Kraken Orbital (16 page)

I remember
her from the Morris-Cooper Mining Company. She was one of the
guards. With her looks, her figure especially, she was something of
a symbol to us all. Men cooped up in there together and
alone
dreaming up things that can never
have happened.

Maybe she
wasn’t even that good looking by
other
standards but how were we to know? She might have been dog ugly but
better to think of her than the grey walls or our imaginations.
Those were the only other things we could look into to find
anything like some kind of stimulation.

I’m barely
conscious. I could be dreaming right now. But it doesn’t feel like
I am.
I hate to have to do anything to
convince myself if I am dreaming or awake. I can’t bring myself to
administer the “pinch” test so I slap myself hard across my frost
bitten face. My skin responds immediately to the harsh pain and I
immediately know it to be real.

But it
all
feels real enough. Right down to the
numbing cold of the snow around my feet. Right back to the piercing
pain in my battered head. I reach up a hand as I instinctively
stagger forward into the darkness and snow and rub the back of my
head.

Stabbing
pains shoot right down my face, my whole body and through my chest.
I take it away to find it stained in
copious blood. I’m lucky to be standing. It feels like I’ve
been out on the drink yet again but I know I haven’t touched the
stuff for months.

That feeling you get when you’ve had one or
two too many. That feeling that you’re invincible gives way after
just a few more pints and you find yourself lost inside of your own
skull.

Then some
kind of
auto-pilot takes over, one that
seems to be programmed to get you to safety, to home or whatever is
closest. You find yourself leaning on that homing beacon and
letting it dictate the rhythm of your feet. I feel like that right
now. I should be able to listen to that hazy and distant voice that
tells me the figure up ahead is nothing but trouble.

I should be
able to, and I probably could if I felt alright,
realize that she is probably heading up the security detail
that has come here to either escort me back or kill me. But I
can’t. The voice that should be screaming that logic right in the
front of my face is too distant, too broken and beaten by my fall.
I can’t think anything but getting to safety.

I trudge just
a little closer to the dark figure ahead. I think I’m calling to
her but my head is so battered I can’t tell if I just want to, or I
actually am. The snow is still hurtling down in volumes.
Every time I plant my step, in the time it takes
me to move a foot, it is buried by the virgin white fluffy new
snow. I can hear her. I’m sure she is real.

I manage to
fight back the urge to close my eyes. To stop fighting and drop
dead on my ass. Maybe if I let go and stop resisting, I will see my
buddy Kolt on the other side, and we can continue whatever
journey we were on. But something inside of me,
just like he had predicted, still wanted to survive.

Some strong part of me, one I though to be
long dead, still wanted to battle on and make it no matter
what.

‘Hey!’ I called to her. I screamed at the top
of my voice. It was all I could manage. The snow drowned me out and
blocked the range of my lungs. It stuffed my mouth full of
snowflakes and robbed me of my breath.

But I think she heard. The crying, the
distant sound of it anyway, stopped immediately and I can see the
black shadow shift. I can see her posture move through the veil of
snow. I should be afraid but I’m not. I know deep down she is here
to cause me trouble! But contrary to everything I though she would
do, she comes running through the snow and takes me by the
hand.

I was right about her sobbing, but her face
changes from deep despair to immediate concern as she studies me
through her teary eyes. I drop right away. I only had enough steam
inside me to make it to her. She is confident in her stride and
upright posture. It must have been all of those years in her
position as a guard at the mine. But she oozed strength and
power.

But that was
a distant cousin compared to her compassion. I could see it in her
eyes. This was the first time I ever saw her face. I knew her by
her figure and by the
color of her hair.
I knew her because I’d dreamed of her pose a million times and
struggled to bring my eyes off her hips, even after the threat of
many a beating. But I’d never seen her deep blue eyes that
reflected back everything caught in them.

I had never
seen her pale white skin, her rounded cheekbones and thin, perky
lips. I had never had that pleasure.
She
wore the same red armor that I did. But her’s was near pristine.
Over it she wore a thick padded jacket. Brown in color with hints
of fur around the collars and sleeves. It must have kept her toasty
warm and I can’t help but be instantly jealous of her and of
it.

‘
Parker?’ She
asked with a ton
e of surprise, which was
thinly masked along with excitement and genuine relief. She didn’t
wait for me to reply. She threw her arm around my shoulder and
pulled me to my feet with a cute groan of effort. I’m too weak to
even stand right now.

I walk with
her but my feet only manage a pointless scuff against the snow as
she takes most of my weight
. She is
strong and fast. I feel useless again. My ego has taken enough
shots of late and I should really be trying much harder to impress
the girl I’ve spent so long secretly lusting after. But I just
can’t manage it. I just can’t make my feet move with hers. All I
can do is protest.

‘
Put me
down!’ I growl at her. Basically spitting on her kind gesture of
help. I must have shocked her because she did. She let me fall to
the snow but steadied my weight every inch of the way down. She
must have thought she had been hurting me because she
immediately hit the ground, took me in both
hands by the shoulders, and stared into my eyes with a magnified
look of concern.

My heart flutters. Like a silly kid with a
crush. Like a stupid emotional teenager who suddenly has the full
attention of some girl he has secretly admired for his whole life.
I would probably be blushing if I hadn’t lost so much blood.

‘
What is it?’
She asks me softly with the kindest voice I think I have ever
heard. Her voice is sweet, soothing and I immediately liken it to
an angel’s.
In spite of having never
heard one.

‘I can walk there myself!’ I growl at her
again ungratefully. I can’t. I was hoping, in some stupid and
masculine way, that if I created a brief argument I would be able
to buy enough time for me to gather my senses and summon the power
I needed to walk myself. She didn’t reply. But she didn’t look hurt
either. She just smiled at me. That was the last thing I had
expected too.

‘
Why are you
helping me?’ I yell at her over the howling wind and
spiraling snow.

‘I saw you…’
She tries to shout back but has to stop mid flow to shield her
mouth from a much stronger gust of wind. ‘I saw you struggle in the
snow. I don’t know. I just want to help you.’ She finished. It
wasn’t an explanation as such. In fact it wasn’t even half of
one.

But that primal auto-pilot inside my head was
kicking off at me silently, yelling at me from behind my own mouth,
to get to safety and try to get warm. I am again in control of my
senses. Like nothing had happened. Like my dying mind has flooded
me with every bit of power it has left, knowing that if it doesn’t,
I will die.

I pull with
all my focus, pressing my hands into the deep snow and arching my
back to stand on my weakened legs. I make it to fully upright but
my oddly kind captor keeps a good hold of my hands the whole way.
She holds me almost lovingly. A thought flashes quickly,
briefly, but shockingly through my battered
mind.
What if she isn’t real
either?

The thought
hurts and makes me
immediately hostile to
her. I rip my hands away and her eyes widen with embarrassment. But
I dismiss the thought as quickly as it surfaces. It must have been
a stray though. First of all, I am certain Kolt had been real.
Ghost or not. Dead or not. I know what I saw and I know what we
did. Besides, and second, I remember this girl. Even though I don’t
know her name.

I shake my head at my own stupidity and my
own shame.

‘Let’s go.’ I
raise a tired arm to what I can see of the frozen and beaten Kraken
ship ahead. We need to get inside or our chances of survival are
slim. She, without asking or feeling worried that I’ll recoil
again, takes my arm, interlocks it with hers and we carry
on.
My legs decide to work again,
motivated by my newly sober state, but every time I tense any
muscle it hurts.

We trudge
through the thick and strength sapping snow for what feels like
forever. I can see the ship better with each staggered and
labored step. It is more beaten down than I had
though. It’s grey metallic hull is scarred with flames and cracked
open completely in some places. I can only see a small part of it.
The bulk of the ship is hidden beneath the ice that has formed up
around it. The scars about its hull are clearly laser strikes.
Maybe even some heavy duty projectile damage too.

It
’s far older than I had been
expecting and that realization makes my heart sink. Kolt can’t have
been there in the flesh. I already know that. I just don’t want to
think about it. The ship died in it’s relative youth. Maybe even
during the colony wars.

‘
How
do we get in?’ She leans into me, almost
pressing her chest against mine, and shouts into my ears with her
hands clasped together like a funnel so I can hear her
better.
As if I would
know?
I just shrug my shoulders, panting
for breath like an out of shape fifty something smoker of sixty a
day. My tongue is too tied to reply to her.

I feel all
warm inside, even though it is
Baltic
outside. She starts running her opened palms over the surface of
the metal. It must be cold to the touch but she doesn’t flinch or
anything. My energy starts coming back as I take in as many deep
breaths as I can without looking like too much of a
sissy.

The snow
relents at long last and I can finally make out the bulk of the
hull. The shape of the ship, something I have virtually worshipped
since birth, comes slowly into view.
The
Kraken Class shape was infamous, desired by friends and enemies
alike throughout the Colony Wars, respected and feared. Two
spherical discs mounted parallel to one another across a triangular
shaped frame. The longest tip of the triangular connecting hull
pointed out to the back. It was constructed of the strongest steel
known to man.

It’s weapon
systems were a true product of its time. Caught between the
technological advancements that
beckoned
laser based weapons into the mainstream and the underlying faith in
the reliability of projectile based torpedo like ballistic
missiles.

The hull
would
have been mounted with a few laser
cannon turrets, of varying size and power, but the true power of
this megalith was in its ballistic missile weapons platform. From
the spherical shaped mounts, the Kraken, once locked into orbit
above any would be victim, could launch ballistic missiles from
space. The threat of nuclear war, on Earth that is, never
disappeared after a strange time known as the Cold War.

The world
split in two, each side governed by a different system of rules and
theories, grew suspicious of one another and
devolved weapons of mass destruction to act as vehicles for
fear. Deterrence was the name of the game and the character of that
war.

The Kraken, I
always felt, was one final
nod, a
respectful glance back in time, to that time and the legacy of it.
The Kraken was the ultimate form of deterrence. In its day, nobody
would dare oppose it. Back then, everything was coming up
Russian.

We trudge around the frame of the lost ship,
looking desperately for a way in. One of the discs is buried
entirely beneath the ice and snow, the other stands up at an odd
angle, snapped in half and hanging there limp. The ship must have
impacted the surface of the planet on a tilt.

The buried
disc was the primary wing and main platform, which also contained
the bridge and most often the hyper drive engine, was propped up
against a rocky outcropping of the mountain. It hung there, eerily
clinging to the side of the mountain, limp and dead. Never found.
Never even searched for.

We might be
the first two people to look upon it in hundreds of years. I can
feel a tear welling up in the back of my eye. I have admired these
ships for all my life, seeing one is emotional in such an odd kind
of way. It gives me a sense of
fulfillment and purpose. That feeling after so many years
of feeling nothing but the lack of purpose, the lack of anything
good to speak of, is nothing short of overwhelming.

But that
isn’t why I feel like crying. Kolt. He can’t have been real. I
cannot deny the truth that my eyes are showing me. This ship is
dead, frozen in a time capsule, an endless relic to one single
event in time and space. The moment it crashed an
d everyone on board was likely killed.