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Lokro’s repairs are holding and the power is back to fifty minutes out of
every hour. At that rate we have just over three days or so, but that is pure
guesswork – nobody has come to tell us anything.
                  I shower with the others. The water at best
lukewarm and doesn’t take the constant chill from the flesh; it only seems to
compound it deeper. After we eat, I retreat back to my bunk, curling up tightly
to try and generate heat. Helst found us each an extra blanket from those who
no longer needed them, but it doesn’t help much: my teeth chatter and my body
shivers and rattles.   The cold is
something that eats you slowly, worming deeper inside, and once it has a hold it’s
like your guts and heart turn to ice blocks, and I hate it. I would give
anything to be home, away from this forsaken place. Where else is there now? It’s
hard to comprehend that beyond this structure nothing remains. There has to be
something, surely? I curl up tighter, wondering and dreaming, wanting so much
for it to be over, but I know nothing will come. And even if it did, where upon
a burned out cinder can a man live? I think we have to do something, but I have
no idea what. Time is the wire that stiches together all fragments of memory,
but the past means nothing when there is no future to look forward to. It just
becomes a loose and empty thread unravelling in the mind and the soul, and all
that is slowly comes undone as surely as if death itself has unpicked the
stiches – all loosened and slipping through the fingers into the black. I turn over,
hoping to wake somewhere far away from here, but know it’s not going to happen.
My head hurts, and inside I die one piece at a time.

 
                                                                            *

 
                  There is no doubt about it now, that Erana’s
death was no accident. Someone sliced her throat wide open while she slept, and
everyone is in fear. It seems the only question is what death it will be:
murder, starvation or to be torn apart from the blighted, blackened creatures
of the waves below. Helst keeps looking at me strangely and it sends a quiver
of fear through me every time. Jem is still not off the hook and everyone is
watching him. I still don’t think he has murder in his heart; he always seems
too big and loud to be the kind who creeps and slivers through the dark, killing
unseen or unheard.
                And now
everyone stays armed: guns become sleeping partners and constant companions;
with so many safeties off, it’s bound to lead to war, you can sense it. Our
little group is the one they all despise, and as we sit and eat the thin gruel
of our former crew mates, Helst stares at me darkly and it stirs an eerie
twisting to my guts. Skea remains impassive, Cora concerned, and Jem… Jem is,
as always, loud and full of shit, but kind of good to know just in case. Or
not, who knows?
                  “We have to hit them first,” he grunts in a
low voice as he spoons his food into his trench-like throat.
                 “What’s the point? The power will go
in days and we won’t be able to hold off the abominations for long,” Skea
relies. There is no need to whisper now but everyone does anyway. We are
abandoned by the others, avoided like some ancient curse.
                 “If we finish the rest of them, we
can cut down the fuel usage further, eke the food out longer,” he says. It won’t
save Helst, I think to myself; he is still refusing to join us in our
cannibalistic ways. Is it just principle, I ask myself again, or does he have a
hidden larder somewhere on the station? But that is irrelevant to me at the
moment. I can sense him becoming ever-more dangerous to me with his suspicious,
piercing stares. I wonder if he is planning something dreadful, or merely
biding