Kraken Orbital

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 16

  The Dead

  I just can’t lie anymore. My back feels worse than ever. I can lie to others. I can hide it. I can cover it up, but I can’t lie to myself and just carry on ignoring it. But at the same time, I need to keep moving. This place is no place to die. Alone in this ship, not being able to see two fingers in front of my face, and choked by this creeping gas.

  I persuade myself off my knees and stumble to the wall at my left. I place a hand on it and use that to support my weight as I shuffle down the hallway. I can remember the map she had drawn. I need to turn left. My hand finally finds it’s way around a sharp corner and the rest of my body follows.

  I know the next task is a long walk down a corridor, before I have to negotiate some tougher obstacles. I need to take it easy, try to breathe my way through the clenching pain, and take this easier walk to try and put myself right.

  I manage to scrape myself down the hall and reach the first turn to the left. The slow walk and gentle pace relaxes my back muscles and the spasm from before subsides a little bit. I can breath a little easier now and it calms me enough to refocus.

  I’m trying to keep that mental map alive in my head but it isn’t easy. I’m still fuzzy in the mind. Probably suffering concussion and definitely starved of water and food. Then there’s the blood loss on top of that.

  No way am I firing on all cylinders. I try to think of the basic sweeping pattern around the lab and to the airlock on the other side. But there are some doors and areas she hadn’t drawn on her lipstick map. And they throw me a little. I guess I need to stick to the path of least resistance. That must have been what she did. That was the only way she might have made it down the twisting halls so quickly.

  I’m walking slowly still, even after that first left turn, and I have one arm pressed with my palm open across the wall to my right. It’s there to steady me. To stop me from falling if my back has another spasm or anything like that. Whatever painkillers Kolt had given me had completely worn off and failed in my system. Maybe there will be more in that lab? I can hope.

  That thought might help me drive through the last of the challenges and get me through that door. That as well as the chance of seeing Lucy again.

  I come across, quite by accident as I slid my hand over the flame choked and scarred walls, a door that was peculiarly warm. Warm like it shouldn’t be. Not here on this ice cast mountain. After a raging torrent of a fire ripped through the ship many years ago. It was nice though. Just the touch and the feel of it. What were the chances? I thought to myself. Of there still being an odd burning ember on the other side, one that might warm me and comfort me. One that might burn a hole through this suffocating gas so that I may be able to see.

  And what were the chances still that I might be able to get the door open? I fold my apron to one side and reach into the pocket of my armor. I haven’t used my access card for a long time. Since we left the rig so many miles and what feels like so many days ago.

  What were the chances that it might open this door? I thought hard. Through the mire of gas, through the shaken concussive blasts to my head, through the claustrophobia and to some entrenched memory that I could barely still grasp at. All the cards worked off a personal area network. They used the electric field the body generates to spark the door open.

  The technology was old. Really old. I hold it to the door. To the spinning lock in the middle, of the same design as all of the others but infinitely smaller. And to my shock, amazement and horror, it opened in front of me.

  I wish there had been a port hole so that I could have looked in first. I wish there had been a camera by the door, or that I had my wits about me and denied myself the guilty pleasure of seeking out he warmth. But there wasn’t. And I didn’t.

  So nothing prepared me for the six foot tall burning man that slumped out of the door and fell upon my boots. I jump so hard in shock that I slam myself against the opposite side of the hall. My heart starts again, even though I don’t know how it has the energy to keep beating, and my chest burns like never before. The gas billowed around the tall, licking and oddly persistent flame. And he stands.

  I start backing away, crouched down as low as I can through fear or some other silly reaction. The burning man looks right into my eyes through his. Bloodshot like Kolt’s. Masked like his too. Dressed the same and threateningly poised. I dare to lie to myself and say that he hadn’t seen me. How could he have? Through the gas and past the flames that still failed to consume him.

  But he had. I know it. He looks just like Kolt but he isn’t. I know he wasn’t. Kolt was my friend, in death, his at least, and I knew it wasn’t him. Even though the two might easily be mistaken.

  ‘Forgive… me?’ The dead man asks with a long pause between breath.

  ‘What?’ I demand of him and bravely stand. He confused me. Worried me clearly.

  ‘I am sorry for my sin. I beg you to forgive me.’ He lurches forth with an outreached flaming hand. But he spoke sincerely and sweetly. Through dried up tears and many years of solemn thought. There was weight behind his words. Truth and meaning too.

  ‘How can I?’ I ask him but can’t help to back away. It might have been a cliché but I got the feeling that by asking for forgiveness, he was about to do something that needed it, and he was about to kill me.

  ‘Are you not God?’ He asks again. More aggressively and determined this time. But with a further weight of impatience and desperation. What can I say in reply to him?

  ‘No. I’m sorry…’ I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for but I sure was.

  ‘Then you are like me?’ I don’t answer but accidentally shake my head.

  ‘What do you mean? Like you?’ I ask him to clarify and for once stood my ground.

  ‘Dead. And Lost.’ I could feel the shiver that raced down my spine churn my stomach. I don’t have time to protest.

  I didn’t have time to answer back. He backed away. Back into the doorway where I had discovered him. And I heard it lock behind him. I have no idea why I even tried, but my access card wouldn’t open it again.

  But I touch my palm once more to the surface. To feel it still warm. My throat is jumping out of my mouth. I feel sick but have nothing there to throw up.

  I have seen visions on this ship before. I don’t want to think about who that was. Or what he was. And furthermore what he meant by his parting words. So I have to let my mind relax in the assumption that this was another vision. Even though it gave me no comfort to think of it either way.

  But what else can I do? I need to ignore it. To put it down to some kind of silly vision or even my concussion. Because I need to keep going. I need to push on. So that’s what I do. I just keep moving. Fighting back the pain and the torture going on in my head, I move further along the otherwise barren hall. My hand still feels warm. And it won’t cool down.

  I guess, no I hope, that must be in my head too. I take the next left and try to stand firm again. My back pain is coming and going. But when it comes it feels excruciating. But it seems to be on the way down for now. So I breathe easy for now. I remember from the map in my mind, a copy of the one she drew for me in her ruby red lipstick, that the way ahead is blocked.

  And I can finally see why. The gas that had choked me for this long is flowing freely and steeply out of a sizeable crack in the side of the hull. I can finally see more than an inch ahead of me. More than whatever section of the billowing cloud whatever makeshift light source I might have come by had lit up for me.

  I can see right through the honeycomb structure of the armor plating that lines the hull and back out into the word beyond. The snow must have stopped but the mountain pass we had left behind still lays covered in the virgin white fall from earlier. It’s cold again quite suddenly but I’m glad of it. Of the fresh air too. Even though it hurts my face through the mask. It burns into my lungs that had become too used to the warmth of the ship. Or relative warmth at least.

  I can see that the path
ahead is clear of the gas, as it all escapes out of the side of the hull, but I still don’t risk taking off my mask just for the time being. I remember from her drawing that the section ahead is flooded, though I’m struggling to imagine how or why at this height.

  Out of the crack in the hull I can see for miles and miles in the clear sky. I suddenly become glad that I’m inside. The vastness of this word and its sheer lack of any kind of civilization makes it daunting. This little ship is at least some kind of memento of a life more normal to me.

  I wouldn’t last a day out there. At least not without Kolt.

  I try some of the doors by me and find them all locked. My heart is filled with panic again and my access card isn’t working on any of them either. How could Lucy have made it this far if all of the doors were locked? The answer was staring at me. Out in the maze of metal that was the honeycombed shell of the armor plating I can see a tiny bit of her jacket torn against one of the sharper edges.

  She must have climbed out and around the locked doors. I knew she was brave. But this is extreme.

  As soon as I’d realized what she had done, I instinctively look down, and immediately wish I hadn’t. With the gas stumbling up in a flume toward the atmosphere outside, I can see clearly through the curved and arced superstructure of the armor plate.

  There was a long way down. Higher than that mountain pass Kolt and I had climbed. More exposed. And more obstacles to hit on the way down too. The space was marred with metal bars and beams running from one side of the armor plate and back to the hull. There’s plenty to hold onto at least. There’s no other way. I have to climb it.

  So I just have to get on with it. To Hell with all of the fear. To Hell with that distant but encroaching thought and fears of failure. To Hell with all of it. Do or die. I came here, to this world, away from the mine, prepared to die. Time to nut up or shut up!

  I pull my brittle frame through the gap in the hull and take tight hold of the first vertical beam. It’s freezing to the touch as I expected. I don’t even look down. I don’t stop so my mind can’t entertain the thought of falling. I step with as much grace as I think I’ve ever had along a section of beams and reach out for the corner where the side of her jacket had become snagged.

  I take the fabric for no real reason and stuff it into my pocket, then stop for a quick break. I’m conscious of looking down. Conscious to avoid it. So I look up instead.

  I hear them scream. But barely make out the shape of a body fall past me and down into the shell of the ship. By the time my eyes had caught up with the speed of their fall, they were gone. And all I made out was a dark shadow race past my eyes. But I did hear them scream. A throaty, desperate and pleading scream that was ultimately short lived. I couldn’t hear them hit the bottom. I was high up in the structure and there was a long drop in front of me.

  In disbelief I look up again and try to see where the mysterious figure had fallen from. But I saw nothing. The gas that had plagued me thus far was shrouding the way. That thick noxious gas from which no light escaped. Could I have imagined that too?

  I tighten my grip on the next bar and lurch forward to the next. I step over another gaping chasm and keep going until I see another gap in the hull to my left. That must have been where she had gone. In fact I’m sure of it. There is, and it is a miracle I saw it at all through my quickly fogged gas mask lenses, a tiny splurge of blood against the crack to the innards of the ship. She must have caught her hand or something on the doorway.

  There’s a lot of exposed metal out here. I hope she is ok. I leap, rather bravely, back into the hallway. Which is no longer filled with noxious gas thankfully. I try to get my mask off right away but my hands are having none of it. I had been even colder out in the exposed section of the armor plating than I was used to.

  My adrenaline is going too though and I was trying so hard but couldn’t grip at all. So I just leave it alone for now.

  There had to be someone else on this ship! It was the only answer I can come up with that I feel comfortable with. It’s the only one that explained everything short of my god like vision of the scene where Kolt had died. The figures in the gas. The burning man in the hall, and the falling person just now.

  There had to be another group of survivors on this ship. But who could they be? Maybe survivors from the original crash? That was a stupid thought, or so my mind recoiled as soon as the words had crossed the metaphorical lips of the voice inside my own head. But it was right to.

  This ship had crashed a very long time ago. The thought almost hurt. It made me think of Kolt. My friend, who I was doomed to never see again. Maybe, I press on with my line of inquiry, maybe they were survivors of the same ship that had brought Lucy here. Maybe they were from the Morris-Cooper company too? If that was the case, I had been lucky to dodge them so closely.

  Even though she had lost her memory, or claimed to at least, I have no doubt about why they were here. To capture me and return me to the company, if not kill me outright. That thought gives me another spurt. I need to press on. I was so glad to be back inside and out of danger of falling that I had as yet failed to notice the burst water pipe overhead.

  The water that once gushed from it had long ago stopped of course and the pipe had been choked up with ice, but I’m happy to guess what’s coming next. Lucy had drawn little wave patterns on her map to indicate, what I assumed, was a flooded section of the path. It looks like I’m heading right for it.

  There’s a hall and a door to my rear but the explosion that had caused the gaping hole I had just climbed through had collapsed a section of the ceiling too and it was blocked. The floor of the hall in which I stand is frozen and slippery as a result. There’s another door dead ahead. It’s already open and ajar. I need to head for that. Lucy must have forced it over somehow.

  As soon as I squeeze through I notice the temperature spike. It’s dark but the air is chokingly damp and humid. The frozen surface of the hall previous changed almost immediately to slush and pools of stagnant water along my path. I can hear, or I think so anyway, a feint hissing noise.

  I conclude by what evidence I have that a steam pipe must have burst, probably quite recently, and melted the frozen pools of ice. It seems odd to me that a pipe, if I was even right, could have burst after so long. But I guess the ship, as old as it was already, is still in the process of dying. The systems, it’s life support, engines and everything else I can’t recall right away must have been taking their time in finally breaking. It was a robust design after all. I feel an odd sense of admiration for it for having held out so long.

  My thoughts turn again to whoever else is here on this ship with us. They might be dangerous. I guess they might be the landing team that came here with Lucy. If I’m right then she probably isn’t the one in danger. I am. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying about her. She has lost her memory, at least I hope that’s all it is, and they might try to get her back. The last thing I want is for her to turn on me. I like her. I don’t think I could take it if she did.

  ‘You’re a damn liar.’ I said out loud by mistake. Sometimes I do that. Narrate my own stupid thoughts. But the words rung true. I was lying to myself. Again. I do like her. I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I have feelings for her for sure but I was lying to myself in saying they were my primary concern. I just don’t want to do this on my own. I had already lost Kolt. I don’t want her to go too.

  I wade on regardless through the stagnant water at my feet. My boots must have been cracked somewhere because after only a few moments water started to gush in. It was ok though. It was warm and it felt good washing around my toes. I want to stop, take off my boots, apron and armor and wash the warm water all over my sweating and blood caked body.

  But I don’t have the time at all. The odd slither of light broke through the darkness and cast swords of pale light all across the water below. The hull was cracked and littered with tiny bullet holes all over the place. I can even see the odd shel
l casing in the pools below my feet. I kick one aside and watch it roll about in the current caused by my own footsteps.

  There it was again. The old world meeting the new. Projectile bullet casings onboard a space ship. I guess this side of the ship must have taken a big hit in whatever fight that had downed it.

  A breeze washed through the clean air but it’s pleasant enough. I can finally, after what felt like a good few hours, see the path ahead. The lenses on my gas mask start to mist up again. It reminded me that I even had it on. Even though I hated it and it made my lungs hurt. I had become accustomed to it and far too used to it. My hands are steadier now so I reach around to the clasp at the back of my skull and unfasten it.

  I let the mask fall into the water, which is becoming deeper as I move onwards, and relax to breathe a moment.

  It feels like I had been carrying a heavy bag around for ages and now that it was gone I suddenly feel much lighter on my feet. It’s like that feeling but it’s deep in my lungs. It takes less effort from my diaphragm to pull in soothing yet cold air. At least the damn thing came off! I think to myself, speaking of Kolt of course.

  I shake my head from side to side, bravely ignoring the pain it causes me to do it, and stoop down to cup some water from the pools on the floor. It smells okay, looks clean too, and I’m far too thirsty to care if it will make me ill or not. I start sipping it at first, then gulping, to the point where I’m leaning right down and just drinking from the pool like an animal. It washes through my insides and tastes almost a little sweet. It hurts to swallow it at first, but given I have not eaten or drank for a long time, I persevere and ignore the mild pain it causes me.

  Just a sore throat is all. As soon as I have my fill, I lay on my back and let the warm water wash through my matted and sticky hair. It feels good to get the stained blood out and feel a little cleaner. I’m used to being dirty and have been for a long time. I was a miner after all.

  But if feels nice every now and again to feel even a little human. I sigh loudly and audibly.

  No rest for me though. I still can’t relax. Not until I see her again. I reluctantly roll over and examine the path ahead. My eyes have become even more so used to the feint and vague ambient light in the bullet ridden hall. I can see the hall culminated at a set of stairs. Ones that led down into a newly flooded area. I guess there had to be something.

  ‘Just can’t catch a break…’ I say under my breath. That desire to be a new man takes over once again and I try not to complain. I try to think of it more as a challenge. I’m on a journey of discovery here. Every bit as much as I’m on a journey of self rescue. I need to find out who I was. Or decide who I was. Whichever it was to be.

  I reluctantly roll over and take one final gulp of deeply satisfying and clean water before standing up again. The water trickles down the back of my armor sending a shiver down my spine. But it relaxes my again cramping muscles and stops the onset of any more pain. For now at least.

  I wade over to the stairwell and start psyching up for what could be a very dangerous swim. I can’t for the life of me think about which way to go by my fading mental image of the map Lucy had drawn for me.

  I’m just going to have to go with the flow. I can always turn back and swim back this way if I get stuck. I have no idea how good I am at holding my breath but I’ve dug on some dumps for planets with thin atmospheres. So I guess the skill might be transferable.

  ‘Okay. I can do this.’ I remember my training. What little we got at the mine, incase we ever found ourselves in a collapsed section or anything. Breathe in as many times as you can. Hold each one in for a few seconds. That would get as much oxygen into your blood and muscles as possible. Then before submerging, take one final but slightly less deep lung full of air, so there would be less pressure on your lungs under the surface.

  I get as far as I can over to the stairwell, until my neck is just above water, and follow those stages. One breath. A second. A third for luck. Then a gentle intake and I throw myself under the surface. At least the water is still warm. This would be far less bearable if it was cold. I think back to those river rapids I had foolishly plunged into back on the surface of the planet. Hopefully this would go a little bit better than that.

  I open my eyes as soon as the water fully washes over my head. It stings for a little while but I get used to it pretty fast. I use my grip and arm strength to pull down on the stairs and dive even deeper. My lungs hurt more and more with every further inch down that I dive. The pressure increases and my ears start to pop too. I fight my cowardly reaction to swim back up and get out.

  I need to press on and get this done. I finally reach the bottom of the stairwell where I notice an air pocket above my head, in what was once clearly a light casing. I take the opportunity in a heartbeat and push down hard with my legs to reach it. Even though I had only been down here a few moments, it’s good to fill my lungs with air once more.

  It’s darker down in the lower section. But there’s still enough light to get the job done. The light casing I just about fit my head into masks a vent shaft that runs along the ceiling of the lower hall. If I can pull myself through, it might be an easier way past the flooded section.

  The entrance to the vent, which I am certain is big enough to climb through, is covered by a grate and what’s left of the light housing. I raise up my right hand and grab onto the metal grate. The gaps in the grate are only enough to get my finger tips into but I’m strong enough to hold my weight like this. I start tearing at the light fitting, what was left of it at least, and throwing the rubble down into the water. It’s just the odd sheet of metal, two parts of a fluorescent light bulb, and a few damaged electrical terminals.

  Once that’s gone I start tugging at the grate itself until that becomes dislodged from its housing too. I let that sink to the bottom of the flooded hall too and start pulling my way through the narrow and dark hole over my head. It takes some effort on some of my muscles that I don’t often use to pull myself through the small gap. I have to grip the sides of the vent housing in different ways and slide my torso in first. Now to wriggle my chest and shoulders to pull my body and legs through. Good thing the water helps me feel a little lighter.

  Once my entire body is in and I’m feeling as calm as I can, the space began to feel just that little bit bigger and I can start to move through it. The gap I have created by pulling the grate down is more narrow than the shaft itself anyway. I can just about roll my shoulders to gain momentum.

  It’s dark in the vent shaft and I have to feel my way around. The metal it is made out of is solid enough and doesn’t creak or groan as I expected it would when I began to move around. It doesn’t bow under my weight either which makes the mammoth task of getting around inside of it that small amount easier. All I can see ahead is a reflection of light cast through the water, reflecting up from the corridor below at the next grate in the section of the vent.

  I make a b-line for it as fast as I can. Even though I’m out of the water and out of the cold, I still want this to be over. I’m only in an air bubble after all and eventually the oxygen will run low and breathing will become more and more difficult.