by Peter Tonkin
There were no cheers, but a great sigh of relief seemed to go round the bridge at the news. Then the lugubrious Yazov came across to the smiling Varnek with a print-out from the weather monitor’s sister system.
‘Ice-watch is down,’ he said. ‘It’s been working well beyond its parameters for a while but now it’s official. It can see the clouds but it can no longer see through the clouds.’ He handed over the flimsy and Varnek, his mood darkening again at once, handed it on to Richard.
He looked down at the print-out. It was grainy and grey, with no detail, no co-ordinates, nothing. Except that, oddly, the flecks of meaningless white against the dull gunmetal background looked like the snowfall whirl of computer garbage on a screen monitoring a dying computer system.
Richard, like Varnek, dashed from the crest of relief to the trough of frustration, suddenly began to learn what it must have been like to be Nelson, running one-eyed through the blast. ‘Take the port wing,’ he said quietly to Colin. ‘I’ll take the starboard. We’re on ice-watch now until the clouds thin or Deception comes in sight.’
Behind them, Varnek gestured and Yazov leaned over the green-tinged bowl of the collision alarm radar like an old-fashioned witch hoping to foretell the future from the entrails of some sacrificial lamb. He knew as well as the first officer and the captain that the machine was designed to warn them if they were about to hit metallic objects such as the hulls of ships. It was no more likely than Richard or Colin’s mere human eyes to see icebergs made of ancient water and air bubbles, hard as iron and sharp as steel.
*
‘Whaddya think, Borisov?’ said T-Shirt, sounding almost drunk with fatigue. ‘Think that’ll hold it now?’
Borisov pulled himself erect and leaned on the second engineering officer for a moment, stretching his cramped shoulders, much in the way T-Shirt was unknotting his body against Max like a cat on a scratching pole. ‘I can think of nothing else we can do,’ he said in answer, easing himself up off the young engineer. ‘If that does not overcome the bug then this system will crash within the next hour or so also.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Look at the time. We must have fixed the weather system or we’d have heard by now. It would have crashed over half an hour ago. So maybe this one will be all right now too.’
‘Well, whaddya know, Max! We’re as good as we said we were.’ T-Shirt straightened to clap his smiling friend on the shoulder. ‘Still, the guys on the bridge have done fine without communications and all that other stuff so far. Unless Dai and Kyril have resurrected that now too. What do they want navigation for in any case?’
Borisov, lading officer and trainee navigator, gave a sour bark of laughter. ‘You feel the way she’s pitching?’ he asked as the four of them began to file out of the cramped, chilly room which housed the navigation computer server. ‘With or without the weather systems up and running, she has never moved like this in the ten years I have been aboard. This is bad weather, my friends, and we need all the help we can get. To run to Deception in this, blind as well as deaf and dumb, would kill us even before we reach Neptune’s Bellows.’
‘That’s one hell of a corny name,’ said T-Shirt. ‘What is Neptune’s Bellows?’
‘It’s the narrows you have to go through to reach the safety of Port Forster in the middle of Deception,’ said Borisov. ‘Even with everything aboard working one hundred per cent, on a still day in a dead calm, it is one of the most dangerous narrows in the world.’
As Borisov delivered himself of this little speech, so lugubrious as to be worthy of Yazov himself, the little band stepped into the lift which would take them up to the command bridge where they planned to report and get their next assignment. Like the rest of the electrical and mechanical equipment aboard — electrical equipment in the engineering sections and in the bridgehouse, deck gear, pumping, lading and cargo-handling equipment — it was safely under the purview of the still-functioning engine room system, which they had also fixed, like the weather and navigation systems, but which the chief was still preparing to override, just in case. They entered with unthinking confidence therefore, but as the door closed, T-Shirt suddenly slammed his hand onto the rubber protector. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘You guys go up and get the next series of what-to-dos. I got to pay a call.’
Then, typically, he was gone. Max shrugged at the other two. ‘It’s love,’ he said, pulling the saddest face. They were all still laughing when the lift stopped dead in its effortless journey upwards halfway between Main Deck and Bellingshausen-Peary. The light went out.
The lights went out on the command bridge as well, as did every instrument and aid there, and for an instant they stared destruction in the face. Dai and Kyril called out from the radio room where they were crouching deep beneath the main shelf. Richard automatically looked at his watch but it was nowhere near five o’clock yet. This had to be something other than the bug then. Irene gasped, but the sound was subsumed beneath the terrible bellow of the storm. The helmsman, little more than a machine minder, looked upwards suddenly, his face a weird mixture of ice whiteness and shadow. Richard and Colin swung round towards the captain and Varnek swore. Then the power surged back. The VHF buzzed and Varnek spat a few words into the mouthpiece and got several, equally terse, in return.
‘The chief apologises, Captain,’ said Varnek when the little machine quietened. ‘His preparations for manual override just hit a temporary problem.’
The lights and the equipment flickered back on. The lift doors sighed silently open and three very worried men spilled out onto the bridge. Behind them, echoing weirdly up the lift shaft, came a cacophony of sound which might have been cheering or screaming from below.
‘You three,’ said the captain, with creditable self-control, ‘please go and check all systems to see whether that failure of power has caused us any further problems.’
As she spoke, a great lightning bolt hit Kalinin.
For an instant the ship was the centre of a tremulous cloud of electrical discharge which raced eerily beneath the ice shroud, leaping from molecule to molecule of metal, seeming to give off freezing sparks buried beneath the blue carapace. From the topmost reach of ice-thickened aerial to the lowest of sea-swept hull, the whole ship lit up as though she was made of fragile neon. Then the strange St Elmo’s fire died, seemingly snatched away northward by the next black buffet of the wind. And as it did so, the lights and power flickered once again.
*
It had taken Jolene the better part of two hours to get to Killigan’s logs. But she had them now: the top copy, last entered; another, twenty minutes older, and another, twenty minutes older than that one — its contents much the same. But then there was a final one, like Billy Hoyle’s, the better part of four hours older still, buried away in the bowels of the record system. A very different story indeed. Without thinking, the minute Jolene cleared the screen of all the junk of incompatible systems, she strained forward to read what it said without printing it out. It was only when she was halfway down the first page — first of fifteen according to the screen — that she even thought to save her work. But when she pressed SAVE, she simply got a DISK FULL message. Full of the confidence engendered by experience and with watching T-Shirt handle the system, she reached across for another disk, waiting for the green light denoting communication between the current disk and the drive to go out.
Instead, everything died. The light, the screen, the ceiling light in the room and in the library outside. Everything. The ship gave another lurch up and forward as though she had been kicked in the rear by a giant. Down went Kalinin’s head. She corkscrewed so wildly that the monitor skidded across the top of the computer box. Jolene reached out through the gloom automatically, guided by the residual static glow of the screen. As her chilled fingers grabbed the icy plastic sides, the screen, the ceiling light and everything else flickered on again. The screen was blank, however. All her work was gone. The realisation of what was happening hit her then so forcefully that whe
n the message PLEASE SUPPLY AN OPERATING SYSTEM jumped onto the screen, she cried aloud with shock.
And the door burst open behind her.
‘Now,’ drawled a deep, coldly disapproving voice, ‘what’s going down here?’
Still fighting to come to terms with what the accursed computer had done to her, Jolene swung round. Sergeant Killigan stood in the doorway, with Billy Hoyle looming behind him. She had never seen them look so threatening. Her mouth dried and her whole body ached for the safety of her powerful little Glock pistol with its red-dot sight. Then she remembered the last time she had seen the red dot and she really did experience cold sweat.
Killigan strode across the room. ‘What have you got there?’ he demanded quietly, his voice awash with venomous threat. He clicked the disk out of the A drive and threw it down with the others. ‘Give the machine what it’s asking for, Inspector,’ he ordered. ‘Give it an operating system and a processor. Let’s see what you’ve got on these little disks of yours, shall we?’
‘Get lost, Killigan,’ she grated. ‘This is a Federal investigation. The disks and what is on them are the property of NASA and the courts. They are no concern of yours.’
‘I don’t believe you, lady,’ said Killigan. ‘And neither does Billy boy here. He’s told me all about secret back-up files and a shitload of other stuff. You’re living dangerously. You know that? You got till I count to three to slip in the operating disk and call up what you were working on just now, or a series of very nasty accidents will happen to you and I’ll call it all up myself.’
‘Here,’ said Billy, suddenly. ‘Let me.’ He shoved Jolene roughly aside and snatched up the SYSTEMS disk, jamming it into drive A while the word processor went into drive B. The screen lit up at once. LOADING PROGRAMME it said. The green light glittered as the system talked to the disk.
Defeated for the moment, Jolene tore herself erect, but Killigan stepped up to her, pushing his body between her and the door. Close as he was, he was still weirdly illuminated when the ghastly glow swept in through the library window next door. Like some strange white airborne miasma, the brightness spread, whitening what it touched like frost, making the plastic glow, making the manmade fibres of his cheap shirt gleam and crackle, bringing a strange odour to the air, an incongruous mixture of ozone and burning, like a distant, chemical beach barbecue. The sergeant’s thin crewcut stood erect and flashed with sparks.
Then the light died again.
As though blaming her, as though preparing to carry out his threat, he stepped forward. She tensed herself for pain and retaliation. The thought flashed into her mind that now was the time to get hers in first.
And the light flickered on again. The dead screen cleared. PLEASE SUPPLY … Jolene’s gaze flashed down to the little green light at the A drive. It was flickering hopefully, then it went red and died.
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Billy Hoyle. ‘The systems disk is screwed. Processor’s wiped. Whole machine looks fucked to me. Unless the inspector here can read BASIC straight off the disks — if there’s anything actually left on them after that little lot — she’s finished with our logs anyway.’ He threw the disks at her and she caught them.
‘I don’t need the disks, you son of a bitch,’ said Jolene, enraged, waving them at him as though they were a fist closed in threat. ‘I don’t need the logs or anything more. I’ve got the whole picture now and I’m coming after you, you murderous bastards.’
Killigan glanced at Hoyle. ‘Close the door, Billy boy,’ he said, almost regretfully. ‘The lady and I have to have a little heart to heart here …’
But before Hoyle had even tensed his muscles to obey Killigan, the outer door opened and T-Shirt slammed into the room.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Was that some light-show? You hear them screaming out there? What a rush, huh, Jolene?’
And, as though he was the love of her life, a soldier back from the war, she tore past Killigan and hurled herself into his arms.
T-Shirt swept her out into the corridor. With a single syllable of obscenity, Killigan moved to follow them, reaching into the conveniently baggy pocket of his army-issue parka for the butt of the Glock. Billy Hoyle reached out to restrain him, seeing all too clearly what was in his mind and knowing that pulping some nosy little broad in the privacy of a storm-silenced library was one thing but blazing away at a couple in a public corridor was something else entirely.
Killigan shrugged off his hand with a fierce look and Billy suddenly felt a little ice entering his own belly. The sergeant’s reason was gone; his sanity rapidly slipping after it.
‘Killigan,’ he spat.
Killigan ignored him and tore the door wide. But there at the far end of the corridor were Borisov, Max and the second engineer gathered around T-Shirt, passing on the captain’s orders and not even Killigan was mad enough to shoot at all of them.
He swung back to Billy, his face still thunderous. ‘I’ll settle with that little bitch later,’ he snarled. ‘Now let’s go pay a visit to the other one. I’m fed up with taking all this crap from a couple of fucking broads.’
The next two women the disgruntled sergeant saw, however, were Robin and Kate who brushed past them as they hurried down to the Mariners’ cabin. Billy’s eyes followed the women after the briefest of grudging nods. ‘If I was going to off anyone, Killigan, I think I’d probably off those two and their nosy fucking kids.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Hoyle,’ snarled Killigan. ‘If anyone’s going to get offed, then I say who, if and when. Remember, the last thing we want to do is close all our options when we’re stuck aboard this tub surrounded by the Russian mafia. I got the Glock, but I ain’t got enough bullets to handle a whole fucking army of these guys if they get really pissed at us.’
It was this thought which preserved Vivien Agran for the time being.
Killigan and Billy did not go smashing into her cabin at once. They watched from the far end of the corridor until enough people had come and gone to convince them that she must be accessible and alone in there. Then they moved. Killigan hit the door hard, turning the handle, half expecting it to be locked. But it wasn’t. He and Billy erupted into the little office area and she looked up from behind her desk, her face set like stone. ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said, her fingers busy on her keyboard.
But Billy had learned a fair amount from his last visit here and he snatched the whole thing away from her at once, before she could even try to send a message on it. The ship’s network was still down — as dead as the door monitors and the corridor cameras — so she was effectively cut off in any case.
Apparently unmoved by Billy’s action, she rose. ‘Of course you want your property back,’ she said coolly, opening the door of the secure cupboard behind her desk. At once Billy was there beside her, leaving the keyboard to dangle. He caught her arms and twisted them behind her back with clumsy but effective force, gripping fiercely through the padded arms of the hooded parka which she wore, unzipped, over her formal suit and blouse.
Killigan came across and looked into the cupboard then. His eyes flicked down to her supplies and up to her eyes. ‘Now,’ he said quietly. ‘I bet you see yourself like this, Mrs Agran don’t you?’ He held up a magazine whose cover showed a powerful-looking woman dressed in black leather standing on the prone figure of a man. ‘I just bet this is you, deep down inside, all dominant, in charge, ahead of the game.’
With sudden, brutal force, he hurled the magazine away, its thick, garish pages almost slapping her in the face. With a return stroke swift as a snake’s he reached into the cupboard again and pulled out a box for a computer game. DEATH PUNCH it said in red at the top. Beneath the title was a computer-generated graphic image of a warrior woman, her slightly angular bosom bursting open in a fierce cloud of blood as her massive, brutish opponent reached in to tear her heart out.
‘I believe I could probably do that for real,’ he whispered, tossing the box back in the cupboard and focusing his dead iron gaze on t
he strain of her blouse buttons. ‘You want I should try?’ He reared his arm back, half closing his fist into a taloned claw.
‘No,’ she said, a flutter in her level voice showing how fiercely she was fighting for control. ‘Of course I don’t. Take what you came for and go. Please.’
‘Maybe I came for more than just the Power Strip and the disk,’ he said. ‘Maybe I came to make sure you can’t come after us.’
Vivien screamed as Billy twisted her arms more fiercely, supporting Killigan’s threat. The buttons over her bosom burst and Killigan tensed, as though the sudden shadowed gape was tempting him past the realm of reason and control into the strange world of the video game, where he could really tear out a woman’s heart and walk away unscathed.
But just at this moment, a firm knocking came at the door and Gretchen’s voice called, ‘Mrs Agran, may I come in?’
‘Just a moment, Gretchen.’
As Killigan hesitated, his mind coming back within the bounds of sanity, the screen on the computer monitor cleared to show Varnek looking fiercely out at them. ‘Vivien,’ he called. ‘We have partial communications restored. Kyril and Mr Gwyllim have fixed the TV satellite reception system and managed to call the network back up and are working on the radio now. It is past five and we still have propulsion and navigation. We have a chance to get to Deception after all. Vivien? Vivien!’
Vivien jerked herself free of Billy Hoyle and fastened the buttons of her blouse. ‘Take your stuff and go, Sergeant,’ she spat at Killigan. Then she swung round to Hoyle, working her shoulders to ease the strain. ‘And you had better find a safer place to hide this time, little man. Because when we get to Deception Island I am personally going to send you to join your friend, the late Mr Marshall!’
*
‘Hey,’ said T-Shirt gently, ‘you’re still shaking.’
‘It’s the cold,’ she said, quietly. ‘I am not afraid. I am simply freezing.’