Kraken Orbital (9 page)

He erupts
though. He has a temper on him. I’ve seen it get him in trouble so
many times
before. He jumps to his feet
and ignores the fact the tray he is holding still has food on it
and starts beating the guard over the head with it. He grunts with
every hollow impact. I want to help him. I really do. But I
daren’t. I hate myself for it. They have me broken, beat down and
afraid. Just where they like us. I wish I could be more like Doug
and just swing out for a lucky punch.

The male
guard endures a few beats and then punches out at my buddy. I’m
frozen to my seat. I know what will happen to me if I try to help
him out. That kind of
insolence gets you
thrown in isolation for sometimes months at a time. The female
guard comes racing over and administers an electric shock to my
friend with a concealed weapon.

He
hit
s the table, eyes still pinned wide
open, and passes out immediately. The guards drag him off, spilling
all of my food across the room as they do. I hate myself for not
doing anything. I know what they’re doing is wrong and I hate the
fact they have me too damn afraid to do anything about it. I
quietly promise to no one but myself that one day things will
change.

Breakfast is
over quickly. I lost all my appetite and ate nothing. We are filed
out into the changing area which is down a few more pale and
uninteresting corridors.
I was gonna miss
Doug on this shift. Him getting dragged away has put me on a
dangerous downer.

I pull my
black suit on in silence
in front of a
towering blue locker as some of my team mates start to wake up and
enjoy a few bantering jokes. I’m happy they have their spirits up.
I honestly am. But mine is rock bottom and theirs will be soon too.
Damn newbies. I don’t feel like getting involved. I still feel
deeply ashamed.

The suit is
tight and unforgiving to the male extremities. It has basic
padding
but it does nothing for you if
you get a rock falling on it or anything like that. I’ve seen guy’s
arms snap clean off before. It is patterned like a human muscular
frame with protruding silver colored pads that emulate a six-pack
figure and a good general muscle structure. I remember seeing the
pictures of them and thinking, stupidly, that if I signed up I
would end up looking awesome like that.

None of us
have good fr
ames. They feed us too much
crap and we get no time to recover to build any muscle. I pull my
mask on. It’s like a motorcycle helmet. It has interior lights that
illuminate my face and allow me to see a few paces in front of me.
It’s dark and claustrophobic to wear though. It intensifies my
breathing and exaggerates the sound of my pulse through the sides
of my neck. It freaked me out at first but now I just think they’re
stupidly uncomfortable.

As soon as we
are changed the shift leader, a short, bald, highly aggressive and
insufferable son of a bitch, comes to take us to the mine. I hate
that guy so much. He talks like he owns the place. Like he knows
everything there is to know. He thinks he has all his
life figured out and that life comes easy to
him.

He gets a
kick out of how beaten down and depressed we all look at the end of
our long slog. He likes to wind us up and take the piss out of us
all day long, like he could do any bett
er
at this hard as nails, rubbish job than we can. He thinks he’s
God’s gift to the job.

At the end of
the day the dumb ass is still stuck down here with us, staring at
the same rock for months on end, watching and laughing at us as we
try to break it apart. That
epitomizes
what I hate the most about this job. They caught us, all of us,
with promises of promotion and creating a better life. If this is
the kind of guy I would have to turn into to “make it” to the next
level in the company, then they can keep it.

He leads us through a large air locked door,
that is locked with a spinning mechanism in the middle of two
splitting parts, and down the dry black rocks to the same face of
brick we’ve been hammering at for months on end. We were supposed
to be mining a crag in the planet for some damn mineral I’ve never
even heard of.

I stay pretty
much silent for my whole shift. You would think that in this day
and age we would mine using expensive equipment but that’s not
true. I think it’s more economical to slave drive us into the
ground with sharpened pick axes.
And then
just replace us when we burn out and die. Humans are cheap.
Machines aren’t.

I swing my
axe at the rock face, deep down in a dark tunnel completely void of
natural light, relentlessly at the unforgiving wall. I swing hard
each time but I can’t get the picture of my buddy getting dragged
away from the back of my eyes. I hate this place. I hate getting
talked down to the way that I do. I hate how the security forces
lord it over us and how we never get any time to get off-world and
enjoy some downtime. I hate that I never see my family any more,
barely even get the chance to call them up.

There is no
light down here. Ju
st the silly,
virtually useless head torches they have built into our crash
helmets.

I think about
quitting. I think about it all of the time. I don’t even know how
to do it
though. I don’t even know how to
go about handing a notice in. I never see a “higher up” to even
talk to them. Not that I would dare.

I know my energy isn’t up to scratch. I think
about how I used to be. I think about how I used to try to impress
my boss on my first few shifts with him and I would slam at the
rock as hard as I could over and over again until some small speck
broke off.

I remember
how he used to praise me and say I would do well and that I would
go far.
How naïve was
I?
That disappeared after a few months
and then the beating started.

The guys in
the sleeping quarters used to hate me. They hated how enthusiastic
I was and how I made them look bad. They never did anything about
it. I would forgive them now if they just beat the living daylights
out of me every single night. But they didn’t. And they didn’t
because they knew what would happen. They knew the company, and its
true
colors, would soon shine through and
that I would turn into the same bitter and destroyed sort of wreck
that they are.

I know I’m not like that anymore. I know my
boss detects that I’m on my way down and he is on my case every
single day. Life shouldn’t be like this. Slaving away for some
company, never seeing your family, never being able to get out and
meet new people. Maybe even a girl. While I might still be young. I
can’t even remember if I am or not. I don’t feel it. I feel
old.

I swing my
axe
with mere muscle memory. There’s no
thought behind it. There is no power behind it. There is no intent
with any swing. The dull edge of the blade just chinks at the stone
all day long. I assume, of course, that it is even day time. There
truly is no way to tell. Some of the guys to my side have a few
boulders, fist sized fragments of the rock face, lain on the floor
beside them. I have nothing to show for the shift. I know I’m in
for it. I can’t bring myself to care though.

‘
Parker
?’ There goes his
aggressive, grating little voice. He looks up at me from his
stunted frame and immediately invades my personal space.

‘What?’ I’m immediately shallow with him. I’m
hostile and he hates it. It might dig my grave for me but I’m not
backing down to this guy today.

I don’t know if he can sense my deflated tone
or, even if he does, if he will care or not. I doubt he has any
emotion beating through his shallow heart.

‘Why
haven’t you got anything
from today?’ He emphasizes the word “why” with such a condescending
tone. It gets right under my skin.

‘I guess the
rock is too hard right there.’ I point at it. He thinks I’m being
sarcastic. I am, but not intentionally, I just want this over with
as soon as possible. He hardens his stance and flares at the
nostrils. I can see the shadow below his nose stretch, illuminated
by the weak lights in his helmet.

‘
If you can’t do this job then I’ll just find someone else
who can!’
He barks at me as he points an
accusatory finger right at my chest. I can feel the primal rage
build up inside of me. Just like I feel it every time he starts.
But there is something different about today. Today, I can’t stop
it, and I don’t want to either.

‘
Then how do you pay to feed your family, I bet your fat
mother eats ten tons a day!
’ He barks
again. And there it is. I snap. Like I’ve wanted to for so long.
The pent up anger raised inside of me finally releases and I’m no
longer in control. I submit entirely to the beast
within.

I lift up my
axe and strike the sorry son of a bitch with the dull end of
it. The force of the blow, the most powerful
I’ve delivered all day, cracks right through his glass helmet face.
I can see the fear in his face. I see his eyes widen and his chin
wobble. And I love it. I’m the top dog all of a sudden!

This
sorry, small and pitiful man has made me, and my
whole group, feel like less than crap for years and now I’m on top!
I strike him again and he falls to the floor. The glass shatters
with the second blow and he gasps for oxygen in the shallow
atmosphere of the cave. I want to kill him. The un-evolved ape
inside of me wants to pulverized this small, pathetic, insect of a
man into the dirt beneath my feet just because he dared to look at
me wrong!

If this was a
dog eat dog world, like it should be, if we were back in the dark
ages before the infection of
civilization, like we should be, if this was survival of
the fittest and the lesser man ended up on the menu? Then I’d have
killed him and feasted on his blood for a week. Regrettably, the
civilized man with a conscience, who knows that its wrong to kill
for any reason, stops me in my tracks.

I finally see
again through my rage glazed eyes and look at my bewildered
colleagues who are staring at me blankly in a welcome state of
disbelief. I
realize my teeth are gritted
shut and I’m panting hard for breath to calm my surge of
adrenaline. It suddenly occurs to me. Any one of these men could
have sounded the alarm by now. More than that they could have
stopped me themselves. But they haven’t.

I make a run for it, carried by the
empowering sense that I might just escape this persistent
nightmare.

I run like I’ve never ran before. My feet
pound hard off the solid rocky surface of the cave and I make for
the airlock. There are other miners still working. I have a chance
at this. The news can’t have spread that fast if people are still
working. I race through the mine as fast as I can. I lean into
every turn so I can make it around the tight and twists rocky
outcroppings.

I knock three guys right off their feet as I
round the last corner to the air lock. I would like to stop and ask
them if they’re ok but I fight that urge and carry on. The door is
locked. Obviously. I still have my axe and I’m not going to be
defeated! I swing it hard into the locking mechanism in the centre
of the door. It sparks but doesn’t budge. I hit it again with every
inch of swing I can manage. Again with heart pulsing agony! Once
more and it relents.

The mechanism drops limply to the floor with
a circular rotating motion, like a coin dropping only to remain
unsettled. The door springs open. People are getting worried. I can
see them over my shoulder, they huddle into the wall struck with
fear, but I don’t care!

The door to the airlock springs open and I
enter it. I jam the axe into the next door and hit it over and over
until it drops too. I swing my axe as hard as I can into the
ventilation chamber above until it stops working too. I did that
out of malice and I really enjoyed it.

I’m back in the changing area. The next crew
are getting ready for their shift, they are glued to the benches in
fear too. I enter the room like a snarling, pulsating, enraged
dragon wielding my axe tightly about my clenched fists. Every time
I breath out I unintentionally snarl or growl.

They do
nothing, so I bolt it past them and make for the next corridor that
I don’t
recognize. If I’m going to make
it out then I need to go to places that I don’t know off the top of
my head. The only other direction would lead me back to my bed
chamber, where I could most usefully, pull the covers over my head
and hide until I got found and likely shot.

I bolted
through a red
colored door that
thankfully wasn’t locked. The light was the first thing that hit
me. The powerful yet gentle sun high in the sky instantly blinded
me but did nothing to sooth my enraged temper. The door led out to
a raised, mesh patterned, metal walkway.

It ran off in
several directions like a spider web connecting a million different
stairwells and other facilities. The steel frames clung against the
rocky fissures and crags. Two guards spotted me right away. Both
guys, massive, with huge muscles and decked out in red, combat
bruised,
armor came bearing down on me
from over the walkway.

I don’t know
where to go. My fight or flight reaction was stuck on the former. I
bolted right to them. I hit the first guy so hard with a dipped
shoulder that he stumbled right away and fell, with a shattering
scream, to the rocky surface below. I heard his body hit the ground
and snap.