Kraken Orbital Page 13

  Part 2

  I don’t know why. I have no idea where the thought came from or why, even though I know as well as I do the truth behind the stray thought, that I gave it the time of day as we parted from that kiss. But I almost thought she wasn’t going to still be there as we, or should I say I, opened my eyes.

  I don’t know what’s going on here. On this barren world. And I won’t pretend to any more. I won’t lie to myself and say that I’m still in control. I’m along for the ride now and that means taking the bull by the horns, straddling the lightning and going wherever it takes me. I don’t know what Kolt was, even though he must have been dead from the beginning.

  But I though she was dead too. I though she was dead like him. I don’t know what’s going on. But I do know what’s real. And that kiss was real. And so is the lovely smile she is giving me as our lips part.

  I’m not going to lie anymore. I’m going to forget what I thought I was before. I’m going to deny the man I used to have to be when I was at the Morris-Cooper mining Company. I’m going to forget whoever that was and I’m going to draw a line in the sand and start again. I’m going to be a new man. Whoever that might be and whatever he might turn into. Strange that a kiss can make you see things more clearly.

  But I’m done being scared. I’m done being worried and I’m going to look at this in a new way. Coming here has, in a heartbeat, screwed everything that I thought I knew. But I’m not going to be scared anymore. I’m going to let it happen and enjoy the ride.

  Sure, I know that’s bull, I know that whatever is behind the walls of the decaying Kraken will scare me half to death. But I’m ok with it. I’m at peace with it.

  I stare at her for as long as my nerves will let me. I feel like I need to say something but I daren’t. Luckily she brakes the silence first.

  ‘Are you ok?’ I don’t think she actually needs to know or that she is genuinely worried about me. I’m not good at hiding my emotions and I know that a thin smile has crept onto my mouth. She knows I’m fine, she must just be, adorably, as nervous as I am and felt she needed to fill the gap.

  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 sounds 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 bra
ve 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 dark 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.

  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.