Kraken Orbital (26 page)

We emerge
into the space via a door at the top of the room.
The entrance is built like a stadium. Steps line
the first wall and we follow them down into the main boarding,
warehousing and distribution area. It’s nice to see some color. We
had been deprived of it for far too long as we made our way through
the scarred and flame dissolved ship. There’s a train of sorts
waiting on the line. Lucy must be right. This must lead us through
a long shaft and out into the other side of the ship.

I’m surprised
at
myself. I thought I had a fairly
intimate knowledge of the ship. The place is lit by a large hole in
the side wall of the tunnel ahead. The light is dingy but adequate.
It makes the room cold though. It’s easy to forget this thing had
come aground atop a snowy mountain when we were usually
unsettlingly warm inside.

‘
Let’s see if
we can get it working then.’ I may as well have been talking to
myself. She d
oesn’t reply.
What’s bothering her?
I smile at her, even though she doesn’t hold my
eyes, and make the last few steps onto the platform
ahead.

The train ran
on tracks that lined the roof. It consist
s of two basic carriages and little more. It has a small
engine bay but no pilot seat. It’s probably a fully automated
system. I study it in the low level lighting from below. There’s a
stairway that led to the left hand side. I dart up the hollow
structure and into the first carriage. It’s like a time capsule.
Totally preserved and intact. Eerie.

‘Lucy!’ No reply. ‘Come up here.’

The train,
without any kind of prompt from me, lurche
s into life. I make a dash for the door but don’t make it.
Lucy ran into me there. Before we knock heads I manage to grab her
by the waist and pull her inside before the door slowly slid
closed. Even the lights flicker on. The ones inside the carriage
and the ones inside the tunnel too. It illuminates the place in a
cold and pale ambience. Like a clinical light. I don’t let her
go.

‘
I
found the on switch.’ She smiles but only
briefly. She let me hold her and I’m glad of it. That must mean I
hadn’t upset her too much. She even slid her hands around my neck
and cradled herself there. She placed her forehead against my chest
bone and just sighed a few times.

‘Come on?’ I
ask her and lift her chin with just a finger. ‘What is it?’ She
just shakes her head free of my grip and says nothing. I have to
let it go. I can’t risk our new found relationship, whatever the
Hell that is, by shouting it out of her. Besides. I still want to
be a different kind of man. I need to fight the impatience building
within and just let her come to me.

‘Okay.’ I
whisper in her ear. I hug a little t
ighter for a few moments but have to let go.

I
t
ake another much slower look around the
thin carriage. There’s a few posters on the wall space between the
large windows. They must be inspirational and work ethic focused
images. But the text is in Russian so I can’t understand it fully.
No need to anyway.

‘Did you check the track for damage?’ The
thought suddenly hit me. We had set off into the unknown and done
no kind of safety check. This thing could fall right out of the air
if the track had split during impact!

‘No… I don’t
even know if there was a way to.’ She’s starting to perk up. Maybe
just distracted by the further challenges I threw at her. Either
way I’m glad. The instructions on whatever screen or command module
she used must have been in Russian too. She had done well to get it
going at all.

‘
Let’s move
into the forward carriage. See if we can get a
better view of the track.’ I hold out my hand, she takes
it, and we jog through the carriage and into the next. The train
bounces under our weight. Like a swing bridge might or a smaller
suspension or rope bridge would.

The next
carriage is identical. Featureless. Since there’s no pilot, and the
engine is seated somewhere beneath the carriage as I had seen
during my brief inspection, the front of the train is just one
panoramic window. I tap it. It’s not glass. Must be some kind of
plastic based but reinforced polymer of some kind. With the lights
somehow working I can see a good way ahead. No bends or at least no
obvious breakages in the section of track. In the distance I can
even see the end of the tunnel. Right at the far end is a massive
cargo door that I can only hope will open upon our
approach.

‘
I think we
should be okay.’ Lucy
is right by me.
With one hand placed on the glass front of the train and leaning
into me. ‘Lie down.’ I tell her and point to one of the seats
behind us. It’s a long bench where she can get a little rest. She
takes me by the hand instead, turns me around, and pushes me down
onto the seat first. And then straddles her legs across my knee
before rubbing her hands up and down my chest. It feels good to
have her so close.

‘So.’ I start
but struggle to carry on. ‘What is it you like about me?’ That was
brave I thought. She just shrugs and smiles.

‘You first.’
She teases me.

‘What’s not
to like?’
To Hell with it. Be
brave.

‘That’s
nice…’ She stops mid sentence. Probably at the sight of my face.
That look of shock and terror that I can barely hide.

There
’s something in here with
us. In the tunnel. Creatures of some kind.

‘What is it?’
She leaps from my knee and spins around. There really is no
mistaking what they are. They’re dinosaurs of the winged variety.
They must have gotten in here through the many holes in the hull.
Known my luck, and known the general pace of this crappy day, we’re
probably sailing right through their nest or something.

Lucy
reache
s for her handgun but I have
different ideas. These things, the dinosaurs, had been extinct on
Earth for millions upon millions of years. I want something old.
Something old to fight something older. I start rummaging through a
few lockers at the side of the main carriage. She’s busy prepping
her weapon and getting into some sort of fight mode. She barely
even gives me a glance.
An
axe!
Double edged too like some kind of
ancient sea trident weapon. Now we’re talking. I throw that on the
floor by my feet with more than just a touch of enthusiasm. But I
keep looking.
This is a war
ship after all.

Why wouldn’t
there be some kind of guns, old ones, like the one Kolt had at the
beginni
ng, lying around somewhere. I come
across a handgun of sorts. It’s bulky and heavy in my grip. There’s
just something about it. Something so much more real than the
plastic toy ray gun Lucy had given me.

‘
Here.’ I
pass it back to her. She
’s glaring out of
the forward window. Waiting there, poised to strike and deadly
focused. It’s a little sexy but I let that thought pass. More
important things to do after all. She looks at me like I had just
drooled all over my armor, then looked to the gun and axe that I
had found with some contempt mixed with thinly disguised
concern.

‘
You can’t
fight with those antiques.’ She cock
s her
head aside but keeps her boots planted in her combat stance, facing
the window with one small step forward, like a boxer entering the
ring.

‘Well, I am a
miner.’ I smile, making light of a situation that I should be
taking a lot more seriously, and throw the axe to spin in the air
before catching it on the way back down.

‘Do you even
know how that piece of dirt works?’ She finally abandons her stance
for just a second to grab the gun I had found out of my hand. She
starts messing with it. Ejected the chamber of bullets, reinserted
it and pulled back on the catch. ‘At least there is a full mag.’
She concedes and gives it back to me. She held it in her hand as I
tried to take it in mine.

‘
That’s the
safety.’ She t
akes my index finger and
presses it against a button along the side of the but of the gun.
That must have turned it off. I’m starting to wish Kolt was still
here. I guess it is a bit embarrassing, even knowing what century
we live in, having a girl show me how to shoot. I fight the urge to
laugh when I think about what Kolt might have said about it. “Take
gun, point at creature, shoot.” He would have no issue fending
these ancient beasts away. She smiles nervously toward me and
pushes my hand away.

‘
Don’t
point it any where near me.’ She chuckles and
refocuses on the window ahead. The flying monsters are becoming
unsettled all the more with every inch further we travel along the
tracks.

I
’ve nothing more to say to her
as I feel my stomach sink into a pit with nerves. This could be it.
We’re really up against it this time. “Come on Parker!” I think to
myself and start jumping on the spot to another look of daggers
from Lucy. I swing the axe around my head a couple of times to get
used to the weight balance but that’s all the practice time the
beasts are going to allow us. There’re at least twenty of the
things fluttering around the tunnel up ahead now. I hope that’s all
of them. It’s already more than enough. All it was going to take
was one of them to start and to make the first move.

‘
Head’s up
Sam.’ Lucy shout
s, even though there
really is no need to, and aims her gun at the first of them to
attack. She fires a couple of blasts through the window, shattering
it into a million tiny pieces in the process, and floors the beast
to an ear splitting shriek.

‘Nice.’ I
shout to her, my axe pressed coolly against one shoulder. The wind
picks up immediately and nearly throws me from what I thought was a
solid stance. It rockets through the train and howls around my
ears. If she took one out, I wanted the next one. I bravely move
closer to the gap in the train that used to be the window, pull my
handgun from its resting place against my thigh and brought it to
my eye level.

I fire. The
gun blast
s back against my grip and I
nearly drop it. That would have been embarrassing beyond belief.
The shot went far wide. I had no training for this kind of thing
and had to fight two overwhelming feelings. One of total
embarrassment as Lucy saw off my target with her laser weapon, and
two, my frustration.

Lucy
t
akes full advantage of the short break
we had earned by shooting two of the flying menaces out of the air.
She darts behind me, holsters her two weapons, and takes a firm
hold of both of my elbows. She pulls my arms as high as she can
manage and rests her head against my shoulder blade.

‘Look right down the barrel of the gun, the
sight should be accurate but you might need to adjust depending on
how the bullet flies.’ I did. ‘Make sure what you want to hit is
bang in the middle of the two notches at the end of the barrel,
right there where the bullet comes out.’

‘Got it.’ I line up the next monster and aim
for the biggest part of it. It’s leathery furless wing.

‘Don’t pull
the trigger, treat it like you would me, and just give it a gentle
squeeze.’ I feel her smile against my back.

‘Not really
the time, Lucy.’ I protest even though it’s nice.

‘Sorry.’ She
mumbles as I fire. The bullet stays true to the sight and rockets
through the thin stretch of skin of the right wing of the
formidably sized monster. It can no longer keep any balance in the
air and falls to the floor of the large tunnel. I hadn’t killed it,
but hopefully the fall will!

‘
There you
go.’ She let go of my elbows and return
s
to her station beside me. I’m blushing and can’t stop. But to my
further embarrassment, she finds it all the more funny. I’ll get
her back.

We
’re in the thick of it now.
There’s more of them in the air and that short moment of training
is no where near going to cut it for me. I hit one of three shots
and even those aren’t well placed enough to bring whatever bird I
had been aiming at down. Lucy is incredible. She stays calm, stays
focused, and hits every target with ease. She alternates between
guns as one would begin to overheat with artistic timing and
precision. I wish I didn’t find it so damn appealing. It’s hard
enough to hit my own damn targets without staring at her for most
of the time.

It
’s too late to matter. As soon
as I’m out of bullets, I just hurl my gun at one of them that gets
too close. It just bounces off it’s armored chest plate and the
creature is just annoyed rather than deterred by it. It lands on
the edge of the window and the weight of it rocks the train from
side to side and slows it down a lot. It can barely fit through the
window and Lucy, despite blasting it over and over, can’t bring it
down.

I charge at
it and slam into it’s chest with my shoulder. It just
throws me back into the carriage and tries to
duck in through the windowless hole. It’s viscous beak is as long
as my outstretched arm and it’s wingspan longer than me and Lucy
stood head to toe together. The distance from which we had been
fighting them from had masked their true size and formidability.
Time for the axe.