“Maybe for twenty seconds.” Tor retrieved the Cola stained cigarette from the chair and felt its flaccid remnants disintegrate between his fingers. “Shit.”
“I guess he had some ghosts after all, eh?” Nilsen flipped through the pages of the personnel file, not really observing anything in particular. He seemed agitated, his anxiety was contagious. Nonchalantly, he dropped the file back on the desk.
“We’d already surmised that, just wished he’d kept his personal business personal.” Tor wiped the chair off with the saturated memo and three-point-shot the remnants into the paper basket. Missing.
“Any word from the company?” Nilsen pulled a small green tin of snus from his shirt pocket, rolling the tin between his thin fingers.
“Comms are down, Stewart is working on it.” Tor could feel Nilsen’s deep set piercing blue eyes appraise his mien.
“But?”
“He doesn’t think they’re repairable,” Tor answered resignedly. “He thinks the array is fried.”
“Figures.” Nilsen furtively opened his snus tin, took a single white portion from it and resealed the tin. He jammed the little sachet of wet tobacco beneath his top lip with his left hand, then ran the right hand from blond stubbled scalp to greying stubbled jaw line.
“Solar flare activity and the brewing ionic storm outside?” Tor gestured to the porthole.
“Something worse,” Nilsen leaned across the desk casting shadows about his gaunt features. “Much worse.”
“How bad?” Tor gulped, blood rushed in his head.
“We haven’t got enough Syntin to thrust anywhere, manoeuvring fuel or otherwise and if our comms are down, we definitely can’t get within a realistic rescue range.” Nilsen sounded like he was chewing gum. “We could reroute what’s left to the manoeuvring thrusters. Establish an orbit around that planet, but not much else.”
“What about the EM drive?”
“Cold and seized. Whatever retarded our comms has also sullied our exotic propellant.”
“And the cargo?”
“It’s unrefined, we couldn’t use it even if it wasn’t…” Nilsen gave an apologetic shrug, “fucked like our propellant.”
“Fuck.” Tor slammed his fist on the desk, the paper mountain collapsed, cascading around his knuckles. He could feel himself reaching for his shirt pocket button, trying to free his final cigarette. He relented, pushing himself up and away from the still-damp office chair that skittered backward, slamming into the sideboard. Something told him he would need the cigarette later.
“That’s not our biggest concern now, Tor.” Nilsen rolled his lips, repositioning the sachet of tobacco. It was an anxious tell, Tor had seen it before when playing poker with him; when he was bluffing a weak hand on an overcommitted pot.
Tor stopped pacing before he began and stared at his Chief Engineer. They’d been friends for over a decade and were two of an increasingly shrinking pool of Norwegian space farers in the Saudi Shipping roster; the slow imperceptible shift to cheaper third world labour was depleting their ilk. Tor had begun his junior, Nilsen having entered an already certified civil engineer. However, unlike many whose careers Tor overtook, Nilsen never showed the intransigence to his authority other overlooked, promotion aged officers had as the number of stripes on his epaulettes increased.
Part of him wondered if the symbiosis he found with Nilsen had been because the engineer found Tor a malleable presence in the Masters office. He let Nilsen mould him, just as he knew the other, younger more diligent officers would have provided an arrogant, inflexible barrier for progress, for the purchasing of spares and maintenance parts. Bean counters eager to please the boardroom bottomline. The Riyadh ran well because of Nilsen’s diligence and Tor’s profligacy with company funds.
Tor knew Nilsen was an exemplary engineer, one of the best in the company, one of the longest tenured and experienced Chiefs. He trusted Nilsen implicitly, knew he ran a tight ship in the engine. By comparison, Tor had never been an exemplary officer, not even close. An exemplary kiss ass perhaps, his predilection for girls and good times made him an excellent foil for the first wave of ship to spaceship captains, looking to relive their youthful adventures on the seas within the nascent ports amongst the stars. He’d wound his way through the chain of command by being an affable, charismatic wingman to his elders. As the industry of vice flourished throughout the early spaceports, Tor sewed contacts with the upstart purveyors of booze and debauchery. He became a favourite amongst the companies masters, but his talent had never been for maintaining a watch, navigation or payload. Nilsen knew this, knew his weaknesses and managed to dampen the effects of his most hazardous shortcomings.
Tor had visited Nilsen in Nordland during vacation a couple of times to go hunting and fishing. An outdoors man, Nilsen preferred a beer by the lakeside with a freshly caught coalfish supper than Tor’s choice of a weekends – whoring in the gated brothels of Salvador.
They’d had numerous run-ins with Station rats, district gangs, dubious customs officials and pimps in their time, but Tor had never seen Nilsen as agitated as he was now.
“Our air and water recyc scuppers are spent.” Tor noted Nilsen’s hands quivering slightly as he tried to dampen the quake in his deep voice. “He’s obviously had to turn them on to sustain himself when he woke, but didn’t know how to control them. They’ve been running on full capacity since whenever he woke up.”
“How long have we got?”
“Two weeks. Three, if we ice non-essentials.”
Tor sat back down and rested his head in his palm. What had started a possibly significant, potentially career ending inconvenience was spiralling into something more dangerous.
“But there’s something else worrying me, Tor.” Nilsen now picked at the edge of a piece of paper, his shining eyes fixed on the distraction.
“What?”
“Whatever this is, this radiation or ionisation that is damaging our comms, our Exotic Matter.” Momentarily he trailed off in deep thought. “What is it doing to us?”
Tor paused, hadn’t had the chance to even conceive of that particular concern and could offer no solace.
“I mean we could be already dead for all we know,” Nilsen continued.
“We can worry about that later,” Tor offered weakly.
“What about my daughter Tor? I haven’t seen Freya in years,” Nilsen splayed overlong fingers around the back of his balding head. “I was going to call it quits after this trip, propose to Emma. I was going to take her down to the lakes. I met her there.”
Tor rounded his desk. He squeezed Nilsen’s shoulder but found himself bereft of platitudes or reassurances. He felt a sick emptiness in his stomach that afforded little sympathy as he contemplated his own mortality. He decided he wouldn’t burden Nilsen further with the tampered transponder. “I’ve ordered a meeting in the mess hall, I could use your support down there.”
Reluctantly Nilsen rose, blank, misted eyes regarded Tor. “Sorry. I’m not sure what came over me. I guess it’s just the effects of the cryo. We’ll be fine.”
The words came out hollow and faintly manic. If Nilsen lost his grip, the crew would follow. Tor patted him on the back, manly slaps to avoid seeming patronizing. But his mind was elsewhere, sinking into its own quicksand of fears both real and potential. He let Nilsen exit in front of him and held his hand to the light, watching his own digits shake.
The crew of the DSMV Riyadh sat bleary eyed in the mess hall. The sharp tang of detergent hung over plastic fixtures and fittings. The same beige-orange flecked Formica veneers gleamed in sterile white light. Split into two rooms, one for officers, the other for ratings, the foldaway divider had been pulled back and trestle tables pushed against the bulkheads.