Alex woke strapped into a very small seat, groggily seeing stars outside of the small window above his head and feeling the weight of gravity and swell of the ocean pitch and toss the tin can in a gentle rolling motion. He felt sick, thinking of his short few orbits on the Space Hotel. What little he did know was that the capsule was afloat in the right position. He knows he must have blacked out during re-entry; but had no idea, was this the Caribbean, Indian, Pacific or Atlantic Ocean? Everything about this Soyuz capsule was alien to a fourteen year old stowaway.
The capsule was not sinking, not moving as the stars above were stationary. Alex had no flashlight to do an inventory. So he closed his eyes and went back to sleep, rather than try and open a hatch and possibly cause his lifeboat to sink.
The unexpected Cosmonaut woke at dawn. All the panels looked dead, no obvious signs of electrical power; not that he had any idea what the panels of instruments did despite the few Cyrillic labels. His priority was to assess if there was communications, survival equipment and any water or rations. He had no idea if anyone was even looking for him. There had been no communications, after he climbed out of ArcAngel into this escape pod and initiated the eject sequence. He was still on his own.
None of the panels worked. There was no power and he had no idea how to hotwire a space craft. In less than fifteen minutes, he had a full inventory; having found a small container with a panel instructions showing it was an inflatable life-raft. He pulled out the three small sets of emergency rations and water, No spare clothes, survival equipment or anything else useful. No torch, nor a flashlight, no phones or a radio. Outside he could see the remains of one parachute, the only thing keeping the capsule afloat as it was twisted around the coral of a low atoll. He guessed he was somewhere in Polynesia and from many viewings of Jaws, he knew he was in the middle of the pacific and a wrong move now would see him drifting away from rescue. Opening the hatch would make him sink. The fine tethers breaking or cutting on the coral, would make him sink. The only good news that the reef meant there were other islands likely in the vicinity.
At mid morning, Alex guessed he had been Earthbound for nearly twelve hours with no sign of a rescue ship or pickup. The hatch opening was time-consuming and with the raft strapped to him, Alex pulled himself out and into the ocean, then pulling out his supplies in a makeshift bag, carefully to avoid the razor sharp reef. The lone survivor swam into deeper water, before turning to see the capsule break free of its fragile mooring and sink like a stone. After then minutes, he judged the currents and wind would take him south-west, away from the atoll and hopefully towards civilisation. The raft on inflation was small, about 2m across with a cover, to protect him from spray and the sun. Alex was well aware he had about five days to make landfall or get picked up or he'd die of thirst and/or exposure, without the more prevalent hazards of sharks and storms.
…..
It had taken Alex seven months to work his way across the biggest ocean in the world from his initial rescue near the Santa Cruz Islands by a small local fishing boat, via Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam to Hong Kong. He had no papers and had survived as a engineer's assistant, guide, thief, smuggler and migrant worker with stolen papers of an eighteen year old Australian backpacker. Only he would wash up in the war zone of the Solomon Islands and use the confusion to his advantage. Something big had happened in October for the whole of Australia to have been in lockdown over an attempted bombing.
It was strangely comforting to be in a large city once again; the population density and large numbers of tourists meant he was for once anonymous. In a downtown internet cafe, he knew he officially never existed. MI6 had wiped his records clean. At fifteen, he was in the same position Yassen had been in before he crossed paths with SCORPIA. No home, no papers, no friends and no family; only the ex-spy felt it was an opportunity not to be wasted. He had wondered if they assumed he died on reentry as the capsule had shorted out, considering the whole Arc-Angel Space Station had exploded up within minutes of his own descent. The Soyuz only one fragment of space junk of many crashing into the Pacific as planned. The CIA had forced him into space and never made any attempt to pick him up afterwards. He read through pages and pages of serious journalism to the most crackpot conspiracy theories over Drevin's failed space hotel. Not one mention of the two occupants. All had said the station had been unoccupied during the computer failure. Drevin had killed himself after filing for bankruptcy. His teenage son living with his American mother.
He left after two hours surfing, with Baltimore address and phone number of Herman Starbright was in his wallet. He would only try to contact Jack in desperation. She was safe, far from MI6 and thought him dead. He had loose plans as he wanted to travel west, which meant avoiding air travel but the slower route of getting a job on a container ship to Istanbul and use the Immigrant Trail via Greece and the Balkans to reenter the EU. Then he could reinvent himself, live, finish school and work; not quite a normal life, but not a spy or a killer.
At a shrine, he gave a generous offering and thanked the benevolent Buddha for his continued good luck. He was skilled enough to avoid official problems.