Kraken Orbital (19 page)

Another thought occurs to me. Another stray.
Where are all the bodies? I let it pass and not sink in. I don’t
want to know the answer, so I don’t ask the question.

‘
Yeah.’ I
hope the
hesitation doesn’t show too much
in my voice but it probably does. Even though I know she will have
picked up on it she says nothing out of kindness. ‘Why don’t you
stay here and I’ll check out what’s behind that door?’ I bravely
offer but she has already wandered over to the dark crack between
the two sliding partitions.

She is holding onto one door and poking her
head into the dark space beyond. I guess she has the opposite
idea.

‘No.’ She says calmly, but with a gentle
smile, as she slides back thorough the door.

‘You love
this thing.’ She continues. ‘Stay here and take a look at the
engine, try to find out if there is anything left worth
salvageable. I’ll go this way.’ She raises up onto her tip toes and
pecks me lightly on the cheek as a goodbye then disappears before I
even have the chance to protest. I might have pretended to protest
at least.

But I can’t say, not here in the honest
confines of my own mind, that I would have disagreed with her. I
did want to look over the engine. But there was something else I
wanted to know. What happened to Kolt? He must have worked
here.

Chapter
14

Alone again

She was gone
so fast. And even though I haven’t known her for long at all, I
already miss her and feel empty without her.
Does that mean I was wrong?
Does it mean she
is
real? If my mind had dreamed
her from nothing, nothing other than my memory of her as a guard
back at the mine, then why would she leave? If she was a product of
my dismembered and lonely, anguish ridden imagination then she
would still be here saving my pathetic self.

But there is
something else I need to ask myself. Something about her that has
me off balance. It doesn’t seem right with me. Never before in my
life has a girl propositioned me with a kiss out of the
blue.
Why would she?
If she really has lost most of her memory then
why would she just go and do that? I’m no oil painting. I know
that. Especially not now, looking as I do, like I’ve been dragged
backwards through hell twice. So maybe she is lying. Maybe she does
remember me and secretly liked me as much as I did her. But my own
self doubt turns that away immediately as an
explanation.

So I guess I
have to just take her at her world this far. She is lost. She has
lost her memory and is willing to just go with the flow of things.
Maybe she’s given up and just isn’t showing it. This world
is
desperate and it does sap the life out
of you. Maybe she’s the same in that sense. And I guess in the face
of death, you take what you can get. That’s a little shallow, I
know. But it’s all I’ve got at this moment in time. But I do
believe in my heart that she’s real. So at least there’s
that.

I try to
focus on that and drag
my eyes slowly
away from the gap in the cold and static metal blast doors that she
had slipped through. I try one last time to peer back through the
gap after her. But it’s too dark. A part of me, a much larger part
than I would like to admit, wants to call her name just so that she
will come back. But I need to buck up my ideas and allay my
fears.

I can do
this. I need to check out this area. I’m supposed to be looking for
anything that might help us to get out of here but
that’s a distant second on my list of
priorities.

The engine
deck is shaped like a tall, towering and cavernous tube that
reaches through many sections of the ship. I don’t have to see it,
even though I can, to know what it would have looked like in full
light and strength. I can just imagine it. I can picture it from
the
schematics that I poured over, like
the nerd I used to be, or might even still be, in my bedroom back
at home.

I cast my
eyes up and down, trying to make out the shapes of the dark reaches
above and below. I can see, now that Lucy is gone and I have
nothing else to look at, that the spiral staircase running around
the outer shell of the tube is cracked and brok
en. It reaches down into depths beyond the power of my
sight.

Even though it is in runs I am certain that I
can make it over them and get down safely. I am sure, unless my
memory is gone, that the control panels and the like are down at
the far bottom. That was where I would look for any sign of
Kolt.

I need to
know if he was real. If he was a ghost or an
apparition. A fictional character that my mind called upon
to get me through a horrid experience, or if he really perished
here in this ship many years ago. I don’t care about getting off
this planet. Not right now. My mind is hungry for answers and I
can’t keep denying it of them.

So I guess
that I need to go and check out the rest of the engine room. As I
cast my eyes over from one end and to the other, I listen with as
much concentration as I can. The ringing in my ears, caused by my
latest fall, still hasn’t gone away and it’s starting to annoy me.
I’m trying to listen to anything lurking in the silence and the
constant e-sharp tone in my ear won’t go away so that I
can.

I should
really give myself a break. I’ve been through a lot and I don’t
me
an that to sound like I want some
sympathy, even if it would only be from myself. I haven’t slept in
what feels like days and I’m loosing concentration fast. But I need
to keep going. I need to keep pushing and trying to find that next
level, that last drop of power in the well spring of my
mind.

With a deep
sight I turn to the metal railing that runs all along the walkway.
The one we emerged onto from the exhaust vent. I can see the way
down but it is shrouded in darkness. Not just dark in the sense
that the light, what little there is, cannot break through far
enough. It’s almost like a dark fog. Like a smoke. And then there
is that smell again. The feint,
tantalizing and mystifying yet comforting smell of old
fires and log burners.

The dark that shrouds the levels below is
volumetric. Not just a veil but a choking mist. I sigh again.
Without meaning to. I promised myself that this would be a line in
the sand. That I would forget whoever I was before all of this.

The short
tempered and short fused, and let’s face it, ass that I think I am.
The guy who can’t even crack a smile at a familiar face. Who can’t
even thank a stranger for their help. My heart sinks as I remember
the way Kolt virtually dragged me this far. And I suddenly
realize but only now that I never thanked him.
Not properly. Before he went away.

So
that
means I have to keep going. Past
that mist and mystifying darkness. Because I owe him at least the
effort of finding out what happened to him. Maybe that would give
him closure. Of course, all assuming that he was real, or ever was
real.

‘Come on Parker.’ I say under my breath with
yet another unplanned and unsolicited sigh. A shrug lightly of the
shoulders. And I make my first step towards the staircase that runs
along the outer side of the cylindrical room.

My
footsteps bounce off every wall as the metal of
the walkway creaks and groans beneath my weight. The bolts scream
in protest, the ones that secure the structure at every wall, as I
make my way lightly to the first step.

As I bravely
enter the mist it comforts me in a way that I never thought that it
would. It wraps itself around me like a blanket in the night and
warms me. I relax and continue to step down one at a time. The
bolts don’t screech any more and the walls don’t cry anymore for a
past glory that is no more.

I’m more than
a little surprised that I can hear voices coming from the distance.
And even though my heart immediately starts racing in protest, I
quicken my pace towards those voices. Because I
recognize at least on of them.

As my feet
race at a volume my heart is not comfortable with, the mist
recedes and the light from behind it peels away.
The structure around me looks as new and I can see men hurriedly
going about their work below.

I can see
uniformed and disciplined men sat at terminals while others rush
from one desk and to the other with instructions and orders. I can
see they are in crisis mode. Once the darkened mist that once
shro
uded and comforted me dissipates I
can hear the alarms. And feel the fury of the flames.

I must be
dreaming. I want to rub my eyes, to kick
myself, to pinch my own arm or something else that you
might expect. But I’m frozen to the spot. In admiration. In
despair. I’m not sure which or even if that’s it.

Because I can
see Kolt standing there in the middle of it all. Tall, as I knew
him, and with his shoulders pinned back in pride. He was an officer
on board the ship and he was going down with it. I could sense the
panic in the room, but I could not feel it. Even though it would
seem that the events, the events I assume that
ended the life of this Kraken and of all those on board,
seemed to be unfolding before me.

I feel
distanced from them. Like some safely guarded part of my mind knew
that it was wrong. That it couldn’t be. That I must be
hallucinating or in some other dream like state. I can see the ship
falling from the embrace of deep space. I can feel it falling
desperately, on fire and burning as it falls, through the
atmosphere of the planet on which it came to rest, the surface of
which I must still be stood upon.

But
I
’m not afraid by it. I can feel the rush
in my stomach as gravity steps back in and does nothing to help the
doomed ship. But it’s vague. It’s distant. I guess the best way
that I can describe it to myself is that it felt like I’m playing a
simulation of what happened.

I
c
an feel and even to some smaller extent
partake in the exhilaration of the event. But I know that it’s
ultimately false, and that I’m ultimately not a part of it and will
be safe from it at the end.

In the
presumed safety of the future, given that what I was
witnessing could only be a part of the past, I
took the time to admire the Kraken in the prime of it’s life. Even
if it was at it’s very end. My eyes are unstoppably drawn to the
dazzling patterns the ionized gasses make as they swirl around the
outer shell of the hyper drive engine. The swirling colors project
onto the floor and wash the room in dazzling and beautiful lights.
It’s like an organic movement. Or so it seemed to my ignorant mind.
It seemed that the engine was alive. But in pain.

‘
Fire the jet
engines into full reverse.’ Kolt yelled at he top of his voice over
the
ruckus. He raised a powerful and
unshaken arm to a distressed younger man, dressed much the same as
he, in the gown I had grown to like despite its garish nature. The
young man glanced back, from his place arched over his work
station, to Kolt with fearful and almost teary eyes.

But he didn’t question and did as he was
asked. If only I’d had Kolt there to tell me where and when to fire
the jet engines to slow down descent. I might not have crashed and
ended up in this mess in the first place.

‘Yes
commander.’ He said. The brief and
desperate exchange over. I can again feel the power of the
Kraken’s mighty reverse jet engines, but they don’t scare me as I
thought they ought to. I remembered, but only a had a brief moment
to enjoy the sense of childish emotion it gave me to remember it,
that this ship truly was where the old met the new.

The
hyper drive engine, as powerful and as mighty as
I though the first of their breed to be, was so completely
dependant upon a jet engine as it’s crutch when it came to landing.
A smile stretched across my face but it was brief.

It was
knocked off me, and all sense of happiness with
it, as I watched the hyper drive shell explode. And Kolt, along
with every member of his team, engulfed in the resulting
flames.

Strange what
your mind thinks after an event. When t
here is nothing that can be done to prevent or improve it.
Even though I suppose an observer such as me could have done
nothing anyway. But I had noticed, and unintentionally ignored, the
ionized gasses stop to move. I guessed, there and then before the
flames washed into me as well, that they must have had something to
do with the cooling of the engine.

I wish I
could know more about what happened. Was it battle damage, an
accident? Or something more
sinister like
internal sabotage? I guess I was not meant to know. I was just
supposed to know what happened to him. Or else my dream or vision
or whatever this is would have shown me more.

I
c
an see him writhing in pain. I can see
him dance with the fire that swallows him. Trying so desperately to
worm his way out of it’s embrace. But it was not meant to be. I
could swear that as he died, he looked right at me, with those
bloodshot and piercing eyes. I can see him pause, then with one
last fit of energy, whatever he had left in him, try to pull at his
gasmask that had become welded to his face. To his skin and his
uniform’s leather too.