Outside Minsky Station

CR-2003113081 (‘Hamlin’s Star’)

When ye feel hope has abandoned thee, delivery not thyself up to the enemy, sons and daughters of God. For it is when we are at our lowest that He giveth us aid: the LORD thine God will not abandon ye in thine hour of need. Verily I say unto thee: struggle against the dark, for it is in that struggle that ye are closest to Him. -Book of Helia, Chapter 14, verse 3.

“...ayday…mayd…mmediate assistance, station is falling…” A radio sputtered in Peter’s ear, broken up by distortion. Words floated by like hail in a snowstorm, brushing against his awareness. His head pounded. Moments apart his skin felt ice cold and then blazingly hot. Pain was a distant, haunting memory now; there was only the void of unconsciousness, teetering on the wider abyss of death.

“Someone…help…”

Peter’s eyes flickered open. Light poured in like daggers in the gaps of his armor, stabbing at his corneas. He closed them again, wincing. His heart was pounding at the door of his chest. It had one demand, repeated over and over again: wake up.

Something else spoke to him. Another voice whispering in his ear, mechanical, ethereal. ‘Administrating 0.7 milliliters of Epinephrine.’

Energy flooded Peter all at once. His eyes shot open, ignoring the pain of blinding light. Every muscle in his limbs spasmed at once. His heart knocked even faster, now. Up, boy. Up!

“Saint above,” he groaned, grasping at the side of his head. He felt his helmet instead. Gloved fingers brushed up against glass. It was damaged. That was when Peter remembered where he was. He looked around in a panic, staring out into the darkness of space where he floated, untethered. Debris from Minksy Station surrounded him like so many headstones in a graveyard. That impossibly bright light he had witnessed earlier? Hamlin’s Star, and it was getting bigger with each passing minute.

“Oh no. Hell no,” Peter cursed, regretting it immediately- both for the lost oxygen and the blasphemy.

The radio in his ear sputtered to life again. “I repeat: mayday, mayday, this is the crew of Minsky Station requesting immediate assistance. Our station has suffered heavy damage and has broken apart. Casualties unknown. I have over a hundred souls sectioned off in the cafeteria, but we are in need of rescue.”

The speaker may have been familiar to Peter but he couldn’t place them through the warped message. Still, it gave him hope to know some of his coworkers had survived.

‘If they made it out then maybe I can, too.’

First came the task of ensuring he didn’t die of oxygen deprivation. He grasped along the pouches on his belt until he found the pouch for suit patches. Ever so carefully he pulled open the pouch, removed a single thin membrane and positioned it over the spiderweb crack in his helmet. The membrane’s smart mesh bent and folded itself into the optimal shape to fill the hole, fusing its pliable material with the glass. The sound of rushing oxygen ceased. One of the alarms in the suit flicked off, satisfied that he was no longer in immediate danger of suffocation.

Next were the three holes in his center of mass. His neurodeck told him he hadn’t been shot clean through, and that there were likely foreign objects still lodged inside him. His implants must’ve been pumping enough pain medicine in him to knock out a horse because he could barely feel the discomfort in his guts. The holes in his suit exposing his insides to vacuum were a bigger problem: he set about quickly patching those with the same membranes. Once he was sure they were secure he gave himself a moment to rest.

“Woo, go me,” he panted out, pumping his arm in the air. Exhaustion covered him like a weighted blanket. Every action, no matter how small, felt impossibly difficult. No time to wallow in suffering, though. There was work to be done and lives to save- his, first and foremost. Wasn’t much he could do for anyone else if he was dead.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Peter took a few minutes to spin around in space. He was still less than a hundred feet away from Goliath; nothing had struck either of them to alter their course or speed, thank the Saint. If he could get back aboard he may be able to pilot it to safety, departed from its lower half though it was. How was he supposed to catch up to it, though? His space suit wasn’t EVA capable, so no built in thrusters or grappling lines or anything like that. And he had no way to call Goliath back to him remotely.

‘Gotta think. Need something to boost my acceleration…’ He wasn’t close enough to any debris to kick off of them. Waiting until he was close enough seemed risky; what if Goliath smashed into something first and it went careening away from him? No. The sooner he acted, the better.

‘The oxygen tank?’ Peter wondered, frowning. He had already leaked too much air to his liking. According to the readout in his peripheral vision he had thirty minutes of air left in optimal conditions. Peter pulled up a calculator in his neurodeck and started punching in some rough estimates. The computer corrected a few of his measurements and assumptions, but he’d gotten close enough on his own. If he burned half of his remaining tank he’d reach the Goliath’s cockpit in five minutes. That would leave him with eight minutes of oxygen- he estimated two minutes worth of air lost to the exertion of flying there and climbing aboard, though that was pessimistic.

The real test would come when he got to Goliath. It had its own life support system and air supply, which would be more than enough to sustain Pete. There was, however, the small problem of Goliath’s missing cockpit canopy. The one Peter had flown head first out of when they were blasted apart. If the life support system did its job it would’ve detected the breach and shut off its valves, preserving the oxygen supply. That would rely on the old girl’s systems being up to date, which they were not. It could have closed off at seventy percent oxygen, or thirty percent. Or maybe it just leaked the whole thrice-damned supply out and Peter would suffocate to death in the pilot seat.

‘Guess we’ll find out when we get there,’ He sighed. With a prayer to Saint Helia on his lips and a desperate hope in his heart, Peter unscrewed the oxygen cable and pointed it behind him. When he turned the release valve a burst of air sent him rocketing through space like a stone in a sling aimed at Goliath’s head. The irony was not lost on him.

The next few minutes were quiet. All he could hear was his own labored breathing, backdropped by a BEEP as he lost another minute’s worth of air. Peter was swimming in an ocean of stars bereft of beauty or serenity- those were stolen by the wreckage of attempted murder surrounding him. Sorrow filled his chest.

Minsky was a terrible place, he knew. The water was rancid. The air had too much carbon dioxide. There were too many crazies. VKS kept its workers indebted to them with terrible wages, dangerous working conditions and poor healthcare. He had dreamed of boarding a ship and leaving it all behind more nights than he could count. He yearned to see what lay beyond those rusted walls and cramped corridors: to climb the summit of Chomolungma in the Himalyas, to walk the Great Wall of his ancestor’s country, to ride the glass highways of Antuara’s skyscrapers on Mars, to follow the Revered Path of Emperor König’s conquest from Paadax, to Kallas, and finally Thedes itself. Peter wanted to see all of it, any of it. Anything but another ship hull or station chamber.

‘There were thousands of us on that station when they shot it. Thousands of human beings who would never argue with their spouses again, or watch another football game, or blow out candles on a birthday cake that tasted like plastic and cigarettes. Thousands of dreams that would never be had again.’

Peter placed a hand on Goliath’s broken hull. He climbed inside the cockpit with strong, determined hands, and set to work making things right.

First things first: the how much air was left in the tank? He needed to unscrew a cap on the exoframe’s oxygen storage unit and run a conjoining hose to his own tank. Then his neurodeck would check the air pressure to determine how much- if any- was left.

“Six hours and forty-seven minutes of oxygen remaining,” the artificial voice sang in his ear.

“Yes!” Peter whooped, slamming a fist into the console. “Hell yes!”