“I’ll take you. I’m about as useful as a fart in a spacesuit here anyway.”
The operator stood from his console and was almost toppled as another huge swell lifted one end of the floatel and smashed it back down to the water again with an impact that rang for seconds afterwards.
The second operator stood, shakily.
“I’m no use to you here,” he said. “I’ll be down in the mess hiding under a table if you need me.”
He left unsteadily, almost walking into the wall when another swell lifted then dropped them again.
“How much of this can we take?” Wiggo asked the man who was left.
“We’re built to survive almost anything the North Sea can chuck at us… and it chucks things at us a lot,” the operator replied. “We probably won’t sink. Probably. But we’ll be getting shaken about and rattled like the last few peanuts in a tin for a while. Maybe a long while, until somebody comes looking for us.”
“Engines it will have to be then,” Wiggo replied. “If we can get them working, can you get us back to the rig?”
The operator sucked at his teeth.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe will have to do. Lead on.”
“What about yon… whatever it was? Yon thing that took the supply boat?”
“What about it?” Wiggo answered. “If it comes, it comes. Unless you’ve got a bloody huge cannon aboard, I don’t think we’ve got anything that will stop it. So I’m not going to worry about that right now. First things first.”
“Engines?”
“Engines.”
They picked up Davies and Wilkins on the way down. Both privates had tooled up with their rifles and flak jackets, so Wiggo followed suit.
“I thought you said we’d need a cannon?” the operator asked.
Wiggo laughed and showed him the rifle.
“This? This is for the rats. I’ve never seen an engine room yet that didn’t have them.”
Once kitted up, the three squad members followed the operator though the mess, along a corridor to a door that, once opened, led to a downward stairwell. They’d already been bounced off the walls twice on the way and the stairs were dark, unlit and uninviting.
“Ladies first,” the operator said and stood aside to let Wiggo look down the shaft.
It was a disorienting experience. As soon as Wiggo gazed downward, his guts lurched, his head went woozy, and his knees threatened to give way beneath him. Only sheer force of will kept his earlier cheeseburger down and his body up. He switched on the light-sight on his rifle; washing it ahead of him on the stairs helped his focus, but he was still unsteady on his feet as he took the first step. He reached out with his left hand and steadied himself on the guardrail, trusting to the sling of the rifle over his shoulder to hold it steady in his right. It occurred to him that, as corporal, he could have ordered one of the privates down first. But he’d learned from Banks and Hynd that you don’t ask your men to do anything you won’t do yourself. He gritted his teeth and went down into the dark.
They didn’t have to go far to find out that the floatel was in more trouble than they’d realised. Wiggo hadn’t reached the bottom of the steps but when he shone his light downward, he saw black oily water swirl below him and tasted salt at his lips.
He called the operator down to join him; the man had hung back behind the three squaddies, and only stepped down to Wiggo’s side reluctantly.
“Bugger me, we’re holed,” he said.
“No shit, Sherlock. How deep is it? Can we wade through it?”
The man looked down the steps, gauging the depth, and shook his head when he turned back.
“Up to the neck at least, maybe more. And the engines will all be under feet of salt water. I told you; we’re royally fucked.”
Wiggo motioned at the swirling water below.
“Does this mean we’re sinking?”
“Not necessarily. In fact, it might be giving us ballast, stopping us from slopping around too much in the swell.”
“And if it gets deeper?”
“Then the engines aren’t the only thing that’s fucked.”
“Well this just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it.”
“Not a word to anyone about what we’ve just seen, understood?” Wiggo said to the operator once they’d returned to the corridor and closed the door against the memory of the chill waters below.
“Trust me,” the man said. “I’m going back upstairs to keep trying to reach somebody. We can’t reach the rig, but I’ve got an idea of how we might get through to Aberdeen.”
“Get to it then, man. I’ll check on you when I can.”
“Who died and put you in charge?”
“Do you want the job? You can have it right now.”
The operator backed away, hands in the air.
“Nope. That’s fine. You’re the boss, boss.”
Wiggo was getting his first real taste of the responsibility of command.
He wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.
He led Davies and Wilkins back to the mess to find a collection of angry crewmen waiting for them. The vocal chap who’d been disparaging about ‘sodjers’ earlier seemed to have been elected spokesman and he got into Wiggo’s face as soon as they entered the area.
“It’s time you told us what the fuck is going on here,” he said, red faced and almost shouting.
Wiggo ignored him, took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, and made a show of lighting up slowly.
“You can’t smoke in here,” the red-faced man said.
“Looks like I can,” Wiggo replied and took a long draw. He addressed the men behind the ringleader. “I don’t see any of your bosses here, do you? Smoke them if you’ve got them.”
Five of the men grinned back at him, Tom the cook among them, and lit up smokes of their own. Wiggo relaxed; he knew he’d already gone a long way to diffusing the situation. All that was left now was the red faced man.
“Come on, mate. Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you what I know, then you can tell the others.” He stepped forward, took the man by the arm, and led him to a table before the man knew what had hit him.
The room took another lurch just as Wiggo was trying to sit down. He righted himself just in time.
“Nearly landed on my arse,” he said, the red-faced man smiled, and Wiggo knew that everything was going to go just fine.
Wiggo sat with the man while he smoked down the cigarette and told him everything that had happened except for the detail about the water in the engine room… all he said was that the engines were, in technical terms, fucked. It was another lesson he’d learned on the squad—only give out what you have to, but if you have to, tell the truth.
“We’re adrift?” the man said.
“Aye. I thought that was obvious. And we’ve lost contact with the rig. I’ve told you this. The lad upstairs is trying to get through to Aberdeen and my boss back on the rig will be moving heaven and earth to get us off of here. Hang tight… that’s what he told me, and that’s what I’m telling you.”
“And yon big beastie that ate the supply boat? What are you doing about that?”
“Fuck all,” Wiggo said cheerfully. “What do you expect me to do, give it a biscuit?”
The man, no longer quite so red-faced, went to relay the news to the others while Wiggo lit a fresh smoke from the butt of the old one. Davies and Wilkins joined him at the table, managing to get to their seats just as the vessel took another lunge upwards and back down with a crash.
“Do we have a plan, Corp?” Wilkins asked. Somehow, the private looked younger now to Wiggo, less sure of himself.