The Platform by D G Jones Page B

strikes me as funny that, even as
the world burns, there will be someone standing round with a clipboard making
notes.
                 “Well, we…” Jem starts, but she cuts
him off with a slicing frown.
                  “I want the fire line prepped for firing. Now,”
she fumes.
                  “Why? Do we have inbound?” Cora asks, a sudden
hope in her eyes.
                 “No.”
                 “Then why bother?” I ask. Those brown
eyes look like they could melt through iron, such is the fury.
                  “This is a military station! You don't need
reasons, you just follow fucking orders,” she says. Flecks of her spit hit me
and there is the temptation to laugh straight in her face. Doesn’t she realise
this is the end of times? I can’t understand these people! We are fucked; they
know it as well as I do, yet they want us still following their pointless
little rules.
                  “Yes, Sergeant,” I say softly.
                 “Now! All of you.” We all jump to our
feet, like we’ve been trained to do, to head off back to the outside, but each
of us takes an age to have that last inhale of smoke, and she looks like her
head is going to come off. She glowers at us each step of the way.

 
                                                                            *

 
                 The squall tears and rips at us with
cold, burning fingers as we fight to stay upright on the gantry. The fire line
usually takes an hour or two to prep – and that’s in good conditions – but in
this gale, it will take up most of the day. The mighty gigantic coil of piping
has to be greased for firing, the ‘poonclaw lined exactly into the cannon, and precisely
down to the millimetre. I have no idea why in the worst of conditions we are
out here at all, and I swear into the slicing wind. We work in the dim green
light; I can barely see a metre into the dark as I grease the tube along its
length. Because of the webbing, no ship docks can dock on the Platform;
instead, huge lines are fired into the vessel’s docking station – Cora calls it
long-range fucking – and the shot has to be precise. Our team is considered the
best, but it’s only because we had so much practice early on the tour, though
we’ve not done it for weeks now.
                  I remember crossing over the thick line when
we arrived, creeping along the narrow, greasy piping, over an acid sea full of
hungry things ready to devour me whole. It’s not a perfect system for sure but
then you know you only have to do it twice, and the second time means heading
home, although, of course, we have not had that pleasure yet. Jem winds up the
next length and I keep on applying the grease on my side. Overhead the corner
watchtowers shake and shudder in the storm, and there is always a fear they
will one day topple down and crash into the deck. But not today, it seems; they
take the hissing, howling gale and hold steady. I’ve been up there a few times;
when the sky is clear you can see to the horizon’s edge, but not recently – not
with all that black shit in the air, the ashes, people, whatever it may be.
                  Helst is screaming something at me but it’s
pointless: I can barely see him let alone hear anything. He is waving his arms
and beckoning me to him. His grease gun is jammed, and it will take the two of us
to wrestle it free, so, fighting the wind, we struggle and slip on the metal
grating, all the time trying to hear one another over the pounding ocean and
the relentless storm. Finally I am able to leave him to it and he jerks a brief
thumbs up sign at me as I cough and spit up the black snot in my throat. I
curse Meska and go back to the coil, hardly able to see through the spray.