Excerpt of High Risk
Houston wouldn’t have cut communications between Xander and me unless something had gone terribly wrong. But as I’m clinging on to the Canadarm robotic arm of the International Space Station, I’m getting zero answers while it carries me to the airlock.
Without having to be told to do so, I again check the reading on my suit—less than 2.5 psi now. I’m still losing pressure and will begin suffering hypoxia symptoms anytime now.
But none of that matters because I’m not the one in the most danger here.
“CAPCOM,” I bark into the mic. I need an update on Xander, dammit, and there’s nothing but a long stretch of silence. “Houston. Do not leave me in the dark. Where is he? Why did you cut me off?”
“Ty,” Noah’s voice fills my ears. Am I imagining the shaky nervousness? Typically, he’s such a cool customer that it startles me to hear his emotion. “We are working both problems. You have to concentrate on getting yourself to safety. Leave Xander’s situation to us.”
I grit my teeth in frustration at the brush-off. Pointing my head to look up above the plane of the station, I search for him against an inky blackness studded with stars. He was thrown in that general direction when his suit collided with the live current of the solar array.
But Houston can follow my line of sight, due to the camera attached to my helmet. They know where my mind is. I can’t see a damn thing.
“Ty, follow orders,” Noah says, reading my hesitation.
“I can do this. My SAFER is working perfectly. Let me go get him.”
“Negative, Ty. Get to Quest, now.” He refers to the airlock by name. “We’ll fill you in the minute you’re out of danger.”
Fucking fantastic.
I let loose a string of filthy epithets, aware that the channel is open and he can hear me. I have zero fucks to give at this point.
Though it isn’t logical, I visualize Xander getting control of his suit, activating his SAFER, jetting back to the station, and using a tether to secure himself. I grit my teeth, willing it to be so. As if somehow, I can make it real.
Silence on the comms makes the time stretch out interminably until I reach my destination.
At the Quest airlock, I make ingress without incident. No one speaks during the seven-minute repressurization process. I can barely hear anything over the low-pressure alarm ringing in my ears anyway, and the light-headedness is starting to kick in, spots floating in front of my eyes.
When the inner hatch opens, my last hopes for Xander are dashed when our commander and the station’s two cosmonauts enter the airlock.
One look at their faces and I know we’ve lost him.
Sergei takes hold of the handle on the front of my suit while the other cosmonaut unlatches the helmet. My ears immediately pop, sharp pain stabbing through my eardrums from the change in pressure. I’m almost certain one of them has ruptured—all sound coming as if from a great, great distance. That burned metallic smell of space on my suit and the perpetually new plastic smell of the station assail my senses.
“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on!” I bellow.
Sergei tenses, his grip on me tightening. It’s only then that I realize my colleagues are anticipating me trying to go back out there and get Xander. Sergei has already pushed my helmet in the direction of the inner hatch so that it floats far beyond my reach.
He’s right. It would be suicide, but he knows me too well. I swallow a lump in my dry throat. Penny, our commander, looks up at me, tears beading around her eyes. Everything in me drops, pulled only by the gravity of my own sudden grief.
On the comms, Noah’s voice is tight with emotion. “Ty, I’m sorry. He’s too far away, and we have no way of getting him back to the station.”
“Take a deep breath, Ty,” Sergei says to me in Russian. And I have no purchase to pull back from him. We are all weightless here, but he’s anchored to the wall by a strap over his feet.
My mind races, and I know they are out of options. The Soyuz capsule has not been prepped and cannot be used in such an operation even if it were. But in my mind, I’m grasping at anything. Any hope when clearly there is none, or they would have found it by now.
“No, goddammit!” I shout, slapping a frustrated hand against the canvas wall of the airlock. The two Russians look away from my face, allowing me some privacy in my grief.
I can’t don another suit. And even if I could, it would be useless for the same reasons the Russians couldn’t egress in theirs. An EVA required at least four hours of proper breathing preparation to avoid getting the bends from the change in pressure.
Noah very loudly clears his throat into the mic. “We, uh, we have him on comms, Ty. He’s asking to talk to you.”
I rub my eyes hard and bite down on the inside of my cheek to control my emotions. Penny nods at the Russians, who slowly leave Quest with concerned glances in my direction.
“How long does he have on his life support?” I ask her.
“Little over an hour…maybe two. He used up a lot of it when he was trying to deal with the situation. The secondary oxygen tank isn’t working either.”
That punch to my gut again. I swallow, take a long breath and struggle to compose myself. Memories flood me—from our first day at the Naval Academy together, Xander’s shit-eating grin that gave him away whenever he was about to pull a joke on me, the night we got locked out of our dorms during a particularly harsh Maryland winter, my throwing a bash for him as best man for his wedding. The hours and hours in the hospital waiting room with a giant teddy bear next to me during the birth of his son.
Fucking fuck. He has everything to live for.
Penny pats my arm. “Do it, Ty. He’s been asking for you for the last twenty minutes. We wanted you inside and safe before…” Her voice fades.
Before they told me there was no hope.
She’s my commander. It was absolutely her call. But I’m so fucking pissed that I can’t look at her. Helpless rage scorches through me, but I don’t have time to be angry.
She’s talking again. “They’re getting Karen and AJ on the comm to talk to him, but I’ll give you the time alone until then.”
My eyes close. Karen and AJ—oh God—his wife and his little son. The thought only reminds me that he has everything to live for. And I have nothing.
Why am I the one safe inside this airlock while he’s the one drifting off into a black void?
“Put me on with him, then,” I say in a low voice to Noah. Penny backs away toward the hatch where the Russians vanished.
More static blasts my injured ear as the frequency is rerouted.
Deep in my gut, that sick feeling roils, making me feel dirty, helpless. Part of me wishes he wouldn’t want to talk to me. But I know Xander.
I know Xander.
A loud click and I hear his voice cut across to me from wherever he is.
“Hey, bud. I got myself into a predicament here. I’m locked outside the dorm and we’ve been drinking too much. Might start snowing soon.”
I suck in a quick breath as his words stab my heart. Tears prickle the back of my eyes. There’s no telling how many people are privy to this conversation. But all that matters right now is the knowledge that I’ll never see Xander again. And this is the last chance I’ll get to speak to him before I lose him forever.
And I don’t give a fuck who hears me lose it.
“I’m so sorry, man. This should be me and not you.” I shake my head though he can’t see me. Emotion clogs my throat.
“No way, bro. No way. There’s no talk of blame, okay? We don’t have the time for that, anyway. Karen will be in anytime now. But I don’t want to hear anything more like that, Ty. Besides…it’s absolutely gorgeous out here. I can’t think of a more beautiful sight to be the last thing I see. I’m not afraid.”
But I am. I’m so afraid I can hardly breathe, and even that thought strangles me with fresh guilt. “Xander.”
“I have some things—some private things I want to say. Can they do that? CAPCOM, can you do that, please?”
I open my mouth, hesitating, but Noah’s voice cuts in. “We can do that, Xander. We’ll interrupt the moment your wife is available. It shouldn’t be long now.”
My heart hurts to think of Karen getting this news, of AJ being told that Daddy is never coming back. That he has to say goodbye forever.
How will I ever look them in the eyes?
There’s another click, and the sound quality changes in the speakers pressed against my head through the Snoopy cap. I chew on my lip and say, “I’m here, Xander. I think we’re alone.”
“I mean what I said, Ty. No recriminations, okay? I’m the one to blame. I’m the one who—” He cuts himself off, and I take the cue from him.
“Xander, please. I would never ever blame you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I know you, and I know you’ll blame yourself. Don’t you dare claim this clusterfuck. If you do, then I’m coming back to haunt your ass, you read me?”
“Yes, sir,” I choke out. Tears pool around my eyes, clinging to them and beading around my eyeballs as they do in zero-g. Fuck.
I’m curled up in here weeping like a baby, barely able to catch my breath. And there’s this agony piercing my chest with every breath, and it has nothing to do with the pressure changes I’ve just endured.
Jesus, this hurts so bad.
“Make me one more promise, Ryan.”
Minutes pass as he calmly outlines it to me. His voice is full of strength and clarity. It has none of the caste of a dying man, and I have to cut through my own panic and grief to hear him.
There are things I promise—all kinds of things. I’d promise him the sun if I could.
I promise him I’ll watch over his wife and child—they are like family to me anyway.
I promise him my future. Readily. Easily. Without even thinking about what I’m doing.
“Promise me, bro.” His voice is hoarse, barely edged with emotion.
“I promise.”