The Iceman's Lament
Pressure Drop

He blundered, this time. The Lights would not come out for him. He sat there waiting for almost a half hour before realizing something: his helmet cam was on. He hadn’t meant to turn it on but nonetheless the little little diode had been blinking. He turned it off and, almost immediately the Lights appeared. He had the sense they were pissed off at him. The warm benevolence was lacking. They swirled briskly around him and did not speak.

Well shit, he thought. Note to self. They don’t like cameras.

“I know how you feel,’ he muttered. And then his air alarm bleated. Time to go.

But, as he turned, they swooped, forming into a knife-edge that made him drop to his knees in terror. They passed through him with an incredible coldness. He could feel the rush of their passage in his very bones. Euphoria like an accelerator, pressed to the floor.

He felt cleansed again.

“Thanks,” he called out.

“Lieutenant Kelly, we wish you well.”

“I’ll see ya next time fellas,” he called.

The elation lasted right through to the end of the run, careening down onto the plain with the rig almost airborne so fast was he pushing her to make up the lost time, singing at the top of his lungs. At the Pole he slid into his allocated slot, ready to load up in the morning, and joined his colleagues at the makeshift bar.

Meng, glowering at him. She tilted her head towards the cabins.

His loins hardened like quick-drying cement. She could do that to him, Meng, with just a look. He grinned and picked up his gear. He would innocently stash it in his cabin and, when the moment was right, she’d slip away and join him there.

He had a momentary vision of Flanagan fucking her with all the finesse of a farm tractor. Doubtful the Quartermaster had much of an appreciation for the finer details of lovemaking. And he allowed himself a little grin of satisfaction. All the money Flanagan took from him and everyone else, all of the tawdry little extortion and vice rackets he ran. It felt good to cuckold him.

You won’t be laughing if he replaces out, he reminded himself. Carefully, he glanced her way. Again the tilt of her head. He swallowed. OK, he thought. We’re in a hurry tonight. He marched off to the cabins. His very bollocks ached for her. A few minutes later, she slipped silently in.

“Jesus,” he gasped as she slapped him hard across the face.

“Big mouth…” she began.

“What the hell?”

“….big mouth you can’t keep shut. You’re going to get us both killed!”

“Meng…”

“I tell you what I’m going to say, Tom Kelly. I’m going to say you’ve been harassing me for months, that you try to touch me inappropriately, that you follow me and stalk me and won’t leave me alone….”

He sat heavily on the bunk.

“…and I’m going to say you have a habit of getting drunk up here at the Pole and then try to force your way into my cabin. And the only reason I haven’t told anyone, especially Flanagan, is that I’m scared. I’m scared of you…”

And she fell upon him with a rain of sharp blows that had him cowering in the corner of the bunk, hands over his head, trying to ward her off. She hit him again and again. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He had never seen her even raising her voice to anyone. Now her fury knew no bounds.

Eventually he managed to grab her wrists.

“Stop, stop now…”

“Big mouth,” she kept saying. “Big flapping mouth…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never said a word to anyone about us. Why would I? Why would would I wanna end up like a…like some…shriveled up husk?”

It took a long time before she flopped onto the bunk next to him, exhausted, her shoulders heaving with exertion and emotion.

’Look at me,” he said, taking her hands. “I have never spoken to anyone, anyone, about us.” But as he said the words he thought of Annie. She had known about Meng. He hadn’t told her but she’d known. Who else knew? An uneasy feeling was stirring in the bottom of his gut. He thought of all the slow, painful ways that Flanagan could kill him and make it seem like an accident.

“That woman,” Meng began, “The news-woman…”

“Lucy Lin?”

“No…the other one. The shrew…”

“Gail?” he realized. The researcher. Understanding began to dawn. They’d found another pressure point, another means of leverage over him.

“She came up to me in the cafeteria, asked if she could sit, and said she had some questions about the Ice.”

Tom buried his face in his hands.

“So we chit-chat about the fucking ice, and then all of a sudden she says, out of nowhere, ‘so, how long have you been sleeping with Tom Kelly?’”

“And you told her….?”

“What do you think I told her?” Meng shouted, angry again. “I told her to take her scrawny, mousy little ass elsewhere.”

He groaned. “Who was with her?”

“That big lunk, her goon…”

“Jared.”

“He got mad at her. Took her right out of there.”

Tom wondered what that was about. Perhaps Jared didn’t approve of the tactics. He sat on his hands and looked at Meng. She pushed her long hair back out of her face, lit up one of her long cigarettes.

“What do we do?” she asked, blowing out a long stream of smoke.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, taking her hand.

She slapped it away. She stood, turned for the door.

“Well,” she said, glaring at him. “I’ve got my story ready. What about yours?”

In the deep torment of a nightmare Tom found himself hanging hogtied between two henchmen rushing him swiftly along an outer passageway towards an airlock. He twisted, he writhed, he tried to work free but it was too late for that: they’d trussed him up like a prize pig and were taking him to market.

Dmitry and Igor: Flanagan’s henchmen. They were going to shove him out of the airlock. It was a traditional death; he thought idly, a warrior’s death. Blood streamed from his smashed nose in a thin red line beneath him. Follow the breadcrumbs, he mumbled, follow the trail home.

Dmitry and two other henchmen had caught him in a corridor and pulled him into a little-used loading dock. He’d gone slack, as he had been taught to do many years before, but he’d gauged his counter attack badly.

“Nah, nah,’ said Dmitry as he pinned Tom’s arms behind him. Igor picked himself off the floor and tried to mop at the flow of blood erupting from his nose. Enraged, he came at Tom again.

Tom let the Dmitry take his whole weight as he jack-knifed his legs upwards, slamming them back down on the man’s shins, but the henchman deflected him, expertly, and kept his arms pinned back like a vice. Igor smashed a meaty fist into Tom’s face, shattering his nose yet again. More blows, to his ribs, his liver, his bollocks.

“Nah nah,” said Dmitry again as Tom crumpled, and tried to wrest free. He said something in his native tongue to Igor and the blows ceased.

“So now we understand, yes?’” said Dmitry in not-unkindly tones, as he allowed Tom to escape his grip. Tom collapsed, gasping. “Ve do not take that which is not ours to take, ve do not engage in pulling of wool over eyes of cuckold boss, ve do not bite the hand that feeds us.”

They forced his jaws apart. They spilled grain alcohol down his ruptured gullet. His head swam crazily.

They dragged him to an airlock. The steel door slid upwards.

“To cool you down!” they laughed. The door slid back down, sealing him in the airlock. The outer door began to open.

He awoke screaming, drenched in sweat.

There was no more sleep after that. He went down to the rig early, before anyone else was even out there, slotted himself into the exosuit and began to carve up the ice. The dream had shaken him: it was all too vivid. He thought of the regolith beneath his bare feet, how his blood would boil within a minute, eyeballs bulging out on their stalks like a fish pulled too quickly from the deep. An accident. He’d fallen out of an airlock. Drunk, as usual.

Loaded, he stowed the exosuit and slipped back inside, bolted a quick breakfast, refilled his urn of coffee. He was heading back to the rig when the Pole Captain intercepted him.

“Call for you, Lieutenant…”

“Don’t call me that!” Tom snapped. “Not a Lieutenant anymore, am I?”

The Captain stared at him.

“Jesus, Tom…”

Tom scrubbed at his scalp.

“Sorry.” He muttered. “Sorry. A call, for me? Don’t tell me, Lucy-fuckin’ Lin?”

“No,” the Captain took his arm and steered him towards the comms shack. “Flanagan.”

It was unnerving, seeing the Quartermaster so soon after his nightmare dream. On the screen Flanagan and Ronal Desai were crowded together, scowling out at him.

“Gentlemen,” Tom said evenly.

And their news was not good. Ronak pinged him an email to read.

“FleetCom….co-operation required,” Tom read. “Aw c’mon…”

“You will take Ms. Lin to the Pole on your next run, Lieutenant. That’s an order. No little slippery tricks, full co-operation, understood?” Flanagan was chomping on an expensive-looking cigar. Tom had little doubt who had provided it.

“These things are important to our mission here, Tom,” Ronak said reasonably. “We need good press. We need people back on Earth and, more importantly, our investors to get a good feeling for what we’re doing up here.”

“Bring her to the Pole, Kelly,” Flanagan followed up. “”Give her what she wants.”

“Or what?” Tom regretted the words as soon as he had uttered them.

“Or there is a navy ship leaving here in two days, Lieutenant. And an extra berth with your name on it. Understood?”

And Tom was left with little choice.

It turned out that berth would be filled anyway. Just not by him.