Kraken Orbital

by James Stubbs

  The hull would have been mounted with a few laser cannon turrets, of varying size and power, but the true power of this megalith was in its ballistic missile weapons platform. From the spherical shaped mounts, the Kraken, once locked into orbit above any would be victim, could launch ballistic missiles from space. The threat of nuclear war, on Earth that is, never disappeared after a strange time known as the Cold War.

  The world split in two, each side governed by a different system of rules and theories, grew suspicious of one another and devolved weapons of mass destruction to act as vehicles for fear. Deterrence was the name of the game and the character of that war.

  The Kraken, I always felt, was one final nod, a respectful glance back in time, to that time and the legacy of it. The Kraken was the ultimate form of deterrence. In its day, nobody would dare oppose it. Back then, everything was coming up Russian.

  We trudge around the frame of the lost ship, looking desperately for a way in. One of the discs is buried entirely beneath the ice and snow, the other stands up at an odd angle, snapped in half and hanging there limp. The ship must have impacted the surface of the planet on a tilt.

  The buried disc was the primary wing and main platform, which also contained the bridge and most often the hyper drive engine, was propped up against a rocky outcropping of the mountain. It hung there, eerily clinging to the side of the mountain, limp and dead. Never found. Never even searched for.

  We might be the first two people to look upon it in hundreds of years. I can feel a tear welling up in the back of my eye. I have admired these ships for all my life, seeing one is emotional in such an odd kind of way. It gives me a sense of fulfillment and purpose. That feeling after so many years of feeling nothing but the lack of purpose, the lack of anything good to speak of, is nothing short of overwhelming.

  But that isn’t why I feel like crying. Kolt. He can’t have been real. I cannot deny the truth that my eyes are showing me. This ship is dead, frozen in a time capsule, an endless relic to one single event in time and space. The moment it crashed and everyone on board was likely killed.

  ‘There.’ She says in her sweet and comforting voice. She raises her hand and points at something she has seen half way up the buried disc. The one that has been buried in the ground. It is an opening of some kind but I can’t make it out through the snow. My head is hurting a lot now.

  I keep checking for blood at the back of my head but I just keep dusting off flakes of dried brown, already clotted blood. The wound has stopped bleeding but I feel like death. My head is throbbing from blood loss and I’m finding it hard to think at all. I wish right now that my auto pilot would kick back in. But I guess that must be out of steam too.

  ‘Ok, lets try.’ I say through labored breaths and nod to her. She pounces up the slippery and angled surface with grace and ease, beckoning me to follow like I’m the old and boring dad to her eager and impetuous inner child. I drag my broken body up the surface, lying flat against it and using any small crack or hand hold I can to drag my weight upwards.

  The hull, the outer surface of the disc, is riddled with large bullet holes. I can use them though they are rusted and brittle as hand and foot holds as I make the hard climb. Her speed and grace, and my obvious admiration for her, spurs me on. I pull harder and harder on each dull metal crack and finally make it to the opening she had spotted.

  It’s either a cooling vent or a weapons discharge point, a barrel or torpedo tube if you like. She peers in hastily but sees nothing. Not surprisingly. She is assessing the measurements of the tube and so am I. By my tired guess I figure we should be able to fit through but the squeeze will be tight. If it turns into a dead end then turning will be impossible and we might even get trapped in there. I’m cold enough, tired enough and desperate enough to take the chance.

  ‘Looks good.’ I say to her. She smiles back contently and slides in first. I’m glad I didn’t have to do the hero bull and pretend like I wanted to shove my exposed head into an unknown environment first. I watch her shapely figure disappear into the dark tunnel barely big enough to fit her hips through, and bend down to watch her wriggle through the small crawl space.

  My heart is starting to beat with fearful anticipation and lust. She moves gracefully and no red blooded man could ignore it was a good sight to see. But I’m tired and hungry and I can’t bring myself to push harder for the last few ounces of energy to try to talk to her.

  Maybe I’m just being pathetic? The cold is pushing me on though. I know deep down that if I stay put I’ll freeze and die. My head is cloudy to start with and there is no way I’ll survive a night out here on the exposed mountain face.

  I glance back, longingly, to the cave now in the distance where I had last seen Kolt. I wish to the bottom of my heart that he was still here. In whatever form he was. Ghost or not. I just wish he would come back.

  I hadn’t realized how much I had grown to like him and depend upon him in the short time I had known him. I breathe a deep sigh and push my head into the dark tunnel and follow my still nameless friend, foe, rescuer or captor, I’m still not sure.

  The tunnel drags my breath out of me as soon as I’m all the way in. My feet are just about tucked into the cramped and polished crawl space. I’m glad to be out of the wind and it feels a little warmer now that we are at least inside, but I don’t like it. I’m a miner. I don’t mind small spaces or confined areas but this has a different feel to it than I am used to.

  This feels cramped and alien. It feels wrong. Like I am out of control completely. Like I’m the passenger in a sports car and someone else, someone I don’t know or trust, is in the driving seat and slamming the accelerator pedal. Such an odd feeling this tunnel has summoned up inside of me.

  ‘Wait.’ I shout, more plead, down the tunnel wherein I can see literally nothing. I can hear her sweet voice echo back. I can hear the soothing syllables bounce back and forth from one side of the metallic frame and to the other and back again. But the echo drowns out any meaning and I can’t figure out what she said.

  I’m alone in my thoughts. Right where I just don’t want to be. I can’t help but start to panic and in my weakened state I struggle to control it. I start to wonder again. A piercing and shivering thought. That I may have simply followed another spectral ghost into the hollow shell of a ship that may not even be there.

  Too late. I’m on the train now and there is no way off. If I’ve been conned then I’ve been conned. If I have followed a siren in here, no longer the captain of my own ship, if I have followed something less than real and it leads me to rocky shores then so be it.

  I start to feel desperate and alone. I start to remember the hopelessness of my situation, the hopelessness of the mine I left behind and the dark thoughts that go with it. I start to give up and start to think that if I have wandered haplessly into my own doom then so be it.

  I feel like I’ve been crawling, struggling every inch, for a while now. I know I have made little progress but I can, at least, not see the light at the other end of the tunnel and I am now a little warmer. I press my agonized shoulders against the slick metal and dig deep to keep pushing against the pain. My lungs are restrained and I cannot draw in a deep enough breath to satisfy my need for fresh air. My muscles are starved and drowning in carbon dioxide.

  ‘Not much further, Sam.’ My angel calls to me. She must have found something and just the sound of her voice, as real as I can make it out to be, satisfies my childish fear that she may not be true. I start to push harder and harder and slip further down the tunnel into the bowels of the ship. I can see a glimmer of light. And I can just make out the ebony glow of her mystical hair.

  She reaches down the shaft and pulls me close to her. I had forgotten how strong she was. My eyes are relaxed by the sudden light, a dull ambient light at best but light all the same, of the new area as she pulls me through a gap in the tunnel. A great fire must have melted a great hole in it’s side. It was big enough to climb through.

  Chapter
12

  Engineering

  ‘What’s your name?’ I work up the courage to ask her as I try to stand and stretch in the eerie light of the new area. I look at her but only briefly. I can feel myself start to blush every time I meet her eyes and her lips start to curl into a smile for me.

  ‘You don’t know?’ She asks sweetly but disguises a small amount of offence. She knows who I am. That much is clear. But I guess she would given what I went and did. I know her by face. By her body and its tantalizing contours. But I don’t know her name even though I really wish I did. I shake my head. I’m too embarrassed to say anything.

  ‘It’s Lucy.’ She doesn’t add a surname and I’ve ran out of courage to ask it. She calms her voice and introduces herself like we had been life long friends. Like I have amnesia or something. My head is spinning with questions that I want to ask her. I try to focus on the area and not on her.

  She must think I’m ignorant but I just can’t look at her. I pace around a little to get a feel of the place. The floor is polished clean but the walls are caked in soot and flame scars. The fire that destroyed most of the inside of the ship, and probably the same one that killed my friend Kolt, must have been severe, quick and relentless.

  ‘How did you make it here before me?’ I glance to her gorgeous face but quickly look away. Her thin smile fades into a frown almost instantly. I feel like I’ve upset her. Time to man up. Time to stop acting like a smitten teenager. I need to engage with her and get over a silly little crush I seem to have developed out of nothing. I stop scouring the floor, looking for bodies I’m afraid to recognize, and face her head on for the first time.

  ‘What is it.’ I reach out a brave hand to comfort her. She lets me get close. I run my hand close to her and run my open palm across her cold cheek as she begins to sob.

  ‘I…’ she begins. I can already guess how the sentence will end and it sends my stomach to the pits yet again. ‘I don’t remember.’ I want to shiver at her admission. I want to tell myself that it’s just coincidence and it has nothing to do with the way Kolt was. I think she can sense that she has shaken me. I rub her cheek a few times and even force a smile. She reaches up and holds my hand in hers. I relish the moment. I don’t care how silly it is. If it is real or not. I just want to touch her and I love that she wants to hold my hand back.

  I manage to press the issue after basking in her love for just a moment. I have to press it. I have to know what is going on.

  ‘Did you come here for me? To kill me?’ She doesn’t reply right away. She turns away from me and stares into the distance. ‘Or capture me, take me back for what I did?’ I keep on asking her the same question in different ways until she meets my eyes again. I lose my chain of thought as soon as I am lost in her gaze.

  ‘What did you do?’ She asked so sympathetically that even I might have believed I was innocent. I killed men and I stole.

  ‘You don’t remember?’ I ask and put my other hand on her other cheek. If that sounded sarcastic or mocking, it wasn’t meant to be. If she is here to kill me, even though I don’t feel that is true, I’m going to make it worth it.

  ‘No.’ She admits but smiles. ‘I feel… funny though.’ She loses my stare momentarily and seems to drift away into thought.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I stoop down just a few inches so that we are the same height and make her look at me again.

  ‘I feel… lost. But that’s ok. I feel peaceful about it.’ My heart drops into my knees and I can only let my mind race thinking about what she means. It can’t be coincidental. It can’t be. Kolt said the same thing. He was a ghost. He was dead and he didn’t even know it until he saw his rotting old ship again.

  ‘Will you kiss me?’ She asks me out of the blue, staring at me like a besotted young girl in love. She is smiling again. She has her mouth open just a touch in anticipation. Like I would ever turn her down. I can’t remember my last date. I can’t remember the last time I kissed a girl. Even her name. It has been so long that I’m not sure if I ever have in reality. If I have only dreamt of it. I don’t know if this will be my first kiss or not.

  She closes her eyes and pulls herself close to me. She is strong but limp. Firm but caring. She lets me reach out for her and press my lips to hers. They are warm and soft and we spend the next few sweet moments caressing one another’s lips with our own. She giggles just a little as we break. I didn’t even realize we had our eyes closed until I open them.

  Chapter 13

  Clean Slates

  Part 2

  I don’t know why. I have no idea where the thought came from or why, even though I know as well as I do the truth behind the stray thought, that I gave it the time of day as we parted from that kiss. But I almost thought she wasn’t going to still be there as we, or should I say I, opened my eyes.

  I don’t know what’s going on here. On this barren world. And I won’t pretend to any more. I won’t lie to myself and say that I’m still in control. I’m along for the ride now and that means taking the bull by the horns, straddling the lightning and going wherever it takes me. I don’t know what Kolt was, even though he must have been dead from the beginning.

  But I though she was dead too. I though she was dead like him. I don’t know what’s going on. But I do know what’s real. And that kiss was real. And so is the lovely smile she is giving me as our lips part.

  I’m not going to lie anymore. I’m going to forget what I thought I was before. I’m going to deny the man I used to have to be when I was at the Morris-Cooper mining Company. I’m going to forget whoever that was and I’m going to draw a line in the sand and start again. I’m going to be a new man. Whoever that might be and whatever he might turn into. Strange that a kiss can make you see things more clearly.

  But I’m done being scared. I’m done being worried and I’m going to look at this in a new way. Coming here has, in a heartbeat, screwed everything that I thought I knew. But I’m not going to be scared anymore. I’m going to let it happen and enjoy the ride.

  Sure, I know that’s bull, I know that whatever is behind the walls of the decaying Kraken will scare me half to death. But I’m ok with it. I’m at peace with it.

  I stare at her for as long as my nerves will let me. I feel like I need to say something but I daren’t. Luckily she brakes the silence first.

  ‘Are you ok?’ I don’t think she actually needs to know or that she is genuinely worried about me. I’m not good at hiding my emotions and I know that a thin smile has crept onto my mouth. She knows I’m fine, she must just be, adorably, as nervous as I am and felt she needed to fill the gap.

  But I might as well ask. Even though I know the question is pointless and may as well fall on dead ears. I might as well try to get out of her whatever little memory she still has left. How can I phrase it? How should I phrase it? Now that I need to be a different man to whoever I was before.

  Before I was cold. I was with Kolt. That job though, it changed me, I know it did. It made me that way. It isn’t who I am underneath. I know that. I just have to try to remember who I used to be before I took on that horrible job and let them get under my skin.

  Either that or I just need to toss it away and start again. I need to be a new man. I guess I would usually shut a stupid question like that out completely. I would probably ignore her and just move on coldly. But I need to be different now. I guess I’ll return the gesture then.

  ‘I’m just worried about you.’ I think that should do it. I think I’ve managed to lie my way through my own fears, even though those fears feel distant right now, and still made her feel respected in turn.

  ‘Why?’ She is so sweet. Even through my belting headache and the cold I can’t help but smile just because she talked at all. She always sounds so innocent. So protective. Just the right amount of a high pitch in her voice, without it being annoying or out of character, to be sweet and attractive.

  ‘Your memory…’ What else could I have said? Maybe it was too much and too soon because it in
stantly makes her recoil. I catch her hand as she retreats and bravely pull her back to lock eyes with me. Even if I had wanted to be stern with her I couldn’t have. Those eyes. What can I do, or any man for that matter, do but fall into them and get lost in the glistening pools of blue?

  Despite everything I had thought about her, her strength and her abilities, I can see a small tear form in the corners of each eye. I don’t want to say anything. It must be the years of programming kicking in again, but I don’t know what to say either. I have to fight the urge, hard, to say something cruel and diminishing like “buck up” or make some childish reference to her girlish emotions.

  I need to ignore those emotions and those urges from now on. I just stare at her in a way that I hope does not come over as creepy, but probably does. That was enough to press her into saying anything at all.

  ‘I…’ She starts but hesitates. Pulling away she places an open palm across her obviously aching forehead. ‘I don’t know why I’m here, or what you did, or even who you are other than your name. But I feel… ok. I feel peaceful.’ So do I. And that’s rare.

  Usually I’m fraught with worry or paranoia. Another distinct disadvantage of having been beaten physically and mentally for so long. I still don’t know what to say.

  ‘I guess, I just don’t want to remember right now. I feel ok, and I like being with you. I feel like a blank slate. Maybe that was why I forgot everything. Maybe I needed to.’

  I want to push her further. The old me, or the me I’m trying to stop being at least, wants to dig harder for more information. But I guess I feel the same. I feel like a blank slate and I feel like I can write whatever I want onto mine. I know I needed it. My past is no story book and I’m glad I’m here if it means I finally get to shred that book. So I leave her be. And just try to be glad that she’s there.