Sunspots Read online

  I crawl over to him. He's making some horrible noises. There’s soot under his nose, staining his blond moustache. I shake him slightly, but he doesn't respond. The first thing to do is to get the bed off him. It's laying on its side pinning down both of his legs. I can see that the air is starting to clear a bit, and I try and take a breath. I cough and splutter. Robert wakes up. He starts screaming, doesn't seem to know where he is. I quickly grab the frame of the bed and just about manage to move it. I'm straining with the effort. Just before I get it past his feet, it slips from my grip, and I drop it on his ankles. He screams again but this time he seems to know what's going on.

  “You fucking cunt!” he shouts.

  I pick it up again and get it off him completely. He's wheezing badly, so I grab a mask off the wall rack and connect it to one of the oxygen mix tanks, and then attach the mask to his bald tattooed head. His beard makes for a bad seal, but I guess it's better than nothing.

  I wait with him for about five minutes and his breathing starts to level off. I stand up and go to the intercom to get Kerry or Mark down here, but there's nothing but static.

  “Robert, stay here and breathe slowly. I'll get Kerry to come down and help you.” He nods, and I leave the room. As I walk back to the hatches, I can see smoke rising from down below, which makes me think the engine room must have been on fire. Or still is. And then it occurs to me that we really should have closed all the hatches when we knew we were heading for a collision. Each level has its own life support, and we wouldn't have been completely smoked out like we are now. If there had been any sort of massive decompression after the collision, we'd all be dead now. We learned all of this and more in our emergency situation training. The guy taking the course said if you didn't remember everything, it was fine, because if you do get into an emergency situation out in space, the adrenaline will kick in, and it will all come flooding back. Absolute bollocks. I haven't remembered a fucking thing, and it seems like no one else has either.

  20

  Once I get back up to the bridge, I see that Kerry and Mark are both busy underneath their consoles checking the scorched wiring.

  “Kerry …?” I say. She looks around, and sits up.

  “We're pretty knackered up here, John, almost all the fuses are blown and most of the wiring is burned to a fucking crisp.”

  Mark gets out from underneath his console.

  “Navigation is the same. Burned to a fucking crisp. There is good news though.” Kerry and I look at him, hopeful.

  “We're spinning out of control and heading straight towards the Sun.” He forces a smile and then drops his head and closes his eyes. I get the feeling he's beginning to crack.

  “Robert's in a bad way in the sick bay, and it looks like the engine room is on fire. Kerry, can you keep an eye on Robert and make sure he's okay, while Mark and I tackle the fire and hopefully find Tim alive?”

  “Mark's got more first-aid training than me, and he's better at it, so I'm coming with you,” she says bluntly.

  Mark looks up slowly and nods his head in agreement.

  Before we get to the engine room, Kerry goes in to her quarters. She comes out with a wet towel, and ties it around her head. I do the same with the towel I already have and we head back to the hatch.

  “Kerry, do you know where the extinguishers are in the engine room?” My voice is now muffled by the towel.

  “I think there are three of the fuckers along the same wall as the hatch, so we climb down, grab them and hope it's not a raging inferno. If that's the case, we close the hatch and open the airlock and let the vacuum of space deal with it.”

  “Could we not do that now?” I ask.

  “Really, John? This was your idea, you remember?! Tim! Tim may still be alive; he's got no chance if we blow him into space.”

  “Oh shit, yeah, sorry. I'm scared and think my brain has stopped functioning.”

  She nods her head.

  “Me too. Fucking scared. This time though, there's no pussying out of it, you're going down first.”

  I make sure the wet towel is tight around my head and then slowly start the smoky descent. I look over my shoulder as we climb down past the rec deck. I can't see all the way to the far end because of the smoke, but I can just about see that all the tables are on their sides, and pool balls are scattered across the deck. We pass through the deck and into the thick smoke of the engine room.

  I jump down the last three rungs and quickly grab an extinguisher. Kerry grabs one too and we both turn around to see the damage. Flames are violently spurting out of the open vents on the engine shaft like flame throwers. The fire is burning its way to the fuel tanks, and once it gets there that'll be the end of that.

  “John, when I shut off the engines before the crash, the fuel tanks were automatically cut off. I'm guessing that due to the shit upkeep of the engine shaft, the fuel didn't drain out as it's supposed to. This ship was always a fucking disaster waiting to happen,” she shouts through the damp towel. I nod and pull the pin out of the extinguisher and aim at it the closest eruption of flame to me. The foam shoots out. Kerry moves forward and does the same.

  Every time it looks like I'm getting the best of the patch of fire I'm working on, it comes back seemingly even worse. We’re running out of time. The fire is making its way closer and closer to the fuel tanks. It's simply too powerful for the extinguishers to deal with, and we're both nearly out of foam. The only option left is to space it. I look at Kerry and point to the hatch; she nods, drops her extinguisher, heads to the ladder and starts up it. I run over and grab one of the rungs, start to climb up behind her, and then stop. Kerry is now in the rec deck, I can see her head through the hatch and she's beckoning me up. I shake my head and drop back to the deck and run for the inspection tubes, realising once again that I've forgotten about Tim. I hear her shout “No, John!” as I run across the engine room. I get to the ladder for the gangway and start to climb it. Fucking hell, it's hot; I can barely hold on. Once up, I climb the steps to the top inspection tube, turn around quickly and look across the engine room. Flames are everywhere now, closing in rapidly on me and the fuel tanks. I really haven't got any time left. I turn around and open the hatch to the top inspection tube. It opens with a hiss. I look inside. There's about two metres of tube, and then it's crushed flat. As I stare into it a horrible guilt fills me. This is my fault. If I hadn't been so stupid as to drop a spanner into an especially sensitive area, none of this would have happened. How can something so small and insignificant have caused this awful situation? Tim has been crushed doing his best to save us, and he's dead because of my mistake.

  He's the first person I've lost under my charge. The thought never even occurred to me that it was a possibility. Everything is so routine, so dull, that nothing bad could ever happen. I know now how out of my depth I am, I know that if I stay in charge, everyone will end up dead because of my idiotic decisions.

  I sit down on the gangway facing the tube’s hatch and realise I don't want any more of this. I can feel the intense heat of the fire on my back and want nothing more than for it to take me. I close my eyes momentarily. A hard slap to the side of my face snaps me out of it. Kerry pulls me to my feet and pushes me down the gangway stairs. She has a surprising amount of strength in that tiny frame of hers. I stumble but keep my balance. She then jumps over the safety rail and lands on her feet on the deck. I do the same, but land somewhat less gracefully and she pulls me towards the ladder to the rec deck. At the ladder, she turns and shouts.

  “What the fuck are you doing? We've got almost no time until the fuel tanks blow, and you start feeling sorry for yourself?” She slaps me again, really hard this time, so hard that the towel doesn't take away the sting.

  “Now get the fuck up to the rec deck and open the engine room airlock!”

  We climb, while behind and underneath us the inferno is raging. Something explodes, and a wave of searing heat hits us. It forces us to move up the ladder faster.

  Once i
n the rec deck, flames start licking through the hatch as we slam it down behind us. I stand up and run to the panel and enter my codes, and then press the button to open the engine room airlock. We hear a loud whooshing noise below us as the air gets sucked out along with the fire. I take a look out of the rectangular viewport. I can just about see the fire shooting out of the airlock in a short spiral motion because the ship is still spinning. When there's no more oxygen left to fuel it, it fades out around twenty metres from the hull. A strangely beautiful sight.

  Kerry rips the towel off her face and stares at me with tangible hostility.

  “I am not dying out here because some jumped-up little shit gets a case of the guilts. How dare you force me to make a fucking choice like that?! You could have blown the fucking ship up if I hadn't got you.” She’s shaking with rage.

  “You could have just shut the hatch and opened the airlock,” I say quietly.

  “Fuck you. You know what? I probably would have if it were possible. But you're the only one with the fucking access codes.”

  “My God … I'm so sorry … I … I'm not cut out for this. Every decision I have made has been wrong. Everything I've done so far has fucked us up even more. I don't know what to do anymore … I … I …” I lean against the wall and slide down, and put my hands over my face. Everything from the last twelve hours to the situation with Ez decides to try and escape from me, but I just about manage to hold it together. Kerry sits down next to me, and puts her arm around my shoulders. She waits until I've calmed down, then she whispers into my ear.

  “We're still not out of the woods yet, John. You still need to take charge.”

  I wipe my face with the now black towel.

  “You'd do a better job. At least everyone respects you.”

  “That may be true, but I fly the ship. You, and only you, are going to lead us out of this, whether you like it or not.”

  I liked it not.

  “Did you know I'm not supposed to be here? That I quit at the beginning of our last three-month break?” I say.

  “No, I didn't,” she replies.

  “I did. And that makes being here now a massive kick in the balls. I wasn't coming back, that was it. But here I am.”

  She looks at me quizzically.

  “Then why the fuck are you here?” she asks.

  I wait for a few seconds before I reply, not really knowing how to explain it. Finally, I cop out.

  “I'm not really ready to talk about that yet. Maybe when we're out of this mess. Maybe.”

  I stand up awkwardly and walk towards the cargo bay. The air scrubbers are finally doing their job now that the engine room is sealed off, and I can see clearly. It's a mess. The emergency lighting is still on, so everything has a red hue. I look out of the small round window of the hangar deck airlock, and can see that the hangar is back in place. Unfortunately, Mark was very right, and while it's technically in its housing, the impact has bent the housing downward, there's a gap of about five or six metres between doors, and no seal. Fuck. I'm going to have to get everyone together to come up with some ideas to get around this. With the ship spinning out of control and heading directly for the Sun, the desperate need to get on board the hanger deck to find out what has happened to the other half of the crew, and the question of who sabotaged us, we really need to try and work together and put our differences behind us.

  I head back into the rec deck and Kerry is still sitting next to the hatch, just rubbing her face and looking a little beaten. I check the engine room control panel, and see that all the air and fire have now been completely sucked into space. I close the airlock and start the re-pressurisation procedure. I walk over to Kerry.

  “What's the plan then, John?” she asks.

  “To bash our collective broken heads together and get out of this alive. Even though a few minutes ago, that's not exactly what I wanted.”

  She looks at me and rolls her eyes.

  “Let's head to the sick bay then,” she says, grabbing my hand and pulling herself up.

  Mark has Robert sitting on a chair. He's awake and seems in good spirits until he sees me. I hold my hands up in front of me and apologise again. Kerry nods at him and he seems to relax. Fuck knows what that’s all about. Whether he’s in a piss with her or not, she still has some power over him. And that’s to my advantage at the moment.

  “You two are a mess,” he says. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Heroically putting out raging fuckin' infernos in the engine room. Nothing too exciting,” Kerry replies. Mark stares at us for a few seconds.

  “Tim?” he asks.

  I look down and shake my head.

  “No.”

  I can feel the guilt flowing from everyone. They all suspected him of sabotage, and he then died saving our lives. I feel the guilt too, but not quite for the same reason.

  21

  I walk in circles around the small sick bay. I'm thinking that somehow, it's up to me to bring everyone together with a rousing and uplifting speech, something that makes us want to get off our arses and sort out this horrible situation we've found ourselves in. But I can't think of anything rousing or uplifting. I decide to just open my mouth and see what comes out.

  “Today has started pretty fucking badly, and has got progressively worse as it has worn on, to the point that we are now spinning towards the Sun without any way of stopping ourselves. After the collision and the fire, I seriously doubt the engines will be an easy fix, and the navigation systems on the bridge are all fried.”

  I’ve failed to be rousing or uplifting on every level.

  “And the communications,” Mark adds, lowering his head.

  “And the communications … fuck. Has anyone got any ideas?” I ask.

  Dead silence.

  “We need to get into the hangar deck, and the only way to do that at the moment is a spacewalk to its forward airlock. And I'll be fucked if I'm going out there while we're spinning the way we are, and so close to the Sun,” I say.

  Robert looks up, and I can almost see a light bulb go ping above his head.

  “The hangar … it's got thrusters that are on a separate system to the main engines. That's how to stop us spinning,” he says.

  “It's a good idea, but that means someone still has to do a spacewalk. It would be suicide. The way the ship is moving, it'd be too easy to be knocked off into space. And on top of that, anyone going outside would be burned to a crisp in seconds,” I say.

  “Actually, John, that's not entirely true.” Kerry says.

  I look at her, confused. She smiles at me, then continues.

  “It's freezing out there. There's nothing to conduct the heat. Just vacuum. All you have to worry about is the radiation, and the suits are built to deal with that. To a degree, anyway.”

  “Then why the fuck is this ship completely covered in heat shields then?” I ask, looking around, hoping someone is with me.

  Robert smiles.

  “It's in case we get hit by a solar flare, or caught in the Sun’s corona. To be honest though, if that happened, all the heat shields in the universe couldn't save us. You really didn't know that? Really?” he says.

  Once again, with my complete lack of knowledge, I've successfully made myself look like an idiot.

  “I really didn't. Fuck.”

  I'm now expecting Robert to tear me to pieces, but to my complete surprise, he doesn't. Instead he stands up and limps out of the room holding his left side. When he gets to the door he turns.

  “I'm gonna see what you've done to my engine room, before you make up your mind if this suicide mission's an option or not.”

  With that he's gone. Mark then smiles a scary wide-eyed smile.

  “Are we going to draw straws for the privilege of killing ourselves then? I'll tell you this now, I'm not doing it. There's no way. I'm not convinced that any one of you isn't the saboteur, and I won't risk my life to find that out. We've eliminated one person; his death trying to save us all makes him a
hero in my book. Only three more to go …”

  Kerry gives Mark an angry look, which usually would stop him in his tracks. But this time he doesn't seem to want to stop.

  “Not this time Kerry, I don't even trust that you're not the one who's done this to us. Everyone likes you, and you know how everything works. You are in a perfect position to sabotage the ship. Hell, you even knew what was wrong with the engines.” He stops, eyes wide, and points at her.

  “You’re the fucking saboteur! I can't believe I didn't see it before, and you've been using sex to keep me on your side all this time … I can't believe that I slept with you and didn't realise! My God, the thought makes me feel sick, as soon as this is over I'm going to …” She punches him full force in the face and he goes down hard on the deck. She looks at me, her face is a shade of red that clashes with her pink hair.

  “It looks like it's just us going outside for a little suicidal spacewalk then, doesn't it?” she says, with her face a little too close to mine. I'm not in a position to argue, she's been close to the brink because of me already. One word and I'd imagine she'd kill everyone in sight.

  We head back down to the engine room and leave Mark on the sick bay deck plates, unconscious. The place is a blackened mess. Smoke is lazily rising from the uneven-looking engine shaft. Robert is standing there, staring at the sheer amount of damage and laughing to himself. He holds his ribs, then laughs some more. He sees us and gains a little composure.

  “There is nothing I can do. Everything is seized up and warped from the heat of the fire; all the dials, wiring, computers and monitors have melted. Sorry guys. It's properly wankered. It would take months in space dock to fix and they'd probably have to replace the whole engine room. I'm really sorry, but there's only one option left.”

  “Figured as much,” Kerry says. “John, I think we better suit up then.”