Kraken Mare

by Jason Cordova

  “I could try, you sanctimonious prick,” I grunted. I knew I shouldn’t engage him. It’s what he wanted, but I had to say something. He was so far inside my head that he should have been paying rent. Plus, I was running out of good insults. I needed something to get me back in the game.

  “I love your enthusiasm and dedication,” he said. I came to a stop and looked around. Where was I? This sure as hell wasn’t Control. I rubbed my sweaty face and grimaced. I’d gotten my ass kicked so hard and so often that I’d forgotten about getting my nose busted. It was swollen but I could still breathe, thank God. I reminded myself for the third time not to mess with it. Baptiste continued to taunt me as I tried to gather my bearings. “Oh, this isn’t Research, is it? Dear me. You must have gotten turned around somehow. Perhaps you should have…taken a left at Albuquerque?”

  That asshole. It was a good line, which made me hate him all the more.

  “Well, since you’re on a mission to save people, Johnny, perhaps you can start with these lost, deluded souls,” Baptiste said. I blinked and watched as the lights came up around me. I recognized the layout of the room from base schematics and swore vehemently. I wasn’t anywhere near Control. Baptiste had mind-fucked me somehow and I was in Maintenance, which was near the absolute bottom of the station. Perfect.

  Maintenance was a strange section of the station, designed in a honeycomb pattern to diffuse and displace the massive heat signature of the station’s generators. Sure, a lot of the station’s energy was created by converting the ultraviolet light and solar winds created by the massive gas giant Saturn, but it still needed the generators to keep up with some demands of the station. These were fueled by the liquid methane on the moon. Not a huge surprise, really.

  Even though the generators were up and running, they were more of a backup system than anything else. Still though, even generators idling created some sort of heat. The heat had to go somewhere or else it would turn the station into the universe’s most expensive oven. Hence, polycarbonate-constructed honeycombs filled Maintenance, directing the heat out and into the tubing system, which would then send all the heat throughout the station to keep it warm as it sat within the unbelievably cold methane lake.

  It was also the only area of the station that featured rough flooring. I wasn’t sure why it was there other than it made the footing more secure and prohibited anyone from slipping. Then again, if moisture buildup happened, it could create a safety hazard for anyone working down here. And everyone knows just how important being safe is.

  Safety third, as my great-grandpa used to say while showing off his missing middle finger.

  Not all of the lights seemed to be on I noticed as I carefully stepped deeper into the area. I could hear some sort of sharp, steady beat somewhere within the room’s shadows. The lack of proper lighting created long shadows in the room itself, dividing it into area of bright light and pure blackness. My eyes adjusted as well as they could and I could faintly make out human forms standing in the shadows.

  They were here, waiting. I swallowed nervously and waited. I hated dealing with mind-wipes, and now I was in a room full of them. For some sick and demented reason, Baptiste had guided me down here. I was about to find out what that was.

  The maintenance workers came out of the shadows, their faces devoid of any emotion, each one of them snapping their fingers in a rhythmic pattern. Each one was dressed in their usual white partial jumpsuit, which covered the necessary parts but left everything below their mid-thighs bare. It was warm enough in the lower half of the station to merit such a strange looking outfit. None of them were wearing shoes, which I found odd. The floor was not something I would have wanted to walk on without some sort of protection. They moved in unison together, though it was slightly stilted. It took me a second to realize just what, precisely, was going on. It made me sick.

  Baptiste was playing puppet master, and each maintenance worker was his own personal marionette.

  “Oh, swing it Johnny, you fat cat you,” Baptiste sang out, his voice reverberating through my skull and across the room. The maintenance workers all stopped moving suddenly, though they continued to snap their fingers. “Boop de bop, wham bam a diddly doo wop.”

  The first maintenance worker slid across the floor on his knees, his bare legs leaving a bloody streak behind him as the skin was peeled off by the grated flooring. If the mind-wiped maintenance person noticed, he didn’t seem to care. He popped back to his feet and spun in place, an improvised dance move that would have worked had he not been trying to do it on a surface that inhibited sliding movements and had bare feet. I heard his ankle crap and he faltered slightly. His face showed no signs of even feeling the pain, however. He continued to dance, though it was a mockery of a number. Blood began to drip onto the floor, trailing behind him with every step he took. I could see the tip of his ankle bone jutting grotesquely out the side.

  “They feel it all, Johnny,” Baptiste taunted me, reading my thoughts, “but they can’t complain. They have no minds left, no sense of self. I own them, and they will dance for me for as long as I desire them to.”

  Another snap. The guy’s other ankle snapped. He continued to dance on the broken bones. I watched, horrified. I had to stop this. But how?

  “Only one way to save them from this, Johnny. Only one way to free these poor souls, and you know what it is.”

  A second maintenance worker began to dance, a series of macabre movements that looked like a cross between a hipster and a drunken zombie stripper. It was horrifying to watch, especially since there was no sign of life behind those eyes. There was nothing but flat emptiness, and there was a decided lack of rhythm to his movements. If it hadn’t been such a disturbing sight, I would have probably mocked Baptiste about his obvious lack of dance aptitude. The mind-wipe continued to dance, his bare feet leaving behind bloodied footprints with each step. I growled. Baptiste was an animal.

  I understood that mind-wipes are controversial, but they served a purpose for mentally handicapped convicted felons. It enabled them to be a productive member of society while it regrew their neurons and tried to work around the handicap. At the end of five years, the convict was supposed to be able to be a free person once more, though with no memory of his or her past life and a skill set so they could find work. At least, that was how it was supposed to work.

  Something slammed into my shoulder and knocked me to the side. I managed to stay upright only because whoever had hit me had not managed to build up enough speed. I snap-kicked towards my attacker and recognized the first maintenance worker. I realized why he hadn’t been able to push me much harder: bone was sticking out of both ankles, which made walking hard even if Baptiste was making him ignore the pain. I let my bag slide from my shoulder and onto the floor as I turned to face my attacker. I tossed the rifle down on top of it as well. There was no sense in killing these poor bastards, not while they were under Baptiste’s control at least.

  “Meet Ghordahn,” Baptiste crowed in my ear as the maintenance worker began to weave towards me. “He’s thirty, loves Thai food and had a wife and four kids. He was also what I would call ‘retarded.’ Funny, that. They let him breed and marry in spite of his being handicapped. I personally would have drowned him at birth or, barring that, neutered him so that his stock could not pollute the Earth. But what do I know? I’m just a crazed, psychotic asshole, am I right?”

  Wasn’t going to argue with him there. I blocked another weak punch from Ghordahn and shoved him away. He stumbled and fell on his ass, his feet flopping hideously around on his broken ankles. I didn’t pursue the attack, though. I didn’t want to fight him. This seemed to piss Baptiste off a bit.

  “Johnny, I’ll make them all abuse themselves until they are nothing more than standing, ragged piled of flesh and meat,” Baptiste growled in a dangerous tone. “I will hurt them worse than I have hurt anyone before in my life. You know what I’m capable of. You know what I can do. Do not test me, Johnny.”

  “What
do you want me to do, you bastard?” I fairly screamed into the comm.

  “I want you to reach down into that dark pit you call a soul, Johnny,” Baptiste whispered seductively, “and I want you to bring the monster to the surface and play with my toys. Or better still, let that dead bitch of yours come out and you can be her white knight once more by removing these poor, captured men from their earthly bonds. Be the hero if you insist, though we both know that you have a desire to be the villain.”

  I don’t think he realized just how badly he screwed up just then. Whatever illusion or spell he had pulled over my psyche snapped apart with that comment.

  Ghordahn managed to crawl back to his feet, a pool of blood forming beneath them. The poor guy was trying to do what Baptiste wanted, but the body could only take so much abuse before it stopped working. Compound fractures were murder on the body and were usually a good indicator that a person was seriously hurt and should stop what they were doing.

  Only Baptiste wasn’t going to let him stop, or let any of them stop. It was up to me to do something about it, even if it was something that I would probably hate myself for afterwards. I decided to take the initiative instead.

  I delivered a brutal kick to the inside of Ghordahn’s knee, the sickening crunch! audible to everyone in the room. I probably broke his leg as well, but whatever I had ruined, he was out of the fight. He lost his balance and fell to the ground. He tried to push himself up off the ground, but without ankles and a knee, there was no way he could fight me any longer.

  “I’m impressed, Johnny,” Baptiste said. “That was a surprising bit of viciousness I hadn’t expected out of you. Can you do it again? For me?”

  Two more maintenance workers joined the routine, bringing the number of mind-wiped dancers to three. The others continued to snap their fingers in a timed beat and dance a small two-step number, hands twirling in the air.

  This was starting to go way past absurd. What was Baptiste’s end game?

  The three men charged me at once, moving as a single unit to take me down. While hand-to-hand combat during recon training had covered being outnumbered, as a sniper it wasn’t something I really focused on. If I was in a fistfight and not on base or in a bar, it meant that somewhere along the line I had seriously screwed up.

  However, just because it was something I hadn’t focused on didn’t mean I was hopeless at it.

  I charged towards the lead mind-wiped and kicked him as hard as I could in the chest. He fell back onto the floor, hard, his head smacking the steel grate beneath. I landed on top of him and slammed the back of his head down into the grate a few more times to make sure. I could feel his chest rising and falling beneath me, so I knew he was still alive.

  The other two grabbed me and hauled me off of him, each taking turns punching my ribs. The blows hurt but weren’t debilitating. Not yet, at least. I think Baptiste was causing them to pull their punches, though I didn’t know why. Or maybe something else was going on that I wasn’t aware of. It’s entirely possible, since I was simply focused on staying alive and not killing anyone else—except Baptiste. I was going to take great pleasure in murdering him.

  “Come on, Johnny. Stop trying to hit them and hit them.”

  That bastard was stealing all of my classic movie lines. I was going to kick his ass whenever I got ahold of him.

  I ducked slightly, weaved and managed to avoid another elbow to the ribs, instead letting it bounce off the top of my head as I slammed an open palm into the solar plexus of the mind-wiped man holding me on my left. He stumbled back far enough to allow me room to maneuver and I used my momentary advantage. I grabbed the closest mind-wipe around the waist, twisted slightly and tossed him over my hip. He slammed down hard onto the floor and I used my own momentum to put a knee on top of his chest. I punched him a few times in the face to disorientate him before the other one came roaring back into the fight.

  I rolled away from him, using the body of the man I had just taken down to cushion the move. It must have caught Baptiste off guard because the mind-wipe stumbled over the other and fell flat on his face. I kicked him in the temple with the heel of my boot and hoped like hell I didn’t kill him.

  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,” Baptiste sang over the comm as I scrambled back up to my feet. Three more of the finger-snapping maintenance workers came rushing in, trying to all use their weight advantage to pin me down. Meanwhile, as I fought to maintain control, Baptiste continued to torment me with his horrid singing. “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of this bicycle built for two.”

  I tried to block out what Baptiste considered music as I redirected two swift punches with my hands. It’s difficult to time just right but if done properly all you have are stinging hands. It also opened them up to a counterstrike. Thank you Senior Drill Instructor Jonathan LaForce.

  Blows were coming in from all directions at such a rapid pace that I felt my control of the situation slipping. I still refused to kill the men, even if they were trying to kill me. They had no control over their actions, and I’ll be damned if I let Baptiste beat me here as well. But I had to do something, and do it quick. The solution came to me after I stepped over the downed mind-wipe with the busted ankles.

  Broken legs are painful and debilitating. The mind-wipes may not feel pain, but I’d already proven that they couldn’t stay upright with broken bones. I felt like shit for doing it, but it was the only way I could keep them alive while making certain they couldn’t keep attacking me.

  Brutal? Definitely. Necessary? Of course.

  The tibia and fibula don’t require as much effort to break as the femur does, which is why they are the most broken bone in the human leg. They also have the least amount of muscle go through to hurt them as well. It’s why banging your shins on the coffee tables hurts so much. There’s just not much there to protect them.

  It’s also fairly easy to break someone’s leg when they’re already on the ground.

  I grabbed the nearest ankle of a felled foe and twisted as hard as I could while I delivered a stomp directly onto the upper part of the tibia. Combined with the pressure I’d put on it with the ankle grab, it splintered like a cheap piece of balsa wood. If he hadn’t been unconscious and under the mind control of a psychotic killer, I’m sure that he would have screamed and passed out. So I guess he was fortunate to have skipped a step.

  “You’re avoiding the issue, Johnny,” Baptiste’s voice cut through the sound of flesh being pummeled. I wasn’t fighting fair at this point. You don’t fight fair if you were trying to stay alive. Legs were choice targets and Baptiste the Puppetmaster did not know quite how to counter the attacks. The guy knew how to play mind games, but physical confrontation without a huge advantage? I could tell that he was stretched to the limits of his abilities while trying to control the remaining two mind-wipes who had yet to enter the fray.

  His hesitancy allowed me to wreck the two poor bastards who had already attacked me. They went down hard and fast, both legs ruined. I felt a little guilty but I also knew that modern medicine could heal those broken bones inside of four days. It was painful for now, but it was far better than killing them. Even if they weren’t precisely innocent.

  Me? My body ached, my nose was bleeding again, I had a numb spot on my elbow and the top of my head was throbbing. To the victor, the spoils.

  “Fine. Time to change the rules a bit.”

  “Wait…what are you doing?” I asked, confused as I watched the two men who had remained behind turn and look at the other. Baptiste clucked his tongue.

  “You disappoint me, Johnny. I expected a little more out of you.”

  The two men grabbed each other by the throat and began to squeeze simultaneously. Both men were large and strong, and I could see the veins on their arms pop out from exertion as they tried to strangle one another. Neither fought back against the other, and both refused to let go. I
realized what now what was going on.

  Baptiste was making a point.

  “Stop it,” I told him. He chuckled.

  “Stop what? This is what you wanted, since you refused to put them out of their misery for me,” Baptiste said. He sounded convincing, but I knew he was full of it. He was toying with me.

  The duo continued to strangle one another, their lips taking on a blue tint as their bodies began to suffer from oxygen deprivation. Still they hung on, controlled completely by Baptiste. I had to stop him before he made them kill each other.

  “Catch-22, Johnny,” Baptiste continued to mock me over the comm. “You do nothing and they kill each other, or you can kill them. Either way, I have determined that these two die. You get to choose how.”

  Damn it. I was out of options. Even with broken legs they could still strangle each other. Especially with Baptiste controlling them.

  “Fine!” I shouted and threw my hands into the air. “I’ll surrender if you stop them from killing each other.”

  The strangling paused. The two men remained motionless but they had loosened their grasps on one another.

  “Surrender? What in the world makes you think that I want you to surrender?” Baptiste asked, his tone incredulous. “I have you precisely where I want you.”

  “Then why’d you stop them from strangling each other?”

  “Well played, Johnny. Well played.” Baptiste paused for a moment, the comm falling eerily silent. I thought that the connection had failed and was just about to turn the comm off when he spoke again. “But while you are quite a catch—you really are, you know—I already have a chew toy in your little pal Doctor Isaac. I don’t need a little chewy Marine. No, Johnny, I want the real prize. The grand prize, so to speak. I want the traitor.”

  “Traitor?” I asked, confused. “What traitor?”

  “That bastard Holomisa was given a gift unlike any the universe had ever seen and he spat in my eye!” Baptiste roared. “He betrayed his brothers for the sake of his precious honor!”