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“ Da . Is complication.” He waves a gloved hand at the space around us. “Up here… is better only men. No women.”

“With your sunny disposition, I’m sure your wife misses you something terrible. I bet she wishes she could come to space.”

He snorts. “I have no wife.”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

He frowns at my words but doesn’t say anything more. He simply grabs the wire cutters and reaches back into the cavity of the wall.

“Yeah, nice talking with you,” I mutter .

I lean on the countertop, ready to dive back into my work, when a low rumble sounds.

Quiet. Slow. Subtle.

I glance around the room, but all appears well. Probably nothing.

“Space rats.” I snort to myself.

I grip the counter’s edge and slide my legs under – that’s when I hear it.

A thousand tiny clinks.

The test tube housing is shaking, the small glass vials clattering beside one another. The magnetic inventory clipboard is dancing along the cabinet doors, the attached pen barely holding on for dear life.

What the fuck…

Metal rattles all around me. Glass beakers clink. The emergency lighting kicks in, bathing Columbus in an ominous green hue. My water sloshes inside its bag, churning like a tempest.

The room shakes. I’m lurching several feet forward, ragdolling through Columbus.

Racks of test tubes shunt forward, shattering as the fridge doors halt their escape. Fluids seep between the glass shards like a perversion of a lava lamp.

One of the large white cargo bags thrashes in the turbulence. It pulls forward with enough force to tear itself away from its velcro bindings, setting it on a direct collision course with me .

“Fuck.” It hits me with the fury of a heavyweight gut punch, altering my trajectory and thrusting me against the corner of a steel counter.

I gasp as all the breath whooshes from my lungs, before another lurch has me scraping along the equipment rack on the back wall.

Adrenaline lances through my veins. My brain rattles against my skull. My body pinballs through Columbus. My arm smacks on a handhold bar. Pain shoots along my nerves, lancing up into my elbow. I clutch it to my chest. My whole body burns. I try to gulp some air back into my lungs.

Inhale. Exhale. Don’t panic. Slow breaths.

In. Out. In. Out.

“Incoming meteor storm,” Anderson shouts out through the comms, though I can hear his panicked cry echoing through the station. “Brace for impact.”

Bloody Hell.

Time to panic.

I scramble to orientate myself. My ribs complain against the movement as I tuck one foot under the bar just as the first wave of burning rocks starts pelting the station. There could be thousands of them .

Or worse, one of those micro meteors. As deadly as they are rare.

I try not to imagine the carnage. Ignoring the memories pulling forward of the small cluster of them that took out two modules and half the Solar Array of the Chinese Tiangong Space Station. That was only last year. The three crew on board had to emergency evacuate to Earth.

Please, don’t let it be one of them.

My mind whirs, quickly running the numbers on how long the station’s air will last… Eighteen days. A generous estimate to be sure, depending on worst-case scenario conditions, but who really knows how–

A grunt from inside the open wall cavity.

Fuck. “ Chelenko!”

I push off hard, the burn of my ribs quieting to a numb ache as I soar across the lab. I crash into the rack of equipment on the far wall. Glass beakers shatter from the impact, the shards floating inside their containers.

Reaching inside the open wall panel, I grab his flight suit and pull hard.

A deep crimson gash covers the side of his head. The blood beads off and drifts away in a stream of dark bubbles.

“Still with me, Chelenko?” I squeeze both his hands with mine. He squeezes back, his grasp weak.

“Come on, you can do better than that.”.

He squeezes again, harder this time, but still far weaker than he should.

“Don’t worry about hurting my delicate female fingers. ”

He laughs, splutters, coughing up blood. Too much blood. The beads collect between his teeth and gums. Escaping in small bursts of bubbles with each cough. One hits me on the cheek, clinging to my skin a moment before sliding away.

Fuck. “Well, that’s no good, Comrade.”

He grunts acknowledgement.

“Impact in five… four… three… two…” The comms crackle.

“No time for pleasantries. This will hurt. You’re going to have to trust me.”

He gives me a jerky nod.

I kick off the racking behind and pull Chelenko along with me. He cries out in pain as we fly across the module. My palm hits the panel first as I reorient us both, sliding my fallen comrade towards one of the empty pull-out counters.

I am extremely grateful for the lack of gravity as his massive body easily glides across the lab towards the supplies wall, tucking neatly under the counter.

With straps from the wall, I belt us both in. They are usually for securing supplies, but I hope they can handle some human cargo. The last buckle snaps shut just in time for the fire and brimstone to hail down upon us.

A lone meteor rips clean through Columbus, filling the room in front of me with a sudden, brilliant light. It glows a dancing iridescence. I watch frozen, time slowing as the glowing hunk of rock glides through the room like a rogue wave – beautiful as it is deadly.

My vision blurs, white out, slowly readjusting as I blink again and again.

It’s inside. There’s a hull breach. The wire caging that winds its way through the exterior walls of the stations must have ruptured.

Where’s the point of entry?

My mind and body war over the urge to look. I can’t risk it.

I hate to think how much radiation we just absorbed. Three months of Natural Background Radiation? A year? A decade’s worth?

Bloody hell, remind me to get checked out for any abnormal cells once we’re home.

The lab shudders as meteors continue to rain down on the outside of the station. Burning hunks of rock pelting against the metal. Hollow thunks sound off, over and over, like popcorn in a pan.

A few of the experiments escape their confines in the racking, one of which - a metal cube - dings off the floor, the side crumpling in on itself before it floats off towards the open cavity in the wall where Chelenko was working.

I frown.

Multiple breaches?

Slowly, the rumbling of the room draws to a standstill.

I hold in a deep breath. And wait.