his right, into the imperceptible darkness.
They hadn’t seen the approaching junk, matte gunmetal grey against a backdrop of lightless space. A great metallic carbuncle of the dilapidated monolith that had torn off from some unforeseen nodule of the station, whipped away by the centrifugal momentum, launching it like a trebuchet round toward them.
It was reaching escape velocity from the weak pull of the station and slowly breaking up. But neither was happening fast enough. As it bore down, Aidan could see that the object was on a collision course. Ragged edges wept glittering plating into space like reflective petals, little abating its progress. Thousands of tonnes of metal floated with imperceptible violent inertia towards them. Aidan conceded that nothingness was upon him, he contemplated releasing his gauntlets to obtain some purchase on the karabiners, but it would be a futile effort, introducing needless pain to an otherwise instantaneous death.
Hernandez was at the magnetic cam he and Stewart were tethered to. First he attempted to release their tethers, but without the luxury of time he was suddenly possessed with Aidan’s lack of finesse. Subsequently, Hernandez started kicking at it and screaming. “Mamón!”
Behind, Stewart, who Aidan imagined was little more experienced than he at EVAing, appeared to be walking through quicksand. In his rush to escape, the young radio officer stumbled against the counterintuitive double step mag boots. Aidan watched the station junk loom large in Stewarts visor and wondered what expression of fear the golden mirror shade masked.
Aidan turned to face the object. In the last second the great metal appendage appeared to change trajectory rising upward, although that was probably an optical illusion caused by proximity. In a final bid, Aidan flattened himself supine against the deck. The musculature of his body clenched in unison with his teeth. In perfect silence he felt the structure of the Riyadh quake beneath him, then the blinking lights of distant stars above blackened. He felt his head lurch sharply to the left, as if something was trying to rip his head from the neck, then impact detritus skittered across him; cleaved portions of the monkey islands railings and shattered aerials.