Station Breaker

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=

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.

"Do they pay you by the hour or the orbit?" I reply, trying to sound totally not stressed out.

"This is funny," she says without a trace of laughter. "Commander Yablokov said you were not military."

"No, ma'am. Just a slack-jawed civilian that wants to be a space man."

"I see. What did you do before working for iCosmos?"

"Me? I was a school teacher for about three weeks."

"You weren't very good at it?"

"Probably not. I wanted to be an astronaut even more."

"But you are a pilot? Yes?"

Why did I feel like everyone here is very interested in my résumé? Don't they have LinkedIn in Russia?

Peterson and Bennet are the interesting ones. But maybe that's it; they've both got full Wikipedia pages with their entire life story. I'm a line of red text with nothing to link to on a page listing all of the current iCosmos astronauts.

When the Russians found out that we were coming and that I was a last-minute fill-in, I looked like the suspicious one.

"Yes. I'm a pilot." In the interest of international conversation, I'm about to point out that I'd even flown MiGs in Russian and learned a little of the language.

But I don't, because all hell is breaking loose.

There's a loud bang and an alarm goes off, filling the air with deafening noise.

"This is not good!" shouts Sonin.

You don't say…