“How long before she can be ready?”

“Probably a day or two of work.”

“You have two hours.”

“That’s impossible!”

“We can’t sit around for a day waiting here, looking at…that, We have to get over there and take a proper look around, the people are going to demand it.”

“People demand all sorts of things, it doesn’t mean they can always get what they want.”

“Two hours Martin. She doesn’t have to be perfect, but she needs to be ready to go in two hours at the latest.” He clicked the phone down. He knew he was pushing his luck with Martin, but he would rather suffer the complaints of one engineer than the wrath of thousands of angry passengers.

He made two more calls.

“Grau, how’s the leg?”

“Further improved, thank you for asking. How is the captain?”

“As well as can be expected. Listen, do you think you’d be up to joining me in a landing party?”

“You think there could be survivors over there?”

“Honestly? No, I don’t. But if there are, we need you with us.”

“I don’t know Jake. Getting round this ship is one thing, but that is rough terrain, and it’s cold. I would slow you down, be a liability, and not much use to you even if you did find anyone. I can send Kiera though. David is sleeping, he ran the night shift.”

“Fine, Kiera’s a great nurse, she’ll be great. Tell her to be on deck two in a couple of hours, by the exit for the tender.”

Click. He swapped the phone for a radio headset, and punched in the channel number he wanted.

“Max, I’m taking a landing party over there. I could use one of your security guys. Someone strong. If we find fuel, or food, or anything we can salvage, we could use help bringing it back.”

“There must be a hundred sailors twiddling their thumbs, why not take one of those?”

“I’m bringing a couple of sailors too, but this isn’t just about carrying stuff. We don’t know who or what we might find.”

“Alright, what about the new guy?”

Jake considered this. “I’d rather take a company man. I’ve already got a passenger representative, I don’t want to be responsible for more than one cone.”

“Okay, I’ll send Reeve. You can’t miss him, he’s six foot six and bald as an egg.”

“Thanks. Have him meet me on deck two by the tender exit at oh-two hundred hours.”

“Will do.”

Jake sat back down in the captain’s chair, stared out over the mountains ahead, trying not to look at Longyearbyen.

“It’s midday,” Silvia said. “I’ll bring up some lunch. You need to eat before going over there.”

“Maybe,” Jake said. But nobody really felt like eating.

Thirty-Six

“YOU MUST BE Reeve,” Jake looked the man up and down. Mostly up. He looked more like a vigilante than a security officer, but he’d got through an interview with Max, so that was good enough. “Stacy, Reeve is our other regular security guy. Reeve, Stacey is here representing passenger interests.” Reeve raised an eyebrow, nodded at Stacy. Jake finished the introductions.

The group were standing by a large square opening. The chunky metal door cut into the side of the hull had been lowered outwards, and icy arctic air whistled in. The opened door formed part of a staircase; five white steps to where a telescopic stairway descended to the the right, down to a platform that sea hovered just over the sea. Moored at the bottom was a bright orange tender. It looked like a bigger lifeboat, and indeed could double as one in an emergency. Jack stepped outside, the cold air hit him full in the face. He reached the bottom of the stairs, and stepped on board the little boat through a sliding door in the middle.

An engineer was waiting for him. “We’ve patched her up the best we can Captain, but she really needs more work.” He gestured towards the side. “She took quite a bit of fire damage, parts of the hull were melted away.”

“So when you say you patched her up, you really patched her, that’s not just a turn of phrase.”

“Very much so. Martin isn’t happy, he wanted me to pass on his feelings that this boat was not ready to be lowered into the sea and that he wont take responsibility for anything that happens to it.” The young man clearly felt embarrassed relaying Martin’s words, and seemed glad he’d got it out of the way.

“Well, she’s floating, isn’t she? So I think we’ll be fine. Thank you, er,”

“Rigg, sir, Bryan Rigg.”

“Yes, thank you Rigg.” He waved at the others at the top of the steps. “Are you coming, or are you all just going to stand there?”

Reeve came down and boarded the tender, followed by Stacey, Kiera, and two sailors, Horace and Dante. Rigg was standing in the tiny wheelhouse at the front. He pressed a combination of buttons to start the engine. A puff of diesel smoke, the starter turned twice, three times, and then burst into life. From somewhere behind them came the sound of dirty water being spat out in puffs and wheezes as the bilge pump got going. The engineer retreated back through the boat, and stepped outside onto the platform. He untied the two thick blue ropes that secured the orange vessel to the Spirit of Arcadia, coiled each one individually and tossed them onto the little boat, casting them adrift.

“Horace, would you?” Jake asked.

The sailor took the wheel. Dante went back to the door, clasped a grab rail on the roof, pulled himself up and outside, where he walked carefully round to the front. He sat on the roof and took up a watch. The tender eased away from its mooring and set off across the last kilometre to the shore.

Despite the breeze the water was calm, which was fortunate because there were obstacles to avoid. Before long Dante had spotted something dark and straight edged lurking just beneath the surface. All the while looking forwards, he tapped on the window below him and signalled to Horace to steer clear. The tender was easily able to change direction quickly, and it glided past. Looking down on the menacing shape hidden just below the water, Jake saw it was a huge chunk of the concrete jetty that they had been hoping to tie up to. He looked on in awe as the little boat tiptoed around more pieces of the pier. Some were hidden below the water line, others rose out of the sea like sheer sided rocks.

“What could do this?” he said to nobody in particular. “What kind of force could rip apart something like that?”

“I once saw a tornado,” Reeve said. “Blew right down the other side of the street in front of me. Picked up the roofs of houses and sent them flying into backyards half a mile away. Picked up cars and dumped them down again a block later. It was an awesome sight, the power of that twister. But even that couldn’t have done this kind of damage. Man, if that asteroid did this, then how the hell did we survive?”

“It was higher. When it went over us, it was going up. Something made it change direction, and it happened before it reached us. Who knows, maybe it was gaining altitude the further north it got? We were anchored very close to the magnetic pole, perhaps the earth’s magnetic field interrupted its orbit and sent it spinning off back into space?” It was a pet theory Jake had been toying with for a while.

“If that’s right Captain Noah, and it levelled a town like this from a higher altitude, then I can’t even begin to imagine what damage it did further south when it was lower.”

Jake closed his eyes, swallowed hard. He saw Jane, couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d avoided thinking about home, had been too busy when on duty, and too tired in his brief rest periods. But seeing the destruction, he could no longer hide from the truth, the inevitable truth that Jane must be dead. His parents, dead, Everyone he knew, everyone he had ever known, they were all dead. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, was fighting for breath, tried to open his eyes but they felt like they were glued shut. His legs gave way underneath him, and that was the last thing he remembered.