by James Stubbs
The loss of the wind has definitely taken a chill factor away but it is still deathly cold. Kolt can’t have come this way. He wouldn’t have been able to climb the sheer vertical and ominous slabs to our either side. I could ask him but I doubt it will end in an explanation that isn’t marred with his patchwork memory.
I guess he must have discovered this recess while exploring and mapped it somewhere in his fractured mind. My assumption is better than bothering to ask. I’m more interested in why he isn’t fazed at all by the death defying leap. I’ll ask him later.
‘I wish we had kept some of that snake.’ I remember that was the last thing I had eaten. My stomach, since my focus and adrenaline is waning, is starting to rumble very loudly. I clutch it with an open palm like it will help but it surely doesn’t.
‘Let’s continue.’ Kolt raises a hand, his leather bound and soaking wet apron creaking with the move, and points down the shaft into the darkness ahead.
I can smell burning. That putrid, but somehow homely and pleasant, smoky smell. I don’t know where it is coming from and I can’t see any visible sign of smoke or fire but it is a tantalizing smell indeed. It seems to be hung in the air though. It seems distant but at the same time not far away.
It feels somehow less than real. It feels feint but still ingrained and ever present. This might sound odd, but it feels like how it is to remember smoke. Not a smoke that is present, flaring and offensively weaving its way up your nostrils, but a feint whiff that conjures up the thought and with it the memory of smoke.
I must be imagining things and decide it best to just shake it off. Kolt has already walked on and I need to catch up with him.
A few paces down the damp corridor and there he is. He seems distant. More so than usual. For the sake of our new found relationship I decide to challenge him and ask what the matter is.
‘Everything ok?’ My voice echoes up the long columns of exposed rock.
‘No.’ I can’t help but to recoil at his honesty. He turns and I can see him crying inside of his gas mask. His tears wash slowly around his red stained eyes as he tried in vain to blink them away. I am filled once again with fear and more as I place my hand on his shoulder.
I feel deeply sorry for him but I don’t know why. I feel scared for him, and agreeably for myself as well, and I simply don’t know what to say to him. An orange light is emanating from inside of his mask. A light that looks like the beginning of a fire. Shivers run down my back and arms as I realize what they are. As I see flames start to lick at him from under his garish apron.
He raises an agonized fist and juts it forward to where the rocky corridor opens up into a plane of bright daylight and fresh snow. I see his ship for the first time and my emotions immediately mix together.
I am filled with child like excitement at the prospect of seeing a Kraken Class and fulfilling that juvenile dream, and then with a sudden realization of a forgotten truth. Something I knew. Something I had figured out long ago and deliberately hidden from my conscious thoughts.
His ship was cracked and broken, shred to bits and mostly buried in the volumes of snow, but the fires had long ago gone out. The Russian Federation flag along its cresting side was long out of date and the paint was cracked and peeling away from its titanic body.
The metal was dated, rusted, and was returning slowly to the ground. I said, through fear shaken decibels:
‘I thought you had just crashed?’ I had to ask him. What choice did I have? I needed him to validate what I already sensed was true. I needed him to say it. I needed him to remember it for himself and then bring me in on his big secret. I looked back to see him utterly enveloped in flames but doing nothing about it. As if reliving his last horrific moment.
‘I remember now. I know why I do not desire rescue. I know why I am lost and not afraid.’ He was starting to shout and stood tall, threateningly poised and aggressively motioning forward with tiny baby like steps towards me.
I started backing away in frozen terror as I watched him burn in thick red and black flames. I stumbled on an icy shelf and fell flat to the floor. A sharp icy blade penetrated the back of my skull and white sparks flew over my eyes as I started to pass out from immediate blood loss.
‘Because I am already dead!’ He shouts as my eyes fade into black with every elongated blink. He embraces the fire as it culminated in a second phase of intensity. He screamed, louder and deeper than before.
‘I am dead and so are my comrades. Their spirits and lost souls wander and pollute this land.’ I can’t visualize his anger as my eyes finally close. So very angry. At himself? At me? At finally reaching death’s door, so he can no longer pretend he is still alive and fester in wait, wandering like a ghost? I finally give in to blood loss and pass out. Scared and alone.
‘I am dead and have been for years. I have been pretending, assuming life when I have none to assume. I was afraid to die and let go. I am not afraid anymore! Come for me Death!’
Chapter 11
The Kraken Class
I can’t open my eyes. Even though the space outside my head is silent and void, I daren’t open my eyes to meet the nothingness. I can’t bring myself to admit he is gone. Kolt was my friend. I can’t believe in what happened. I just don’t want to.
There has to be some kind of other explanation. Even though my body is cold and I must be entering the first, if not later stages of hypothermia, I don’t want to get up.
I can’t face it alone. This world will eat me whole, chew me up and spit my bones out if that man isn’t around to save me anymore. I don’t have to lie to myself. I can be honest here in the confines of my own thoughts. I can admit I’m scared. My ego has taken such a battering lately that it will hurt it no more to beat it again.
Kolt kept me safe where otherwise I would have died. I can’t bring myself to think he had been anything less than real.
Private Kolter Gespenst. It hits me right now what his unfortunate surname meant in Russian. Ghost. I was never one with a flair for language but I know that. I’m not sure I remember how. Just one of those tid-bits of information that your mind stubbornly holds onto for no reason at all.
Private Kolter Ghost… Private Kolt Ghost. Poltergeist. I want to laugh at the irony. Even if I can call it irony. Unfortunate? Coincidental? But another thought enters my mind even though I want nothing other than to chase it out. Had I dreamed the whole thing?
I know of times when people have dreamed up a superior identity to protect themselves during times of great need. I had scoffed at the stories about those kinds of people. They said the mind sometimes needed it. It sometimes needed to relinquish control and hand it over to someone or something less than real to take the noose from around their necks.
The unconscious mind dreamed up a powerful entity in order to save its conscious partner. Is that what I had done? Every time we hit a problem, Kolt had embarrassingly outmatched me. Physically, mentally and in durability. The thought sickened me so much that I opened my eyes and pulled my stiff and iced body to stand without flattering or indulging myself with the time to regain blood flow.
The thought hurt in ways I didn’t know thoughts could. I already missed him. I pained for him. Like a parasite ripped from his host, bringing their symbiosis to an unsolicited end. I longed for him. My friend. I mourned for him. And he may never have even existed.
My eyes eventually focus. Quite some time after my stubborn legs start carrying me towards the decayed space ship. I don’t trust in them at first. What they tell me they can see. How could there be anyone else here with me?
I can see the figure of a woman in the distance. I can make out her gorgeous curves through the hail storm. I can see her standing tall and confident, her weight resting over one hip in a sexy pose. Her long legs I can just make out through the flanking snow, and even her long, flowing copper red hair. I know her. I can hear her crying into her hands.
I remember her from the Morris-Cooper Mining Company. She was one of the guards. Wit
h her looks, her figure especially, she was something of a symbol to us all. Men cooped up in there together and alone dreaming up things that can never have happened.
Maybe she wasn’t even that good looking by other standards but how were we to know? She might have been dog ugly but better to think of her than the grey walls or our imaginations. Those were the only other things we could look into to find anything like some kind of stimulation.
I’m barely conscious. I could be dreaming right now. But it doesn’t feel like I am. I hate to have to do anything to convince myself if I am dreaming or awake. I can’t bring myself to administer the “pinch” test so I slap myself hard across my frost bitten face. My skin responds immediately to the harsh pain and I immediately know it to be real.
But it all feels real enough. Right down to the numbing cold of the snow around my feet. Right back to the piercing pain in my battered head. I reach up a hand as I instinctively stagger forward into the darkness and snow and rub the back of my head.
Stabbing pains shoot right down my face, my whole body and through my chest. I take it away to find it stained in copious blood. I’m lucky to be standing. It feels like I’ve been out on the drink yet again but I know I haven’t touched the stuff for months.
That feeling you get when you’ve had one or two too many. That feeling that you’re invincible gives way after just a few more pints and you find yourself lost inside of your own skull.
Then some kind of auto-pilot takes over, one that seems to be programmed to get you to safety, to home or whatever is closest. You find yourself leaning on that homing beacon and letting it dictate the rhythm of your feet. I feel like that right now. I should be able to listen to that hazy and distant voice that tells me the figure up ahead is nothing but trouble.
I should be able to, and I probably could if I felt alright, realize that she is probably heading up the security detail that has come here to either escort me back or kill me. But I can’t. The voice that should be screaming that logic right in the front of my face is too distant, too broken and beaten by my fall. I can’t think anything but getting to safety.
I trudge just a little closer to the dark figure ahead. I think I’m calling to her but my head is so battered I can’t tell if I just want to, or I actually am. The snow is still hurtling down in volumes. Every time I plant my step, in the time it takes me to move a foot, it is buried by the virgin white fluffy new snow. I can hear her. I’m sure she is real.
I manage to fight back the urge to close my eyes. To stop fighting and drop dead on my ass. Maybe if I let go and stop resisting, I will see my buddy Kolt on the other side, and we can continue whatever journey we were on. But something inside of me, just like he had predicted, still wanted to survive.
Some strong part of me, one I though to be long dead, still wanted to battle on and make it no matter what.
‘Hey!’ I called to her. I screamed at the top of my voice. It was all I could manage. The snow drowned me out and blocked the range of my lungs. It stuffed my mouth full of snowflakes and robbed me of my breath.
But I think she heard. The crying, the distant sound of it anyway, stopped immediately and I can see the black shadow shift. I can see her posture move through the veil of snow. I should be afraid but I’m not. I know deep down she is here to cause me trouble! But contrary to everything I though she would do, she comes running through the snow and takes me by the hand.
I was right about her sobbing, but her face changes from deep despair to immediate concern as she studies me through her teary eyes. I drop right away. I only had enough steam inside me to make it to her. She is confident in her stride and upright posture. It must have been all of those years in her position as a guard at the mine. But she oozed strength and power.
But that was a distant cousin compared to her compassion. I could see it in her eyes. This was the first time I ever saw her face. I knew her by her figure and by the color of her hair. I knew her because I’d dreamed of her pose a million times and struggled to bring my eyes off her hips, even after the threat of many a beating. But I’d never seen her deep blue eyes that reflected back everything caught in them.
I had never seen her pale white skin, her rounded cheekbones and thin, perky lips. I had never had that pleasure. She wore the same red armor that I did. But her’s was near pristine. Over it she wore a thick padded jacket. Brown in color with hints of fur around the collars and sleeves. It must have kept her toasty warm and I can’t help but be instantly jealous of her and of it.
‘Parker?’ She asked with a tone of surprise, which was thinly masked along with excitement and genuine relief. She didn’t wait for me to reply. She threw her arm around my shoulder and pulled me to my feet with a cute groan of effort. I’m too weak to even stand right now.
I walk with her but my feet only manage a pointless scuff against the snow as she takes most of my weight. She is strong and fast. I feel useless again. My ego has taken enough shots of late and I should really be trying much harder to impress the girl I’ve spent so long secretly lusting after. But I just can’t manage it. I just can’t make my feet move with hers. All I can do is protest.
‘Put me down!’ I growl at her. Basically spitting on her kind gesture of help. I must have shocked her because she did. She let me fall to the snow but steadied my weight every inch of the way down. She must have thought she had been hurting me because she immediately hit the ground, took me in both hands by the shoulders, and stared into my eyes with a magnified look of concern.
My heart flutters. Like a silly kid with a crush. Like a stupid emotional teenager who suddenly has the full attention of some girl he has secretly admired for his whole life. I would probably be blushing if I hadn’t lost so much blood.
‘What is it?’ She asks me softly with the kindest voice I think I have ever heard. Her voice is sweet, soothing and I immediately liken it to an angel’s. In spite of having never heard one.
‘I can walk there myself!’ I growl at her again ungratefully. I can’t. I was hoping, in some stupid and masculine way, that if I created a brief argument I would be able to buy enough time for me to gather my senses and summon the power I needed to walk myself. She didn’t reply. But she didn’t look hurt either. She just smiled at me. That was the last thing I had expected too.
‘Why are you helping me?’ I yell at her over the howling wind and spiraling snow.
‘I saw you…’ She tries to shout back but has to stop mid flow to shield her mouth from a much stronger gust of wind. ‘I saw you struggle in the snow. I don’t know. I just want to help you.’ She finished. It wasn’t an explanation as such. In fact it wasn’t even half of one.
But that primal auto-pilot inside my head was kicking off at me silently, yelling at me from behind my own mouth, to get to safety and try to get warm. I am again in control of my senses. Like nothing had happened. Like my dying mind has flooded me with every bit of power it has left, knowing that if it doesn’t, I will die.
I pull with all my focus, pressing my hands into the deep snow and arching my back to stand on my weakened legs. I make it to fully upright but my oddly kind captor keeps a good hold of my hands the whole way. She holds me almost lovingly. A thought flashes quickly, briefly, but shockingly through my battered mind. What if she isn’t real either?
The thought hurts and makes me immediately hostile to her. I rip my hands away and her eyes widen with embarrassment. But I dismiss the thought as quickly as it surfaces. It must have been a stray though. First of all, I am certain Kolt had been real. Ghost or not. Dead or not. I know what I saw and I know what we did. Besides, and second, I remember this girl. Even though I don’t know her name.
I shake my head at my own stupidity and my own shame.
‘Let’s go.’ I raise a tired arm to what I can see of the frozen and beaten Kraken ship ahead. We need to get inside or our chances of survival are slim. She, without asking or feeling worried that I’ll recoil again, takes my arm, interlocks it with hers and we carry on. My l
egs decide to work again, motivated by my newly sober state, but every time I tense any muscle it hurts.
We trudge through the thick and strength sapping snow for what feels like forever. I can see the ship better with each staggered and labored step. It is more beaten down than I had though. It’s grey metallic hull is scarred with flames and cracked open completely in some places. I can only see a small part of it. The bulk of the ship is hidden beneath the ice that has formed up around it. The scars about its hull are clearly laser strikes. Maybe even some heavy duty projectile damage too.
It’s far older than I had been expecting and that realization makes my heart sink. Kolt can’t have been there in the flesh. I already know that. I just don’t want to think about it. The ship died in it’s relative youth. Maybe even during the colony wars.
‘How do we get in?’ She leans into me, almost pressing her chest against mine, and shouts into my ears with her hands clasped together like a funnel so I can hear her better. As if I would know? I just shrug my shoulders, panting for breath like an out of shape fifty something smoker of sixty a day. My tongue is too tied to reply to her.
I feel all warm inside, even though it is Baltic outside. She starts running her opened palms over the surface of the metal. It must be cold to the touch but she doesn’t flinch or anything. My energy starts coming back as I take in as many deep breaths as I can without looking like too much of a sissy.
The snow relents at long last and I can finally make out the bulk of the hull. The shape of the ship, something I have virtually worshipped since birth, comes slowly into view. The Kraken Class shape was infamous, desired by friends and enemies alike throughout the Colony Wars, respected and feared. Two spherical discs mounted parallel to one another across a triangular shaped frame. The longest tip of the triangular connecting hull pointed out to the back. It was constructed of the strongest steel known to man.
It’s weapon systems were a true product of its time. Caught between the technological advancements that beckoned laser based weapons into the mainstream and the underlying faith in the reliability of projectile based torpedo like ballistic missiles.