He motions towards the storage lockers behind us. Those and a trunk under the capsule are where we carry cargo.
"What is your cargo?"
"I can resend the manifest if you like. Resupplies for US/iC and Peterson's equipment."
Yablokov drifts behind us and unlatches one of the panels without asking. "No unsecured gas cylinders or other hazardous materials?"
Other than the several hundreds of pounds of monomethylhydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer that will explode upon contact we have sitting in tanks underneath us for landing, and a pistol in Bennet's pocket that could poke a hole through the tanks in a split second — blowing up the Unicorn and rapidly depressurizing the entire K1 station causing it to lose orbital stability and crash into our atmosphere where it will only imperfectly burn up, leaving a debris field a thousand miles long — no, nothing to worry about here.
"None of our cargo is dangerous," says Bennet, simplifying things.
Yablokov pulls himself back to the nose of the capsule. "Only one of you will be allowed out of the capsule at a time."
"That's not going to work, Commander," says Bennet. "We're required to do all of our EVAs in two-man configurations. In order for us to inspect the sensor I need two of us."
"You will have a cosmonaut escort."
"I understand that. But it's a two-person operation, not a precaution. I thought they explained this to Roscosmos?"
"They did. But this is at my discretion."
Even though our suits have gyros for keeping you balanced and emergency jets if you somehow detached from the tether, a space walk can be a terrifying experience — especially on something unfamiliar like the K1.
The technology has advanced some since the first time men drifted out of their capsules. It's now NASA and iCosmos's standard procedure to carry a small rescue drone that can retrieve an astronaut that drifts too far away. Thankfully, this has never had to be used on an iCosmos mission.
But I'm sure as the rapid pace of orbital construction continues, that will come in handy.
For now, we try to keep one person focused on the task and another to watch them, making sure they don't get tangled up or disoriented.
Yablokov stares at Bennet, trying to read the man. Bennet does a lot better at not flinching than I do.
He has that confident trait of making his point, then not arguing; ready to wait the other out.
"Fine," says Yablokov. "Which astronaut would you use?"
"Peterson," replies Bennet.
Peterson? She's not even an iCosmos employee.
Stay cool, David.
"Alright." Yablokov points to me. "He waits here during EVA."
Why do I get the feeling I'm a hostage in something I don't understand?
8
Babysitter
After checking their suits and grabbing some tools from the trunk under Yablokov's watchful eye, Peterson and Bennet glide out of the hatch.
As he passes me, Bennet gives me a quick glance that says a thousand words, none of which are answers to the burning questions in my mind.
I wait for the sound of them going through the docking module airlock, then slide over to Bennet's console, ostensibly to watch the camera feeds from their helmets as they do the totally fake inspection.
When I try to pull up the signal there's nothing. Neither of them is transmitting.
That's just odd. There's no way you'd pull this kind of thing off without someone at Mission Control monitoring everything from what you're doing to solar flare activity and foreign object paths.
Granted, our suit computers track every lost lug nut and wrecked satellite in orbit, giving us a 3D display of where everything is, plus monitor space weather, but you still want a set of eyes and ears on the ground checking on you every few minutes.
Should I radio Bennet and ask?
No. This is intentional. He shut their cameras down for a reason. He might put them on during the space walk, but I doubt that.
He asked if I trusted him. The answer is "yes," I trust Bennet. I'm not so sure about the guy I've been around for the last few hours. Especially now that I know he's up to something.
Whenever you hear about a workplace tragedy where a coworker flips out and starts killing people with an AR-15 they brought to the office, the survivors often describe the tragedy as coming out of nowhere.
After the fact, the signs of erratic behavior are everywhere. "Yeah, it did seem a little odd that he brought a gun with him. Well, yes, he did seem a little erratic that morning."
I'm starting to freak myself out. Peterson is part of this or knows something is up. Is there a little thing between them that's about to erupt onboard the Russian space station?
See something, say something, David.
I'm not about to start blurting this out over our comm system; even the secure line. I have no way of knowing who else at Mission Control will be listening in. All I need is someone to report it right back to Bennet. It's not even a question of who they'll trust between us.
However… we have a text-based communication system that's basically instant messaging for talking between the Unicorn and Earth or any of the other iCosmos properties.
I could direct message Renata through here with something innocuous, like, "Bennet seems tense. Is there anything I should know?"
If she knows what he's up to, then all she has to say is, "It's okay," or something like that. Then I can relax and casually mention his gun discreetly.
When I try to access the messaging window, I get an alert that say, "iComm unavailable at this terminal."
Bennet shut down the system?
I slide out of the seat and try Peterson's panel. Same message.
Jesus. They've locked me out of both systems!
Alright, enough is enough.
We keep a set of laptops in the trunk in the event our displays stop working or we need extra terminals.
I float over to the trunk and remove one. The minute it takes to boot up feels like a year. I'm afraid Bennet is going to come back and find me hunched over the thing, trying to send my secret message.
Fuck him. I'll just tell him flat out I was trying to work around the message system lock out.
I pull up the iComm window and type in my credentials. A second later I get a different error message: Channel offline.
He shut down all outward access for the messaging system. Hell, is my microphone even live?
"Nashville, this is Unicorn 22, can I get a time check? Over."
Nothing.
I pull up a command line and type in crew/channel/status=
Comm01: Active
Comm02: Disabled
Comm03: Active
Comm04: Disabled
Comm05: Disabled
Comm06: Disabled
Comm07: Disabled
Comm08: Disabled
Bio01: Active
Bio02: Active
Bio03: Active
Bio04: Disabled
Bio05: Disabled
Bio06: Disabled
Bio07: Disabled
Bio08: Disabled
Jesus. Bennet disabled all the microphones except his and Peterson's while leaving my suit's biosensors live. The only way I can talk to ground control is if I have a heart attack in Morse code.
"Are you checking Facebook?" asks a female Russian voice from the hatch.
I'd jump out of my seat if I wasn't already floating a foot over it.
I look up and see a young woman staring at me from the nose cone. Large cheekbones and short red hair, she kind of reminds me of Peterson, only Russian.
"Just doing a routine check," I say, sounding like someone who only says "routine" when he's doing something very much not part of a routine.
"You are Pilot David Dixon?"
"Yes."
"I'm Flight Engineer Sonin. I am here to babysit you." She says this in what sounds close to a friendly tone — at least the most friendly I've heard since launch.