Outpost

The remaining crew stood on the docking platform and shouted questions to the first mate. Jane watched from the helipad. The mate stood at the prow, shotgun over his shoulder. He kept his answers non-committal, said less than he knew. He watched for any sign the Rampart crew might make another attempt to storm the boat.

The four chosen crewmen climbed aboard. There wasn’t room for their luggage so they left it behind. They stood on deck and waved as the tug pulled away. Spirit of Endeavour. A little ship on a big ocean. Jane wondered if the boat would reach Scotland. It was a long journey south, but they might make it if they ran ahead of the weather.

The remaining crew retreated to their cabins to unpack.

There was nothing new on TV.

CNN was down.

Sky News was a test card: ‘ We apologise for the break in transmission. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Normal programming will resume shortly.’

BBC: a haggard newscaster repeated the same advice. Keep calm. Stay off the street. Stay tuned for updates. Jane remembered the young man. He used to present the weather. He used to stand in front of a map and forecast sunny spells and rain. Now he found himself reporting the end of the world.

Punch muted the sound and cued some tunes on the jukebox.

‘Hope you feel good,’ he told Jane. ‘You did something heroic today. You could be on your way home right now.’

‘I’m not sure my mother would agree.’

‘She’ll be all right.’

Jane looked out to sea.

‘Check out the cloud bank. There’s a weather front moving in. Waves are starting to build.’

‘I went aboard with a box of food. It’s little more than a rowing-boat. I wouldn’t want to be out there right now. Not with six people crammed inside. It’ll be touch-and-go. Take a lot of luck for them to reach land.’

‘Think we’re better off here?’

‘How can we know? Did we give our folks a ticket home or send them to die?’

Rawlins led Jane and Sian to an observation bubble on the roof.

The bubble was at the edge of the helipad. A circle of windows gave a three-sixty view of the refinery, the sea and the jagged crags of Franz Josef Land.

‘Since you two are staying you better make yourselves useful.’ He pulled dust sheets from transmission equipment. ‘We should have done this days ago.’ He pointed to a swivel chair. ‘Sit there,’ he told Sian. ‘Don’t touch the sliders.’ He powered up a bank of amplifiers. ‘A bloke called Wilson used to play DJ after each shift. Had his own little drive-time show. I filled in for a couple of days when he broke his wrist. This kit is designed to broadcast to the rig but if the atmospherics are right we could reach two, three hundred miles.’

‘What about the ship-to-shore?’

‘Too patchy. I want to try short-wave. Go broad and local. It’s a big ocean. We can’t be the only people stuck out here.’

‘What do I do?’ asked Sian, positioning her chair in front of the mike.

‘Press to talk. Release to listen.’

‘Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.’

No response.

‘Mayday, mayday. This is refinery platform Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over.’

No response.

‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim, is anyone out there, over?’

No sound but the static hiss of a dead channel.

Fragile

The radar in Rawlins’s office sounded a collision alarm. Iceberg warning. His desk screen showed a massive object closing in, moving slow.

They watched from the observation bubble. A mountain of ice passing five kilometres distant. A table-berg, a colossal chunk of polar shelf. Ridges and canyons. Blue ice marbled with sediment. A strange hellworld.

‘I walked on a berg once,’ said Rawlins. ‘They fizz and crackle. Trapped air. Sounds like a bonfire.’

‘Some big waves down there,’ said Jane.

Heavy swells broke against the ice cliffs. Spume and spray.

‘Yeah,’ said Rawlins. ‘Wind speed is way up. There’s another storm coming. Line squalls. One cyclone after another until spring.’

‘Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.’

Two a.m. Jane’s turn at the microphone.

‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim. Do you copy, over?’

Sian unscrewed her Thermos and refilled their cups.

‘We’re alone out here,’ said Sian.

‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

The upper deck of the rig was floodlit. A storm lashed the refinery. A blizzard wind scoured girders and gantries. The girls watched the swarming ice particles from the eerie silence of their Plexiglas bubble.

Sian put her hand to the window. A thin film of plastic separating her from the lethal hurricane outside. She felt the warm up-draught of the heating vent between her feet and was acutely aware of the refinery’s life support systems, the elaborate machinery keeping them alive minute by minute in this implacably hostile environment.

‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart. Can anyone hear me, over?’

‘How long until the sun sets for good?’ asked Sian.

‘Three weeks.’

‘Jesus.’