Kraken Orbital (18 page)

But I might
as well ask. Even though I know the question is pointless and may
as well fall on dead ears. I might as well try to get out of her
whatever little memory she still has left. How can I phrase
it?
How should I phrase
it?
Now that I need to be a different man
to whoever I was before.

Before
I was cold. I was with Kolt. That job though, it
changed me, I know it did. It made me that way. It isn’t who I am
underneath. I know that. I just have to try to remember who I used
to be before I took on that horrible job and let them get under my
skin.

Either that or I just need to toss it away
and start again. I need to be a new man. I guess I would usually
shut a stupid question like that out completely. I would probably
ignore her and just move on coldly. But I need to be different now.
I guess I’ll return the gesture then.

‘I’m just worried about you.’ I think that
should do it. I think I’ve managed to lie my way through my own
fears, even though those fears feel distant right now, and still
made her feel respected in turn.

‘
Why?’ She is
so sweet. Even through my belting headache and the cold I can’t
help but smile just because she talked at all. She always
soun
ds so innocent. So protective. Just
the right amount of a high pitch in her voice, without it being
annoying or out of character, to be sweet and
attractive.

‘
Your
memory…’ What else could I have said? Maybe it was too much and too
soon because it instantly makes her recoil. I catch her hand as she
retreats and bravely pull her back to lock eyes with me. Even if I
had wanted to be stern with her I couldn’t have. Those eyes. What
can I do, or any man for that matter, do but fall into them and get
lost in the glistening pools of blue?

Despite
everything I had thought about her, her strength and her abilities,
I can see a small tear form in the corners of each eye. I don’t
want to say anything. It must be the years of programming kicking
in again, but I don’t know what to say either. I have to fight the
urge, hard, to say something cruel and diminishing like “buck up”
or make some childish
reference to her
girlish emotions.

I need to
ignore those emotions and those urges from now on.
I just stare at her in a way that I hope does
not come over as creepy, but probably does. That was enough to
press her into saying anything at all.

‘
I…’ She
starts but hesitates. Pulling away she places an open palm across
her obviously
aching forehead. ‘I don’t
know why I’m here, or what you did, or even who you are other than
your name. But I feel… ok. I feel peaceful.’ So do I. And that’s
rare.

Usually
I’m
fraught with worry or paranoia.
Another distinct disadvantage of having been beaten physically and
mentally for so long. I still don’t know what to say.

‘I guess, I just don’t want to remember right
now. I feel ok, and I like being with you. I feel like a blank
slate. Maybe that was why I forgot everything. Maybe I needed
to.’

I want to
push her further. The old me, or the me I’m trying to stop being at
least, wants to dig harder for more
information. But I guess I feel the same. I feel like a
blank slate and I feel like I can write whatever I want onto mine.
I know I needed it. My past is no story book and I’m glad I’m here
if it means I finally get to shred that book. So I leave her be.
And just try to be glad that she’s there.

I can sense
that she wants the conversation to end
,
even though I don’t. And as much as I’d like to spend the rest of
my life, however short and soon to end it might be, staring at her,
we need to find a way out of here. The plan was to call for the
Russian Federation.

That was what Kolt was bringing us here to
do. Before he… went away. I guess, as I think about it and run my
eyes across the walls of the room we pushed through into, that’s
the best way that I can describe what happened to him. I don’t want
to think of him as dead. Even though he might have been. But then
again he might have been a figment of my imagination. As well might
Lucy.

I try to drown those thoughts as the dark
room slowly became more visible as my eyes adjusted to what little
ambient light there was. My headache was starting to fade too. I
know I must have lost a lot of blood by falling over on the ice
outside. But I feel ok now. I reach up and rub my open and
uncovered palm across the brittle blood that has matted it’s way
into my long hair. It hurts as I brush past it, sending another
spark of pain around the front of my head.

I have to keep looking back for her. Just to
make sure that niggling voice in my head is wrong. The one that is
telling me Kolt was never there, and that she isn’t here either.
That our kiss was fake, dreamed up by my desperate imagination. I
take my hand off the back of my head and make my way to the nearest
wall.

Just to touch something. Just to feel
something. To remind myself how to feel, what the tips of my
fingers could touch. And that soothed the voice in my head that was
slowly starting to irritate me.

The tunnel we
used to get inside from the cold has led to the engineering section
of the ship.
As the light penetrated the
backs of my eyes, the scale of the place slowly settled
in.

We had
entered the broken ship into a cavernous and vast space. The Engine
Bay. The room stretched high into the abyss above and even further
to the same abyss below. But
that
engine.
That
hyper drive. That
first breed.

I lusted for
it as I ran my open hands over the flame scarred engine case. As
the dull light pressed further into my eyes, I could see more of
the vast and cavernous space into which we had emerged.
At least three storey’s in height, open plan in
design, with metal walkways spiraling and interconnecting over
head. Wrapped around the case of the first breed of hyper drive
engine.

Even though
it was dead, even though the ship had perished in a war I know
little about, I could
feel
it. I could feel the life
breathed into the engine as I ran my hand over its cold and empty
shell. I was getting giddy almost at the thought of it.

This is where it all started. This is where
the whole universe had opened up to the world. This is where those
few brave pioneers took to the skies and raised up a fist to the
stars.

Most of the
walkways above were broken or cracked. I could even hear them creak
in the odd gust blown into the place through the tunnel we just
crawled through. It was much warmer in here than it had been out
there. But being warmer shouldn’
t be
confused with being warm. It was still really cold. It must have
been a cooling vent. Like I had guessed. We had crawled into the
engineering deck via a large hole but the pipe carried on,
spiraling down a few levels and into the very core of the engine
itself.

I peered
down, into the darkness, over the brittle and frosted metal railing
to the core of the engine. Once upon a time, maybe not even that
long ago, the
ionized gasses swirling
around the core would have washed this whole section in dazzling,
ever changing colors of the whole spectrum. It was a shame. And it
was sad, especially for me, seeing it dead like this.

‘So much for my plan.’ I whispered but Lucy
must have heard. Though she had been silent for some time as I
browsed the area, she came jogging over to my side. She laid a
comforting hand on my left shoulder and almost cuddled me as she
peered down into the dead ship’s core. I wanted to recoil. Like I
did before, and retreat into my defensive shell, but I quickly
remember that I decided to let whatever version of me that was
die.

I fought the
reaction hard and just let her hold me.
It felt wrong. But nice all the same.

‘What were
you thinking?’ She asked softly into my ear. Not wanting to upset
or embarrass me but out of curiosity. I wanted to hide the truth
from her. I wanted to just not reply but I fought that reaction
hard too. I had known my idea wouldn’t work. Not just because what
Kolt had said about the state of the Kraken, but in knowing in
myself that my idea had been informed more by fantasy than it had
by anything else.

‘
Oh… just
some childish fantasy I guess.’ I admitted through a sigh, turned,
and gazed into her eyes.
I was going to
leave out the rest. She chuckled playfully, adorably.

‘What?’ She
persevered and I got the distant sense she was playfully toying
with me.

‘That we could fly this broken old ship out
of here.’ My dream after all. She didn’t reply even though I knew
fine well she was fighting back the urge to mock me. She just
smiled, and kept on smiling, and I was just happy to watch her.

‘
I don’t
think we can do that.’ She rubbed her hand gently back and forth
over the arch of my back.
Maybe she was
lying. Another stray thought suggested. Maybe she was lying that
she had no memory. She had battered me before, I remember very
well, back at the mine. Now she was groping me and comforting
me.

Had I misjudged her that badly?
I
had no problem with her beating me though. A daily beating was a
dead cert and I definitely preferred them from her. But maybe, just
maybe, she had admired what I did. Maybe she came here to join me.
Not to kill me, finish me off or take me back. Just maybe. But I
doubt it.

I can see it
in her eyes. They’re open. Not open in the sense that she is
looking out of them, but I mean an open book.
Not being able to hold a stare would suggest to me that she
was hiding something. But she looked at me softly and kept her eyes
focused there as I turned to lean on the barrier side.

I wish I could ask her. The old me might
have. But I just have to leave it for a little longer.

‘
Hey.’ I
interjected. ‘Don’t knock it.’ I was talking about my idea.
Or was it more a fantasy?
‘You can’t tell me it wouldn’t have been one
hell of a ride to fire one of these up and blast it through space
to wherever the hell we wanted to go?’ I smiled at her. It feels
unnatural to smile. For reasons that should be obvious by now. But
I fight through those reasons and do it anyway.

She takes me
by the hand and pulls me off the barrier a little. She then places
her fingers around mine and we walk, hand in hand, more stroll,
around the broken ship’s
interior like we
are taking the five dollar tour.

‘Where would you go?’ She asks me. I have to
think about it for just a second but the answer is obvious when all
other possibilities don’t match up.

‘I’d go home.
See my Dad.’ I was waiting for her to ask why but she doesn’t. I
guess the shortness of my sentences and answers gives away that I
don’t want to talk about it.

‘
You
?’ I quickly ask in case she
loses the ability to fight the urge to ask anyway.

‘I’d get good and lost.’ She doesn’t give
anything else away and I’m not sure what she means. I’ll have to
add that to the growing list of questions that I need to ask her
later. When we’re better friends.

Even though
it would have been
exhilarating to say
the least to fly this old and battered icon of a time lost, it was
nothing more than a pipe dream. I guess that means I’m out of
ideas. Lucy seems happy. As we walk around the broken ship, she
swings her hand up and down with mine clasped inside of hers. She
is still smiling and I don’t know why. I still don’t know what to
think of her. But I don’t want those questions in my mind right
now.

The niggling
thought that she might be just like Kolt. Either dead, or just a
figment of my own broken imagination.
As
much as I love her company right now, and as much as she is helping
me to feel like a new man, we need to think of a way out. I need to
admit that my ideas are sub par and that I need her
help.

‘
Any ideas on
what we should do?’ I nervously ask her, and turn my shoulder
gently so I can face her as we walk. Our boots clink off the old
and rusted metal barrier walkway. The sound rattles around the
cavernous and da
rk space but we feel no
fear. Even though we probably should.

‘I think we should just explore the ship.
Maybe the answer will present itself.’ That makes sense. We might
just need a little inspiration. And how better to get it than walk
around an iconic structure such as this. She stops walking, leaves
go of my hand, and the cold suddenly fills my palms where the
warmth of her skin used to be.

‘Should we split up?’ She suggests, proud of
herself and feeling no fear at the prospect. I wish I was the same.
Just the thought of parting company has me silently terrified. But
alas that’s another of those old reactions that I need to fight. I
should listen to her. I’m not going to be afraid like I was before.
I’m at least going to try.

By chance we had stopped by a large door. The
control mechanism must have been fried in the crash or the fire
that followed because it was already slid ajar. The spinning lock,
of the same design but an older model, to the ones that locked the
doors of my rig, had long since been battered open by desperate
survivors trying to get out of the burning wreck.