Kraken Mare (16 page)

Whatever. It was a win, and as far as I could tell, there was now only one escaped prisoner that was still alive. He also happened to be the one I hadn’t seen during all of this, nor heard a peep about.

Baptiste
…
where in the world could you be hiding?

The doors to the hangar opened as I approached. I looked up in surprise and stopped dead in my tracks. Standing before me in all his twisted, psychotic, vampiric glory was Gentry. He grinned, his mouth stretching wide over his malformed face.

“Missed one,” he said and slammed a fist into my chest.

The body armor I had put on earlier while in the Armory probably saved my life. Combined with the impact absorption shirt I was wearing underneath and it only felt like I’d taken a shotgun full blast to the chest instead of being impaled by a freight train. I flew backwards a few feet and landed on my ass. I lay there for a moment, gaping like a fish as I struggled to breathe.

Over my gasping for air, I could hear Gentry approaching. His footsteps were loud in my ears for some reason. I rolled onto my side and winced as I managed to get some air into my lungs. That punch had hurt worse than when Jou had hit me. For some reason, I also got the feeling that Gentry had pulled his punch a little bit.

Not much, but enough to keep me alive…and make me suffer longer, I guess.

“That was actually pretty cunning,” he said as he delivered a kick to my ribs. I slid another few feet back away from the door, and my escape. He continued to rant, “I almost got caught in the Halon system. Army guys might not know what the siren was for, but any former Navy personnel would. You sneaky little bastard. You’re just about as psycho as we are.”

I wish I could say I had a clever retort and a snappy rejoinder, but my ribs hurt too much to even whimper in pain. The spirit was there but the flesh, unwilling. It really sucked, too. I had some good ones saved up.

“Was that all you could plan though?” he asked again as he circled around behind me. Another kick, this time to my kidneys. I groaned through ragged breaths. Between him and Jou, I was going to be pissing blood for a year. I hoped like hell the medical insurance I had from the company covered a dialysis machine. “Lure us in, blow shit up, let the Halon clean up the mess?” He paused in his rant for a moment and knelt down beside me. His blood-red eyes bored into mine. “Actually, that’s not a bad plan. Hard to prove murder when there’s no body. Wish I had thought of it.”

“Fuck…” I managed to spit out. He grinned, showing me his sharp teeth.

“No thanks,” he replied and hauled me to my feet with one hand. He slapped me across the face. That stung, but at least on my feet I could breathe again. Bonus points for that. “I prefer mine to be a little more on the younger side.”

He pivoted and tossed me across the hangar and out into the hall where our fight had initially begun. The air was still thick and heavy from the smoke grenades I had used to distract him with earlier. That was weird. The air filters should have cleared the smoke out in minutes. Lazy-assed maintenance workers.

I managed to crawl to my knees, which was a mistake. He reared back and kicked me so hard that I convulsed. I slammed into the wall, which broke open one of the air filter panels. I don’t think I’d ever hurt that bad before in my life. I may have even peed a little. I couldn’t be certain, since just about everything below my chest tingled and felt slightly numb. Even my hands tingled a little.

Did that bastard just snap my spine or something?
I wondered as he grabbed the back of my body armor. I desperately reached out and grabbing some of the tubing which ran inside the panel. It slowed him down for barely a moment before he jerked harder. The hose ripped out from the panel and began to gush onto the ground. Steam began to rise and the oxygen sensors on the walls of the corridor began to beep.

What the hell?

I weakly kicked backwards at Gentry, a futile gesture which made him laugh. He rewarded my efforts by slamming my face into the wall a few times. I was fortunate that he didn’t break anything important. I could feel my lower lip split, and there was some moisture on my upper lip. I tasted it and recognized my own blood. Awesome. Maybe he had broken something after all.

“You’ve stopped fighting,” he said in a gloating tone from behind me. My vision was blurred from the repeated head bashings, but I could just make out the rising steam from the broken tube I had accidentally ripped out earlier. I blinked my eyes clear and watched as the liquid continued to spill out onto the floor.

Something in the back of my mind clicked. I knew what it was, and what I had to do. I could only hope that my body was up to the task.

It was growing harder to breathe. I wasn’t sure if it was my ribs being kicked too much or the steam which was filling the corridor. I took as big of a breath as I dared and held it. I briefly wondered if Gentry even noticed or if he was too caught up in kicking my ass. Only one way to find out.

I reached out and carefully snagged the hose, my ribs screaming in protest. Being very careful not the get any of the liquid on my skin, I aimed the broken end directly at his exposed legs. It splashed against the skin and crystals began to form immediately.

Gentry howled in pain and tried to step back, only his legs had quit working. His feet had fused themselves to the floor. I aimed the spray from the hose higher and nailed his junk. His inhuman scream nearly shattered my eardrums, but I continued to hose him down.

For some reason or another, an engineer had decided to cool the station with liquid nitrogen during the design process. I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, however. I was going to make the most out of it.

My lungs burned and my head began to swim as my body cried out for oxygen. I refused to give in and kept pumping the nitrogen all over Gentry’s form. It took nearly a full minute before I had him precisely where I wanted him: immobile and helpless.

Call me a sadist for continuing to dump the liquid nitrogen on him. I dare you.

I pitched the hose aside and crawled away as best as I could, gasping for air along the way I had held my breath for over a minute, which was longer than I ever had before. With bruised ribs, no less. All while lying dangerously close to a liquid that would have killed me if I hadn’t noticed the oxygen alarms in the hall. Someone up there loved them a Marine.

Oorah
.

I lay gasping for a few more minutes before I dug for my PDA. It had managed to survive the beatings I’d taken so far and with the Wi-Fi up and running I was able to tap into the maintenance section. I quickly put in a request for extra oxygen to be pumped into the corridor while the emergency cutoff for the liquid nitrogen finally kicked in.

Somebody in Maintenance was on and followed my orders without question. Score one for mindless efficiency, I guess. Yay team.

I rolled over onto my back and clutched my bruised ribs. I gingerly inspected them as best as I could through the body armor but I couldn’t feel anything broken. I’d gotten extremely lucky. I touched my nose and grimaced as a fresh wave of pain washed over me. Okay, maybe not so lucky. My split lip was nothing new, since that seemed to happen even in dry weather all the time in the winter. Being punched hadn’t helped, but at least I had a lame excuse other than forgetting to put on lip balm.

I lifted my head a few inches off the ground and glanced at Gentry before it thumped back down onto the floor. I winced.

“Give me something alcoholic on the rocks,” I quipped and struggled to sit up. “Ow. Damn. Ow. What, nothing? Oooh, shit, that hurt. Not even a chuckle, Gentry? Ow. C’mon you bastard, that was fun—oh hell with it. Oooooh damn damn damn.”

It took a few tries, but I finally managed to get back on my feet. I was woozy, ached all over and was pretty sure I looked like someone who had gotten their ass beat. Well, no surprise there, given my day. Still, though, I was alive and Gentry…wasn’t?

I looked at Gentry’s frozen form. He was nothing more than a statue now. I had no idea if his newfound abilities would allow him to recover if he ever thawed out. The liquid nitrogen had done the trick, even if it had almost suffocated me during the process. I made a mental note to mention the idiocy of using it as a coolant for the exterior balancing of the station’s panels to whoever designed the damn place, assuming I made it out of this hell alive. While it was a good idea as a whole, the shit had allowed for me to do something that no person should be able to do. I had literally frozen a vampire on a space station and lived to tell the tale.

My life had sailed past strange, skipped crazy and was now threatening to reach Lewis Carroll territory. Ah well.
C’est la vie
.

I pulled my handgun from its holster and took careful aim at Gentry’s frozen form. I wasn’t certain what would happen, but I had a feeling that it was going to be final. I could almost hear him pleading for his life even if his lips did not move. He wasn’t even breathing. There was no way he would survive being frozen.

Fuck it
. I wanted to make certain.

“Seen this one, Gentry?” I said as I cocked the hammer. “I loved that movie.”

The round hammered into his frozen chest and embedded itself deep into the frozen mass. I was a bit surprised. I’d expected the frozen man to shatter when the round hit him, or the slim possibility of a ricochet. I hadn’t expected the round to actually penetrate.

Still, a large crack had formed in his chest. I looked behind him. The steel floor of the corridor was awfully tempting. I gave a little mental shrug and pushed Gentry.

The upper half of his chest cracked fully and fell backwards, taking his arms and head with but leaving his lower torso and legs standing upright. I jumped back a little as the chest shattered into large chunks of frozen man. I could identify what looked like red ice cubes lying across the floor.
Blood. That’s frozen blood
.
And that little piece over there looks like frozen brain. Huh. Is that his tongue?

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I’d done some nasty things in my life, but this…this was something far worse. This was absolutely heinous, ranking up there with psychotic mass killer shit. A massive wave of nausea crashed over me. I turned my head and suddenly spewed the last remnants of the Chef’s Special all over the place.

It had tasted far better going down than it did coming up, in case you were wondering. Throwing up with bruised ribs is no picnic, either. It took me a few minutes to regain control of the dry heaving and pushing through the pain which racked my body before I could even think about anything else. I spit the last remnants of corn and bile from my mouth and activated my comm.

“Lockhart, you there?”

“That you, John,” a reply came back almost instantly. “You sound like hell.”

“I feel worse,” I admitted, “but we’re good. Hangar is secured.”

“That’s great news! We’re heading up to the Observation Desk in five,” Lockhart reported back. “Patching you in to the civilian’s channel. See you in a bit.”

I acknowledged and killed the connection. I tried not to let relief overwhelm my cautious state, but it was difficult. Things were finally looking up. I exited the hangar and headed for the stairs. The only thing we needed to do now was to get the civilians onto the shuttle and get off the planet, then get the Navy to drop a rod or ten on this place and call it a day.

Easy peasy.

Chapter Twelve

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee…

–John Donne

“All right, civvies, coast is clear,” I said into the comm. “Let’s do it just like in grade school.” No reply. I started down the corridor to the Observation Deck. “Poole? Lockhart? Hello?” Still no answer as the hairs rose on the back of my neck. There was only one way in or out, but I hadn’t been paying attention when I blew up the hangar and I’d kind of lost track of everything during the fight with Gentry. “Guys, we haven’t got all day…”

I stopped at the foot of the stairs. Blood. Blood everywhere. Great pools of it running together on the floor, growing larger as what was on the wall slowly flowed into them. Here and there, solid pieces of flesh and gristle stood like islands in a crimson sea, broken only where it was smeared across the floor. The smell hung in the air, thick and metallic, invading my nose and forcing its way into the back of my throat. I averted my eyes before I could see too much. My reflexive reaction, though, brought my eyes onto a pile of what looked like ears. I gasped in horror and gagged, unable to get the taste of the putrid air out of my mouth.

Jesus. If it’s this bad down here, I don’t want to see what’s up there.
Unfortunately, the part of my brain that demanded thoroughness insisted that I check. I climbed the stairs, expecting the worst, hoping for the best.

My fears were not unfounded.

The observation deck was covered in blood, splashed on the walls and windows. What was left of the gathered scientists was scattered around the room, seemingly strewn at random by a rogue wood chipper. Careful searching would’ve been a waste of time—the room left no place to hide for any survivors. A smear of blood, starting in the center of the room, continued down the stairs. I followed it, back the way I came.

The trail led down the hall, long streaks of red apparently made by clawing hands. Whoever had been drug away was still alive. At last check, only two inmates were left unaccounted for: Holomisa and Baptiste, and this definitely didn’t seem like the work of the mild-mannered and heroic Holomisa.

I checked weapons, not able to shake the feeling that I was walking towards a death trap. Someone able to rip through a room full of people in only a matter of minutes wasn’t going to be stopped by a few bullets.

The trail led to the elevator. The supposedly non-working elevator.

Oh hell no. No way am I getting in there.
Not only would it give away my position and allow whoever to know exactly when and where I’d be when I arrived, it was a great place to set an ambush.
I’ve seen this movie. The hero gets in, complains about the music, and then gets attacked by the monster on top of the car. All that’s missing is the scary music and glowing footprints. Stairs it is. Although…

I was at the top level of the station, the elevator had stopped at Research. Chances were good that the bad guy was there, and that it was a trap. Why, though? As bruising to my ego as it was, I had to be honest with myself: that thing would likely shred me, pick its teeth with my leg bones, and wear the body armor as a trophy. Why not hit me up here, close to the shuttles?

I racked my brain, trying to remember something Jou had said. “The boss wants you alive.” Holomisa had still been in his cell, and Baptiste had been loose.

Pretty much eliminates Holomisa as ‘the Boss.’ So why would Baptiste want me alive?

I punched the call button, watching the numbers above the doors. Agonizingly slow seconds passed before the car arrived, the doors opening to my raised rifle. Empty.

I worked fast, pulling the stop button to make sure I had time to set up. One charge went on the ceiling, roughly a foot from the door; the other, on the panel. I pushed the button for research, deactivated the stop, exiting as the doors slid closed.

Again, time crawled as the numbers reversed themselves, finally stopping at research level.

“Three, two, one…” I triggered the charges.

The muffled thump of the explosion brought a smile to my face. Hey, I was still a Marine, and boomy things make me happy. I could only hope that Baptiste had been waiting close by in ambush. I started down the stairs, rifle at the ready, keeping my movements as quiet as possible.

The stairs were empty. I was thrilled about this, but I had to admit that I was completely
done
with stairs. If I survived this I was installing a fucking elevator or three in my house whenever I got around to buying one. Hell, screw that. I could just build a house with no stairs at all, with everything on the same level. Yeah, that sounded much better.

Kansas. Kansas was flat. Yeah, I was going to buy a single-story house in Kansas.

As I made my way down the stairs, I began to grow dizzy and breathing grew a little more difficult. My ribs were aching, though not the flaring, stabbing pain I typically associated with broken bones. That was the good news. The bad was that my body was extremely beat up and my mind was starting to wander because of it. I knew it would happen eventually. I probably had a concussion from the continued beatings.

My comm chirped. I ignored it. I knew who it was and had no desire to deal with him. It chirped again, this time seemingly a little more insistently. I scowled and answered it as I arrived at the proper level.

“What do you want, psycho?”

“Tell me, Johnny,” Baptiste said over the comm as I exited the stairwell and hobbled down towards Research as fast as I could manage. “Did you think you could save everyone?”

“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?”