Outpost

Rye cranked the handle and pulled the door ajar. She hesitated. The Rampart crew would have sought out every entrance to the officers’ quarters. They would not have left the door undefended. They would have taken steps to protect themselves.

Rye squinted through the crack. She could see a red canister taped to the back of the hatch at eye level. A grenade, trip-wire pulled taut.

Rye squeezed her arm through the gap and gripped the grenade, careful not to dislodge the pin. She ripped the grenade free, snapping the thread. She examined the case. AH-M14 thermite grenade.

She put her eye to the gap and studied the barricade beyond the door. She could see a jumble of furniture. Desks and office chairs. A couple of filing cabinets. She could also see a couple of fine nylon threads, like wisps of cobweb. More grenades rigged around the doorway. If she opened the door wide she would have three seconds’ grace before blowtorch heat seared flesh from her bones.

Rye sealed the hatch.

She wandered through the ship. She followed a draught of Arctic wind until she reached the gash ripped in Hyperion’s prow by the collision with the rig. An evacuation sign, a running man fleeing flames, pointed to where jagged, ice-dusted metal framed the night sky.

Rye stepped over buckled floor plates. She stood in the great wound and looked out at the stars, the sea, the lunar crags of the island.

There had been rumours. Months ago, Jane and Punch had returned to the rig from the island with crates. They had visited the site of a seismic research station and returned with some kind of munitions. The secret revealed: boxes of thermite grenades.

The grenades were not designed to explode and spit shrapnel like conventional anti-personnel ordnance. Once triggered, they burned at four thousand degrees for a full minute. The brief nova-heat could turn an engine block to a puddle of liquid metal in seconds. Arctic drill teams used them to melt quickly through permafrost.

Would it hurt if she lay down, pulled the pin and quickly wedged the grenade beneath her head like a pillow? Three, maybe four seconds of unimaginable pain as flesh crisped and flaked from her skull, then her brain would fizz and boil away. Her thoughts and memories would be vapour.

Do it, she told herself, for the sake of the Rampart crew. Do it for them.

The diesel tanks. A steady gush of fuel. Rye descended a ladder and waded knee-deep. She held the grenade. No more excuses. All she had to do was stand between the huge fuel tanks, wreathed in diesel vapour, and pull the pin. The blast would measure in megatons.

She hooked the grenade ring with her finger. What about the Rampart crew? She shook her head, tried to think straight. The guys were a couple of floors above her. If she detonated the grenade they would burn.

She looked down at the red cylinder in her hand. She was tired. She just wanted to sleep.

Rye woke. She lifted her head from a table. Green felt. House must stand on 17. She looked around. The casino. The blackjack table. The game.

‘Welcome back,’ said the dealer. He smiled with cracked and bloody lips. His face had begun to disintegrate. Skin hung in strips. ‘I thought we’d lost you. Thought your lights were out for good. Well. Maybe tomorrow, if you’re lucky. It surely won’t be much longer.’

He skimmed a couple of playing cards across the table. Rye didn’t bother reading her hand. She pushed a couple of chips towards the centre.

‘Not going to check your cards?’ he asked. ‘Dancing to the music of chance?’

He drew seven. Bust.

Rye gestured to the empty seats around her.

‘So the others all turned?’

‘One by one. I’m glad for them, but I can’t help asking, why not me? Why am I left behind?’

‘The breaks.’

‘Those fucking breaks. It’s just you and me now. The living dead.’

‘I feel like I’ve drawn the short straw all my life. Forgive the self-pity. I just want it to be done.’

‘It’ll happen, sister. Don’t you worry.’

‘I’m scared. I want to do something, take steps, if you know what I mean. But I have to admit, I’m scared.’

The dealer gestured to his legs. Rye craned to see beneath the table. Metal tendrils had burst from the dealer’s shoes. They had punctured the carpet and fused with the deck plate beneath. It looked like he had taken root.

‘Sadly, I’m not as mobile as I was. If I could get out of this chair I’d jump over the side.’

Rye took the grenade from her pocket and placed it on the table.

‘I found this. I don’t have the courage to use it.’

‘Mind if I take it from you?’

‘Be my guest.’

Rye slid the grenade across the table. The dealer examined it like a barstool drunk contemplating the bottom of his shot glass.

‘Obliged to you.’

‘Thank you for your company these past few days,’ said Rye. ‘It’s been a comfort.’

‘Good luck, Liz.’

Rye woke. She was sitting on a bed. Whose bed? She was in a third-class cabin. Cramped. Trashed by a previous occupant. Clothes and coins on the floor.

Blood on the bed sheets. Whose blood? Hers? The blood was black and old.