Kraken Mare (19 page)

“And, that, my dear John,” Baptiste’s voice came from directly behind me, “is why you will fail.”

I felt myself heaved off of my feet, Concy fading out as I was slammed to the floor. The breath left my lungs as the rifle slammed into my kidneys, pain causing me to gag soundlessly for air. Baptiste’s kick caught me square in the chest, the ceramic armor plate cracking at the impact. I slid backwards, unable to do anything but try and breathe, watching helplessly as he closed, flexing his fingers.

“Poor little Johnny,” another plate cracked at his next kick. The impact felt like a .45 slug at close range. “You couldn’t save them. Any of them. No matter how hard you fought and tried, it was beyond your level of skill.”

Baptiste squatted down next to me, his face above mine. “Why do you think you were cashiered so quickly after Soma? You want to believe it was skill that saved you, but deep down, where you don’t want to look, you know the truth. It was sheer luck. The Marines knew it. They could see you for what you really are—the boy playing war while all the grownups die around him. Too many old action movies and adventure books gave you a false sense of manhood.”

I couldn’t help myself, flinching as his hand stretched out to tousle my hair, hating myself for giving him some satisfaction. “See? The scared child never strays too far from the surface.”

I drew in a ragged breath, finally able to get my wind back.

“Fuck you, Baptiste.”

“Profanity is the first resource of the immature, my dear boy. You should really work on your vocabulary.” A sharp slap across my cheek, faster than I could follow, bounced my skull of the floor. “Normally, I’d wash your mouth out with soap, but that will have to do for now.”

“You realize you’re not getting off this station, right?” I coughed, body complaining with every motion. “The U.N. knows about the breakout, and will only allow those shuttles to leave with the correct codes.” I jerked my chin at the remains of Thing One and Two. “And you killed the only two guys that had them.”

“Oh, Johnny.” Stars exploded in my eyes with the next slap. “That’s for lying. I know those codes are firmly nestled in your little jar head. Getting them out is going to be sooo much fun.”

He lifted me up again, handling my body weight and assorted gear like it was nothing, the straps of the body armor biting into my armpits as he raised me with one hand. I went for a pistol, only to have Baptiste lock my wrist in an iron grip.

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny… When will you learn? You’re beaten. I’m faster, stronger and smarter.” To prove his point, he forced my hand, pistol and all up and out, the muzzle aiming at a point somewhere over his shoulder. Before I could stop him, the butt of the gun cracked into my temple. “Now, stop this foolishness before I’m forced to really hurt you.”

He squeezed, the tendons and bones in my wrist creaking at the sudden pressure. The pistol fell from nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor before Baptiste kicked it away. Still holding me aloft, the former prisoner stripped me of every weapon I had, tossing hardware around the room as he found it.

“Now that you’re sufficiently harmless, let’s have a chat.” With a sudden move, Baptiste hit me with a rabbit punch, his fist angling up under the body armor to catch my side. I felt a rib go, the sharp pain causing me to gasp. “I pulled that one, Johnny. Can’t have you dying on me just yet.”

I struggled to breathe as he dropped me into a chair, pulling up another and reversing it to sit with his arms crossed over the back. He didn’t even bother tying me up. There was no need. I was a beaten man. It hurt to breathe, much less try to make a break for it. I knew it, and Baptiste knew it. He smiled sardonically.

“I grew up in a small, rural town in Indiana,” Baptiste said as he gently touched the side of my cheek. The touch, light as a feather, opened the skin. He looked at his sharpened claw and frowned.

“Oops. I am so very sorry about that. Anyway, in this tiny, redneck town there was absolutely nothing for a kid to do.”

“Great,” I growled, blood trickling slowly down my face, collecting in a drop at my jawline. My entire body let me know how it felt about the beating I had taken. I told myself I still had some fight in there, somewhere, because Marine, dammit. Granted, that could have been the blood loss and traumatic head injury talking. “You're just another psychopath who blames all his problems and everything he's done on his fucked up childhood.”

“I'm surprised that you would think that, John—I can call you John, right? I mean, we're practically blood brothers now, considering how much of yours is all over me.” Baptiste shook his head. “Sadly, I have no one to blame for the way I am but myself. I decided my actions, and this is the result. I have to be frank with you, though. I used to think that maybe I'd done wrong, that perhaps this prison was my punishment for all the crimes I've committed. Now? Well, now I'm rethinking that assessment. Perhaps this isn't so much of a punishment as it is a reward.”

“Lunatic.”

“What was I talking about again… Oh, that’s right.” Baptiste nodded and leaned away. His eyes, molten puddles of red filled with insanity, were lost in memories past; his voice a hushed, almost reverent whisper. “This town, there was nothing to do at all for the teens as we got older. Sure, there was little league and soccer for the young kids, but once you hit high school, unless you made one of the few sports teams, there was little else to do. So the kids had three option: get drunk, get high, or get laid. Oddly enough, my hometown had a high teenage pregnancy and high school dropout rate. Strange, right? Nobody could figure it out why fourteen and fifteen year olds kept getting knocked up. The strangest damn thing.

“Then one day a new business opened up. It was amazing, this new place. It was a place where the teens could hang out and not get chased off by cops. It wasn't anything special, really. Just a pool hall with some retro videogames in it. But it was
something
, and naturally kids flocked to it. For a time, the parents in town were happy. No longer were their kids out doing stupid things.

“This 'peace,’ for lack of a better word, lasted for about a year. Then the drug dealers noticed that their clientele had moved, and followed suit. Soon enough, drugs were being sold out of the pool hall and police began to patrol. Parents were angry—not at their kids, though. Oh no. That would have made sense. No, they were angry at the pool hall. They wanted it shut down, so they tried to revoke the business license. That failed because the business brought in money for the town, money that was much needed, since there was little else there for the small town to tax.

“One night, an angry father of a girl who had gotten pregnant and eventually dropped out of high school torched the place. Burned it right to the ground, no muss, no fuss. Police investigated and, even though everyone knew who did it, there wasn't enough evidence to bring him up on charges. Other parents covered for him, saying that he had been nowhere near the fire. So the owners of the pool hall collected their fat insurance check and were given two options: build elsewhere, or risk more accidents.

“They took the risk and rebuilt. Now the pool hall had even swankier games and had enough money to hire an off-duty police officer to guard the place to chase away the drug dealers. Unsurprisingly, this worked, and the pool hall was safe again. Well, safe from the criminals. Safe from concerned parents who thought that this blight on their precious community should leave permanently? Safe from concerned citizens who blamed their own poor parenting skills on something else? Well, that was a different matter altogether.

“It was little things at first. Tires on a car being slashed or having the air let out of them, threatening messages on their voicemail, graffiti on the walls of the hall. But the owners were convinced that they were doing a good thing and pressed on, trying to keep their business open. Petitions were started, online hate campaigns pressed forward, and for the owners it was as if they were running a pornography den out of the basement of a church. They were hated by the parents, no matter how much the kids like them.

“Then the place was burned for a second time. Completely scorched, nothing saved. The volunteer fire department, for reasons unknown, were a bit slow in responding to the fire. The subtle message was obvious to any and all. This time the owners packed up and left. There was no insurance check this time, since the insurer had figured out by now that it was going to continue to happen. Poor, destitute and hated by all, the owners never looked back. And the proper people in the town rejoiced, because now things can get back to the way they were before. The teens slid back into old habits, and once more the parents were left blaming society for their own misdeeds. The circle of human life. So sad, so cruel, so absolutely pathetic.”

“What…has that to do with this?” I jerked my chin at the bodies around us. “You think that's some sort of good reason to murder innocents?”

“Them? Your so-called innocents? No, John. They're the little things. Ah. I see confusion on your face. Well then, let me explain it to you in easier terms then. After all, you're just a simple Marine,” Baptiste hissed through his pointed teeth, his hot breath on my forehead as he leaned in closer. “This planet? A small, boring redneck town for your beloved kraken. This station? This…
prison
? This is the pool hall. The kraken that seem to follow your every move and move freely about? Those are the fourteen and fifteen year olds of their species. All that we’re missing is the angry parents, no?”

The entire station tremored slightly, causing my blood to run cold. A distant thunder reverberated throughout the supposed indestructible structure.

“Ah, it seems I’ve struck a nerve,” Baptiste said, grinning. “Someone’s getting a little worked up.”

My heart raced as adrenaline poured into my system, realization dawning on me.

Psyops. An almost forgotten detail of his bio came to the front of my mind. As an officer, he’d run psyops in one of the wars. Whatever it was had apparently been bad enough to cost him his commission. The lack of details in his court martial, combined with the catch all ‘conduct unbecoming’ made me think it was something the military didn’t want to make public.

Baptiste wasn’t done with me yet. He wanted to drive the fear into the mind of a man who had already survived Hell once. He wanted to break me, and in doing so, break the Kraken. That’s why he needed me alive. The empathic link was stronger than it was with anyone else, and the resulting backlash would cripple their morale.

Why, though? Why did he have a need to harm an alien species that, for all intents and purposes, was harmless? What made him want to kill the very species which had helped the scientists make him into… whatever he was? The many questions and complete lack of answers made my head spin.

Baptiste's mocking, evil smile was wide upon his elongated face. He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. That’s when I felt it. Pressure at the front of my skull, rapidly increasing to a throbbing pain. It felt like my head was trapped in vice, and Baptiste was slowly turning the screw. Those red eyes bored into mine, the brightness fading as my vision grew dark. Through the ringing in my ears, I could just make out his voice, harsh as steel wool on sheet metal. Another tremor seemed to shake the entire station.

“Daddy's here…and he's ready to burn this fucking place to the ground.”

Baptiste was crazy, that much was obvious. What his little monologue meant was lost on me. I wasn’t, however, in any position to critique his style, so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, had I said anything, he may have decided to write a dissertation.

On my chest. With a rusty spoon

Darkness consumed me, penetrating my brain, extinguishing any thoughts of resistance. I couldn’t beat him, there was no point in trying. Everything I had gone through—Hell week, mission after mission against difficult odds, Soma—everything in my life leading up to this moment meant nothing. I wasn’t strong enough to fight Baptiste. There was no hope, I wasn’t getting out of this. I needed to just let go, give in, and give up.

A bright flash of pain, a small white light in the overwhelming black cloud, flared behind my eyes, growing steadily brighter and larger as it became a familiar figure.

“You’re not done yet, John,” Concy said, a fierce smile dominating her features. “I didn’t fall in love with a man that would just quit.”

A sudden wave of hope washed over me, flowing from the fiery form of my dead wife, growing stronger as her light grew brighter. Her voice echoed in my head, joined by every drill sergeant and NCO I’d ever met.

“Get up, Marine!”

The other voice, formerly seductive and quiet, transformed into a grating parody of itself.

“There’s no point, give in, don’t listen!”

My vision slowly came back, the desperation fading as it was replaced with grim determination and something else. Anger. I felt my jaw clench as I looked Baptiste in the eye, spitting my words through gritted teeth.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Head!”

The fire in my mind grew blinding, burning out the darkness surrounding it. Baptiste rocked back, as though hit by a lead truncheon, releasing his grip on my chin.

I followed through with a sharp head-butt, the heavy bone of my forehead smashing into his nose with as much force as I could throw behind it. Adrenaline and fear forced away the various pains in my body, giving me the strength to surge forward and land a vicious uppercut. Both feet slamming into his chair sent him toppling over, the sound of his skull striking the floor giving me a grim satisfaction. I jumped up, using the momentum to deliver a snap kick to his temple on my way past.