Kraken Orbital (8 page)

‘
I
probably got fired
when I stole the rig from them.’ I decide to just drop the
bombshell. My chest is starting to hurt and my muscles are still
heaving. Kolt instantly spins around on the spot and glares at me
through those bloodshot and piercing eyes.

I swear
he
’s laughing so low that I can’t hear it
through the muffler of his mask. Maybe I’m just making it up. Still
no reply from him though.

‘So I think
its more a case of them coming here to, at best, drag me back to
face the consequences, or at worst, just kill me.’ I think he is
surprised to hear that. But it’s so damn hard to tell with him.
‘And I wouldn’t put that latter option at all past
them.’

My voice
grumbles after the effort of climbing and I meet his stare and hold
it for the first time in our odd friendship. This time I hear
h
im laugh. Openly, extravagantly and
audibly. I can’t force my smile away. I might have actually broken
through to him.

‘What’s so funny?’ I ask him, desperate to
maintain the conversation. It might just be the longest one that we
have had.

‘I didn’t
think you had it in you, Sam.’ He says between genuinely disturbing
laughs, each burst broken up by a very drawn out inhale through the
grumbling mask. I want to be offended but literally can’t be
bothered. I search my mind for a reply. I hate myself because
nothing comes to mind witty enough to deter him.

‘
Go to Hell
mate.’ Is all I can manage. I turn my attention back to the rock
face below. My vision is hazy as sweat permeates over my eye lids
from across my brow. I can’t see the ground anymore. I can make
out, however, that nothing is moving down there so I assume that
the snapping dinosaurs must have gone.

He eventually
stops laug
hing and somewhat surprisingly
decides to give me the choice of what to do.

‘How should we proceed?’ He asks and composes
himself instantly, like he just flicked an internal switch, one
that returns him completely to normal and utterly, frustratingly,
unreadable. I start to walk across the rocky surface of the
elevated ridge we find ourselves on top of.

‘Any chance we can fly your ship out of
here?’ I take a stab at a potential solution. ‘What kind is it
anyway, you never told me?’ I bombard him with questions as my mind
races through the possibilities. I lead him over the jagged rocks
at my pace. I’m the one anxious to get going this time. I know what
will be in store for me if I get caught by whatever security forces
they have sent after me.

They are a
law unto themselves. They have their own armed security, or at
least they call it security, they may as well be enforcers or
military police or something. I bet it’s those
they
’ve sent after me. I watch my feet,
not Kolt, since the surface of the ridge is unpredictable and any
fall to either side of the narrow edges would be a death
sentence.

‘No.’ Is all he says. I finally lose my
temper with him. I’m so sick of his nonchalant sort of attitude and
his vagueness every time I need information out of him.

‘
Is that all you have
?’ I raise my
voice but still don’t turn. I know I’m the beta male in this
relationship. This guy could snap me clean in half if he tried. I
want to vent my frustration but not lose him as a friend. I’ll
never make it on my own out here. I hear him sigh though his
breather. I briefly glance up and he is walking much closer behind
me than I though he was. That makes me flinch but I hold my
ground.

‘
My ship, is
not
my
ship, I was only a soldier on board it. Maintenance and
repair.’ He says. He sounds distant again. Like he was trying to
pull out a dated memory from right at the back of his mind. At
least that explains his odd and garish attire.

‘
Then you can fix the damn thing
?’
I keep on my course of anger and frustration. It might work. This
is the most information I have been able to get out of him in two
days.

‘It is
“
Kraken
” Class.’ He says like a spark has gone off in his mind.
But I know what that means. My heart flutters with childish and
naïve excitement.

The Kraken
Class, named after a mythical sea creature, was an enormous breed
of interstellar vessel.
Among the very
first of them too. First breed of hyper drive engine. Balls to the
wall space exploration with no hope of back up when it all went
wrong!

They were
used for conflict though.
I’d never given
any thought as to why Kolt was here. On this desolate and
uncivilized world. But I guess he must have crashed during a
fight.

But to the
point at hand
. There are two glaring
problems with what he said. Problems that protrude from behind my
mask of excitement. The Kraken’s are old. Very, very old. Museum
old.
So what the hell was he
doing with one?
And second. There was no
way we could fly a Kraken on a crew strength of two. My overactive
mind lurches into action and I start digging around my imagination
for a solution to the questions.

We stumble a
few more yards, I say
we
stumble, of course I mean I
stumble. Kolt takes it in stride as always.

‘Why did you
bring a Kraken here?’ I decide to take a saw to the branch he is
sat on. I can already predict his answer. And I’m poised and ready
for the frustration of his reply.

‘I don’t
remember.’ He says with no hesitation, but with a hint of
frustration of his own, and proves me right. I push
further.

‘The Kraken is a warship, Kolt, I didn’t even know they
made any more after the Colony Wars
.’ I
stop, realize I’m screaming at him, and turn to look right at him.
The Colony Wars ended a very long time ago ‘
What the Hell did you come here for
?’ I calm myself and hold his vacant stare. He shakes his
head. He stays calm but I can sense somehow a deep and burning
anger coming from inside of him. He stares into the distance over
my shoulder and continues.

‘We maintain our course. We locate and board
my ship and use the communication modules to call for help as
planned.’ He hammers out a rehash of my own plan.

‘Call who?’ I ask, more calmed, and turn my
attention back to the ridge we are trying to traverse across.

‘
The Russian
Council of Federal Governments.’ He sounds pleased
and proud with himself for figuring out how to
get off the planet. But more for the effort he has gone to dig out
a what must have been a long lost memory.

But my heart virtually stops. I try so hard
not to let my surprise and shock show. I feel a wave of bubbling
fear boil over me like a freezing wave of icy water. I keep going
with our path and hold onto the rocks beneath my feet using my
clammy hands with as much power as I can manage.

I know my pace has slowed but I can’t help
it. I try to control my breathing and not let my fear show. The
Russian Federation doesn’t exist. It hasn’t for over a hundred
years.

Chapter 6

The Morris-Cooper Mining Company

I awake, the
same way I do every miserable day, to a high pitched blaring alarm.
At least I’m not alone. All of the other miners in my sector are up
and ready too. They, like me, resist the urge to turn over and get
a little more sleep.

There are days I would literally kill for
just another five minutes. I know better than that though. I did it
once and got a swift slap round my face from one of the brutish
guards as penance for the crime of wanting just a few more seconds
of shut-eye.

I crawl out of my top bunk, the highest of
three, and jump to the cold floor. The impact shudders through my
flat, bare feet and hurts a little but I’m used to it. I stretch
but only briefly. Those thin cots are no way near big enough for a
guy of my size to get a comfortable night’s sleep.

The walls of the facility are grey and
uninspiring, cramped and claustrophobic, and aren’t exactly
designed to make us comfortable. I file in line with my fellow
downtrodden miners and wait for my turn to be served my daily
intake of orphan grade gruel.

There are a
hundred of us working in slave like conditions in this sector.
There is no telling us apart, other than the tone of our skin, for
we all wear the same bland grey vests and black
trouser
s. The company don’t provide us or
even allow us to provide our own nightwear. We just get these itchy
wool based garments that serve as multi functional clothes. Night
clothes first and underwear later when we stick our mining suits on
all thrown into one nice unattractive and itchy package.

Some of these
guys are close to tears every single morning.
They
’re the newest of us. We’ve all been
there. We all came here at some point or another with dollar signs
glistening in our eyes. With thoughts of new worlds, different
frontiers, and life experiences bubbling through our young and
naïve minds.

The first to
arrive are the most distressed. They
realize the truth behind the propaganda and it hits them
like the slab metal of a sledge hammer. The rest of us have our
hearts hardened to it by now.

Nobody says
anything as we walk, single file, smelly and miserable, down the
thin and grey concrete covered corridor to the cafeteria. There is
barely enough room for a gentle sway of the shoulders in here. The
cafeteria is no better. It
’s serviced by
more hopeless wrecks like ourselves.

There’s never
any chance of service with a smile. I take a thin wooden tray that
has compartments carved into it from a pile in the corner of the
narrow and boxy room. I’ve had this one five other days so far. I
know because I etch a little mark into the corner every day with my
breakfast knife. Some of them I’ve had like fifty or more times.
It’s odd how we pass the time here and measure out our
sentences.

Some of the
guys have notches scribbled in chalk above their pillows. I bet
they wish they stood for all the women they managed to
bed while they were here. I do.

The room is
housed in a deep underground facility which contains all living
quarters and access to the mines too. I can’t remember the last
time I saw the sun. That’s why they serve us this
crap. It’s laced with vitamins and minerals, all
cheap to produce, to stop us getting rickets or scurvy.

The young
woman behind the chest high counter slops some white, lumpy, slop
onto my tray with a deep spoon and refills it for the next guy. I
used to say thanks to her. Can’t be bothered anymore. I never even
got so much as a smile back from her.
And
she’s not exactly pretty either.

I take it,
since there is no point in protesting, and go to sit on one of the
white
colored plastic tables set in the
middle of the room. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t even know
if it’s day or night. They keep us on a constant rotating shift so
we never know how much sleep we have or anything like that. Alarms
go off all the time as the next group rises or beds
down.

They might
even artificially lengthen the day or maybe even shorten it so it
feels like time is all wrong. I have no proof of that but I don’t
put it past them. I kept track the best I could for about a month.
Now I have literally no idea. I can barely remember how long it has
been since I started “working” for them. I think it’s years. I
remember when I started but I can’t mark time here
so I guess it could be longer.

We
’re guarded the whole time. I
wonder what they are. I never get to see their faces. They all wear
red armor that is galvanized in a plastic shell and stand a good
few inches above us. They might be bio-engineered slave drivers for
all I know. They speak in different tones like men and women but
they always wear mirrored masks that just cast my own reflection
back at me every time I even dare to look at them.

They always
stand there, wherever we are, looking menacing and ominous. They
must get fed a damn sight better than we do though. The guys are
massive with huge bulking arms that are the same size as most
peoples
’ legs. The women are tall, curvy,
maybe even sexy. I can’t tell anymore. They might be horrible
looking but I have nothing else to go by as I endure my long
sentence of employment. I’ve had a good few beatings in my time
from them.

‘
What are you
thinking about Parker? Any good dreams?’ His booming voice greets
me as soon as I sit down. He sleeps one bunk
below me and we mine together sometimes. He is a massive,
muscular framed, and energetic black man. Doug. His teeth
miraculously remain dazzlingly white after our long service
underground.

He always
asks me that. And it always really
winds
me up. I’m thinking the same thing that everyone else is thinking
about. Taking a big axe and slamming it against some rocks for a
few grueling hours. And I can’t remember the last time I had
a
good
dream. I hit out at him over it.

‘
Yeah.’ I
say. ‘One really good one. I think your mother was in it.’ That’s
out of character for me. His smile fades briefly but he soon erupts
with glorious laughter. I wish more people were like him.
I
t takes no time at all for one of the
beating guards to come over and stomp on our brief exchange. They
don’t even bother to ask us to be quiet. They slap me across the
back of my head and do the same to my buddy.