Adam Baker - Outpost

Dr Rye. Missing. Presumed suicide.

Ivan and Yakov. Both ripped apart aboard Hyperion.

Mal. Murdered.

Gus. Murdered and eaten.

Nail’s picture lay on a chair. Jane didn’t want to add him to the memorial wall. He didn’t deserve it. No one would pray for him.

The canteen kitchen.

Sian sat morose on a bar stool while Ghost greased the damaged shotgun. He reassembled the weapon. He racked the slide. The mechanism jammed. He threw the gun down on the kitchen counter.

‘Fucked. And Punch took all the ammunition.’ Ghost took a cleaver from a drawer.

‘Want to help me patrol?’

They walked the perimeter of the rig. Ghost brought the ruined shotgun. He swung it round his head and flung it far as he could. They watched it fall to the ice two hundred metres below. They looked towards the island.

‘Nail can’t stay out there for ever,’ said Ghost. ‘Nothing for him in that bunker. We’ve got food, heat, everything he needs. Sooner or later he’ll try to make it aboard. I reckon he’ll try to climb an anchor cable. Doubt he could make it, but he’ll give it a shot.’

‘What about Punch?’ asked Sian. Jane hadn’t told her about the cannibalised remains they found in the bunker. ‘I don’t think he’s coming back.’

Ghost decided to give her a task, something to keep her occupied.

‘Do me a favour. Disable the platform lift. Take out a fuse or something.’

Sian headed for the airlock. She opened the exterior door and walked out on to the platform. She could see infected passengers milling on the ice far below her. She reached for the platform controls. She hesitated, then pressed Down.

The lift descended the south leg of the refinery. Infected Hyperion passengers and crew looked up. They saw Sian descending to meet them, and stretched their arms to reach her.

She opened the railing gate and closed her eyes, ready to be torn apart.

The platform jolted to a halt. Sian fell to her knees. The lift rose. She looked up. Ghost high above her, leaning out of the airlock door.

He dragged Sian back inside the rig. He helped her to her feet.

‘We’ll pretend that didn’t happen, all right?’

Jane sat with Ghost in the canteen. They emptied the backpack. They contemplated the stack of explosives and detonators on the table in front of them. Bricks of C4 wrapped in paper. DEMOLITION CHARGE Ml 12 WITH TAGGANT.

‘Sian’s probably right,’ said Jane. ‘We’re kidding ourselves. We’re not moving an inch. We are trapped here for ever. This place is our tomb.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘This is the endgame. Nobody is coming to save us. We’ve got no ride home. If the cables don’t drop, we’re done.’

‘My dad died of stomach cancer,’ said Ghost. ‘He had a car, an E-type Jag. He was restoring it in his garage. He worked hard even though he wouldn’t get to drive it. I asked why he bothered. He said, “Never leave a job half done.”’

‘I’m so tired.’

‘We’ve got a plan. We’ve got things we can do, moves we can make. Still plenty of fight left.’

‘Yeah,’ sighed Jane. ‘I suppose. But that’s the problem. I can cope with despair. But hope keeps fucking me up.’

Ghost stood and began to stack the explosives into three separate piles.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Get the job done.’

Ghost refilled the flamethrower. He used a SCUBA compressor to pump the tanks with diesel, and pressurise them with nitrogen.

They went outside and thawed the couplings. Jane fired a jet of flame at each giant lock pin. Ice liquefied and steamed, exposing metal.

Jane held the flashlight while Ghost rigged the explosives. He took off his gloves. He unwrapped C4. He slapped patties of explosive against the massive cable coupling, punched them with his fist, moulded them into a single tight mass. He pointed to a nearby wall.

‘This is good. This should work well. We’re boxed in. Nice, enclosed space. It should focus the concussion. Be a hell of a bang when it goes.’

He pressed blasting caps into the clay with his thumb before the explosive froze too hard to penetrate. They weatherproofed each charge with garbage bags.

‘What do you want to use for detonation cord?’ asked Jane.

‘Strip some wire from a few extension leads. Nothing much to it. All we need is enough copper thread to carry a single six-volt pulse. Click. Bang.’

They returned to the canteen and spliced wire. Heaters. Dehumidifiers. Computers. Cases prised open with a screwdriver. Flex stripped, coiled and stacked on a Formica tabletop.

‘We need about two hundred and fifty metres for each charge. We’ll run the cord to a central point. We have to blow all three charges at once. If we blow the cables one at a time the last rope will take the full weight of the rig. It will be under so much tension we’ll never get the pin to release.’

‘Right.’

‘No screw-ups. No breaks in the wire. We get one shot at this. No second go.’

The storm cleared. They slung cable over their shoulders and headed outside.

Jane helped Ghost run wire from each explosive charge. They spooled flex along the walkways and metal steps. They taped the wires to girders and railings. The wires converged at the pump house, a cabin that housed monitor equipment for the three great distillation tanks.

They smashed a window and fed the cables inside. Ghost webbed the remaining windows with duct tape. Proof against the blast. He laid three pairs of ear-defenders on a desk.

One last inspection to check the charges were properly rigged and the detonator wire unbroken.

‘Beautiful sky,’ said Jane. She pulled back her hood and craned to see a dusting of stars. A delicate pink twilight to the east.

She looked out over the refinery. A crystal palace. White-on-white. Frosted steel. Cross-beams and scaffold towers dripping ice. Snow-dusted storage tanks. Crane jibs heavy with icicles. Every north-facing surface caked and glazed.

‘Reckon Nail is lurking round here?’ asked Jane.

‘Keep a lookout for prints,’ said Ghost. ‘I doubt he could make it up the anchor cables, but he’s desperate enough to try.’ He lifted his boot and pointed at the sole. ‘Zigzag tread, all right? Anything else is him.’

Ghost struggled to unscrew the cap of his hip flask with a gloved hand. He swigged.

‘Back in a moment, all right?’

Ghost had spent the last hour thinking it through. This was their last chance of escape. If the anchor cables failed to detach they would be permanently marooned at the top of the world. In a few weeks the food and fuel would run out and they would be forced to choose between a knife-slash to the throat or a long walk in the snow. He pictured his body on a high gantry facing the sea. A grinning corpse cradling a blade. Maybe Jane’s mummified cadaver would be beside him, holding his skeletal hand.

He walked to the corner of the rig. He took a fist of explosive from his pocket. He had kept a small lump of C4. A vague plan. If the anchor cables failed to detach, he could prepare a small charge and tape it beneath a table in the canteen. Cook a meal. Invite Jane and Sian to sit for dinner. Make it quick and clean. End it all mid-conversation.

He told himself not to be so stupid. He had spent so long facing down mortal terror he had made a fetish of death. He had been planning an elaborate demise instead of fighting to live. He added the nub of explosive to the main charge.

Jane fetched the initiators from the canteen. A black plastic case. Three initiators sitting snug in a foam bed. Each initiator was a pistol-grip with a red Fire button on top.

Jane tested batteries in a Maglite, to make sure they held a charge.

She slotted batteries into the butt of each grip.