Hyperion

 

Jane got some sleep then looked for Ghost. He had joined Sian in the observation bubble. They were sipping tea. Sian brewed a mug for Jane.

'Feeling better?'

'Restless,' said Ghost. 'Been lying on my back for days.'

He unzipped his coat and fleece. He lifted his shirt. A surgical dressing taped over bruised skin.

'Feels like she broke most of my ribs.'

'Rye saved your life. Battlefield surgery. She kept calm. I don't know how.'

'She's a tough person to thank.'

'You're not going to get all distant on me, are you?' said Jane.

'Why would I do that?'

'It's happened to me countless times. I help people through their midnight hours. Later on, they won't look me in the eye. They associate my face with hard times.'

Ghost gave her a hug. She tentatively hugged back.

'Mind the ribs.'

 

Jane took the GPS unit outside. She and Ghost stood on the big red H of the helipad and studied the screen. They were searching for the Raven lifeboats, scanning for a clear TACOM contact.

A winking signal at the top of the screen.

'Damn,' said Ghost. 'The Raven guys. There they are.'

'How long has it been? Four, five days at sea? Poor bastards. Let's bring them home.'

 

Ghost steered the zodiac. Jane sat in the prow. They had left Rye shivering at the refinery railing, ready with a spotlight to guide them home.

Jane hunched over the GPS screen. An intermittent signal to the north.

'Left. More left.'

She shone her torch into the darkness and fog. The beam of her flashlight lit nothing but broiling vapour.

'We're getting close. They should be around here somewhere.'

Ghost shut off the engine. They rode the swells. Jane scanned black water.

'I don't get it. They should be right here.'

A blinking TACOM signal at the centre of the screen.

Jane shouted into the dark.

'Hello? Is anyone there?'

Nothing.

Jane took a flare from her coat pocket. She popped the cap and pulled the rip-strip. A red star-shell shot skyward.

'How long do you want to wait?' asked Ghost.

'It would be tragic if they are floating out there and we miss them.'

They took turns to shout.

'Two more minutes,' said Jane, 'then we call it a night.'

'There,' said Ghost. 'See that?'

A faint strobe blinking in the fog. It was hard to judge distance. Ghost gunned the engine and headed for the flashing light.

The TACOM beacon was a cylinder the size of a Thermos flask. It floated in the water attached to a ragged strip of red rubber. The remains of a raft.

'So they didn't make it,' said Jane. 'Lonely place to die.'

'We needed that cable. Guess it'll be at the bottom of the ocean.'

'Over there.'

More ripped rubber. Jane undipped a paddle from the side of the zodiac and dragged the punctured raft closer. A boot. She lifted the edge of the tattered raft. A body in a red hydro- suit. A bearded man, floating face up. Marble-white skin. Open eyes.

'Was that him?' asked Jane. 'Ray. You said you met him once. The guy I've been talking to these past couple of weeks.'

'Maybe. Hard to tell. Want to say a prayer?'

'No.'

They headed back to the rig. Neither of them spoke. Jane switched off the redundant GPS and sealed the case.

Ghost suddenly swerved the boat. He struggled to avoid a sheer white wall that confronted them through the fog. Jane was thrown to the bottom of the boat.

'Jesus,' said Ghost. 'Fucking berg.'

He killed the engine.

'That's no berg,' said Jane. She shone her flashlight across the white cliff face. Rivets. Weld seams. Steel plate. She looked up. An anchor the size of a bus.

HYPERION.

 

Jane ran up the steps to the observation bubble. 'Punch, wake up.'

She unzipped the tent. Punch and Sian sat up, shielding their eyes from the flashlight glare.

'Fuck's sake,' muttered Punch.

'Get up. Grab your coat. We just got lucky.'

 

They hurried to fetch rope from the boathouse.

'It's drifting,' said Jane. 'A superliner. Fucking big. Dead in the water. No running lights. We'll have to be quick. It'll pass out of range in a few hours. We have to get aboard and take control. This is our ticket home.'

'We should get the lads together. Ferry everyone across.'

'No time. Ghost is upstairs pulling the legs off a chair to make a grappling hook. Where's Ivan? We'll need him too.'

'Why him?'

'Ghost is running round like he has fully recovered. I need you two to help him out, slow him down. We don't want to provoke a relapse.'

They ran through the canteen kitchen. Jane unlocked a refrigerator. Punch held her torch.

Shotguns laid across a shelf. Jane tugged the weapons from their nylon sleeves. She slotted shells into the receiver. She swept boxes of ammunition into a backpack.

'I'll tell you right now,' said Jane. 'There will be no negotiation. I don't care how many people are hiding on that boat. They are sure as hell going to stop for us.'

 

They found the ship drifting twenty kilometres south of its previous position.

'The current is pretty strong,' said Jane. 'No time to fetch the boys. Three or four trips in the zodiac. Guys would get left behind.'

'Jesus. Look at the size of it.'

'Bring us round the stern,' said Ghost. He hurled the grappling hook upward and snagged railings.

'Maybe I should go,' said Punch.

Ghost ignored him. He shouldered his backpack and gun, gripped the knotted rope and began to climb. He hauled hand over hand, walking his way up the side of the boat. Punch tried to keep the zodiac beneath him. If Ghost fell in the freezing water the shock would kill him.

Ghost reached the deck. He climbed over the railing. He caught his breath, coughed and spat.

'Looks pretty dead,' he shouted. 'No one around.'

Jane grabbed the rope and hauled herself up the side of the boat. Weeks ago, when she was fat, she couldn't have managed the climb.

She tipped over the railing and fell on to the deck.

The ship was ten storeys high. Six rows of portholes in the main hull, and four stacked decks like the concentric tiers of a wedding cake.

Jane found herself on a teak promenade laid out for an Arctic pleasure cruise. Whale-watching loungers and curling stones.

She looked up and down the walkway. Every cabin window was dark. They un-shouldered their shotguns. Safety to Fire. Ghost chambered a shell.

'Let's find the bridge.'

They walked towards the prow. A couple of cabin doors were open. Scattered possessions. Jane wanted to investigate, but there wasn't time to explore.

Ghost's flashlight lit vacant lifeboat davits, rope swinging in the breeze.

'Couple of lifeboats missing,' he said. He kicked scattered lifebelts. 'Looks like everyone left in a hurry.'

They reached the prow. Jane pointed to windows high above them.

'That must be the bridge.'

They entered the ship. They were in a functional, crew-only zone of the liner. Bare corridors. Linoleum floor. No heat.

Jane was spooked by shadows. Once in a while she swung her torch beam down the passageway behind them to make sure they were not being followed.

Ghost tried a light switch. He pointed at the red, winking LED of a ceiling smoke detector.

'The power is shut off but some basic systems are active. I guess the generators still work. All we have to do is throw the switch.'

Offices, store cupboards, crew quarters. Corridor floors cluttered with toilet supplies and discarded uniforms. Signs of hurried departure.

They climbed narrow stairs and pushed through doors marked Tillträde Förbjudet.

They reached the bridge. Ghost tried the light switch. Dead.

'Thought it might be on a separate circuit or something.'

Jane moved to enter the bridge but Ghost put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back. There was someone sitting in the captain's chair.

'Hello? Bonjour?'

A slumped figure in a white cap and greatcoat, collar turned up. Ghost and Jane cautiously approached.

'How you doing?' asked Jane. Her boot crunched on broken glass.

The captain was a big man in his fifties. He had a white moustache. He had been dead a long while, but the sub-zero temperature had preserved his body from decay.

Green glass in his hand. He had cut his throat with a jagged piece of wine bottle. The front of his uniform, a brass-buttoned tunic, was glazed with frozen blood.

'Help me get him out of the way,' said Ghost. 'Watch yourself. The guy doesn't look infected, but you never know.'

They dragged the man from the chair. He was rigor-stiff. Crackle of frozen blood. They hauled him into a side room.

The bridge looked like the flight-deck of a starship. Three padded chairs facing the sea. Banks of switches, dials and screens, powered down and inert. The steering column was a horseshoe control like the joystick of a passenger jet. Acceleration governed by a central thrust lever.

'I was expecting a big wheel,' said Jane.

'Look at this,' said Ghost. 'A keyhole. What do you reckon? An ignition?'

He ran to the side room. He crouched by the captain's body and searched his pockets. Handkerchief. Coins. Asthma inhaler. No key.

'Search the place. Let's see if we can find some kind of key locker. If we can get this ship to drop anchor we'll have all the time in the world to figure out the rest.'

Jane looked around. Desks at the back of the bridge. Charts and, maps. She tugged at the door of a red cupboard.

'Brandsläckare. What the hell is that? You'd think the signs would be bilingual. I mean English is the international language of pretty much everything.'

'There must be a spare set of keys somewhere, but we're running out of time.'

'Hey,' called Jane. 'Check this out.'

A door at the back of the bridge led to a stairwell. They leaned over the railings and shone their flashlights downward. A jumble of furniture heaped against a steel hatch. Chairs, tables, a bed frame. A big, red 'X had been sprayed on the door.

'Someone was very anxious to keep that door closed,' said Jane.

 

Jane called Punch and Ivan on the radio.

'Get aboard, folks. Meet us at the prow.'

Ghost showed them to the bridge.

'We need the master key to this thing, okay? We need to get the ship's systems back on-line. Let's fan out and see what we can find.'

 

Ghost and Ivan checked the officers' quarters.

'This is living,' said Ivan. 'Plasma TV. En suite.' He picked an officer's cap from a sofa and tried it on. He checked his reflection in a mirror. 'Fuck oil rigs. I need a Cunard gig.'

'Imagine sailing south in this palace,' said Ghost. 'The presidential suites. Gym, Jacuzzi, sauna. We've got to make this work for us.' 'I've never been in a Jacuzzi.'

'This ship is a fucking gold mine.'

'The freezers have been shut off a long while,' said Ivan. 'Most of the food will have spoiled. Lobster will be off the menu.'

'Think of the bars down there. Champagne, vintage malts, any cocktail you care to mix. Imagine how much beer they must have stowed below deck. You could fill a bath.'

They descended a flight of stairs. Another barricade. A fire axe slotted through the crank-handles of a door to keep it closed. A big, red 'X sprayed on the hatch.

'This is fucking creepy,' said Ivan. He crossed himself.

Ghost examined an exterior door at the end of a passage. Sooty scorch marks and bubbled paint. He pushed open the door. Someone had built a large bonfire on the promenade deck. A pile of charred debris. A mound of scorched lifebelts and bench-slats. The fire had long since burned out. The cinders were dusted with snow.

Ghost knelt by the debris and prodded the ashes with a stick.

'What have you found?' asked Ivan, joining Ghost on deck.

'Bones. A ribcage. At least two skulls.'

He hooked a can with his stick and read the scorched label. Kerosene.

'I wish there were a few more of those guns to go around,' said Ivan.

'Let's find those keys.'

 

The administration corridor. A row of offices.

A splash of blood on the corridor floor.

'Steer clear,' advised Jane. 'Assume infection.'

Faint white-noise fizz from a side office. Jane nudged the door open with her foot. The radio room. The radio operator had died at his desk. His body was slowly melting into a telex console, upper body completely absorbed like the workstation was eating him head first.

Jane yanked the power cable from the wall. The satellite console sparked and died. The hissing stopped.

They found the purser's office.

'We could be millionaires,' said Punch. 'All those rich old ladies on a Baltic cruise. The deposit boxes must be packed with diamonds and pearls.'

'But where did those rich old ladies go?' said Jane. 'That's the question.'

She found a key cabinet on the wall. She tugged it. She hit it. She shucked the slide of her shotgun.

'Stand back.'

 

Ghost undipped his radio from his belt.

'Jane? You guys all right?'

'We're fine.'

'We heard a shot.'

'We've got some keys. We're heading back to the bridge.'

'We've found some kind of battery room. I'm going to throw a few switches, see what happens.'

'Reckon these batteries still hold charge?' asked Ivan.

'They're supposed to sustain light and heat if an iceberg or something knocks out the engines. They should be good for days.'

 

Jane took fistfuls of keys from her coat pocket and dumped them on the console. She threw a fire blanket over the captain's chair so she wouldn't have to sit in his blood. She tried to slot the keys, one by one, into the panel above the steering column then threw them aside.

'How long before this ship drifts out of range of the refinery?'

'An hour. Two at the most.'

Punch stood in the side room and looked down at the captain. The man was lying on his side, legs still hitched like he was sitting down. Punch unfolded a map and draped it over the dead man's head so he wouldn't have to see his eyes.

'I'm going out on deck,' he said. 'Think I'll take a look around.'

 

Punch climbed exterior steps to the upper deck.

The Lido. There was an empty children's swimming pool with scattered life jackets at the bottom.

The Winterland Grill. Smashed plates and an upturned barbecue.

A vast funnel rose into the fog above him.

He found a skylight. He rubbed the glass with a gloved hand, wiping away frost as thick as snow. He shone his flashlight down into the dark.

Ghost must have found a power switch in the battery room because the ship suddenly lit up brilliant white. Stark floodlights illuminated the decks, the balconies, the badminton court, the miniature golf. Strings of bulbs hung between the funnels glowed in the fog like weak sunlight.

Punch crouched over the skylight and looked down into the Grand Ballroom. Art deco wall lights glowed amber for a soiree, but the dance floor appeared to have been turned into a hospital. Row upon row of beds. Bandaged bodies in the beds, some in pyjamas, some in ball gowns and dinner suits. Punch couldn't see clearly through the smeared glass. He could make out bloody dressings, blackened skin, half-eaten faces.

A squeak of feedback from the deck speakers as the sound- system powered back to life. The genteel strings of 'The Blue Danube' waltz were broadcast throughout the ship.

As if waking from a long sleep, the bodies in the ballroom began to stir.