Kraken Orbital (4 page)

It was rapid
re-radiation of stored heat in the ground. The sun belts down
immense amount of heat in the daylight hours but
later on in the night, with no cloud cover and nothing to
insulate it, that heat spills out back into the atmosphere in the
night time.

I hadn’t
been
too bothered by it though. This
armor I stole from one of the guards had kept me reasonably warm
and I was just happy to wake up looking at the sky. To see the
millions of stars and not just the base of some other guy’s bunk
above me.

It
’s no surprise that Kolt is up
and around before me. I don’t even remember him falling asleep. His
breathing is calmer now at least. I thought he was going to pass
out and die last night carrying those bottles of water.

I feel a little guilty about it. That
sensation is burning away in the pit of my stomach. But I’m glad of
it. I’ve not had the time to feel anything in such a long time that
I’m glad just to feel at all.

Whether it’s
anger or guilt, sadness, joy or love. I don’t care. He is sat atop
one of the larger dunes. I can just about see him by his black
silhouette against the strong light of the morning desert sun. He
is facing the other way. I can hear, in the calm of the barren
space, his regular and controlled breathing. In and out through his
tight gas mask. I feel for him. It must be constant stress to have
to think, and probably worry, about the simplest task of
breathing.

I can just about make out his twin needles
and tube kit. The water bottle he is ingesting intravenously
glistens against the rising and powerful sun. I decide to make my
way over to him. I want to ask him about his cryptic comments from
last night but I’m not sure I’ll ever find the best moment to do
so.

The sand is
soft, unreliable, and sinks around the depression I make with every
press of my heel as I try to walk up the dune. As I look upon the
sand, it doesn
’t look like a difficult
task to walk upon it, but the reality is very different. The ground
is inconstant and flows with every pressure placed upon it. I try
to look poised and collected as I walk towards Kolt. But I stumble
and fall regularly. I have to put my hand down to the ground just
to keep my fragile balance.

The sand is hot to the touch. Not just warm,
but insensitively hot. It feels as though each fine grain burns a
new and individual puncture mark into my hardened skin. I hope this
desert does not last long and we find shade soon.

Kolt stirs
when he hears the gentle cascade of fine grains of sand as I
approach, leaving my dignity behind, with clumsy ape like steps. By
the looks of him, his eyes, I guess he probably hasn’t slept at
all. He turns to face me. I can’t tell if he is happy to see me or
not.
Or even if he can just about put up
with me.

‘
We have a
long day ahead.’ He opens the first conversation of the day
bleakly. I’m not offended. I’m not exactly used to being woken
gently by the rocking hand of a lover or anything. I’m used to
waking up to some
moron or another
blasting me for whatever reason they can think of right there on
the spot.

‘
Just the
one?’ I ask rhetorically and sarcastically. I don’t think Kolt
understands my dry and mutated
humor.
Maybe he doesn’t get much of that back on Earth and on the original
Russia.

‘Many days in
fact.’ He says and pulls the needle out of his bleeding arm. His
mouth must be dry constantly. I know he’s at least getting the
fluid he needs to survive but it’s not the same. Shoving it
straight into your veins can’t give you the same sense of
satisfaction as quenching your powerful thirst with a gulp of icy
cold water. Washing it around your dry, sand filled mouth and
teeth.

That thought has me thirsty. I don’t know how
much water Kolt managed to get from the escape pod floor but it
can’t possibly match the amount we will need to safely trek though
what looks like an endless desert. I take the bottle from the sandy
dune, the one he has used to feed himself through his needles, and
take a swig from it. The bottle is surprisingly full. I don’t
really want to swallow it knowing where it has been and what Kolt
had been using it for. But my thirst is strong enough to overpower
that reaction.

I remember, just in due time, how many times
I had to drink from water deposits built up on the mine floor.
Conditions really could be that bad.

He obviously
wants to ignore my stab at
humor and
carries right on into an account of the horror that lies ahead. He
stands slowly from the sand and pulls his sleeve down over his many
wounds. He stretches a while and I take a few more mouthfuls of
water from the warm bottle. It’s not exactly refreshing but it does
the job.

‘
The desert
will last another day.’ He began ‘But soon it will
give way to a large body of water that I think
we can swim. I did. Then the water will give way to the trees and a
great forest beyond. The forest will make us lost and is a
dangerous place to be. At the end of the forest we will meet some
foothills and be forced to climb a great mountainous peak to reach
the crash site.’

He says it
all with an absence of emotion. He remembers the journey but seems
distant. He’s lost in his thoughts again. I follow his distant eyes
for a moment but I can’t bare the effort.

‘That’s how far you came?’ I ask him. For a
while he doesn’t reply and I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to.

‘Yes.’
H
e answers but gives away no more
detail.

The thought of enduing another day in the
baking heat of the desert has me frustrated but I should have honed
in on the other thing he said a little faster. We had collected our
few supplies together and pilled them back into my fragile backpack
before it occurred to me to ask.

‘
Why is the
forest such a dangerous place to be?’ We had taken the first step
on our epic journey before I finally got around to asking him. I
took the backpack this time. He had exhausted himself yesterday
trying to carry it all that distance. I feel strong today.
Stronger than I have in a while. Those
painkillers had worn off in the night and my body still aches and
screams in pain from the impact of the crash. But I’m used to being
beaten around like some kind of stress ball. So I still feel like
I’m up for this. I feel like a day’s walk will do me
good.

‘There are predators there.’ Kolt finally
answers. That was no surprise really. But nothing prepared me for
what he was about to tell me.

‘Are you
aware of dinosaurs?’ He asks. The creatures had roamed the Earth
millions and millions of years ago. But there were no records of
them ever having been found on any other world. No one on the
colonies had ever found fossil records in our own soil, but in all
honesty, I have no idea how many people actually went out there
looking for them.

People were
obses
sed at all times with what was in
front of them. That seemed like the prevailing feeling of the time
I live in. No one really cares what came before them and how their
current situation came about.

I dared to be
excited at first. To be able to see them in the flesh, if that was
what Kolt was actually telling me. But that
short and indeed short-sighted feeling passed quickly and
paved the way for fear. I have to admit that a bit of panic slipped
in there too. I know nothing of dinosaurs and all of the childish
excitement disappears from my mind as I start to imagine enormous
brutes capable of tearing me apart without having to even try. I
hold off on getting too hung up by it though. I guess we have no
choice but to go back the way he came. It would be what it would be
in the end.

Our walk
gives me time to think about
things. I
have no way of getting off the planet without trusting in Kolt. I
don’t know him. I have faith in him though and I don’t even know
why. He is distant and aggressive even though I’m sure I’ve done
nothing to offend him. Every time I try to start a conversation he
makes it a short one and bulldozes me into a corner so I can’t
think of anything else to say to him.

I still don’t
know why he said he didn’t want to be rescued. Logic tells me
it
’s because he’s given up and doesn’t
want to live anymore. But if that was true, this barren planet must
have presented him countless opportunities to take the easy way out
and get himself killed. So logic might be lying to me.

He said he
didn
’t desire rescue. That means he
doesn’t want to go back to wherever he came from.
Does that mean he has some horrible
fate awaiting him if he returns?
Is he afraid to return?
My heart
jumps a little at the possibility that we might be kindred spirits.
I can’t go back either.

But that
makes no sense either. I know I’ll never get it out of him so I
don’t think there is even a point in asking him about it again. If
he had some kind of punishment or something worse waiting for him
then why would he be helping me at all? He could have just let me
die for that matter. Or if his conscience wouldn’t let me die, then
he could have saved me just like he did, but then just give me
directi
ons and a map of how to find his
ship.

I’m starting
to obsess. Everyone I’ve ever known has told me, at some time or
another, that I do that. My mind overreacts and hones in on any
small detail. It looks for evidence to support a theory I probably
just made up in some pit of my own imagination. It takes things and
twists them to look like e
vidence to
support some bull hypothesis.

But I’m like a dog with a bone who just won’t
let go. I need the answers like I need air to live. I’m not nosey.
Just if it feels like I’m affected by what is going on then I feel
like I need to see every angle of it. Sometimes I wish that I could
just turn it off. I wish that I could be normal and just go with
the flow. Whatever the flow might be.

The only
trouble is that I’m usually right. If I smell something’s off. It
more often than not is. On the flip side of that though. I can
never see the wood for the trees. I look at detail and miss the
picture. That’s how I got trapped in that job. That was a dumb
decision for a reasonably smart guy. I messed up. And I paid my
price.

Back to the
problems at hand though. For now I have no option but to trust in
Kolt, even though I know he’s on the wrong side of psycho street.
Maybe, hopefully, I’m misjudging him. Maybe the baking desert sun
is clouding my judgment. It beats down on my exposed face with
every split second that passes. It feels so hot that I might as
well be in an oven. I can’t look up to the sky. It’s too bright.
There isn’t a single cloud to rely on for cover and we have only
been walking a few hours.
In
silence
.

The sand has
heated up and I can feel it burning through my
armored boots with every step. But I only have the sand
below to look at. The sun’s light reflects off of it too well. It’s
like staring into a mirror. The reflected light is burning holes in
the backs of my retinas and it’s making it hard to see anything at
all. I feel a little lost and very disorientated. I can’t make out
the various textures in the sand and I can’t read the undulating
dunes well enough to make for steady progress.

So far
I
’ve been able to keep on my feet but I
can’t imagine how undignified and how very un-cool I must look. I
can just rely on following Kolt and his unwavering pace. It’s like
he drifts over the sand. It looks like he isn’t feeling a second of
the torment that I am. He is tough, hard as nails, that’s for sure.
He steps artistically over the sand and strides on despite it’s
ever changing resistance.

I can hear him breathing still. It’s all
there is to focus on. It’s making me sick. I use all the energy I
have and run to catch up with him. I tap him hard on the shoulder
and he stops to face me. His face is burned, what I can see of it
through those ominous eye holes in his gas mask, and his eyes
remain tired, wide, and bloodshot.

‘Would you like a drink?’ He asks. His voice
is kind and that shocks me a little. I nod. I have no energy spare
for talking. I could have just got it myself but Kolt drags the
backpack away from me and digs inside for the water bottle we had
been drinking from that morning. He unscrews the cap and hands it
to me. He keeps a gloved hand on the top to steady it as I take
gulp after gulp.

I hold up my
hand to say “thanks” and he pulls the bottle away.
He
’s still stood tall above me. I enjoy
the brief moment of relief from the heat as I duck behind his
sizeable shadow. I use it to refocus my eyes and give myself a
stern talking to. The day is only middle aged and we still have a
long distance to go. I comfort myself with the thought of a jungle
to hide in soon. But I’m careful not to let my thoughts dwell at
all on the monsters that the jungle hides.

Kolt slowly
reaches under his apron and reveals a large hunting knife.
It
’s long and sharp. The blade is curved
at one edge and reaches a pointy tip. The other side is fashioned
to be used as a saw with a serrated edge. That would be used to
hack through bone no doubt. I recoil in a brief, and regrettable,
moment of terror. He casts me a judgmental and deeply hurt look. He
must be fighting the urge to have a go at me and instead places a
single raised finger over his lips. Or at least the snout of his
mask in front of his lips.