Kraken Orbital (30 page)

I need
to
help Lucy make that last move. She’s
probably stronger than me but I don’t think she is as tall. So the
jump will be more daunting for her. I lay down in the crack and
lower my hands down. As soon as she is close enough I tell her to
jump. She doesn’t even hesitate. She must be able to trust me that
much. That feels nice too. Her hands clasp into mine and I grip for
my life and hers too. I pull hard and she does the same. She runs
her boots up the wall and I unceremoniously grab at her belt and
tug at it to pull her up beside me.

‘
Thanks.’ She
sa
ys but blushes. I know why. But say
nothing. She shifted her pants back to normal and held onto me
tight in the small space we found ourselves propped inside of. It
was a tight squeeze and not too comfortable either. The metal
shards that had been ripped asunder by the explosion dug into our
backs. I slowly ease myself toward the open space behind me.
Towards the other side of the tunnel. That’s the way we need to go
and hopefully where we might find the escape pods.

I
slip
. Lucy isn’t fast enough to catch me,
and I push instinctively back against her to make sure she stayed
on her feet and safe.

I
f
all. So fast I don’t have time to think
about it. So quickly that I don’t have time to try and save myself
or even find the best landing spot. I hit the bottom of the dark
hall and blacked out with the searing pain immediately. I hit the
floor right on my back. Right where it hurt the most.

‘
Sam! Sam!’ I
awoke slowly and not so softly to the sound of my own name yelled
again and again. It d
oesn’t take me long
to recognize the voice as Lucy’s. I thought it had killed me. It
feels like it had back on the rig when I first came to after the
crash. It feels like it had in my dream too. Like I was dead. I
can’t explain the relief that surges through me as I slowly open my
eyes. It could have killed me. It should have too. So many times I
had escaped a gruesome fate on this world.
What was one more?

Her
voice
is distant. It sounds distant, as
you would expect any voice would when you awake from the wrong side
of consciousness, but as I slowly open my eyes I can see that she
hasn’t made the climb down yet. I mustn’t have been out for long. I
want to call to her. Let her know I’m okay. Even though that’s a
stretch of the truth in itself. But I can’t. It feels like my jaw
is welded shut and I daren’t even draw in a deep breath for the
sake of the ever present pain in my spine. Any small jolt might
paralyze me. I’m lucky to have avoided it so far.

‘
Hold on, I’m
coming!’ I wish I could shout to her to be careful. I don’t want
her to fall too. I was careless. Proud and pent up on my brief
track record of success. I wasn’t paying a
ttention. I messed up and now I’m paying for it. I can’t
see her climb. It’s too dark and my eyes are too strained. I can
hear the odd clunk and each one makes my heart flutter. I hope she
is okay. And it frustrates me out of my mind that it’s all I can
do.

At least I
can still feel my heartbeat. At least I can feel something. I wish
I could move my toes or my legs or something but I can’t. I’m
trying so hard to focus but I can’t. It fills me with dread and
fear. My throat closes up and I can feel my tongue swell. My heart
races and I can’t stop sweating.
Is this is? Is this how it ends?
All I can do is blindly trust in blind faith that it will
pass. That I just haven’t recovered from the shock of the fall yet.
The feeling will come back. It has to.
It just has to.

Before I
even
have time to process everything, I
feel Lucy jump down from her last step of the climb and run over. I
can
feel
it. The tremors through the floor when she jumped. That has
to be good. She rushes to my side all a flutter and places two
desperate open palms across my chest. And I can feel that too.
Another lucky escape.
Or is
something else happening here?

‘
Are… are you
still alive?’ She
sobs over me in floods
of tears. But what a question. I have no idea. I really
don’t.

‘My legs.’ I
manage only two basic
syllables. I want
her to touch them. To run her hands over them so I can see if I
have any sensation in them. Even though I can’t articulate it, she
senses it anyway and does what I want.

It’s hard
through my
armor to feel anything at all,
let alone her soft and gentle hands. And it’s all to easy to think
I can feel something but I really can’t. It’s too easy for our
minds to play tricks on us like that. Kolt thought he was alive
when he wasn’t. Let that be a true representation of how much power
the mind has over our matter. Dead or alive. To convince itself
that it can feel, that it still exists but exists no longer. But
despite all of that, or maybe even in advocacy of it, I am certain
that I can feel her caress my aching legs. And I can feel her
teardrops slash gently against my hands.

I don’t need
her to be weak right now. I need her to be the strong girl I met
out on that snowfield. I can’t move. No way can I stand. I like
that she cries for me. I like that she cares about me enough to.
But I need her to be the
hard as nails
guard I used to know. Or at least that I thought I knew.

‘
Come on!’
Again she reads my thoughts and dries her eyes. I know how strong
she is. I know she can carry me but I still have something left. I
still have an insurmountable power of will. And I swear
that even if it bleeds me dry I’m going to use
it.

I push
her
arms aside and roll onto my side. It
hurts. Like a blistering heat mixed with an icy cold thrashing
through my mortal frame. But I do it anyway. I growl against her
advances and she backs away. And I stand up despite everything.
Despite the crushing weight of defeat and death, in defiance of all
of it, I stand on my own. Tears roll freely down my cheeks as I dig
deeper and deeper to a power source I didn’t know that I had. And
I’m proud. But it doesn’t last. It couldn’t have.

I reach out
to her side and fall limp onto her. She dutifully catches me and
takes most of my weight.
It’s a welcome
respite. But I know what I have to do now. I know what’s happening
here. I know I’m part of it. But there is still one thing that I
have to do and there is nothing that is going to stop
me.

‘Let’s get
you out of here.’ I say, with both of my heavy arms
wrapped around her sweaty neck.

‘I was just gonna say that to you.’ She
sobbed but responded immediately.

Chapter 22

One Last Mission

We slowly
slip our way through the dark tunnel, with most of my weight
pressed against
her’s. My back is in
agony. We can’t see more than a foot in front of us. But we pick
our way carefully through the untouched industrial setting towards
an unknown destination. This side of the tunnel has escaped most of
the damage that I caused by blowing apart the other side. That’s
good. It means the going isn’t as rough as I was
expecting.

My weight is
still pressed against Lucy’s chest. It feels nice.
Why am I such a sissy? Why do I need
someone to take care of me like this?

There I go
again. Always was my own worst critic.
Why do I need to be so hard on myself all of the
time?
I did okay!
I had a good run
. An
argument rages inside of my head between the two opposing points of
view as we slip and slide our way, me on barely useful legs, limp
and useless, to the other disc of the ship.

I did okay.
That’s what I need to remember. I came here prepared to die. I had
a good run. I stole the rig. I showed those guys they can’t bully
people and get away with it. That no matter what happens, if you
oppress a people, any people, for long enough they will rise
against you to fight you. Even though I won’t ever get to see my
Dad again, I think he would be proud that I was
that
guy. Not the one
who just kept bending over and took it over and over
again.

I was the
guy. I
embellish myself with the floating
fantasy that back at the mine there would be an uprising going on
right now. I hope that it’s true. I can believe it. I think it
might be true. Lucy came here to get away from them too. That meant
there had to be more like us.

So I don’t
know why I am so hard on myself. But I guess, for want of a better
or more complete explanation, it must be in my nature. And there
really is no point in changing that now.
Even though I’ve tried to be different since Kolt left me.
Even though I’ve had to evolve because of what’s happening on this
planet, for her, there is no point anymore in digging up the power
cables that keep me ticking.

This is as
good a note as any to go out on.
I think
silently to myself in such a way that I expect death.

Lucy stops
suddenly. I had floated off into my own world. I had forgotten how
much of a strain I must be putting her under. I had forgotten to
even try to move my legs. She must have dragged me all by
herself
for quite some time. That was
selfish of me. I’ll try harder for the last push. I need
to.

‘
How are you
feeling?’ She nurtures me to the ground, thinking of only me and
not herself. That’s sweet of her. But I’m not going to feel sorry
for myself. If this really is the end, if this is really how I go
out, then
I’m going out the strongest
version of myself that I can ever be. She’s worth it.

‘
I’m alright
now.’ I lie. ‘I can walk the rest by myself, sorry you had to carry
me.’ Another two successive lies. She just smiles and puts a soft
hand on my knee. She looks me up and down with an undisguised
concern upon her face.
I can do this. But
there is no point in stopping.

‘Let’s keep moving.’

Time for that gargantuan effort. I roll onto
my knees, feel my back crack in more than one place, and force it
to stop hurting while I stand. I take my weight upon my brittle and
tired legs, and slowly persuade one foot, I don’t care which, to
take a baby step forward.

‘
I can…’ I
know what she is going to say so I stop her mid flow with just a
politely raised hand and a pointed finger. I need to
do this. For me. And for her.

I’m amazed
they keep listening, my legs that is. And that they keep moving
despite my back howling in protest. It has to be broken somewhere.
I can’t have been that lucky again and a again. The power of will
and nothing more carries me forward into a thin light trickling
towards us from an as yet unknown turn in the path
ahead.

Lucy is right
here with me. Holding onto my hand sweetly but taking none of my
weight. I look back but only briefly. My balance is all over and I
can’t hold my neck in
any one place but
forward for long. I raise a salute. Lucy is looking down. Tears
rolling down her soft cheeks. So she doesn’t see. And I whisper
under my breath, only so that I say it, but she hears nothing.
“Goodbye Kolt. See you on the other side my friend.”

I don’t know
what I meant. Or why I needed to. But it felt right. Grief has a
way of messing with you and screwing you around like that. I just
felt I needed to wish him farewell as I mounted the last leg of my
journey. And gave the last
morsel of
power I have left inside of me to finishing it.

We make it to
the end of the dark tunnel and slide into a well lit room.
Strangely and warmly well lit. In the soft,
gentle, orange glow of a million candles. Candles placed around
bodies wrapped and preserved in blankets and sheets.

‘Oh
…’ Lucy whispers upon seeing
them. The candles still burn, like the constantly burning man in
the gas filled corridor, even though they must have been lit many
countless years ago. They remain lit in a constant vigil to the
dead they guarded.

‘
Mass
suicide.’ I conclude without a shadow of doubt
in my voice. Lucy hurls herself towards me and cries softly into my
chest. I cuddle her softly for comfort and bravely ignore the
shooting pain it causes me to hold her as well as myself. The
bodies lay there gone and lifeless upon the floor. Dumped, but not
unceremoniously, in piles of ten or more. They were filled into a
room as big as the distribution centre we had passed at the exact
opposite side of the tunnel.

Every
last one of them had been shot through the
skull. Blood drained out and remained to this day bright red and
living about the heads of the mummified shapes. The sheets remained
white for the most part. Not aged or worn by the ravages of time as
you might expect. Virgin white and innocent like the victims they
held.

I don’t want
to stay here long. I don’t want her to have to see this any more. I
hate seeing her upset. I want her safe. So I whisper gently in her
ear that everything would be okay. I even
promised her. Even though I know I shouldn’t have. I take
her weight, almost like I want it to hurt, like I want it to test
the very pits of my will power, and half drag her through the
corpses of hundreds of innocent dead. I am careful, for respect, of
every footstep and every movement.