Free Outpost by Adam Baker Page A

announcement: 'Mr Rawlins, Reverend Blanc, please report to Medical right
away.'
    Sian.
By the sound of her voice, something was very wrong.
     
    Simon
was curled foetal at the bottom of the shower cubicle. He was dead. He held a
scalpel in the swollen, blackened fingers of his left hand. He had slashed his
wrist. He lay naked in a puddle of pink blood-water and unravelled bandages.
    'Jesus
fucking Christ.'
    Rawlins
shut off the water. Jane helped drag the dead man from the shower.
    They
carried Simon to the operating table. They watched Sian wash him down. They lifted
him into a rubber body bag and zipped it closed.
    There
was no mortuary on the refinery, so they laid Simon on the floor of the
boathouse overnight.
    'He
was talking to me,' said Sian. 'Reaching out. Screaming for help and I was too
stupid to hear.'
    'A
person's life is their own,' said Jane. 'It's not your job to save them.'
     
    Nikki
sat in the observation bubble reading a magazine.
    'We'll
be holding the funeral at three,' said Jane.
    Nikki
flipped pages like she hadn't heard.
     
    The
crew processed down steel stairs that spiralled round one of the rig's
gargantuan legs. An ice shelf had solidified around each leg. They walked
across the ice and congregated at the water's edge.
    Jane
turned the pages of her service book with gloved fingers.
    'O
God, whose Son Jesus Christ was laid in a tomb: bless, we pray, this grave as
the place where the body of Simon your servant may rest in peace, through your
Son, who is the resurrection and the life; who died and is alive and reigns
with you now and for ever.'
    Simon
was swaddled in sheets. He lay on a stretcher. Ghost lifted the stretcher and
the body slid into the water.
    'As
they came from their mother's womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came.
We brought nothing into the world, and we take nothing out. The Lord gave, and
the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'
    The
shrouded body floated just beneath the surface. Ghost pushed the corpse away
from the ice with a golf club. It drifted away, drawn by the current, a white
phantom shape beneath the water.
    'Support
us, O Lord, all the long day of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen
and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and
our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest,
and peace at the last; through Christ our Lord. Amen.'
    The
crew walked back to the rig. Nobody spoke.
    Jane
stood with Punch and looked out to sea.
    'I
feel like I'm doing more harm than good,' she said.
    'Shall
we go and find your asteroid?'
    'Yeah.
Let's get away from this misery for a while.'

The Crater
     
    Jane
steered the zodiac. Counter-intuitive: turn the outboard left to steer right.
    'Keep
us about three hundred metres from shore,' instructed Punch. 'We don't want to
rip the bottom out of the boat.'
    They
followed the coastline. They hugged a ridge of lunar rock and black shingle.
    A
milky film in the water. Grease ice. The ocean starting to freeze.
    Jane
looked back. A rare chance to see the totality of the rig.
    The
refinery was constructed around three great distillation tanks, each the size
of a cathedral. The structure was spiked by radio masts and cranes. The
platform floated on four buoyant legs. It was tethered to the seabed by cables
as thick as a redwood tree trunk. It looked like something out of a nightmare:
a squat spider big enough to crush cities. A million tons of steel. Product of
twenty different slipways. Assembled in a deep-water fjord and towed north.
    'Terrifying,'
said Jane.
    'What
is?'
    'It's
one thing to sit with our feet up in the canteen, dreaming up plans to sail
home. It's another thing to see it for real. The ocean. The ice. We wouldn't
last a day.'
    'We
have time to prepare,' said Punch. 'Plenty of survival gear aboard Rampart. And
you wouldn't be out here alone. We would have each other. Ghost is a solid guy.
Kind of man you can rely upon in a crisis.'