Magnet (Lacuna Short Stories) (3 page)

A bright light behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, a gesture awkward in my heavy suit and thick helmet. At first I thought it might be the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, a great white wave of energy coming to sweep me up and take me from this life to the next... to carry me to my seventy two virgins or whatever.

With my luck, they’d be pimple faced male nerds bitching about how the latest film adaptation of a much loved book hadn’t lived up to their impossibly high standards.

Instead of an angelic choir, however, a different sight presented itself to me; no less salvation, but one brought by the hands of man. Like some hungry beast the Broadsword
Piggyback
glided toward me, their cargo door open like a great mouth to devour me whole.

I drifted inside the cargo hold as
Piggyback
scooped me up, but then my body felt suddenly heavy as gravity reasserted itself. I crashed to the metal deck with a scraping thump. Gasping for breath, I weakly flopped onto my back, blood trickling from my chest wound as my lungs tried to fill themselves with the fleeting gasps of air that remained inside my suit.

To my infinite relief, the cargo door eased closed and the whole chamber began to flood with oxygen. Four arrays of jets, one from each edge of the room, began pumping sweet air into the cargo hold. I fumbled for the latch on my helmet, the visor still fogged, my numb fingers somehow able to find the latch. I yanked on it, half tugging the helmet off my head; a rough shove was enough for it to tumble from my head, bouncing onto the steel mesh grid of the deck below me.

Everything was grey... grey like all the colour had been drained out of the room, my vision bordered with black clouds. I knew I was close to passing out, and I felt my eyes drift closed, but I just had to hang on a little while longer... a little while longer...

“
Wake up! You’re not dead yet, you ugly mother fucker!”

I slowly creaked open my eyes, expecting to see the dark hull of
Piggyback
. Instead, I was assaulted by the bright white sheen of an infirmary.

“
Air...” I gasped, grabbing at my suit – but instead, I saw I was wearing a hospital gown and my body was covered in a sheet.

There’s sometimes a very profound confusion one experiences when waking up from a prolonged unconsciousness that’s impossible to communicate for someone who’s not experienced it for themselves. For me, I felt as though I had only seconds ago been laying on the inside of
Piggyback
... still struggling to breathe, to get my helmet off before I died. I felt like trying to avoid being shot by the Toralii fighters, making the decision to eject from my crippled craft, launching the mission itself... they were were all still fresh memories, vivid and raw like they had just been made.

I nearly tumbled out of bed and I felt strong hands grab me.

“
Woah, easy there, champ. Easy there. You’re okay, you’re back on the
Sydney
...”

Unable to struggle any further I fell back against the bed, panting and gasping. I reached down to my chest with hands that barely moved, trying to find the hole, searching...

“
It’s okay, mate, it’s okay. Doctor Richards bandaged the wound. You’re okay, you’re fine... you’re fine. You’re going to be fine.”

Slowly, slowly, my conscious mind began to catch up to where I really was. I gave a weary sigh, then a low chuckle, glancing to my side. It was Rachel, grinning at me with those blue eyes, her expression a mixture of jockish laughter and relief.

“
... you’re fine.” Her smile widened. “Gave us quite the scare, though.”

“
Oh really?” I remarked, coughing weakly, then gestured down my body with a finger. “How bad...?”

“
Terrible,” she answered, her eyes flicking down to my crotch, “short, shrivelled, always hanging to the left... barely gets up when you want him to, burns when you pee-”

“
I meant the fucking... the wound. Not... urgh.”

She gave a wide smile. “You won’t believe this, but... basically that bolt of Toralii energy went straight in and out, missing every single vital organ on the way. Couldn’t ask for a cleaner injury... you’ll be right as rain in no time, but you’ll have one hell of a scar.”

I coughed again, wincing slightly as the effort stretched my wounds. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” I mused, resting my head back against my pillow.

“
Can’t say the same for your fighter, though,” remarked Rachel, her tone impish. “Looks like you broke your precious little baby. Captain Knight had a salvage team look at the
dust
that was left of the explosion... there wasn’t even enough to bring back a souvenir for you. Still... you got your Martin Baker tie waiting for you when you get back, so that’s something at least.”

For as long as Martin Baker had been making ejection seats, whenever anyone successfully employed one and survived, the company sent them out a special pin and a tie. Some pilots, especially test pilots, made it a point of pride to collect them.

“
How did we go after you picked me up? Did we get what we came for?”

“
Got all the prisoners, yep. We didn’t any other kills – the Toralii strike fighters retreated when they realised we were playing for keeps.” She idly glanced down at her fingers, faking indifference. “... so we got one of theirs, and they got one of ours. Nobody can say that we’re not scrupulously fair.”

I rolled my eyes, reaching out with my hand, resting it on the woman’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming to collect my arse,” I remarked, hoping that the sincerity I felt carried through on my voice.

“
Hey, any time.” She winked. “How could I resist the chick magnet?”

I snorted. “
Bullet
magnet more like. Did anyone else get hit?”

She laughed. “Nope. Just
you
... not a single hit. The paint on
Piggyback
isn’t even scratched.”

“
Figures.”

There was a moment’s silence as I closed my eyes. I felt intensely weary, as though I’d been awake for days. “How long have I been here?”

“
Four hours.”

“
Ah.” I nodded, wrinkling my nose. “I guess I missed dinner then.”

“
Believe me you didn’t miss it. MREs again.”

MREs, or Meal Ready to Eat, were the bane of military servicemen’s existence. They were essentially foil-wrapped “food” that could be torn open and eaten with a minimal amount of preparation or fuss and came packaged with a hydrogen based chemical heater. An MRE was intended only as an emergency supplement, but too often with supplies being what they were they served as main rations.

Due to their taste, MREs had earned a number of nicknames. Meals Rejected by Everyone, Meal Ready to Expel or Morale Reducing Elements among many others. Each package was helpfully labelled “MEAL” in giant letters, as though some bureaucrat somewhere had assumed that the morons the military entrusted with heavy weapons would be unable to distinguish food from ammunition.

We shared a laugh, then Rachel’s eyes lit up.

“
Wait a second, hang on, I nearly forgot...” she dug around inside a small plastic bag, fiddling for a moment before withdrawing her hand, closed like a fist. “Guess what we found rattling around the bottom of the cargo hold.”

She opened her hand, revealing the thin steel band that I thought I’d lost, the red heart shaped gem still splattered with a flick of blood.

“
You didn’t even clean it?” I remarked dryly, although I couldn’t stop my face from lighting up in a bright grin.

“
You must be joking,” she snorted, “I know your sordid history with women – I’m not touching your blood. I don’t want to...
catch
...
anything.”

“
Thanks anyway,” I said, extending my hand to take it, but she kept her hands around it.

“
Uh uh uh. You tease a girl with a pretty ring like this, you gotta make good with your promises.”

I cocked a grin. “If I gave that to you Penny will eat my soul for breakfast. Then yours. Gimme.”

With a dramatic sigh she handed it over. “That’s the thanks
I
get... next time I’ll just leave you and your jewelry out there.”

I took the thin sliver of metal, cupping the ring in my hand. Slowly I closed my fingers around it and bought it to my chest. I sighed, my lungs emptying as relief swept through me like the gentle soothing waters of a creek. I looked up, smiling into Rachel’s eyes.

“
I really appreciate this. I mean it.”

Rachel patted me on the arm, then stood to leave. “Whatever. Make sure you don’t lose it next time you decide to take a walk in space.”

“
I won’t.”

With a grin she left me alone with my thoughts... and the ring I thought I’d lost. I played with it, turning it over and over in my fingers, letting the light play over the gem. The illumination from the fluorescent above me filtered through its red structure, casting a pale crimson shadow over my fingers.

I couldn’t help but notice that the ruby light was the same shade as the blood on my bandages.

“
Next time I see you,” I promised to nobody, clutching the ring in my hand and resting my head back against the uncomfortable infirmary pillow.

Next time.

End

The Lacunaverse

Novels

Lacuna: Demons of the Void

Lacuna: The Sands of Karathi (soon!)

Lacuna: The Spectre of Oblivion (December!)

Short Stories

Magnet

Imperfect