Cold Pride, Page 2

in a path leading back to his client snow-tribe.

  Inside his capsule, Quinn prepared tools, used the wizardry of the on-board technological apparatus to brew chemicals that kept him nourished and warm. He tinkered with the armoury, converted explosives into slow-build heat mines and grenades.

  Swooping low, he peppered the Kraken’s favoured ocean habitats with these mines. Afterwards, Quinn ventured to the extreme-northern polar region, where the sea met diamond mountain ranges and where night lasted throughout the year. Here, Brother Quinn landed and secured his capsule to a large diamond barb, connecting himself to the capsule via safety cable.

  Cross-legged, he sat upon a peak and sang into the winds, meditating amongst diamonds which twinkled with moonlight. His first imaginings always ended with failure and death. But as time went by, these deadly failures morphed into narrow ones. Suicidal stalemates became Pyrrhic victories. Then, as Quinn re-ran all possibilities, a path to clear-success became manifest. Eventually, this mental stalking ended with victory.

  In the distance, immense spouts of steam framed the rising tide; the heat mines evaporating oxygen. Gradually, this pushed the Kraken further and further north in a quest for breath. A flock of birds huddled on the horizon, occasionally diving and pecking at whatever sea life hitched a ride on the beast’s back.

  Suddenly, the tide surged, sea level swelled. Lapping waves became ocean-battlements high enough to blot out stars. Under and around Quinn the diamonds vibrated and rung. The wind blew harder, a mist tainted with the stink of salt and rotting fish, like some old sea god determined to completely empty his lungs.

  Lit by pale moonlight, ghostly in the mist, something started to rise from the ocean. A dark puddle of rock ever growing. In mere moments, rock spanned into boulder, into mountain, until it appeared that the sea was birthing an island. Leaping to his feet, Quinn dashed along a spiny edge as waves crashed around him.

  With the force of a continental shelf, the Kraken crushed into the cliff and found itself in shallower water aching for oxygen. In an urge born from instinct the gargantuan lurched upward to smash ice, instead finding diamond crags, ripping and piercing granite hard mantle. The vast beast impaled itself. Yet, even diamond could not withstand such massive forces unscathed.

  Countless razor shards sprayed a mist over the cliff. Quinn sprinted, rolled and ducked, avoiding slivers and bergs slung in gravity defying abandon. A slow man would have been instantly torn to shreds, a quick man mortally wounded, but Quinn was a faster man.

  The razor mist slashed his contoured suit; a thousand tiny lacerations over his skin. Diamond shattered all around, and yet he bound from safe spot to safe spot. Until the ground opened underfoot and Quinn tumbled into a fracture of rock. Hands scrabbled for a hold, heavy boots kicked into any nook for leverage. The support cable from his capsule snaked limply as the craft started to slip across surfaces lacking friction.

  Cable tangled around his body, burning as it rubbed. Quinn bellowed as stinking gusts of Kraken breath frosted the crevice around him. Don’t think, act! He twisted the limp rope in his hands, cut it away from his body with the blades now unsheathed from wrist guards and boots. Despite the razor slivers opening his skin, his bloody fingers found purchase. Pulling upward, sinews trembling, fingers lifted him over a ledge just as the capsule sped past, falling into the tide-filled fracture.

  Quinn lay on an edge of ice, feeling the running cracks under him. Deep wails of Kraken thrummed in the air. Belches bubbled the sea as it struggled for oxygen, water darkening inky black as it bled. But the young hunter knew the Kraken could slip or break off from the ranges. He still had to finish it off; to make sure. The first bite better be easier than the seasoning, he thought.

  Salt-spray stung as it soaked the crosshatch of slashes covering Quinn’s body. But the pain kept Quinn alert as he crawled ever closer to the lip of the diamond ridge. With a conscious thought, the laceration on his body congealed and scabbed over.

  The Kraken’s breath still shook the ground, but less urgently than before. Perhaps to preserve energy; waiting for the inevitable when its sheer bulk pulled it back into the ocean.

  As Quinn prepared to leap onto the beast, the sight of the moonlit mantle caused him a moment’s pause. Instead of the ice-smooth polish of legend, the moonlight caught against dents and scratches; a constellation of bizarre boils and dimples. Legends exaggerate, thought Quinn. Taking a running jump and plunging over the cliff edge he wondered what exaggerations people would speak of him.

  Parachute-wings unfurled from activity suit. Quinn glided gracefully onto the surface of the Kraken’s back; wind pulled him along at speed. The rumbling heartbeat of the Kraken vibrated through his whole body. Skating on the bladed edges of his wrist guards and boots, he steered around mottled scabbing and barnacles, watchful for new threats.

  Irregular slithers in his periphery, Quinn grinded his blades to a stop, parachute wings creasing and folding away. Eyes filtered through the light spectrum and tried to make sense of the darkness on the unlit curve of the mantle. Here and there, pulpy forms steamed against the shell, burrowing amidst patches of boils. Man-sized slug things with sprigs of string-tentacles feeling their way. Such a stink. Quinn’s grinding had disturbed a nearby group.

  Suddenly, a pulpy form spat at him, a stream of goo arcing across the mantle. The mess gelled against the young hunter’s suit, pooling over his scabbed hands. Filthy parasites. But Quinn ignored them, far too slow to catch him. Other streams missing as he skated on, even though the goo reeked and his skin burned. Chemicals quaked through his blood to quell the pain.

  Diamond shards continued to rain, now accompanied by fresh snow. Quinn continued to labour on his way while the huge creature frosted over. Eventually, the hunter reached a rimmed edge, allowed himself to hang by a blade then fall to an outcropping. Curling into a vast hood under the outcropping, his blades bit into thickly scaled flesh. He climbed what would pass for a brow until he hung over an eye. Determined to share a gaze with what he was about to kill, Quinn paid his respects.

  A deep black pit, an abyss of infinity, contemplated the tiny hunter swinging to and fro. The mammoth eye, yet small on such a creature, fidgeted; but Quinn held firm. He bowed his head before kicking away, wrist-blades retracting, and he plummeted into freezing sea.

  Again, internal chemicals sacs burst to keep the cold at bay. Embedded nose filters sucked oxygen from the sea as Quinn swam. The moonlight broke into shards on the water’s surface when Quinn dived, everything darkening as he explored the Kraken’s belly with green-black night vision.

  Weaving through diamond stalagmites, scanning puncture wounds, a warm throb of blood created a trail. Locating a pulsing rip, Quinn forced himself into the wound. It gripped around him, rubbery. Yet he writhed deeper, sucked into an artery by a distant heartbeat. Through veins and arteries he swam and struggled. He crawled through an offal swamp that would span streets. Yet the smell of slug goo lingered…

  An hour later, surging cells and blood pulled Quinn into the heart of the beast, his planned destination. Twisting grenades from his activity suit he set timers running, then nestled the grenades into throbbing flaps of muscle. Irritated, the heart slowly clenched in spasm.

  Quinn kicked away, back through arteries. Quickly, go. Fast! Grasping innards squeezed him like cream in a tube. A sudden sneeze-like pulse gyrated all around. Cracking sounds in his chest. Quinn screamed at the unhealthy buckle of his ribs while a surge of blood spat him like a bullet back into the sea.

  Everything went black. Disorientated equilibrium. Then bubbles and froth. Follow the bubbles. Pushing himself up against the water, again and again, streamers of rising air showed him the way. Until the cold rush of wind on his face and the shimmering of an aurora in the sky let him know he had survived. An aurora. The old gods have come to congratulate me. A hollow hiss simmered the sea, but the sound weakened second by second; the last exhale of the Kraken.

  Quinn floated on his back, the tide gently buoying
and lapping. Pain seemed to excite every nerve ending, body wracked by lacerations, bruising and cracked bones. And still the stink of goo.

  But none of that mattered now.

  Bathed under the light-curtains of an aurora, Brother Quinn allowed himself a moment of conscious pride. His face creased into a smile, the smile opened into a laugh of giddy-mad victory. Perhaps my masters should listen to me. They have much to learn.

  Currents of ice-water pulled Quinn away from the diamond peaks. Pins and needles prickled through fingers and toes. Every inhale seemed to ratchet the tightness of his broken ribs. Cuts reopened, bleeding slowly into the sea.

  Putting it down to enormous strain, Quinn closed his eyes, allowed a meditative state to work into his sinew and nerves. Anaesthetic released through his system, slowing heart and numbing sensation. Sinking into a self-preserving hibernation, he drifted in preparation for the final part of his plan.

  When he next opened his eyes, interference crackled through his inner ear transmitters. No doubt it came from the Shaman, from somewhere not too far.

  Quinn groggily took account of his surrounding; a snow covered shore. His body had run aground. Hunger raged inside and he shivered, internal chemical sacs now