Vessel (3 page)

But tha
t sound didn't come — it didn't have a chance to. Shuddering awake, his eyes searched the darkness, hunting for the dream that roused him. The screaming silence mellowed, and he eased himself back onto his pillow, taking deep breaths of the cool, dry air to ease his skipping heart.

Thump, thump, thump.

There it was again, the noise from his dream. His semi-conscious brain fumbled for an answer, but the wires weren't connecting. Then, a muffled voice called through the door: 'Mr Dezhurov, sir? Are you there?'

The dream was gone for good as conscious and subconscious snapped back to together in an instant.
'I'm coming,' he croaked. He got up, grabbed a dressing gown from the otherwise empty closet, threaded his arms through the sleeves and wrapped it around himself, yawning as he slouched to the door. He looked at his watch. It read:
3:49am
. Opening the door a crack, he squinted at the silhouette of a man standing outside. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the man was practically a boy, a young soldier wearing the uniform of the centre's security.

'What?
' Aleks said.

'Sorry to disturb you, sir. Y
ou're needed in Mission Control.'

The
soldier looked awkward during the silence that followed. Aleks considered him for a moment, then nodded. 'Alright,' he said. 'Let me get washed and dressed and I'll be right there.'

'Thank you
, sir,' the soldier said, looking relieved.

Aleks
sighed, and shut the door.

Lev greeted
Aleks as he entered Mission Control through the makeshift security point that had popped up overnight. He had concern on his face, even if he was trying his best to mask it. For the first time in a while, Bales was not at his side.

'I'm so sorry to wake you up at this time in the morning,' he said, handing
Aleks a polystyrene cup filled with hot coffee. 'But we have a small situation that we thought would be best for you to be in on.'

They walked around the circumference of the room before slotting in at the appropriate row
. A relieved-looking junior communications officer stood up as they approached, the suddenly taut cable almost ripping the headset from his ears. Lev had barely dismissed him before he darted away, and Aleks watched him leave, apprehension stirring in his chest.

'What's his problem?' he asked, still watching the man as he lef
t the room.

'
He's out of his depth, I suppose,' Lev said, inviting Aleks to sit down, before doing so himself.

'Where's your NASA friend?'
Aleks said, nodding towards the empty third seat at his station. He took a sip of his coffee, allowing the lingering heat to flow to his extremities.

'We, er …
haven't alerted him. It's only a minor thing. Nothing worth disturbing him about,' Lev said, looking guilty.

'Not minor enough to let me catch up on my rest though,'
Aleks said. 'You know I don't sleep well, you know I've been up doing long shifts —'

'As have we all,' Lev interjected, 'and I'm sorry, but we have some very powerful eyes watching over us
, so we need to make every decision perfectly. We can only do that with the best personnel on the job.'

Aleks
felt numb, cranky and exhausted. He had probably overreacted. Lev was just doing his job after all. He took another sip of coffee, placed the cup down on his desk and started again.

'So what's the deal with Bales? Why is he here?'

Lev pulled a face, one of frustration. 'NASA pretty much funds this entire operation. With money comes control. They may let us think we're running the show, but if they want something, they get it.'

Aleks snorted with disbelief.
'And we let them?'

'We don't have a choice.
If we say no, they could pull the plug. As long as they stay happy, and we preen and smile for their puppet, Bales, we'll be okay.'

There w
as a visible annoyance forming in the creases of Lev's brow at the mention of Bales, so Aleks decided to drop the topic altogether.

'What's going on here, then
?'

'Well, you know that
solar flare that was predicted for the next month?'

'Yeah.
I saw the NASA STEREO report a few weeks back.'

'Well, it's come early.
Only a small one at the moment — M Two class I think — but the reports suggest this is the first of many, and they're going to get larger.'

'Do we still have contact with the ISS?'
Aleks asked.

'
Not at the moment,' Lev said. 'The radiation storm from the first flare is still passing. We estimate another half-hour before comms are restored. I wanted you here ready for the link up.'

Aleks
nodded, turning to look back at the double doors. He could hear raised voices, and as a member of security exited, a fragment of the shouting slipped in through the swinging door.

'Excuse me one moment,' Lev
said, heading for the door himself. It had barely swung shut behind him when Aleks heard Lev's deep, authoritative bark adding to the muffled cacophony. The voices died down after a minute, and Lev returned looking furious. Bales followed him, his tanned face expressionless and cold below his colourless crew-cut hair. They marched over, and Aleks shot a puzzled expression at Lev when Bales wasn't looking, but Lev either ignored it or didn't see it. He sat down beside Aleks, but Bales continued to stand, looking around the room. Clearing his throat, he addressed everyone in a near-perfect Russian dialect, albeit one tainted with a slightly robotic accent:

'
Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention for a moment, please?'

He already had it.

'My
name is John Bales, and I have been sent by NASA to work closely with you all following the recent discovery of the unidentified vessel that we have code-named
UV One
. It has been decided in a joint negotiation between our two states that should the situation escalate to a point that our astronauts are in a state of immediate danger, our expertise and authority — NASA's expertise and authority — will take command. That time —'

Hushed whispers rippled around the room.

'That time,' Bales repeated, raising his voice a fraction, 'has come, and so I will duly take command of this operation.'

The flutter of whispers became open discontentment, some operators shaking their heads in disbelief.

'It is for the safety of us, our astronauts and for the people of Earth,' Bales said, scanning the room, 'and I expect you all to continue doing your very best. That is all.'

He stood watching as
everyone turned back to their stations. Aleks could tell by the look on his face that he was glad — no, worse than that,
delighted
— to be taking control of the mission.

Chapter 3

'Still nothing,'
Aleks said, after failing to reach the ISS yet again.

Bales chewed the stylus of his touch pad, thinking.
'Okay,' he said. 'Keep trying, ten-minute intervals.'

Aleks
made a note of the time for his next broadcast. Lev, who was sat alongside Bales, was staring into the distance.

'If you'll excuse me,' Bales
said, standing up, 'I need to make a few phone calls.'

Without waiting for a response, he
strode off, flicking through his touch pad as he walked. Just before he left the room altogether, he turned around and called: 'Please be sure to inform me of any changes to the situation, okay?'

And then he was gone.
Aleks, who watched him leave, turned to Lev as soon as the door swung shut.

'Are you going to let him
carry on like this?' he said.

Lev, a faint veil of dejectedness hanging over
him, shrugged. The expression aged him considerably, and the usual sharpness in his keen eyes seemed to have fizzled out.

'What can I do?' he said
. 'It's not my call if the RFSA decides that this is the best course of action. Maybe it is for the best. Maybe the Americans are better trained at this than we are.'

Aleks
snorted. '
No-one
is trained for this and you know it.'

Lev looked blank for a moment, and before he could speak,
a wiry-looking man with a floppy haircut appeared with a ream of printouts.

'
I've got some more readings on the radiation storm,' the wiry man said, flicking his drooping side-parting with a twitch of his head, 'and it looks like we should get an opportunity for communication with the ISS in the next few minutes. But,' he continued, letting the ream spill onto the desk so he could point to a line that slashed up and down in quick succession, 'it'll only be for a minute or two at the most. After that, the next window could be hours, days — even weeks away.'

'Thank you Pyotr,' Lev
said, acknowledging the man with a half-hearted smile. Pyotr dithered, looking unsure, then gathered up his printouts and returned to his station. Before Lev could even open his mouth, Aleks was already broadcasting, nudging his headset down to a more comfortable position on his head as he spoke.

'RS0ISS, TsUP, please come back.'

He paused and waited for a few seconds before trying again.

'RS0ISS, RS0ISS,
how do you read?'

A loud burst of garbled static gave his heart a jolt, and he instinctively
snatched at the gain controls to manage the harsh levels.

'RS0ISS,'
Aleks repeated, desperate to hear a voice through the digital mess, 'can you hear me? I repeat,
can you hear me
?'

He
held his breath as he waited, searching the soundscape for signs of life. There were nigh on a hundred people in the room, but at that moment it felt like it was him on his own, his world shrinking around him as he focussed his attention on his hearing. The radio hissed and crackled again, this time more quietly, and Aleks' trained ear heard a voice hidden somewhere in the confused mass of sound.

'I think I've got t
hem,' he said, hands darting from one control to the next to isolate the signal. 'Negative copy RS0ISS,' he said, his calm voice hiding the racing energy in his chest. 'Please modulate your downlink on the DSKY using manual. I'm trying a connection through an alternate satellite.'

The static came through again;
this time the voice was definite, but still not understandable.

'I've al
most got you, RS0ISS. Try again.'

The crackle died
and Aleks waited, his thumb and index finger poised on the gain control.

'TsUP, TsUP
— RS0ISS, please confirm — signal,' came Mikhail's voice, laden with static and broken up into chunks, but clear enough to understand. Relief flooded through Aleks. He nodded to Lev and switched the main loudspeaker on.

'RS0ISS,
readability two, strength four — we're reading you with some noise, but we can hear you clearly enough. Can you confirm your current situation?'

The
intermittent replay came intertwined with the hiss of millions of radioactive particles as the solar storm thundered through the ISS at the speed of light:

'The situation
— okay — reading — levels of radiation.'

'Copy
, RS0ISS, remain inside your radiation protection compartments where possible and limit your exposure time. Anything to report on UV One?'

'Negative
— no change to — continue to maintain — aft.'

'Ok
ay, RS0ISS. Please cease all activity and remain inside your radiation protection compartments until further notice.'

'—
opy, TsUP.'

Then there was silence
, and Aleks waited to see if Mikhail had anything more to add. He did.

'TsUP, how long
— we transfer — to Earth?'

Aleks
was taken aback by this unexpected question. Looking to Lev, whose corrugated brow mirrored his own concern, he pushed the broadcast button.

'You've got just over a week until Progress arrives with the resupply
for the refit and return, and then another four weeks until the next team goes up on Soyuz TMA Eleven M and you come back.'

He released the button, frowned,
and then pressed it again. 'Is everything okay up there?'

The response came a little later than felt normal.

'Yeah, yeah — think so. Just getting a little — up here. It feels close.'

There was a pause
. Aleks thought Mikhail sounded anxious. Mikhail never sounded anxious.

'Aleks,' Mikhail
said, 'I'm getting — that normal?'

'Negative copy, negative copy,'
Aleks responded. He could feel his chest becoming tight and constricted.

'I'm
— hallucinations — I don't — if — awake …'

'Mikhail, I'm losing signal,
negative copy, please repeat, please repeat,' Aleks said, his fingers jumping from dial to dial, adjusting settings as they went. All that came back was static, and then nothing. He called out to the ISS a couple more times, and when not even a distorted signal was being received back, he pulled off his headset and tossed it onto the desk with a clatter.

'Shit!
' he growled.

Mikhail's voice still rang discordant in his mind even hours later as he sat in one of the centre's many boardrooms, waiting for Bales.
On the opposite side of the long table sat Lev, whose usual aura of capability and authority had all but vanished. A clock ticked, each
tick-tick-tick
long, loud and clear. The atmosphere was thick, but the ticking clock cut right through it with utmost clarity.

When the door opened and Bales entered,
striding through in his quiet way, Aleks realised that he'd slipped into a doze. He’d been mesmerised by the clock, the humidity and not least by his exhaustion. An invisible weight pressed down onto his weary shoulders, so he didn't get up to pull his chair in as Bales squeezed past.

'Gentlemen,' Bales said,
sitting at the head of the table and placing upon it a thin blue folder, 'I've called this meeting because I need to know what happened in the brief conversation that took place between Mr Dezhurov and Major Romanenko at around zero five hundred hours this morning.'

Lev's
face contorted with frustration and annoyance. 'We didn't have enough time to —'

'As you are aware,' Bales
interrupted, not looking up as he drew a pile of paper from the folder and sifted through it, 'I specifically requested that any change in the situation be reported to me, particularly any conversation that you may have had with the crew of the ISS.'

He turned to
Lev, his narrow eyes unblinking beneath his stark white eyebrows. He was obviously allowing Lev to speak, and Lev seized the opportunity, regardless of why Bales had let him take it.

'The window was small and there w
asn't enough time to call you down to Mission Control. Hell, I didn't even know where you'd gone.'

Bales still didn'
t blink, but he broke eye contact with Lev for a moment as he placed the pile of paper on the table, pinching the corners together so they lay perfectly square.

'Mr
Ryumin,' Bales said in a slow, deliberate way, 'there was plenty of time between then and now for you to inform me.'

'But
you weren't anywhere to be seen,' protested Lev, who held his hands up in exasperation. 'You would have been informed as soon as you'd returned from whatever it was you were doing.'

If Bales was as frustrated with Lev as Lev was with
Bales, he didn't show it.

'Had there been another window for us to resume contact with the ISS,' he continued in his deliberate way, 'I would not have known all the facts and I would not have been able to instruct the crew in the best possible manner. It is
imperative,' he prodded the pile of paper, 'that this kind of information be reported to me
as soon as possible
.'

He emphasised the last few words, looking hard at Lev, who
glared at the opposite wall above Aleks' head. Bales pulled his chair closer to the table, licked his index finger and flicked through the sheets of paper.

'Before we continue,' he said
, as though the previous conversation hadn't even taken place, 'I want to clarify a few details from the conversation with the ISS this morning. I have read through the transcript and listened to the playback, so it would be good to utilise your professional opinions to find the distinction between what we
think
we heard and what was actually said.'

Bales had divided his pile of paper into three s
maller piles of equal thickness, and he handed one to Lev and one to Aleks. It was the transcript from the conversation, documented like a script, with initials for the speakers and occasional commentary that allowed for context.

'If you could l
ook at page three,' Bales asked. They all turned to page three. 'You can see that Major Romanenko questions the duration of the mission. What would you say had happened here? Is the Major asking a legitimate and understandable question, or would you say he had forgotten what the date was?'

Aleks could see Bales looking at him from the corner of his eye
.

'
Mr Dezhurov, would you say that Major Romanenko had forgotten what the date was? It's a simple question.'

'Well,'
Aleks said, looking to Lev for help, but not getting it, 'I can't say for sure. Keeping track of time can be difficu—'

'That's not what I asked,' Bales
said, clasping his hands together in front of him. 'I just want to know if Major Romanenko was having trouble with his temporal orientation.'

Aleks
sighed. He couldn't dance around the question forever. 'It seems that way, yes,' he said reluctantly.

'Good. T
hank you,' Bales said as he turned to the next page. 'Could you continue to page four, please.'

He looked on until the other two had turned to page four, then his eyes returned to his own transcript.

'Here, on the eighth line down, Major Romanenko makes a statement that is broken up by interference. I need a best estimate as to the subject and context of his statement, and an assumption as to what he means by it. He says,
just getting a little,
then there's a section missing, before we hear him say,
up here.
'

Bales read the text
aloud without any shred of emotion. It sounded so strange read like that. The desperate words, haunting and unnatural, made his skin crawl.

'It feels close,
' Bales said. 'What do you make of that, Mr Dezhurov?'

'I don't know,
' said Aleks. He could feel his words being led someplace he didn't want them to go. 'I wouldn't want to assume what Mikhail meant.'

'But you must be able to make an educated guess, surely?'

Bales wasn't going to let Aleks get away with not answering this — or any other — question, that much was clear.

'It seems,'
Aleks said, 'at a purely hypothetical guess, that Mikhail is experiencing the symptoms of claustrophobia, an expected side effect of the —'

'Thank you, Mr
Dezhurov.'

'
— of the stresses of being in space during a period of loss of communication and confinement to the radiation protection compartment,' Aleks finished through gritted teeth.

'
Thank you
, Mr Dezhurov,' Bales repeated, his voice firm, but still calm. 'Lastly,' he continued, 'at the bottom of page five.'