The Sylvester Part 2
On a space cruise ship plagued by bad decisions and misfortune. Lost and drifting, with no hope to survive... maybe.
Note from the author:
If you haven’t yet, head to the following page to read the first instalment of the Sylvester series:
And now, here we are, still lost in space:
We arrived a few floors under the control room. Bo was heading towards a corridor, and I stopped him.
‘The guests, Bo. Where are they?’
He lowered his head.
‘They are in their cabins. Can you wait for me here? I’ll be back shortly.’ He left me in the landing. I let myself fall on a chair. I cursed under my breath; I should have expected to find the Silvester in the middle of a crisis. I had insisted to go alone in some silly effort to make a name for myself within the company. I was now trapped like everyone else.
Bo came back, pushing a cart with a big basket full of linen. He pointed to the stairs and hoisted the basket with a grunt. I looked at him and it hit me. ‘Is… Is that… the laundry?’ He nodded and started going down the stairs, holding the basket against his hip with one hand. I shook my head and followed him. We slowly made it back to the hold. I opened the fireproof door to the laundry room and held it for Bo, who was nearly out of breath. A fireproof door. Protecting us from a fire we didn’t have and desperately needed.
Bo had already hurled the content of his basket on top of the nearest dirty pile. He wiped his forehead and went to sit at his ironing board table, panting. He glanced at me. ‘I could use some of that drink from earlier, if you have more.’ I sat down with him and fished another bottle from the bag. We downed it, one sip each. ‘Do the guests know?’, I asked. Bo shook his head. ‘We told them to stay in their cabins. Because of an emergency.’ He looked down, his hands rubbing his knees. Then he sighed. ‘Sometimes we act like officers to keep them calm. Make announcements, dress up, and so on…’ He looked at me with eyes wide open, studying my face. Pretending to be an officer was a serious violation.
I nodded for him to go on. ‘They are getting uneasy, though. I don’t know if we can go on until…’ he fell silent. I knew what he meant. Until the end. ‘Is this why you’re still making the rounds for laundry?’ I asked. He gestured around, cursing the company’s guidelines and sanctions. Of course. If the Sylvester was rescued and the guests complained of negligence, the staff could face serious repercussions. Sitting there, surrounded by mountains of dirty linen, it seemed absurd to even entertain the thought.
‘You kept this whole thing going, you and the rest of the crew…’
‘We have to. If I could, I’d burn all this stuff to Saturn and back. Dunno how much longer we can do it. The last backup engine is still working, but barely. And with no emergency fuel, it will shut down soon. We have light and heating and a bit of running water. Not much longer, though.’
Bo stood up and started turning the handle of a small manual shredder next to us. He was shredding sheets. To my quizzical look, he simply said: ‘filling, for my bed. These are almost clean.’ I sat there, listening to the rhythmic noise of the handle and to his grunts of ‘smelly stuff’, ‘burn it all’.
‘Why the radio silence?’ I asked. ‘Why not send an SOS? The radio is powered by the emergency engine, right?’ He sighed again, pausing his grinding to rub his neck.
‘I only know what the attendants on the control deck told me. They told me that the officers tried. But bloody Lucretia stopped the signals.’ He snickered joylessly. ‘Lucky, huh?’ Right. Lucretia. The biggest magnetic storm in the past ten years. The Balthasar’s departure had been delayed by three days because of it. ‘I thought all ships already en route had been redirected.’ Bo shook his head and raised his hands. ‘That’s what I mean, just our luck. With the engines shutting, not a chance to shift course enough. When we tried signalling, we were already in the middle of that bitch. And then… they tried to reignite the engine. With only half a tank. Took down all systems for a day.’
He shivered at the memory. ‘The technicians worked round the clock. They only managed to activate the small backup engine. The radio was shot. Wouldn’t work no matter how they tried. Then they shot all the flares we had. But nothing. We were the only ship for lightyears thanks to bloody Lucretia. And then, the officers stole all the bourbon and locked themselves in the control room. There you have it. Stupidest shipwreck of the fucking century.’
I sank into my seat of pillows, shaking my head. The Sylvester’s journey had been a deadly cocktail of bad luck and poor decisions. I thought of the Balthasar. The only ship due to sail in an area even remotely close to the Sylvester, the only hope that could reach us in time.
Would they attempt a rescue without any communication? I shook my head again. It would take the officers days to come to that kind of conclusion. Days to accept that my delay was serious enough to warrant a change of itinerary for our precious guests. By then, the backup generator will have succumbed to the pressure of having to heat an entire ship; the unforgiving cold of outer space will have turned us all into ice statues. A grim, dark winter garden populated by frozen people.
No, nobody would come unless called. And the bloody radio was shot. No hope then.
‘Bo,’ I called. He raised his head from the shredder. ‘If we’re screwed, why put on an act for the guests? The officers are dead, so why?’ He shrugged and went on shredding. ‘I don’t know. At first, we didn’t want any trouble with the company. In case we were rescued, you know. Didn’t want the guests complaining about staff abandoning their tasks, and so on.’ He looked at me. ‘By now, most of us have given up. That’s why I’m the only one you met so far. There aren’t many left still working. Me, it keeps me busy. I don’t really fancy waiting for death in my cabin doing nothing. Or…’ his voice faded to nothing. ‘Or taking the plunge from the main deck. Might as well do laundry rounds.’
I nodded again. I also wanted to keep busy. Keep myself from thinking. I looked around and my eyes fell on the emergency kit bag I had gotten from Henry. I decided to inspect it, just in case. Worst case scenario, it would take my mind off the impending doom. I opened it and placed it on the makeshift table. It was a hard-shell briefcase with several compartments for different tools.
The food and drink rations that I had already used with Bo. Several mechanics tools. A small, low-range radio transmitter. My brand-new officer badge. I had only been appointed two weeks earlier, during the last ceremony. It was customary for the company to retire one officer and appoint one new one per ship during the first journey of the year. I had been chosen to be the new officer for the Balthasar. I had a soft snicker at the irony. Then, it dawned on me.
‘Bo?’ I called again. ‘Do you have any mechanics left on this ship?’
He nodded, unconvinced. ‘Yes, there’s still a couple who haven’t chucked themselves overboard. But they tried everything they could. Besides, the radio is in the control deck. You know, the one…’
‘The one that is only accessible with an officer badge?’ I lifted it in front of his face. Bo’s eyes went big for a second, then he shook his head. ‘Even so, the radio is broken and without a source of power. It won’t do any good.’ I was getting up and quickly putting together the emergency kit again. ‘Just get the mechanics, please. And then we’ll head to the control room.’ I shuddered for a second. ‘I promise it’s worth a try.’ I said, trying to focus my mind away from what we’d find in the control room and on the many conversations I had had with Henry about the little secrets of our ship’s systems. Perhaps we were not dead and lost in outer space yet.