Kraken Orbital (17 page)

‘
There.’ She
says in her sweet and comforting voice. She raises her hand and
points at something she has seen half way up the
buried disc. The one that has been buried in the ground. It
is an opening of some kind but I can’t make it out through the
snow. My head is hurting a lot now.

I keep
checking for blood at the back of my head but I just keep dusting
off flakes of dried brown, already clotted blood. The wound has
stopped bleeding but I feel like
death.
My head is throbbing from blood loss and I’m finding it hard to
think at all. I wish right now that my auto pilot would kick back
in. But I guess that must be out of steam too.

‘
Ok, lets
try.’ I say through labored breaths
and
nod to her. She pounces up the slippery and angled surface with
grace and ease, beckoning me to follow like I’m the old and boring
dad to her eager and impetuous inner child. I drag my broken body
up the surface, lying flat against it and using any small crack or
hand hold I can to drag my weight upwards.

The
hull
, the outer surface of the disc, is
riddled with large bullet holes. I can use them though they are
rusted and brittle as hand and foot holds as I make the hard climb.
Her speed and grace, and my obvious admiration for her, spurs me
on. I pull harder and harder on each dull metal crack and finally
make it to the opening she had spotted.

It
’s either a cooling vent or a
weapons discharge point, a barrel or torpedo tube if you like. She
peers in hastily but sees nothing. Not surprisingly. She is
assessing the measurements of the tube and so am I. By my tired
guess I figure we should be able to fit through but the squeeze
will be tight. If it turns into a dead end then turning will be
impossible and we might even get trapped in there. I’m cold enough,
tired enough and desperate enough to take the chance.

‘
Looks good.’
I say to her. She smiles back contently and slides in first. I’m
glad I didn’t have to do the hero bull and pretend like I wanted to
shove my exposed h
ead into an unknown
environment first. I watch her shapely figure disappear into the
dark tunnel barely big enough to fit her hips through, and bend
down to watch her wriggle through the small crawl space.

My heart is
starting to beat with
fearful
anticipation and lust. She moves gracefully and no red blooded man
could ignore it was a good sight to see. But I’m tired and hungry
and I can’t bring myself to push harder for the last few ounces of
energy to try to talk to her.

Maybe I’m
just being pathetic? The cold is pushing
me on though. I know deep down that if I stay put I’ll
freeze and die. My head is cloudy to start with and there is no way
I’ll survive a night out here on the exposed mountain
face.

I
glan
ce back, longingly, to the cave now
in the distance where I had last seen Kolt. I wish to the bottom of
my heart that he was still here. In whatever form he was. Ghost or
not. I just wish he would come back.

I
hadn’t
realized how much I had grown to
like him and depend upon him in the short time I had known him. I
breathe a deep sigh and push my head into the dark tunnel and
follow my still nameless friend, foe, rescuer or captor, I’m still
not sure.

The tunnel drags my breath out of me as soon
as I’m all the way in. My feet are just about tucked into the
cramped and polished crawl space. I’m glad to be out of the wind
and it feels a little warmer now that we are at least inside, but I
don’t like it. I’m a miner. I don’t mind small spaces or confined
areas but this has a different feel to it than I am used to.

This feels
cramped and alien. It feels wrong. Like I am out of control
completely. Like I’m the
passenger in a
sports car and someone else, someone I don’t know or trust, is in
the driving seat and slamming the accelerator pedal. Such an odd
feeling this tunnel has summoned up inside of me.

‘
Wait.’ I
shout, more plead, down the tunnel wherein I can see literally
nothing. I can hear her sweet voice echo
back. I can hear the soothing syllables bounce back and
forth from one side of the metallic frame and to the other and back
again. But the echo drowns out any meaning and I can’t figure out
what she said.

I’m alone in
my thoughts.
Right where I just don’t
want to be. I can’t help but start to panic and in my weakened
state I struggle to control it. I start to wonder again. A piercing
and shivering thought. That I may have simply followed another
spectral ghost into the hollow shell of a ship that may not even be
there.

Too late. I’m
on the train now and there is no way off. If I’ve been conned then
I’ve been conned. If I have followed a siren in here, no longer the
captain of my own ship, if I
have
followed something less than real and it leads me to rocky shores
then so be it.

I start to
feel desperate and alone. I start to remember the hopelessness of
my situation, the
hopelessness of the
mine I left behind and the dark thoughts that go with it. I start
to give up and start to think that if I have wandered haplessly
into my own doom then so be it.

I feel like I’ve been crawling, struggling
every inch, for a while now. I know I have made little progress but
I can, at least, not see the light at the other end of the tunnel
and I am now a little warmer. I press my agonized shoulders against
the slick metal and dig deep to keep pushing against the pain. My
lungs are restrained and I cannot draw in a deep enough breath to
satisfy my need for fresh air. My muscles are starved and drowning
in carbon dioxide.

‘
Not much
further, Sam
.’ My angel calls to me. She
must have found something and just the sound of her voice, as real
as I can make it out to be, satisfies my childish fear that she may
not be true. I start to push harder and harder and slip further
down the tunnel into the bowels of the ship. I can see a glimmer of
light. And I can just make out the ebony glow of her mystical
hair.

She reaches
down the shaft and pulls me close to her. I had forgotten how
strong she was. My eyes are relaxed by the sudden
light
, a dull ambient light at best but
light all the same, of the new area as she pulls me through a gap
in the tunnel. A great fire must have melted a great hole in it’s
side. It was big enough to climb through.

Chapter 12

Engineering

‘What’s your name?’ I work up the courage to
ask her as I try to stand and stretch in the eerie light of the new
area. I look at her but only briefly. I can feel myself start to
blush every time I meet her eyes and her lips start to curl into a
smile for me.

‘
You don’t
know?’ She asks sweetly but
disguises a
small amount of offence. She knows who I am. That much is clear.
But I guess she would given what I went and did. I know her by
face. By her body and its tantalizing contours. But I don’t know
her name even though I really wish I did. I shake my head. I’m too
embarrassed to say anything.

‘
It’s Lucy.’
She do
esn’t add a surname and I’ve ran
out of courage to ask it. She calms her voice and introduces
herself like we had been life long friends. Like I have amnesia or
something. My head is spinning with questions that I want to ask
her. I try to focus on the area and not on her.

She must
think I’m ignorant but I just can’t look at her. I pace around a
little to get a feel of the place. The floor is polished clean but
the walls are caked in soot and flame scars. The fire that
destroyed most of the inside of the ship, and
probably the same one that killed my friend Kolt, must have been
severe, quick and relentless.

‘
How did you
make it here before me?’ I glance to her gorgeous face but quickly
look away. Her thin smile fades into a frown almost
instantly
. I feel like I’ve upset her.
Time to man up. Time to stop acting like a smitten teenager. I need
to engage with her and get over a silly little crush I seem to have
developed out of nothing. I stop scouring the floor, looking for
bodies I’m afraid to recognize, and face her head on for the first
time.

‘What is it.’ I reach out a brave hand to
comfort her. She lets me get close. I run my hand close to her and
run my open palm across her cold cheek as she begins to sob.

‘
I…’ she
begins. I can already guess how the sentence will end and it sends
my stomach to the pits yet again. ‘I don’t remember.’ I want
to
shiver at her admission. I want to
tell myself that it’s just coincidence and it has nothing to do
with the way Kolt was. I think she can sense that she has shaken
me. I rub her cheek a few times and even force a smile. She reaches
up and holds my hand in hers. I relish the moment. I don’t care how
silly it is. If it is real or not. I just want to touch her and I
love that she wants to hold my hand back.

I manage to press the issue after basking in
her love for just a moment. I have to press it. I have to know what
is going on.

‘Did you come
here for me? To kill me?’ She doesn’t reply right away. She turns
away from me and stares into the distance. ‘Or capture me, take me
back for what I did?’ I keep on asking her the same question in
different ways until she meets my eyes again. I lose my chain of
thought as soon as I am lost in her gaze.

‘
What did you
do?
’ She asked so sympathetically that
even I might have believed I was innocent. I killed men and I
stole.

‘You don’t
remember?’ I ask and put my other hand on her other cheek. If that
sounded sarcastic or mocking, it wasn’t meant to be. If she is here
to kill me, even though I don’t feel that is true, I’m going to
make it worth it.

‘
No.’ She
admits but smiles. ‘I feel… funny though.’
She loses my stare momentarily and seems to drift away into
thought.

‘How do you mean?’ I stoop down just a few
inches so that we are the same height and make her look at me
again.

‘I feel…
lost. But that’s ok. I feel peaceful about it.’ My heart drops into
my knees and I can only let my mind race thinking about what she
means. It can’t be coincidental. It can’t be. Kolt said the same
thing. He was a ghost. He was dead and he didn’t even know it until
he saw his rotting old ship again.

‘
Will you
kiss me?’ She asks me out of the blue, staring at me like a
besotted young girl in love. She is
smiling again. She has her mouth open just a touch in
anticipation. Like I would ever turn her down. I can’t remember my
last date. I can’t remember the last time I kissed a girl. Even her
name. It has been so long that I’m not sure if I ever have in
reality. If I have only dreamt of it. I don’t know if this will be
my first kiss or not.

She closes
her eyes and pulls herself close to me. She is strong but limp.
Firm but caring. She lets me reach out for her and press my lips to
hers. They are warm and soft and we spend the next few sweet
moments caressing one another’s lips with our own. She giggles just
a little as we break. I didn’t even
realize we had our eyes closed until I open
them.

Chapter 13

Clean Slates

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.