Kraken Mare

by Jason Cordova

  Ninety percent failed to complete the first Time of Major Suck. Instead of making it simpler, as other branches of the Armed Forces had done in the past, the Corps decided that it was too easy and made it…tougher. Gone were the random food drops to keep Marines fed. If you wanted to be Recon, you had to find your own food. Lost? Should have brought a map, or stolen one. Lack of food? Suck it up, Marine. Water? Urine is sterile, you whiner. Drink up and stay alive.

  Needless to say, the last week of the Time of Major Suck is a bit of a blur to me. On the other hand, it's the primary reason I survived my unwanted and unasked for field trip on Soma.

  It was still early in my shift as I wandered the levels of the station, doing what the rest of the guards called a “leak and peek” check. I had originally thought that they were messing around with me when they told me about it. Harass the new guy and all that, so I ignored it. I got royally chewed out by Gerry on my third night after finishing my rounds well ahead of schedule. After he explained precisely what a “leak and peek” check was, though, I made damn certain to take my time and do exactly as I had been told.

  The station was pressurized to keep the air inside breathable. It was what kept us alive. A series of locks and pressurized vaults allowed for the shuttles to arrive in the hangar, and another set let the deep sea research vessels depart into the lake and explore the surroundings. Throughout the remaining parts, the plasteel and carefully sealed joints kept the inhabitants of the station safe.

  The “leak and peek” check basically meant that a guard had to wander all over the station and listen to any strange sounds, anything miniscule to something like air escaping or hissing, and even a bubbling, boiling water sound. The guard also looked for any sign of dampness in the outer passageways. Sensors covered the entire station and were wired into Control in case something catastrophic happened, but sometimes the sensors missed things. That was why idiots like me walked the halls looking for trouble.

  Strangely enough, my boss mentioned that if I could hear the boiling water sound then I was probably already dead. I would like to think that he was just messing with the new guy, but the odds were pretty good that he wasn't.

  The Gallery was dimly lit and quiet, as I'd expected. I briefly scanned the room for any signs of life, but even the kraken had disappeared from the viewing tubes for the evening. While the inquisitive aliens were almost always watching the scientists, the only other guard besides me that they paid any attention to was the boss, Gerry. Which meant that once the scientists left, the kraken disappeared into the mysterious depths of the lake.

  I logged my inspection of the large space on my PDA and moved around the edge of the room, looking out through the plasteel and into the lake. I could see tiny, almost microscopic flashes of fluorescent light moving about. The plankton had startled me the first time I had seen it, though the explanation was easy. Much like lightning bugs of Earth and the parietal bugs on Soma, the fluorescent was designed to attract mates. It was eerily beautiful, much like everything else on this moon.

  I stopped and watched the show for a few seconds before moving on. As much as I enjoyed it, I had a job to do.

  I turned the corner and spotted Post Three, one of the five security checkpoints strategically placed throughout the station. They protected the restricted locations throughout the base, places like Research and Control where the few civilian maintenance workers could not go. I felt it was a bit redundant to have that many posts for only thirty civilian workers but it wasn't up to me.

  Justin Balyeat and April Voecks were on duty tonight at Post Three. Justin was a pretty bland guy who was a bit of a nerd like me, except his interests ran more to the math side than mine. He was taller than I was and better built, but I liked to think that I had better hair. He was pretty reserved, too, rarely displaying his emotions for anyone to see. I never really understood how he got into private contracting, since he was one of the rare few who didn't have military experience. His room was actually next to mine so I could have just gone over and asked, but we didn't interact much for some reason. It's not as though I was trying to avoid him or anything. We just never really talked once we were off duty.

  April, on the other hand, had a crass sense of humor that I greatly appreciated and was fairly gregarious. She was one of the few non-civilian females on the station and, because of this, was the center of attention for a lot of the single guys, as well as a few of the married ones. She never seemed to show any interest in any of them, though, and particularly enjoyed shooting down their attempts. Watching someone crash and burn while trying to hit on her was a form of entertainment most of us never seemed to tire of. Her husband back on Earth must have been one hell of a guy to keep her loyalty, I figured. She was a former pararescuer, a special operations unit that worked to save pilots when they were shot down in hostile territory. It was a tough group to get into by any standards. She was, by any definition of the word, a total badass.

  “Hey Manning,” April greeted me as I approached their post. “How are things on this lovely fall evening?”

  “I guess that's the nice thing about being on a station where you don't see any seasonal changes,” I observed as I stopped at the desk. “You can tell me it was winter and I'd believe you.”

  “Benefits of the station's isolation,” Justin stated as he held out a PDA. I pressed my thumb on the screen for a few seconds until it chirped. Logged, I leaned against the desk and glanced at the clock. It was just past midnight, standard Zulu time. I wondered for a moment if my mom had made enchiladas for dinner. The idea made my stomach gurgle hungrily.

  “Benefit?” I asked and gave him a curious look. I told my stomach to shut up.

  “You're still aging the same as if you were on Earth, since we still use Earth time and calendar here,” Justin explained. “No matter where in orbit we are in relation to Saturn, we're still on HQ's seasonal calendar, which means Chicago. Not like if we were on, oh, Soma or something, where we had to try to match the calendar to the planet's orbit. It'd be kind of stupid to try and match the calendar of the station to the moon's orbit when we never even see a seasonal change.”

  “Point,” I conceded. Having three months of August on Soma had sucked hardcore. Especially when the average temperature was three degrees higher than Earth's, and the humidity levels were five times greater on average. It was like the Deep South, but worse. Much, much worse. “Never really thought of it like that.”

  “Quiet night, like always,” April said as she rubbed her face with her hands. “I hate the night shift. Too damn slow for me. Why'd you volunteer for it?”

  “I like the quiet,” I admitted. “Not to sound rude, but I don't have to deal with a lot of people this way. The prisoners are asleep, and the scientists aren't begging me to interact with the krakens for more research while I'm on duty.”

  “It's nice,” Justin agreed with me. “But the occasional change of routine? I wouldn't complain.”

  “Bitch whine moan,” I chuckled. “Paid as much as we are to do nothing? I almost feel guilty.”

  “I don't,” April grinned. “I jumped into hot LZ's eighty-six times during my hitch while making a little over minimum wage. You can offer me more money than I make right now to do this and not a shred of guilt would ever touch my soul.”

  “Amen, sister,” I said, impressed. I knew she had made a few combat jumps, but not that many. “All right, I'm off to Post Two. Leak and peek watch is as exciting as competitive lawn growing. Catch you guys later.”

  “See you at 0500,” April said and waved. Justin merely grunted in my direction as I walked off.

  The distance between the posts was enough that we needed our comms to stay in contact. The station was huge by civilian standards and featured lots of varying hallways and rooms throughout that made traversing it slow. I'd gotten lost a few times my first week at the station and endured some ridicule from the others, but eventually I was able to figure it out.

  Five minutes later, I was nearing Resea
rch when I felt the air around me suddenly grow colder. I paused and looked around. I couldn't hear anything unusual so I began to mentally go through my checklist. The air recyclers of the station kept the temperature at a balmy 72 degrees at all times, and there was almost never any sort of fluctuations. A change in air temperature usually meant that one of the recyclers was on the fritz. A simple fix but a common problem on a station this size. I scowled and brought up my PDA. I typed in a few commands before I began to speak.

  “Post Three, this is Manning.”

  “Go, Manning,” April's voice came back almost instantly.

  “One of the recyclers needs to be repaired in hallway four, delta level,” I informed her. I rattled off the numbers which were stenciled on the wall where I was at for her to reference the precise recyclers I was talking about. “Just picked up a cold spot. Run a diagnostic to confirm.”

  “Cold spot in hallway four, delta level,” she then repeated the numbers back to me. “Running diagnostic test now to confirm.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  A moment later she came back on the PDA. “John, readings in the hallway says that the temperature is steady and the same as the rest of the station. All recyclers show green and are running within parameters.”

  “Well that's bull,” I muttered. “Negative, Post Three. It's decidedly cooler in this hallway. Feels like it's fifty degrees or colder here.”

  “I'm showing everything to be green, John,” she countered in a disbelieving tone. “You running a fever or something?”

  “Not that I'm aware,” I said, puzzled. What the hell?

  “Do we need to send a maintenance crew down there?” April asked.

  “No, I don't think so,” I said after a moment of thought. If I were running a fever, I would be sweaty, so I checked my forehead with my free hand. No sweat. I scowled. I stayed quiet and listened, but I couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. The gentle hum of the recyclers remained steady, and I couldn’t hear anything that remotely sounded like an air leak. “It's probably nothing. Thanks for checking, April.”

  “No problem. Post Three, out.”

  I tucked my PDA back into my pants pocket. Methane needed to be both cold and under extreme amounts of pressure in order to remain in liquid form, and Titan had both in spades. I listened carefully but heard nothing that sounded like water bubbling. In fact, the entire hall was eerily silent. I rubbed my exposed arms as goose bumps began to rise. I held up my PDA and tapped into the environmental scanners remotely. According to the sensors, the temperature was normal. I scowled and slapped the stupid machine before I tucked it back into my pocket. I didn't care what the sensors said. It was cold.

  A tickling sensation ran down my spine. It was a feeling which I'd come to dread while out in the depths of the wilderness. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and goose bumps, which had nothing to do with the temperature, raised on my forearms. My gut churned. This was too familiar.

  I was being watched and I didn't know by who.

  I glanced up and looked for the security cameras. They were scattered throughout the station and were constantly monitored by the guards back at Control. For a brief instant, I thought that maybe I was being watched electronically but dismissed that notion almost immediately. Whoever was spying on me was closer than the cameras, which was impossible. There was nothing in the hallway that anyone could hide behind and nowhere to hide in, like a utility room, and the space between the walls and the recyclers was too small to fit anyone larger than a child. Yet the sensation remained. It was bizarre, and it was starting to freak me out a little.

  Movement flickered in the corner of my eye. I whirled quickly, my hand dropping to where I would normally have had a sidearm. Guards didn't carry actual firearms, though, merely tranquilizer guns. Handy but not something I wanted to trust with my life.

  It didn't matter, though. There was nothing there. I let my eyes slide slowly across the hall, though I never took my hand off of the tranq gun. No movement, no sign of whatever I thought I had seen, nothing. Had I lost my mind, I wondered as I continued to scan the hallway. Had I finally snapped?

  “Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. I was getting myself all worked up over nothing. It was all in my mind, my brain filling in gaps of what my eyes couldn't see. My imagination gone wild was a far simpler solution than anything else. I made a mental note to talk with Gerry after my shift ended. Maybe I needed to swap shifts with someone for a few days? I rubbed my tired eyes as I turned around.

  An apparition of some sort was standing in the hall, facing away from me. I almost screamed but managed to keep my composure, though I still went for my sidearm…which was worthless against something like this. The sweat on the back of my neck was icy cold, my palms were clammy. I was staring at something that wasn't supposed to exist. Couldn't exist.

  I fumbled for my tranq gun but the nerves in my fingers seemed to be numb. I couldn't feel the release catch for the holster.

  Ghosts aren't real, I thought as I struggled to keep hold of my sanity. Ghosts can't be real!

  Ghosts aren't real, and yet there was one standing right in front of me. It was facing away, looking out into…what? I didn't know. I couldn't even imagine what the ghost was thinking. Or if they even did think. It was too much. I had to be hallucinating…

  …but I wasn't. I knew I couldn't be hallucinating. Which meant that the ghost before me was real. Who could it be, though? Had one of the workers died during construction and was now doomed to roam the halls? Or was it something else entirely? And why me? Why would the ghost show itself to me?

  The ghost turned and my heart stopped beating in my chest. I knew every single angle of that delicate face, the curve of her lips, the shape of her eyes. I recognized the curious tilt of her head, the slight quirk of her smile, the laughter which was yet to come. I was intimately familiar with everything about her even though I had only seen her in photos taken years before.

  A man never forgets his first, last, and only love.

  “No,” I whispered as I stared at her. I took a step back. “This is a trick. My brain is playing tricks on me. That's all. That's all this is.”

  John…

  “Oh fuck no!” I screamed and looked away. “No! I'm not going through this shit again!”

  After a minute of silence, I looked back .She was still there, watching me, a strange expression on her face. It was filled with sorrow, but there was something else on the edge of that. It was almost as though Concy – no, just a ghost, not Concy, I told myself – looked guilty.

  How can the dead look guilty? I wondered.

  John…danger…

  “What are you talking about?” I asked in a hushed whisper, terrified that if I spoke too loudly that she would leave or, worse yet, stay. I can't explain why I thought this, it was just there, in the back of my mind. A lingering doubt. “What do you mean?”

  Danger…comes…

  “Comes from where? What are you talking about?” I knew I was babbling but I couldn't help it.

  From…within…below…

  Below? From the bottom of the lake? Was there something at the bottom of the lake that was coming for us? I was confused, frightened, and in a hell of a lot of pain. Pain of the heart, of the soul. A deep, dark depression, something I had thought I'd left behind years before, welled up. It threatened to overwhelm me, to drag me back down into that never-ending abyss.

  Was I hallucinating? Had I finally snapped and gone crazy? Tears blinded me. The hall wavered in my eyes as my vision blurred. I knew I hadn't snapped, not yet in any case. But I didn't understand any of it. What did she mean? I hastily wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I had to know. I had to—

  She was gone. The hallway was back to normal temperature. The lights were no longer flickering or acting oddly. I leaned against the wall, emotionally exhausted, barely able to contain the soul-wrenching sobs which threatened to tear me apart from the inside out. My heart threatened to tear itself in two for the
second time in my life, and I slowly slid down the wall until I was seated. I pressed my head against the cool surface of the wall and closed my eyes. I began to count, slowly, by threes until my breathing began to return to normal. My racing heart slowed and the old, familiar dull ache in my soul faded. I opened my eyes.

  There was no sign of anyone in the hall with me. I could hear nothing but the steady, gentle pulsing of the recyclers working in the ducts below. I couldn't smell anything other than my own stale sweat and fear. I bent my head down and pressed it against my knee. I was alone and nobody would be able to see a thing.

  I let the last remnants of the festering wound in my soul pour forth. The pain was almost welcome. It was long past overdue.

  Chapter Seven

  The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

  -Wendell Barry

  I didn't tell anyone what I had seen in the hallway. I'd finished my shift and immediately made my way to the gym where I could beat up on a punching bag while I sorted through my jumbled emotions. It took long enough that by the time I'd finished punching, all the muscles in my shoulders were numb and I could no longer feel my hands. I was exhausted and needed to go to bed, but I was almost afraid to. I wasn't sure how my dreams would turn and, given how raw my emotions were, I decided to forgo for the time being. Catnaps would suffice, I hoped.

  Gerry could tell something was wrong when he saw me come into the gym. He wisely left me alone while I hit the bag. After I'd returned from the showers carrying my dirty workout clothes, however, he pulled me aside.