Kraken Orbital (31 page)

I stop when I
see the first one move. A single breath expands in the chest cavity
of a single victim. I freeze to the spot and listen intensely as my
heart races to my throat. I should have known. I should have known
they hadn’t escaped the same fate. Once one started breathing, the
next continued, followed in a chain until the room of bodies
breathed together as one.
Lucy clings
tightly to me as we stand in frozen disbelief. One stands, casts
their sheet aside, followed by the next and every one of them after
that. The dead stand. The gruesome dead. And they walk.

I hold her hand tight and pull her close to
me. Fearing the worst.

‘I’ll get you out of this I swear.’ I whisper
gently as the dead, the mass of dead, standing and lost, began to
cry as one. An ear and earth shattering cry of the lost. The
forever lost. They, like everyone who dies here, are cursed to
relive their death over and over again. In a twisted purgatory
between life and death. There are scientists, soldiers, civilians
and children among the crying dead.

They part
like a wave. Like a
rehearsed mass to
opposite sides of the room. Soldiers to one side. Everyone else
indiscriminately to the other. Leaving me and Lucy in the middle
alone. I should run, if I could have even managed to do so, but I
don’t. I want to see.

Some sick and
twisted desire inside of me driven by horrific
curiosity demanded that I stay. That I give them farewell
and take part in their death. I know what is about to happen. I can
feel it in my blood. The soldiers, dead, at one side of the room
raise antique guns identical to Kolt’s. The others, dead too, cower
as one mass at the other side. The sounds of gunfire fills the room
without the hot lead to accompany it. Like a play. A rehearsal or
an act.

The bullets
that were no longer there tore through the brittle and terrified
bodies
huddled together. And the noise
didn’t stop until every one of them had been killed yet again. A
command yelled by someone unknown, in Russian so that I could not
understand, and the soldiers turned their rifles around at the
butt. With one explosion of sound they fell too. But stood
immediately after. Bleeding as if the deed had only just been done,
they crawled to their resting places, pulled the sheets back around
their formerly dead bodies, and slept again until it was time to
relive their own nightmare again.

‘
Why did it
happen?’ Lucy asked. It shock
s me. Not
that she cared to ask but more that she didn’t ask what I expected
in the order I expected her to ask it. I thought she might have
begun with “what’s happening” or something to the same
effect.

‘I don’t
know. Maybe they were just afraid. They didn’t understand.’ I try
to console her as she gradually stopped crying.

‘Do you?’ I sigh at the proposition. I think
I do know what’s going on. And I get the feeling that she does too.
I just want her safe. I don’t want her to have to go through
this.

‘Yeah.’ She
smiles at me through shaking lips but says no more. I’m grateful
for that. I don’t want to get into it. I want it over and done with
at long last. ‘Let’s go.’

We stumble
together for a few steps as I work the stiffness from my back and
take over the pace soon after. I pick the biggest of three doors in
the room of the dead and make a direct heading for it.
In the chaos that was the last act of the dead I
had not noticed the sign on the door. It was the same everywhere. A
basic figure of a man heading right for the exit, which in this
case took on the form of a crudely drawn rocket ship. Chance had
lent us another hand in that we were stumbling in the right
direction.

‘I didn’t release that Gas.’ She announces
out of the blue.

‘What?’ I’m not mad. Not at all.

‘I think it
happened when the ship crashed. I didn’t press a thing I promise
you. It just seems that now we’re here, the things that killed the
poor people aboard the Kraken are coming back. Like the ship, or
something in the core of this messed up planet, wants us to see how
they died. Or it wants to recreate their deaths over and over
again.’ There it was. She hit the same explanation, the same blood
curdling and horrific theory I had arrived at in my hours of
tramping around the planet on my own. It dawns on me right now that
I haven’t even mentioned Kolt to her. Maybe it’s time I
did.

So I
t
ell her everything. Like I probably
should have from the start.

‘I was
rescued from the burning rig that I stole by a man who called
himself Private Kolter Gespenst.’ She perked up but didn’t
interrupt me. The door I had been aiming for parted slowly once I
presented my access card to it. It opened up into a room, small and
cramped, full of blinking lights and computer screens and an air
lock at the other side. ‘He half dragged me through the wilderness
with promises of rescue. He planned on calling the Russian
Federation using the masts onboard the Kraken.’ I can see the color
drop from her face at the last sentence.

‘But the federation…’

‘I know.’ I
si
t down against a corner of one of the
computer terminals without thinking of looking at what it was.
‘That was my first clue.’ No point in sugar coating the truth. Or
at least what I thought was the truth. ‘He burst into flames when
he saw the broken shell that used to be his ship. He said he had
been pretending he was alive, assuming life, and hadn’t even
realized he had died what must have been hundreds of years ago.’
Lucy visibly shivered and held her arms tight around her chest. She
said nothing so I feel once more that I need to fill in the gaps.
Those nervous gaps in a fledgling and young
relationship.

‘
I… should
have told you, I’m sorry.’ She just shakes her head.

‘I’m scared.’
She admits but looks away from my eyes.

‘It’s okay.’
Here I go again. Filled with the bravado that’s carried me here so
far. With the blind faith that I can save her. That I’ll do
everything in my power to see her live through this. ‘I’ll find a
way for you to be safe.’

Spurred on my
the rush of adrenaline my mind and body gifts to me I stand and
start examining the flashing lights and nonsensical computer
screens.
Luck had carried us this far.
But it had run out. I knew what these warning messages were. The
symbol was the same everywhere, feared everywhere too, and had not
been changed in countless years of space travel.

I won’t
pretend to myself to know anything about the science behind it but
it is in some curious way a vital pat of a hyper drive engine.
Microwave energy. It’s deadly and poisonous in most forms and it
filled the corridor ahead. And that was the only way to go to get
to the escape pods. Fate was cruel. A cruel and bitter temptress
that had hand fed us this far only to run us clean into a brick
wall. No way out. Lucy must have seen through my anger, frustration
and hopelessness.

‘
What is it?’
She places a single hand on my shoulder to look at the same screen.
But she mustn’t have understood. She casts me another pleading
look. I point to the glyph on the screen and I can almost see her
heart sink. The symbol consisted of three lines in a wave pattern
across a red triangle.

‘
There must
have been an accident. One of the
hyper
drive engines on one of the escape pods must have blown. This room
is shielded. The corridor beyond isn’t.’ I ran my finger along a
map upon the screen. It flashes red in the areas that it was unsafe
to go to.

‘
The chamber
that holds the escape pods is flooded with it too. So I’m assuming
the shut off valve is on the other side of the airlock.’
I sigh but only once. I already know what I need
to do. There really is no other way. No turning back and no point
regretting it. I know who I have to be now.

I watched my buddies get beaten and did
nothing. I watched the guards and the company beat guys to death
and did nothing. I was always a coward. But not today.

‘What do we do?’ She was deflated and beaten.
This was going to hurt. Me and her too.

‘
Lucy.’ I
stood to face her, bravely kissed her across the lips, and ran my
hands over her cheeks. ‘
I’m sorry.’ I
raise a balled fist and slam it as hard as I can into her
cheekbone. I hear the crunch, the sickening clash of sinew upon
sinew, and caught her before her limp body slammed off the
floor.

No way would
she have let me go. And to be honest, as
honest as I might as well be at the end, I don’t care for
an argument. I promised to save her. Time to do it.

I press the
button that opens the door to the air lock and look back to see
Lucy gradually come to. Without a shred of anger about her face she
runs to the door, full of tears, and starts banging at the console
controls. I know they won’t work. Not while I’m in here. She gives
up and looks longings into my eyes as the door behind me finally
opens. Exposing me to the deadly
microwave energy beyond.

‘
Don’t do this
!’ I can just make
out her tearful plea over my own heartbeat. I mime the words “I can
save you” back to her but this upsets her more. She bangs harder
and harder, becoming more and more upset each time, against the
glass of the door.

‘You can’t die for me
!’ I can
just a say make her out as I turn to face my own fate head on.
‘
It should have been
me
.’ She says it over and over again but
I have to ignore her. I can’t face her at all. Unless I get upset
too and I don’t want her to see that. I want her to remember me as
a hero. And I have to be glad that I’m getting the chance to be one
right here at the end.

Nothing
prepared me for what hit me. I knew walking into a microwave was
going to hurt but I had no idea how much. I c
an feel my blood start to warm in my cheeks and around my
face. In my head too. There really is no time to waste here. I
start to run. Uneasy at first given the agony my back is already
in, but it slowly evolves into a mindless stagger. Until the power
of the microwave energy starts to sap my strength and power. What
was left of it at least.

After a few
steps my eyes begin the blur and I can barely see anything at all.
My visions reddens and I can almost feel the pulse of my blood gush
through the arteries that line the iris of my eye. Before I am out
of sight of the door, and Lucy who I left behind, I fall to
my knees coughing unstoppably. Blood starts
pulsating out of my mouth and my chest tightens with each
spasm.

I have to
keep going. Dig as deep as I can, I
grind
my heels in and push with everything I have left against them. I
lift my right arm first, punch it into the floor ahead of me, and
scrape my knuckles along the polished surface for traction. And I
drag my boiling body ever slowly to the opening not more than a
hundred yards ahead of me.

I want to
stop. Everything in my mind is screaming to me to stop. To give in
to death and let this place finally have it’s way with me. But I
can’t. I made a promise to save Lucy and I
’m going to make sure I do it. That feeling drives me.
Another fist slammed into the floor and more scraping from my feet
powers me through the doorway and into full view of the escape
pods.

They
st
and tall at three storey’s high. Sleek,
highly polished with an earthy design. Tantalizing yet for me at
least completely unattainable. My eyes burn red and I need to find
a way to shut off whatever part of whatever of the three ships had
been damaged.

I run my limp
hand against the doorway and use whatever corner I can grip against
to pull myself to my feet one last time. I stand with all the will
I have left and stumble on into the expansive room beyond. Looking
up I can see the launch chamber and can only hope they aren’t
blocked. If they are, they’re her problem, because I’ll be dead
before I have any chance to fix it.

The ship to
the left, and the one to the far right, look intact and perfectly
preserved. It ha
s to be the one in the
middle. The one with a door shaped and sized panel missing from the
mid section must have been causing the problems. It’s surrounded by
a metal walkway. The same sort that spiraled up the main engine at
the other side of the ship.

I need to
climb it and find a way to close the panel. A stray thought
suggested to me that someone must have been working on it, perhaps
even trying to escape themselves, as the Kraken slammed into the
deadly world at our feet.
But it
ultimately doesn’t matter.

It
’s what it is to me right now.
Momentum pushes me on but my feet can’t keep up with my urgency and
I fall to the floor again. Right in front of the cold stairs. I
reach out with my right hand and wrap it around part of the hollow
metal frame before pulling as hard as I can. Even though I can hear
my own failing heartbeat, and that sound consumes all around me, I
can make out the creaking sound of the metal bowing under my
weight.

I push on,
one step at a time, and gradually ascend the weak and swaying
walkway.
I climb, breathing hard and
audibly through closing lungs, up the side of the walkway and force
myself to stand. Though limp and resting entirely against the
stairway. I can see through my bloodshot eyes a large red button.
It is cased in a plastic housing that I must flip open in order to
even think of pressing the button. Around it is painted a mesh
pattern of black, yellow and red. It lines one side of the sliding
panel and I am out of energy to assume it is anything but the
solution to the problem at hand. I, gasping for breath through my
closing and bleeding throat, slam my closed fist against the
button.