by James Stubbs
‘I came here to leave there.’ Just like I had. ‘So I separated from my group and that’s when…’ She trails off and I don’t push her for more.
‘Shhhh.’ I start stroking the back of her hair and she slowly stops crying.
‘That’s when something went wrong. I can’t see in my mind what happened. I must have fallen or hit my head. I don’t know.’ She pulls away and dries her arms with her fingers. ‘That’s when I found you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that we did at the mine. I hope you don’t hate me?’ I manage a smile and kiss her on the forehead.
‘No. Of course not.’ No point in holding a grudge after all. And it didn’t matter a whole lot any more. Those days are over and that me is dead. I’ve moved on. I’m sure of it. And it’s comforting to know that she came her to get away from her boss, the same way I came here to get away from mine.
We just stand there a while in a soft embrace. I was hard on her. I hate myself for it but I guess I’m also a little relieved that I finally got a little of the truth from her. And I also feel better knowing there is depth to her mind. Not like Kolt. He was a lost soul. I’m just glad she isn’t the same. Or at least I’m pretty sure she isn’t. And that makes me feel a little better. But none of it explains what the drowning girl had said. Or the falling man. And the burning man too. I didn’t want to burden her with it. I’d deal with it on my own. It was all in my head. It must have been.
‘Any closer to finding a way off this planet?’ I whisper in her ear. ‘Is the ship you came in serviceable?’ I can feel her shaking her head against my chest.
‘Crashed.’ Time to keep moving through the Kraken then.
Chapter 18
Second Disc
‘I think I found a way out of the sector.’ Lucy whispers to me, with her eyes still closed and her head still pressed firmly against my chest.
‘How?’
‘I only slipped in here to take a look. I pressed something and released that gas. Sorry by the way.’ I chuckle at her. Even though it had been traumatic at the time, it was okay now and I appreciate her little joke to lift our moods.
‘It’s alright.’
‘But back out the way we came I’m sure there’s some kind of shuttle, maybe like a train I guess, to the other side of the ship.’ I lift her head off me. I don’t want to and she didn’t want to go either but we need to go.
‘Let’s go check it out then?’ She responds to my gesture and we move out of the lab. Hand in hand.
I know there’s something wrong. I don’t consider myself very emotionally intelligent, and I never have done. But I can tell there is something the matter with her. I can feel it. In the air, through her hand, in her eyes. I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to ask either. I just have to hope that she’s going to be ok. I just have to make sure she is. She wipes a final tear away as we leave the lab behind.
‘Do you have any weapons on you?’ I ask her a bit sheepishly. I’m worried about how many of her people are hiding in the shadows around the broken shell of the ship. And I’m more than a little bit worried about what they’re capable of. But I don’t even want to think about them. And the ways that I found them.
‘Yeah.’ She reaches under her jacket and pulls out two handguns. ‘Take one.’ They are laser based weapons. Like the ones I had briefly used back at the mine to make my escape. I almost hoped they were older. I disguise my disappointment and just say thanks. I had hoped they were like Kolt’s ancient projectile antique. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the ship. That feeling that I’m in a different time.
Lucy leads us through another parting door and out into a more open space. The largest we have been in since the engine room. It’s some kind of transport hub. At least it used to be. It looks and feels like a railway station for want of a better description. It’s the size of a large warehouse. Untouched and preserved, away from the flames and trauma that brought the ship down and killed all aboard.
Shipping containers line the walls, stacked atop one another. They’re blue and green in color, all still locked and stowed away. There could have been anything inside of them. Shame there’s no time to look. I let my mind carry away with a nice thought that it would be awesome to come back here. Once we were rescued of course and in far greater numbers for the sake of safety, to study the place and dig up some fanciful relics of the past.
We emerge into the space via a door at the top of the room. The entrance is built like a stadium. Steps line the first wall and we follow them down into the main boarding, warehousing and distribution area. It’s nice to see some color. We had been deprived of it for far too long as we made our way through the scarred and flame dissolved ship. There’s a train of sorts waiting on the line. Lucy must be right. This must lead us through a long shaft and out into the other side of the ship.
I’m surprised at myself. I thought I had a fairly intimate knowledge of the ship. The place is lit by a large hole in the side wall of the tunnel ahead. The light is dingy but adequate. It makes the room cold though. It’s easy to forget this thing had come aground atop a snowy mountain when we were usually unsettlingly warm inside.
‘Let’s see if we can get it working then.’ I may as well have been talking to myself. She doesn’t reply. What’s bothering her? I smile at her, even though she doesn’t hold my eyes, and make the last few steps onto the platform ahead.
The train ran on tracks that lined the roof. It consists of two basic carriages and little more. It has a small engine bay but no pilot seat. It’s probably a fully automated system. I study it in the low level lighting from below. There’s a stairway that led to the left hand side. I dart up the hollow structure and into the first carriage. It’s like a time capsule. Totally preserved and intact. Eerie.
‘Lucy!’ No reply. ‘Come up here.’
The train, without any kind of prompt from me, lurches into life. I make a dash for the door but don’t make it. Lucy ran into me there. Before we knock heads I manage to grab her by the waist and pull her inside before the door slowly slid closed. Even the lights flicker on. The ones inside the carriage and the ones inside the tunnel too. It illuminates the place in a cold and pale ambience. Like a clinical light. I don’t let her go.
‘I found the on switch.’ She smiles but only briefly. She let me hold her and I’m glad of it. That must mean I hadn’t upset her too much. She even slid her hands around my neck and cradled herself there. She placed her forehead against my chest bone and just sighed a few times.
‘Come on?’ I ask her and lift her chin with just a finger. ‘What is it?’ She just shakes her head free of my grip and says nothing. I have to let it go. I can’t risk our new found relationship, whatever the Hell that is, by shouting it out of her. Besides. I still want to be a different kind of man. I need to fight the impatience building within and just let her come to me.
‘Okay.’ I whisper in her ear. I hug a little tighter for a few moments but have to let go.
I take another much slower look around the thin carriage. There’s a few posters on the wall space between the large windows. They must be inspirational and work ethic focused images. But the text is in Russian so I can’t understand it fully. No need to anyway.
‘Did you check the track for damage?’ The thought suddenly hit me. We had set off into the unknown and done no kind of safety check. This thing could fall right out of the air if the track had split during impact!
‘No… I don’t even know if there was a way to.’ She’s starting to perk up. Maybe just distracted by the further challenges I threw at her. Either way I’m glad. The instructions on whatever screen or command module she used must have been in Russian too. She had done well to get it going at all.
‘Let’s move into the forward carriage. See if we can get a better view of the track.’ I hold out my hand, she takes it, and we jog through the carriage and into the next. The train bounces under our weight. Like a swing bridge might or a smaller suspension or rope bridge would.
The ne
xt carriage is identical. Featureless. Since there’s no pilot, and the engine is seated somewhere beneath the carriage as I had seen during my brief inspection, the front of the train is just one panoramic window. I tap it. It’s not glass. Must be some kind of plastic based but reinforced polymer of some kind. With the lights somehow working I can see a good way ahead. No bends or at least no obvious breakages in the section of track. In the distance I can even see the end of the tunnel. Right at the far end is a massive cargo door that I can only hope will open upon our approach.
‘I think we should be okay.’ Lucy is right by me. With one hand placed on the glass front of the train and leaning into me. ‘Lie down.’ I tell her and point to one of the seats behind us. It’s a long bench where she can get a little rest. She takes me by the hand instead, turns me around, and pushes me down onto the seat first. And then straddles her legs across my knee before rubbing her hands up and down my chest. It feels good to have her so close.
‘So.’ I start but struggle to carry on. ‘What is it you like about me?’ That was brave I thought. She just shrugs and smiles.
‘You first.’ She teases me.
‘What’s not to like?’ To Hell with it. Be brave.
‘That’s nice…’ She stops mid sentence. Probably at the sight of my face. That look of shock and terror that I can barely hide.
There’s something in here with us. In the tunnel. Creatures of some kind.
‘What is it?’ She leaps from my knee and spins around. There really is no mistaking what they are. They’re dinosaurs of the winged variety. They must have gotten in here through the many holes in the hull. Known my luck, and known the general pace of this crappy day, we’re probably sailing right through their nest or something.
Lucy reaches for her handgun but I have different ideas. These things, the dinosaurs, had been extinct on Earth for millions upon millions of years. I want something old. Something old to fight something older. I start rummaging through a few lockers at the side of the main carriage. She’s busy prepping her weapon and getting into some sort of fight mode. She barely even gives me a glance. An axe! Double edged too like some kind of ancient sea trident weapon. Now we’re talking. I throw that on the floor by my feet with more than just a touch of enthusiasm. But I keep looking. This is a war ship after all.
Why wouldn’t there be some kind of guns, old ones, like the one Kolt had at the beginning, lying around somewhere. I come across a handgun of sorts. It’s bulky and heavy in my grip. There’s just something about it. Something so much more real than the plastic toy ray gun Lucy had given me.
‘Here.’ I pass it back to her. She’s glaring out of the forward window. Waiting there, poised to strike and deadly focused. It’s a little sexy but I let that thought pass. More important things to do after all. She looks at me like I had just drooled all over my armor, then looked to the gun and axe that I had found with some contempt mixed with thinly disguised concern.
‘You can’t fight with those antiques.’ She cocks her head aside but keeps her boots planted in her combat stance, facing the window with one small step forward, like a boxer entering the ring.
‘Well, I am a miner.’ I smile, making light of a situation that I should be taking a lot more seriously, and throw the axe to spin in the air before catching it on the way back down.
‘Do you even know how that piece of dirt works?’ She finally abandons her stance for just a second to grab the gun I had found out of my hand. She starts messing with it. Ejected the chamber of bullets, reinserted it and pulled back on the catch. ‘At least there is a full mag.’ She concedes and gives it back to me. She held it in her hand as I tried to take it in mine.
‘That’s the safety.’ She takes my index finger and presses it against a button along the side of the but of the gun. That must have turned it off. I’m starting to wish Kolt was still here. I guess it is a bit embarrassing, even knowing what century we live in, having a girl show me how to shoot. I fight the urge to laugh when I think about what Kolt might have said about it. “Take gun, point at creature, shoot.” He would have no issue fending these ancient beasts away. She smiles nervously toward me and pushes my hand away.
‘Don’t point it any where near me.’ She chuckles and refocuses on the window ahead. The flying monsters are becoming unsettled all the more with every inch further we travel along the tracks.
I’ve nothing more to say to her as I feel my stomach sink into a pit with nerves. This could be it. We’re really up against it this time. “Come on Parker!” I think to myself and start jumping on the spot to another look of daggers from Lucy. I swing the axe around my head a couple of times to get used to the weight balance but that’s all the practice time the beasts are going to allow us. There’re at least twenty of the things fluttering around the tunnel up ahead now. I hope that’s all of them. It’s already more than enough. All it was going to take was one of them to start and to make the first move.
‘Head’s up Sam.’ Lucy shouts, even though there really is no need to, and aims her gun at the first of them to attack. She fires a couple of blasts through the window, shattering it into a million tiny pieces in the process, and floors the beast to an ear splitting shriek.
‘Nice.’ I shout to her, my axe pressed coolly against one shoulder. The wind picks up immediately and nearly throws me from what I thought was a solid stance. It rockets through the train and howls around my ears. If she took one out, I wanted the next one. I bravely move closer to the gap in the train that used to be the window, pull my handgun from its resting place against my thigh and brought it to my eye level.
I fire. The gun blasts back against my grip and I nearly drop it. That would have been embarrassing beyond belief. The shot went far wide. I had no training for this kind of thing and had to fight two overwhelming feelings. One of total embarrassment as Lucy saw off my target with her laser weapon, and two, my frustration.
Lucy takes full advantage of the short break we had earned by shooting two of the flying menaces out of the air. She darts behind me, holsters her two weapons, and takes a firm hold of both of my elbows. She pulls my arms as high as she can manage and rests her head against my shoulder blade.
‘Look right down the barrel of the gun, the sight should be accurate but you might need to adjust depending on how the bullet flies.’ I did. ‘Make sure what you want to hit is bang in the middle of the two notches at the end of the barrel, right there where the bullet comes out.’
‘Got it.’ I line up the next monster and aim for the biggest part of it. It’s leathery furless wing.
‘Don’t pull the trigger, treat it like you would me, and just give it a gentle squeeze.’ I feel her smile against my back.
‘Not really the time, Lucy.’ I protest even though it’s nice.
‘Sorry.’ She mumbles as I fire. The bullet stays true to the sight and rockets through the thin stretch of skin of the right wing of the formidably sized monster. It can no longer keep any balance in the air and falls to the floor of the large tunnel. I hadn’t killed it, but hopefully the fall will!
‘There you go.’ She let go of my elbows and returns to her station beside me. I’m blushing and can’t stop. But to my further embarrassment, she finds it all the more funny. I’ll get her back.
We’re in the thick of it now. There’s more of them in the air and that short moment of training is no where near going to cut it for me. I hit one of three shots and even those aren’t well placed enough to bring whatever bird I had been aiming at down. Lucy is incredible. She stays calm, stays focused, and hits every target with ease. She alternates between guns as one would begin to overheat with artistic timing and precision. I wish I didn’t find it so damn appealing. It’s hard enough to hit my own damn targets without staring at her for most of the time.
It’s too late to matter. As soon as I’m out of bullets, I just hurl my gun at one of them that gets too close. It just bounces off it’s armored chest plate and the creature is just annoyed rather than deterr
ed by it. It lands on the edge of the window and the weight of it rocks the train from side to side and slows it down a lot. It can barely fit through the window and Lucy, despite blasting it over and over, can’t bring it down.
I charge at it and slam into it’s chest with my shoulder. It just throws me back into the carriage and tries to duck in through the windowless hole. It’s viscous beak is as long as my outstretched arm and it’s wingspan longer than me and Lucy stood head to toe together. The distance from which we had been fighting them from had masked their true size and formidability. Time for the axe.
I grip it tight with both hands and thought very briefly of the last time I had held one. When I beat my old boss down into the dirt. I tried to capture the aggression of that moment and multiply it by the frustration in my heart. Multiply it by the fact I want to save her and I can’t. That I want to save myself and I can’t. That I miss Kolt want him back. I took the axe and let it speak for me.
I howl without knowing and let the rage burn through me. Let the fact we were doomed control me and fulfill me. The blade of the axe crunches into the chest of the beast and blood gushes from the open wound I had created. It showers over my face and tastes like warm iron. It’s nice. Warming and nourishing.
Lucy takes to booting it over and over, trying as hard as she can to dislodge it from it’s perch on the window. The creature, pale and yellow, howls and groans as it loses more and more blood. I’m not stopping. Next shot of my axe I make for it’s lowered beak. It splinters across the carriage like a broken tree trunk.
‘It’s claws!’ Lucy shouts through powerful breaths and between aggressive kicks. I raise the axe up as high as I can and slam it down onto the clenched talons that held the ancient bird onto it’s housing in the carriage. That does it. It lets go and plummets with further ear splitting howls.
I quickly count five more swirling and gliding around the tunnel. We’re getting really close to the blast door ahead, that would hopefully open automatically and allow us entry into the next section of the ship. That makes the fighting seem more intense. An added sense of urgency spurs us on to keep hitting out at them.