Adam Baker - Juggernaut

A white-walled airlock, little bigger than a phone booth. The inner hatch was sealed. There was a pile of fabric on the floor. A space suit.

‘ Switch on the camera. I want to see it all. ’

A big helmet with a gold visor. A big, quilted backpack. A heavy pressure suit in white canvas. The suit was in two sections. It seemed to seal at the waist. There were gauntlets with big lock-rings.

‘ Must be an EVA suit. That confirms Spektr has an occupant. There are a stack of hermetic storage boxes in the containment area with you. Pack the suit and seal it up. ’

We packed the suit in a plastic trunk. We sealed the trunk with biohazard tape.

‘ All right. Return to the airlock. My schematic says there is a mesh service plate in the floor. ’

‘I see it.’

‘ Grip the ring-latch. The plate should lift out. ’

‘There’s a socket inside. A five-pin, high-voltage connector.’

‘ Spektr had a bank of chemical batteries but they will be long dead. If we run electricity from an external power source, we can get the ship’s systems back online. ’

We unpacked a four-stroke generator and set the motor running. We ran cable up the scaffold steps to the airlock. I twisted the connector into the floor socket and there was an immediate power-up hum. Lights flickered and lit the airlock interior brilliant white.

‘I’ve got a green panel light.’

‘ The inner hatch is active. Open her up. Let’s look inside .’

I pressed the panel button and turned release handles. I pushed the inner hatch open.

‘ Talk to me, Jabril. Describe what you can see. ’

I resumed filming.

‘I’m entering a crew compartment. It’s cramped. There are storage lockers. There is some kind of porthole at the back.’

Hassim shone a flashlight through black glass. The empty hold. Payload doors held shut by heavy piston actuators.

‘The bay is empty,’ I told Ignatiev. ‘There is no cargo.’

A bank of winking red lights.

‘I think I have found the life-support controls. Russian symbols. Might be CO 2warnings. Depleted oxygen.’

‘ There should be another floor plate directly beneath your feet. ’

‘I see it.’

‘ Open it up. Don’t touch anything. ’

I lifted the plate aside.

A status panel flashed red, first in Cyrillic, then in English.

‘What in God’s name is this?’

‘ About thirty kilos of plastic explosive. The standard auto-destruct mechanism on all Soyuz and Progress flights, manned and unmanned. If a craft fails to deploy correctly, if there is a significant deviation from the launch flight-path, then Mission Control has the option to initiate a de-orbit burn and bring the vessel back into the atmosphere over the Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands. They wait until the vehicle descends to an altitude of about fifteen kilometres then transmit the self-destruct code. ’

‘How do we defuse it?’

‘ Press the amber button. Flip the toggle switch. ’

‘ Unplug the unit. There are grips either side of the console. The detonator and explosives should lift smoothly out. Get Hassim to help carry it from the vehicle. ’

We carried the auto-destruct unit from the airlock and set it down on the cavern floor.

‘ Return to the crew compartment. ’

‘Okay.’

‘ There’s a wall panel, secured by four lock-screws. Should be a voltage symbol on the panel. ’

‘Got it.’

I unscrewed the bolts. A cavity. Clumps of cable.

‘ The Saliut-5 data system. It captures telemetric and medical information for post-flight analysis. I’ll talk you through the de-installation. ’

‘It’s gone.’

‘ What do you mean? ’

‘The entire unit has been removed. Someone cut through the wires.’

‘ You’re sure? ’

‘There are data ribbons hanging out of the wall. They’ve been sawed with a knife.’

‘ Chyort voz’mi ,’ muttered Ignatiev.

‘It seems someone was anxious to ensure Spektr kept her secrets.’

There was a long pause.

‘Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?’

‘ Open the cockpit. It’s time we saw who flew this thing .’

The crew compartment was separated from the cockpit by a thick bulkhead.

I turned the release handles and pulled back the flight-deck hatch.

Darkness. The cabin lights had shorted out.

‘Hassim. Give me some light.’

I crawled into the cramped flight deck and filmed. Hassim crouched by the doorway.

A single high-backed couch facing banks of instrumentation. Commsgear, telemetric read-outs, navigation management consoles and attitude controls. Row upon row of dials and toggle switches.

The flight-deck windows were smoked almost black by the heat of re-entry.

I crawled into the cockpit on my knees.

‘ There should be six red switches. Centre panel, above the thrust levers .’

‘I see them.’

‘ They isolate the main boosters. Flip them upward into the off position. I don’t want some random command impulse to trigger the combustion chambers and blow us to pieces. ’

I put down the camera. I rested my stump on a deck plate for support and reached forward to flip the bank of switches.

‘There’s a pilot right next to me. He looks long dead.’

‘ Any obvious signs of injury? ’

‘No. His suit is intact.’

‘ Film it. ’

The figure was strapped in the command couch. The couch was a foam and fibre-glass body-shell mounted on ram-jacks to absorb a heavy impact.

The cosmonaut wore a grey canvas pressure suit. His boots and gauntlets were attached by lock-rings. A hose anchored to his chest-plate was plugged into a wall-mounted oxygen supply.

‘Give me more light.’

Hassim crawled into the compartment and held the torch above his head.

The dead cosmonaut had a silver rosary wrapped round his wrist.

‘His helmet is sealed. I can’t see his face.’

I kept filming.

A mission patch on his sleeve: the tricolour of the Russian Federation and a clenched fist. A name tape on his chest.

KONSTANTIN.

‘ Can you move the pilot? Can you extract him from his seat? ’

‘I’ll try.’

‘ Don’t violate the integrity of his suit, understand? Don’t release the lock-rings. Don’t lift the visor. ’

I shut off the video camera and passed it to Hassim.

The cosmonaut was held in his seat by a five-point harness. I twisted the central clasp. The straps unlatched and fell free.

I turned a screw-ring, and released the oxygen umbilicus from his chest valve.

I shut off the light.

‘Give me a hand.’

Hassim gripped the cosmonaut’s ankles. I pushed my hand and stump beneath the pilot’s armpits and supported his weight as we swung his body from the seat.

We manhandled the dead man from the cockpit, through the stowage area and out the airlock.

‘ Put him in the sarcophagus. ’

I pulled a polythene sheath from a long box. A steel coffin with a big biohazard symbol etched into the metal and a porthole in the lid.

We laid the cosmonaut inside the steel container, still in his pressure suit, and folded his arms across his chest. We sealed the lid.

We entered the decon cycle. We scrubbed our suits with bleach, hosed down under a shower head, then stood bathed in ultraviolet light.

We towelled and dressed.

‘We shall rest,’ said Ignatiev. ‘Rehydrate. Get something to eat. We begin the autopsy in an hour.’