Outpost
Authors: Adam Baker
Outpost
Adam Baker
First published in Great
Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Adam Baker 2011
For Helen
Table of Contents
The
Barents Sea is so cold that if it were still for a day, if it were no longer
churned by Arctic winds and ocean currents, it would freeze solid. You could
walk across it. Shine a searchlight downward and illuminate the ice-locked
dreamscape of the ocean floor. Ridges and canyons, silted wrecks, eyeless
organisms that live and die in perpetual darkness.
The
Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart is anchored a kilometre from the clustered
islands of Franz Josef Land. A skeleton crew of fifteen haunt corridors and
accommodation blocks that used to be home to a thousand men. Each day they
perform desultory system checks then get stoned, watch TV, or stare out of a
porthole at the bleak sun. They retreat into memory, navigate a landscape of
nostalgia and loss, kill time until the day Con Amalgam reboot the platform and
set the seabed pipeline pumping again.
Part One
Survival
Jane
woke, stretched, and decided to kill herself. If she hadn't found a reason to
live by the end of the day she would jump from the rig. It felt good to have a
plan.
Jane
jogged down service tunnels on C deck. Part of her morning routine. The walls
and deck plates were autumnal shades of rust. The pipework throbbed like a
heartbeat. Heating, sewage, desalination.
Jane
was fat. It often hurt to walk. She struggled to wipe each time she used the
bathroom. It was the main reason she took a job on the rig. The gargantuan
refinery would be her health farm. Six months sequestered from supermarkets and
junk food restaurants. She would return to the world transformed.
Each
morning she put on her super-ironic, super-self-hating,
PORN STAR
shirt and shuffled a kilometre-long
circuit through the metal labyrinth. She wore Lycra cycle shorts so her thighs
didn't chafe. She wore a towel wadded down the back of her shorts to stop
perspiration trickling into the crack of her buttocks. Her tracksuit hung wet
and heavy.
Jane
used fire point fifty-nine as her finish line. A red locker full of breathing
apparatus and extinguishers. Lung-bursting effort. The final stretch. She fell
against the locker whooping for breath and fumbled for the Stop button of her
watch with sweat- slick fingers. Fourteen minutes. She was getting slower.
Barely faster than a walking pace. The first time she ran the route she flew
fast and strong, but now her knees stung with each heavy footfall. She should
rest for a few days, give her body a chance to recuperate, but she knew that if
she broke her routine she might not run again.
She
usually followed her daily run with calisthenics, punished her disgusting body
with a round of sit-ups and squat-thrusts, but this morning she was overcome by
a strength-sapping wave of what's-the-point. She returned to her room and
stripped out of her wet clothes. She showered. She soaped her barrel belly,
kneaded fistfuls of dough-flesh. Her skin, usually mottled pink and white like
the inside of a pork pie, blushed red under the heat of the shower jet.
She
towelled herself dry. She dusted the creases and folds of her body with talc
and sprayed herself head-to-toe with deodorant. She avoided her reflection. She
hated mirrors. Sagging breasts. Rolls of blubber as if her flesh were poured
from a jug in gloops and folds like thick custard.
She
dressed. She clipped her dog-collar in place and headed for the chapel.
The
chapel was last in a row of retail units. Three years ago, when the refinery
ran at full capacity, Con Amalgam provided a hairdresser, a general store and
movie rental. Now the mall units were shuttered and padlocked. The remaining
crew still called it Main Street.
Jane
unlocked the chapel and hit the lights. The chapel was a white room filled with
metal chairs. Coloured wall lamps projected the illusion of stained glass.
She
took her cassock from a cupboard and wrestled it on.
She
began the service. She blessed empty chairs. She sang along to
''Classic Hymns of
Worship'.
She
stood at the lectern and read her sermon. She read the same sermon every week.
Sometimes she read it in a silly voice. Sometimes she read it backwards. Today
she gave up halfway through. She folded each page into a paper plane and flew
them across the room. She experimented with different wing designs to see if
she could reach the back wall.
'It's
a tough job,' the bishop had said, as they sipped sherry in his study. 'You'll
be away from home a long time. You’ll be mother to a thousand men. Deckhands.
Brawlers. A tough crowd.'
'My
dad used to be a sailor,' said Jane. 'I can handle roughnecks.' But she
couldn't handle irrelevance.
Rampart
used to be a busy town. Installation lights burned through the Arctic night as
if a chunk of Manhattan broke loose and floated away. There was a cinema, a gym
and a Starbucks. There was even a radio station. Three marshals kept order.
There was no booze on the rig but tempers ran high. Long shifts and nowhere to
go when they were done. Sometimes fights got out of hand. Marshals zapped the
participants with a Taser and let them cool off in a holding cell.
A
deckhand job on an Arctic rig was like joining the Foreign Legion. Guys fled
bereavement, addiction, all kinds of personal failure. Jane expected to nurse
tough men through those midnight hours of heartbreak and loss. Let them talk it
out in the privacy of the chapel. Send them home fixed and whole. Instead she
found twilight and dereliction.
'I
can't understand why they sent you here,' shouted Punch, as he helped Jane lift
her kit-bag from the supply chopper.
Gareth
Punch. Ginger goatee. Short and slight. Mid-twenties.
'I
suppose your Church didn't hear the place got moth- balled.' They ran from a
typhoon of rotor-wash as the Sikorsky took off. 'Rampart hasn't been pumping
for a year. The Kasker field is running dry. All the easy oil got sucked.
Sooner or later the rig will get redeployed someplace like the Gulf of Mexico
or sold to India for scrap. Dumb bureaucracy. Same wherever you go. Anyway.
Hello.' He shook Jane's hand. 'Gary Punch. I'm the chef.'