… continued from Return to Aniara

🚀

The darkness did not persist. Lights came on, dimly at first, then gradually brighter, to illuminate the embarkation compartment beyond the airlock, and Anna reached up to turn off her helmet light. She heard as much as felt a rush of warm air blow into the room from the wall vents, though it would take a while to displace the cold that permeated everything. At least that meant there was atmospheric pressure, so the safety systems must have sealed off the depressurized parts of the ship. A slowly pulsing red light over the far hatchway competed with the persistent alarm for her attention, and after each alarm tone, a cool, calm, female voice rang over the speakers.

“Attention. Hull breach detected. Safety interlocks engaged. All personnel don emergency apparatus and report to duty stations.”

Had that alert been sounding repeatedly for… how long had it been? Nine weeks? Ten?

“Attention. Hull breach detected. Safety interlocks engaged. All personnel…”

Anna touched the acknowledge icon on the panel beside the airlock and the voice and audio alarm silenced. She pulled up an environmental display and checked the room pressure and temperature: breathable but cold, yet tolerable and slowly climbing even as she watched. Then she pushed over to the closed hatchway leading to the rest of the ship and checked the panel beside that one to confirm good pressure in the corridor beyond.

“Laxmi, you can come through, and bring Ca-Tren. We have good pressure in here. You can remove your helmet, but keep it handy.”

So saying, Anna removed her own, clipped it to her belt, and opened the corridor hatch. She floated through into the short transverse connector between the lander embarkation compartment and the main longitudinal passageway running the length of the ship, with its own pressure hatch. As she anticipated, the hatch was closed — the ship would have automatically sealed them all as a safety precaution when the breach was detected — but the control panel indicated good atmosphere on the far side. She opened this hatch and pulled herself through, while behind her Laxmi and Ca-Tren exited the lander and followed her path.

Anna flexed herself to the left, toward the bow of the ship, and pulled herself forward. She let momentum carry her along the corridor, occasionally pulling on or pushing off a ladder rung to correct her angle and stay centered. Twenty meters forward, she encountered the next closed safety hatch, normally open, and thirty meters beyond that, the next one. As she had hoped, she continued to find good pressure in each section of the corridor, as well as in the sealed compartments to all sides. Along the way she passed the tiny gym, its hatch closed like all the others, and remembered her conversation with Laxmi, seeming forever ago now. They had found the local residents, all right, as well as aliens, and it remained an open question who had caused more disruption to whom.

She reached the final transverse connector, leading toward the bridge in one direction and the observatory in the other, while smaller hatchways led to cramped avionics and systems maintenance closets. A short pull brought her to the bridge hatchway. Unlike all the others so far, this one had an insistent flashing red light, as expected, and indicators of vacuum on the far side. She unclipped the helmet from her belt.

“Laxmi, take Ca-Tren back to the crew lounge and wait there for me. It’ll be safer.”

“Anna…”

“It’s very unlikely to be pleasant on the other side of this door.”

“Anna, wait for me. I’ll take her back, but wait for me to return before you go in there.”

“I need to do this, Laxmi.”

“No, we need to do this. I’m the mission doctor, Anna. If anyone should be going in to retrieve David’s body, it should be me. So, please wait for me to return.”

Anna hesitated, then nodded. Seeing that, Laxmi took Ca-Tren by the wing and together they floated back down to the main corridor. Laxmi looked back to Anna one last time before going through, mouthing wait silently.

Meanwhile Anna inspected the hatch control panel more closely, pulling up a detailed display of the environment on the far side. Pressure was effectively zero, of course, and radiation levels were consistent with what she would expect in open space, exposed to Kepler 62’s stellar wind, but no worse than what she had already been exposed to while scrambling around the hull of the lander. She briefly considered going back for a full EVA suit, then discarded that idea when Laxmi returned to the corridor.

“Ok, she’s settled and safe for the moment. Probably confused about things, but safe. Let’s do this.”

Laxmi closed and sealed the hatch behind her, isolating the transverse corridor, then put on her helmet while kicking over to Anna.

“Check my seal.”

“It’s good.”

“Thanks, yours too.”

With that, Laxmi turned her attention to the control panel, and Anna let go any thought of needing the EVA suits.

“Putting in my override control to evacuate the corridor pressure. And yes, I know we’re bypassing all sorts of protocols and procedures here, but we don’t really have time, do we? Still, we’ll want to make this quick, not linger in there.”

Both suits puffed out away from their bodies as the air left the corridor, and when the panel display color changed to yellow, Laxmi opened the hatch, then followed Anna through to the bridge.

Anna knew what they would find when they entered, but she could not help the moment of shock at seeing the bridge — her bridge — dark, ruined, and lifeless. The shattered windows were nearly devoid of glass, though a few polycarbonate fragments sparkled in the starlight where they were embedded in the bulkheads or still floating around the big opening. Most of the material was gone, however, and the compartment showed other signs of explosive decompression. One console still had a red warning light blinking on and off, endlessly, but the rest had all gone dark. What illumination was present came almost entirely from outside, with sharply-edged shadows enveloping most of the space.

In the center of the compartment, strapped into the commander’s chair, sat an unsuited figure, his ruined face and sightless eyes frozen in a stricture of horror and surprise. Flash-frozen drops of blood and bile still floated around his nose and open mouth, stretched wide as though silently screaming for no one to hear.

“He is dead, then.” Anna closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s one thing to suspect, it’s another to have it confirmed.”

“Whatever happened here, it happened quickly.” Laxmi pointed around the room. “I won’t say he didn’t know what hit him. He… suffered. His lungs appear to have…” She stopped upon seeing Anna’s expression. “Anyway, it was quick. We should move him to…”

“That may have to wait.”

Anna pointed through the shattered window opening, through which the planet appeared mostly dark with oncoming night, the abandoned ring station arcing away below into the inky umbra. Against this stygian blackness, however, one thing shone clear. The fusion trail of the approaching Orta ship had only grown brighter. They were coming.

“Can we outrun them, Anna?”

“Doubtful. The ion engines take a long time to get all this mass moving.”

“So we’re out of options. All we can do is wait for them to catch us.”

“We can’t outrun them.” Anna grinned and put a hand to Laxmi’s shoulder. “But we do have options.”

🚀

… to be continued.

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header image credit: Matt Fraser

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