Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

31 - Disposal

 Having climbed far enough down the ladder from the airlock to the maintenance platform to allow the outer airlock doors to close, Ria manoeuvred the oxygen bottle under her left arm to free up her right hand. The soft rubber pads on the fingertips of her E.V.A. suit gloves made it easy to grip items, but the stiffness of the fabric around her fingers made it harder to manipulate anything.

Holding the ladder with her left arm while squeezing the bottle with her elbow to hold it in place on her hip, she used her free hand to hit the large pad that closed the outer doors. With her suit surrounded by total vacuum, she could hear nothing as the large door panels rolled shut above her.

As she moved her free hand to grip a rung of the ladder, she felt the weight under her left arm suddenly drop. She tightened the pinch with her elbow, but it was too late and the bottle fell. In a panic, she reached out to grab the metal bottle, but it was already out of reach and plummeting towards the maintenance platform a few metres below her. She braced herself for an explosion as it struck the metal mesh floor with surprising speed.

The explosion did not happen. Instead, the bottle bounced half-heartedly, landing back on the platform before resting against it and beginning to roll. Realising immediately that the rudimentary safety-rails around the outside edge of the platform would offer little if any hindrance to the bottle simply rolling off the edge beneath them, she pulled her feet clear of the rungs and dropped down the ladder.

Her magnetic boots clanged onto the platform, the sound audible through her suit, and she turned and ran as fast as her suit would allow. The powerful magnets in her boots made it almost impossible to lift her feet with any speed.

"Stephen, shut down the ion drives, NOW!" she shouted into the open microphone in her helmet.

Launching herself forwards into a dive, she reached for the steadily rolling bottle, touching it momentarily with her fingertips. The brief contact served only to accelerate it forwards out of her reach, spinning it sideways too. She crashed chest-first onto the platform and could only watch helplessly as the bottle slipped silently over the edge.

"Shut down is running, Commander," came Stephen's reply. "What's going on down there?"

"I dropped it!" she almost cried, still winded by her fall.

The display projected onto the inside of her visor flashed an amber heart-rate warning as she attempted to heave herself onto her knees. Hoping the heat from the plasma plumes streaming from the base of the ship would not be enough to detonate the explosive, she used her arms to bounce herself upright. Maybe the bottle would fall fast enough to only be caught in the edge of the plumes for a few seconds. It would warm up a little but maybe not enough to agitate the contents into detonating.

At that moment, gravity went away and she got a momentary glimpse of sparks exploding against the outer wall of the supply module in front of her before her upward momentum crashed her helmet painfully into the solid underside of the Command Module above her. She was too jarred by the impact to be thankful that the visor was unaffected by the jolt.

The impact caused her to pivot helplessly around her helmet, throwing her legs around and, for a moment, she thought she was going to crash back-first into the Command Module. Then she realised that the bounce of her helmet had given her enough downward momentum to move her slowly away from the Command Module, although it had left her spinning completely out of control.

She grabbed at the airlock handgrips as she spun past them, but they were moving away from her and already out of reach. All she could do was try not to get dizzy as she turned head-over-heels back towards the maintenance deck some three metres below. She was vaguely aware of Stephen speaking in her ear then her knees smashed painfully into the platform.

The impact set her spinning the opposite way and she threw out her arms to protect herself from crashing visor-first into the platform again. Through luck more than skill, she managed to poke the fingers of her right hand through the platform mesh and cling on to avoid bouncing upwards again.

"Stephen, what's going on with the ion drives?" she called into the helmet radio.

"They shut down successfully. Are you ready for me to restart them?"

"Whenever you want," she replied, still a little out-of-breath. "Did that bottle explode?"

"Various sensors near the aft of the ship picked up a couple of seconds of erratic vibrations which stopped just as quickly. Was that it?"

"I couldn't stop it. It fell into the ion plumes. I got a bit... out-of-sync with the ship so I didn't see what happened properly. Any leaks or other damage?"

"Foxy's checking the sensors now, but we seem to be fine."

"Keep checking. I'm looking at the side of Supply Module 2 right now and it's got a spread of micro-punctures."

"The self-sealing foam should take care of that, Commander. Nothing seems to have perforated the inner laminate as we've got no pressure drops anywhere on the ship."

"Okay, I'm coming back inside."

Please don't forget to VOTE for any chapter you enjoy. Thank you!