Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

wall crammed with security camera screens and protruding wires, below which sat a large console. Rows of recordable laser disc drives topped with blinking red lights, one for each on-board camera, flanked a central control unit.

Ptarmigan wasted no time tapping into the operating programme and resetting the record parameters as planned. He also inserted a data stick into the main drive and uploaded two new programmes. One of them had been agreed with Finback. He smiled. The other… that was a little something that he’d cooked up himself.

He checked his watch. He had four minutes, five max, before he could expect the belated guard change. A bleep sounded from the console as it accepted his alterations. Next he searched out the cameras that had tracked his movements already that evening. One by one, fingers working furiously, he searched back to the relevant sections and deleted his Oscar-winning performances. Using the first of the uploaded software programmes, he then stitched the footage back together as best he could. Finished, he reset the screen the way it had been left and made his way to the door.

It was a rush job. The crudeness of it was already busting his balls. But he consoled himself with the knowledge that it would serve. By the time any eagle-eyed jobsworth had picked up on the rough edges, the whole vessel would be on the bottom of the ocean anyhow. With this thought, he cracked open the door and exited.

Retracing his steps around the side of the deckhouse, he could hear the sound of low conversation as the two replacement guards approached the room from the other direction. Moving as fast as he could, he now made his way along the deck, past the funnel to another restricted entrance.

He listened for company.

Nothing.

He punched in the code and slipped inside.

The ship’s engine room was arranged around three inter-dependent platforms. Ptarmigan entered onto the upper platform. Though he knew the layout by heart, he was still taken aback by the sheer scale of the room. It was cavernous. To his right, stretching off into the distance, were a row of workshops and spare-part repositories stacked with tools, workbenches and crates filled with metal components. Beyond this sat the enormous electrical main motherboard and control panel. To his left he scanned his eyes across the central exhaust manifold, the oil settling, service and storage tanks, and the mind-boggling array of pipes that formed the hydrophore pump system for supplying the ship’s water. In the far corner sat the sewage plant, next to which were the incinerator and a spare propeller and tail shaft, poised like monumental works of modern art sculpture.

The first cluster of security cameras was mounted high up, besides the ceiling crane terminus. Even though nearly all of them seemed to be pointing directly at him, Ptarmigan was confident that he was out of shot. His security programme updates had turned his entire route into a temporary blind spot. To avoid suspicion he had needed to keep the camera coverage as comprehensive as possible, meaning that, as blind spots went, it was pretty narrow. More of a periphery spot. Not a toe could stray from the carefully planned route. There was also a rigid schedule to stick to, with the cameras programmed to resume full coverage behind him.

Having oriented himself, he followed around the hot well and expansion tanks, careful to stick as close to the railings as possible, and descended the next staircase. Before setting foot from the bottom step he waited, watching as the seconds ticked away on his wrist. Then, precisely on schedule, he stepped onto the walkway.

The central platform was as crowded with machinery as the upper and just as silent at this hour. The main generators loomed large at the far end. In the gloom, Ptarmigan could also pick out the auxiliary alternators, the oil heater and purifier system, and the row of large, vertical canisters that comprised the main, auxiliary and emergency air bottles. It was all exactly as it had been on the plans. Growing in confidence, he slipped between the dehumidifier system and the fresh water generator, kept towards the edge of the room and descended the next staircase.

On the lower platform, he checked his watch once more. He took a deep breath. His hands were clammy and shaking. Sweat lined his brow in the humidity. But so far, so good. And he was on schedule.

In the centre of the platform was the main engine, a mass of pipes, cylinders and cables, surrounded by a moat-like cofferdam. The rest of the far end of the platform was taken up with the seawater, oil, lube, bilge and sludge pumps. To his left, the entire aft area was beset with rows of tanks.

“Bin-fucking-go!” he whispered to himself, already searching out the bunker fuel tanks. The three large metal containers were painted green and their sides were adorned with international warning symbols above lists of white-painted bunkering instructions translated into numerous languages.

Ptarmigan dropped the rucksack from his shoulders and unzipped it. To an outsider, the charges would have looked like everyday bathroom items: two toothpaste tubes, two shaving foam cans and two deodorant bottles. Of course, they were just casings. The six canisters no longer contained toothpaste, shaving foam or deodorant spray, but enough concentrated explosive to blast through the lining of the tanks, ignite the considerable quantities of diesel within them, create an atomic particle explosion and blow the Albanov clean in half. Ptarmigan’s heart raced at the thought of the raw, concentrated power in his hands.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho…

The explosives drop had been at the exact coordinates supplied by Finback, and he had retrieved it no problem only the day after the inductions. God knows how the guy had got it there in the first place. The going rate for somebody to fly to Franz Josef Land just to make a drop-off must have been astronomical. But still, there it had been. And now