PART ONE

Lurking

November–December 3133

1

Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47

Oilfields Coast, Northwind

Prefecture III, The Republic of the Sphere

November 3133; dry season

Ian Murchison, resident medic on Balfour-Douglas’s Station #47, leaned on the rail of the oil rig’s observation deck, watching the night sky and taking his ease after a long day. Here on Kearney’s Oilfields Coast, the low latitude made for warm weather despite the season. The continental landmass was a dark bulk away over the water to the east, and the memory of sunset lingered in a purple glow along the seaward horizon.

There was no moon tonight to overpower the rest of the night sky. Murchison had seen a meteor shower the night before, out of the usual time for such—maybe, he’d speculated, bits of the tail of some minor and uncharted comet, making its long elliptical journey around Northwind system’s central star, only brushing atmosphere once out of centuries. Tonight, however, he saw nothing but the regular twinkling stars, their light refracted by the humid ocean air.

Today had been a long day, but a dull one. Murchison hadn’t minded; in his opinion, a little dullness now and then was a good thing. Out on an oil rig, days that weren’t dull tended to involve nasty industrial accidents or sudden illnesses, and Balfour-Douglas #47 was a long way from a good hospital, on a long empty stretch of coastline. Even a VTOL craft summoned to evacuate someone seriously ill or injured had to come from more than three hours away—which meant that in most emergencies, Murchison’s patient was either dead or stable long before transport arrived. Balfour-Douglas #47 hadn’t had one of those emergencies since Barry O’Mara’s appendix went bad on him in the middle of a force 10 storm, and Murchison was in no hurry to experience another one soon.

He pushed away from the rail. He’d dawdled out here enjoying the night air long enough. It was time to go back to his office cubby, write up the log of the day’s cuts and scrapes and bruises, lock up all the drawers and cabinets, and go to bed. If any pain or discomfort decided to manifest itself later, someone would wake him.

A faint sound—the clink of metal against metal—broke the night. Murchison knew all the regular sounds of the oil rig, so that his mind erased them without thinking all day and night and let him read their steady underbeat as silence, but this sound had not been one of the regular noises. He paused, listening, but heard no repetition of the metallic clink.

He shrugged. Maybe somebody on another of the platform’s several decks had dropped something; sounds carried out here on the water, and the clinking noise could have come from anywhere on the rig. Or maybe the sound had been the metallic structure of the platform itself flexing and creaking, which meant that in a day or two something on the rig would break, probably without warning, and Murchison would have to patch up whoever was in the way when it went.

Whatever, he thought. There was nothing he could do about any of it tonight. He continued on his way inside.

Murchison’s office was a small windowless room on the platform’s upper admin level, with a one-cot examining room/sick bay immediately adjacent. Both rooms were empty as usual. The office didn’t hold much—a desk, computer, and datalink setup; what Murchison didn’t know how to treat already, he could look up or discuss with experts at need. He kept a small tri-vid box up on one metal shelf; he turned it to a satellite news channel and settled down to work. He listened with half an ear to the sports news—late rugby scores, mostly—as he pulled up the log page for the day on his computer screen.

The tri-vid news show cycled back to the start of the hour and the big events of the day. The main news story dealt with signs of local economic recovery after the Steel Wolves’ incursion during the early summer; the show had brought in an expert from the University of New Lanark to quote statistics.

The tri-vid news moved on to the global weather, with a story about how early snowfalls in the Rockspires presaged a hard winter, then cut to the regional weather feeds for local details. In the case of Balfour-Douglas #47, the forecast called for a high tomorrow in the southern Oilfields Coast region of 36 degrees centigrade, and an overnight low of 22.

In the entertainment news, local Northwind networks were planning new dramas to replace off-world programming lost in the collapse of the HPG communications network: “And now an interview with producer Brett—”

The lights went out and the computer screen went blank. The office and sick bay were silent. Even the humming and ticking of the electronic equipment had suddenly ceased.

Something’s happened to the power, Murchison thought.

He heard noises now: the sound of heavy feet pounding on the steel plate decks of the platform. The alarm down on Deck C began to sound—a strident, metallic pulse beat. Once it started, it could go on for hours, powered by its own stored energy, until somebody hit the manual disconnect.

Murchison kept a flashlight in his right-hand desk drawer—it had a red lens, so as not to destroy his night vision if he ever needed to use it in an emergency. He also kept a jump bag with basic medical supplies on the floor under the coatrack, to the right of the door. He checked the luminous dial of his watch. He’d wait five minutes to see if the power came back on its own, or if anyone showed up at his office with word of what was happening. Then he’d go look for himself.

He heard noises again. A high-pitched whining sound, repeated several times; the rattle of metallic impact, a long series interrupted by duller, softer bits; shouts—words, but undistinguishable—and at the end a scream.

Murchison knew that sound. Someone was in pain.

He took the flashlight out of the desk drawer, grabbed his jump bag, and headed out.

On this level, at least, no one was moving. The manager’s office would be empty at this time of night anyhow—the conference room was never used except for official visitors—the security office’s door was halfway open, but no one was inside. The banks of monitor screens that should have covered all the vital spaces and machinery on Balfour-Douglas #47 were off and blank.

Murchison went on downstairs to the next level, his footsteps echoing off the metal treads. He kept alert for more noises as he went, and was no longer surprised to hear, somewhere below, the sound of a slug-pistol firing a series of single shots with spaces between. He realized that he was counting, matching the number of shots against the tally of the oil rig’s crew. His subconscious, at least, had already decided that something very bad was happening.