Outpost (42 page)

'Too high. You would never manage the climb
.'

'There
has to be a way.'

She
switched to infrared. The frozen steel superstructure of the refinery betrayed
no heat signature except for Accommodation Module A. The module glowed weak
orange. Someone had switched on the heating.

She
scanned walkways and gantries. A red dot. Zoom in. A glowing stick figure,
walking slow, looking down as if they were following a trail.

'Those bastards hold all the cards. They've got food,
they've got heat and they've got guns
.'

'They
are my responsibility. That's why I came back. I have to save them. I have to
save them from themselves.'

Nikki
was halfway back to the bunker when she heard the explosion. A deep, rumbling
roar like thunder. She ran to the shoreline. Two of the refinery's great anchor
cables were gone. The ice beneath the rig was shattered.

Nikki
uncapped her binoculars. They were still set for infrared. The corner coupling
burned crimson. Reset. Focus, re-focus. Mushroom clouds of smoke hanging over
each coupling.

The
third cable hung slack. A moment later the lock-pin broke loose of the
coupling, and the cable dropped. It smashed through the ice crust and threw up
a geyser of seawater.

'Clever
said
Alan.
'Can
you see what they are trying to do?'

'My
God,' said Nikki. 'They want to float the rig free.'

'Yes.'

'Will
it work?'

'I doubt it.'

'They keep trying. Despite it all,
they never give up.'

'
They must never leave the island. You understand that,
yes? They belong here with us
.'

Ghost
replaced the platform lift fuse.

He
and Jane rode the platform lift down to the ice. Jane walked out on to the
polar crust. She circled the great wall of steel.

'Why
the fuck is this thing not moving?'

'The
rig is ice-locked,' said Ghost. 'We're stuck until the Arctic shelf melts and
breaks up. We won't see our first full sunrise for three weeks. Then it will
take another month or two for the ice to thaw and break up. Our food won't last
that long.'

'How
about thermite grenades? Any left? Any at all? They'd melt the ice in seconds.'
'No.'

'Explosives?
Demolition charges from the bunker? Is there anything left? Anything at all?'

'No.
Nothing.'

'Fuck.
This thing weighs a million tonnes. Imagine the inertia. The momentum it would
build up. If we could get it to shift a single centimetre it would keep going.
It would be unstoppable. A juggernaut. It would plough through everything in
its path.'

Jane
sat on the platform lift. She pulled off a gauntlet and drew a smiley face on
the frosted deck plate with her finger. 'If only there was some way we could
give it a push.' Ghost looked out across the ice to the white horizon. 'Got
it,' he yelled. 'Come on.'

He
ran to the lift and pressed Up. The platform juddered to life. It began to
ascend.

'Do
you have the combination to Rawlins's safe?' he asked. 'I found it in his
address book.'

'Go
to his office. Look in the safe. There should be a couple of red keys in a
plastic box, okay? Bring them to the pump house.'

Jane
found the pump house ankle-deep in scrunched paper. Ghost sat at a desk rifling
through box files and binders. He leafed through sheet after sheet and threw
them aside.

Jane
picked up a fistful of paper. System flow charts. Input/output schematics.
Reciprocating compressors. Heavy octane filtration.

'What
are you looking for?'

'I
did a little work in here a few months back. A guy showed me something. Trying
to find the damn thing.'

'What
does it look like?'

'It's
a red sheet of paper.'

Jane
leafed through files.

'Yeah,
baby,' said Ghost, triumphantly waving a red laminated checklist.

She
glimpsed DANGER in big letters at the top of the page.

'What
the hell is that?'

Ghost
didn't reply. He spun his chair across the room to the console, kicking box
files aside.

The
pump room windows had shattered when the demolitions charges blew. Ghost wiped
snow and broken glass from the screens and consoles. He cranked isolator
breakers to On. The pump consoles lit up and winked expectant green.

He
jabbed the main touch-screen plan of the refinery and set each system flag from
Off to amber Standby.

'Okay,'
he said. 'The treaters are back on-line. The super-heaters. The draw-pumps. Did
you find the box?'

'Yeah.'

'There
should be two keys inside.'

'Yeah.'

'And
an envelope.'

Jane
read out authorisation codes. Ghost typed. The screen in front of him flashed
red.

The
final code was Rawlins's employee number. Only he had sufficient high-level
access to stop or re-start the refining process.

Jane
read his employee number from an old payslip.

FAILSAFE WARNING

DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?

YES/NO

Ghost
slotted keys into the main console.

'We
need to turn both keys at the same time.'

'Are
we launching a missile?' asked Jane.

'Remember
Chernobyl? A couple of bored technicians nearly incinerated Europe. This is the
biggest Merox treater in the world, give or take. Press the wrong button and we
could pollute the entire western hemisphere.'

They
turned the keys.

FULL SYSTEM PURGE IN PROGRESS

The
screen began a ten-minute countdown.

'Why
the countdown?' asked Jane.

'Because
we are asking the refinery to do something epically stupid and it wants us to
reconsider.'

Punch
woke. He struggled to open his eyes. A cut in his forehead. Lashes glued shut
by clotted blood.

Punch
was bound hand and foot. His arms were tied behind his back by nylon cord. The
cord cut his wrists like wire. He twisted his hands to restore circulation.

He
lay on the floor of a bare room. The strip-light flickered. The walls were
concrete. The ceiling was concrete. The floor was cold, green tiles. He guessed
he was in the bunker.

He
tried to roll. He tried to wriggle his hands free. He felt blood trickle into
his palms.

The
door opened. Small snowboots. Blue Ventile trousers. He lashed out with his
legs. Someone kicked him in the face. He spat blood. He looked up. Nikki stood
over him. She crouched and checked his cuffs.

'Where
am I?'

'Where
do you think you are?' asked Nikki, calm and pleasant.

'What
the fuck is going on? Are you going to let me go, or what?'

'An
exchange,' said Nikki. 'I'm going to trade you for food and fuel.'

'Food
for what? Where are you heading?'

'I
wouldn't worry too much about that.'

'Where's
your boyfriend? Where's Nail?'

'He's
around.'

'Cut
me loose.'

'Not
yet.'

'Go
fuck yourself, Nikki.'

'You
want to get out of here, don't you?'

'You're
lying. Food and fuel. Bullshit. I don't know what you are planning, but it's
not going to work.'

'Jane
will need proof of life. Tell me something only Sian would know.'

'Help
me up.'

'No.'

'Come
on. I need a shit.'

'So
shit.'

'I'm
bleeding.'

'So
bleed.'

'Go
fuck yourself, Nikki. Seriously.'

Nikki
left. The heavy door slammed. A key turned in a lock. Footsteps diminished down
a passageway.

Punch
squirmed across the floor to the wall. He tried to stand. Maybe he could ambush
Nikki next time she walked through the door. Knock her out with a vicious
headbutt. Get her on the floor and kneel on her throat. She would almost
certainly have a knife in her pocket. He could free himself, and find his way
back to Rampart.

He
lost balance. He toppled to the floor. He hit his head and shoulder. He lay and
stared at the wall. He felt hopeless and defeated.

Nikki
returned an hour later. She crouched beside him. Punch didn't look up.

Proof
of life.

'My
favourite comic book character is John Constantine. When I was young I bought a
trench-coat and smoked soft-pack Marlboros just so I could be like him.'

Nikki
patted him on the shoulder. He heard the door close and a key turn in the lock.

Jane
knocked on the door of Sian's room.

'Sian?
Hello? Anyone home?'

No
reply. Jane tried the door. It was unlocked. The room was dark, dimly lit by
light spilling from the corridor. Sian was curled on her bunk staring at the
wall. She was hugging her pillow.

'Sorry
to intrude,' said Jane. 'Ghost said we should both come and see the fireworks.'

'What
fireworks?'

Jane
shrugged. 'Wouldn't say. He's acting all mysterious. Seems pretty excited
though. May as well humour the man.'

Sian
wearily sat up. She switched on her lamp and winced against the sudden glare.
She laced her boots.

Jane
wanted to make conversation. No point asking: Are you feeling all right? Are
you doing okay? The best she could offer was companionship, small talk.

'We've
still got a carton of
Hyperion
egg concentrate. Want a shitty omelette later?'

'I
just want to be quiet for a while, Jane. I don't want much at all.'

Jane
knew a little bit about loss. Not much. She hadn't wept at a graveside. But she
had a boyfriend at university. Mark. He dumped her for a thinner girl. Dumped
her by text. She had to watch them arm-in-arm round campus. Those first few
days of heartbreak were hell. Jane walked around with a head full of black.
Felt like she was drowning. She stood in the supermarket queue and tried to act
casual, tried not to sob and scream. Friends told her the grief would slowly
ebb. She would think about him a little less each day. But the knowledge that
one day she would leaf through Mark's letters and feel nothing doubled her
loss.

'We
should head to the canteen later,' said Jane. 'I'll beat you at Monopoly.'

'I'll
skip it.'

'No.
You're going to play Monopoly. Then you are going to watch me cook an omelette,
and then you'll do the washing up, all right? You've got to keep on living.'

Ghost
led them to C deck. He lifted a floor hatch.

SAFETY HARNESS TO BE WORN AT
ALL TIMES

Blast
of winds and ice particles.

They
climbed down a ladder and found themselves standing on an inspection walkway
slung beneath the rig. Miles of pipes and girders above their heads. Mesh
beneath their feet, and a two-hundred-metre drop on to the ice.

Ghost
checked his watch.

'Here
it comes. Any second now.'

A
shudder ran through the refinery, shaking loose icicles and slabs of snow. The
pipes above their heads creaked and sang.

'The
storage tanks are dry,' he explained. 'But there is plenty of octane-grade
distillate in the pipework. I've reversed the injection pumps. The whole
system is set to flush itself out.'

Liquid
poured from a massive pipe mouth hung beneath the belly of the rig. The
retracted seabed umbilicus. It looked like Rampart was taking a piss. A torrent
of part-refined fuel. First a spattering stream, then a gush. Thousands of
gallons of semi- purified petroleum poured in a thin cascade and splashed
across the polar crust.

'Smell
that?' said Ghost. 'Pure rocket fuel.' He took a flare pistol from his pocket
and slotted a shell into the breech. 'This is going to be good.'

Nikki
stood at the shoreline and watched the ocean burn. Flames danced spectral blue.
The island was bathed in lavender light. The sea boiled with a gentle hiss,
like a long exhalation.