Magnet (Lacuna Short Stories) (2 page)

“
Damn straight I see the bastards, not that I can do shit about it. My weapons are down.”

It was time to call for help... but of a different kind. I changed channels. “
Sydney
, this is Magnet. Request fire mission, grid six alpha-romeo. Three bandits, dispersion four hundred metres.”

There was the briefest of pauses then my headset crackled. “Magnet,
Sydney
; confirmed. Fire mission, grid six alpha-romeo. We are initiating medium range bombardment of those coordinates, explosive anti-fighter shells, firing for effect.”

“
Confirm that,
Sydney
. Bring the rain.”

I held the nose of my Wasp straight, watching the three dots that represented the Toralii fighters draw close. A quick glance up saw twinkling of the
Sydney
’
s autocannons – the ship’s anti-fighter close range punch – open up. Just behind those winking little flashes I could see the faint point of light that was
Piggyback
racing towards me.

The first hint I got that something was wrong was when one of the
Sydney’s
high explosive shells soared right past me and exploded. Nowhere near the Toralii, and everywhere right near my little fighter.

“
Sydney
! God fucking damnit, you’re firing into the
wrong grid
! Cease fire,
cease fire!
”

I jammed the throttle as far open as I could. The reactionless drive that powered the ship – a strange technological marvel that allowed us to generate gravity waves – whined as it started again, my fighter jerking forward and down, diving out of the effect of my own ship’s barrage. Shrapnel pinged off my hull like summer rain.

“
Magnet,
Sydney
... uhh, say again.”

I gripped the talk key so hard I thought I’d break it. Shells continued to burst silently all around me, little mushrooms of fire in space, blasting waves of shrapnel in every direction.

“
You mother fuckers are shooting at
me!
Cease mother-
fucking
-fire!”

I kicked out with my left foot, jamming the ship into a wild twist, barely avoiding an incoming projectile that burst just to my starboard side. This whole section of space – almost a full cubic kilometre – was being bombarded by my own ship and I had nowhere to go.

Slowly, the fire petered off. “Apologies, Magnet – an error occurred passing the coordinates from communications to fire control. These things happen.”

These things happen?
I felt like reaching out through the vast gulf of space and throttling the man. Before I could unleash an entirely inappropriate stream of comments through my radio, however, the three Toralii warbirds descended on me like hawks to an exposed mouse.

“
Piggyback?
If you’re out there, I could use some help right about, oh,
ten seconds ago
!”

I kicked out my right foot this time, grunting as my tiny ship lurched in the opposite direction, barely avoiding a spray of fire from the Toralii fighters. They overshot, zooming past me silently like owls on the hunt, and I pulled back the handle that governed the speed of the reactionless drive, jamming the fighter into reverse.

Which caused a low groan to reverberate throughout the ship as the engine spluttered, jerked twice, then died.

Well,
shit.

“
Piggyback
, this is Magnet – my reactionless drive is out. I’m dead in space.”
Pardon the pun
, I silently added, instantly regretting saying what I’d said. In the game of space combat words like that had a tendency to come back with an ironic bite.

I twisted in my seat, glancing over my shoulder. I could see the light of the system’s star reflect off the canopy of the three Toralii fighters as they turned towards me, bearing down towards me to deliver the coup de grace.

I was presented with an interesting but morbid choice. To be blown to atoms by remaining where I was, or to eject and be asphyxiated in space. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it and, in a strange way, the training hammered into me by endless repetition took over. Training which gave very clear guidelines on when to egress and how to decide when to do so. I knew that the number one reason for ejection failure was
hesitation
. Pilots who were unwilling to accept that they’d lost and believing, hopelessly, that they could turn the tide if they just stayed on a little bit longer.

But there were no second places in space combat. First prize was a relaxing flight home for tea and medals, where your nation’s leaders would pin a shiny metal cross on your chest on national television and people would call you a hero for the rest of your life.

Second prize was also a cross... but a stone one, placed at the head of your grave.

I waited until I saw the flashes of the Toralii’s energy weapons firing then I reached between my legs and yanked the ejection handle.

Ejection is a very strange feeling, especially in zero gravity. The Martin-Baker Mk. 19B ejection seat functions in two stages. The goal of the first stage is to remove the canopy. To effect this, tiny rockets mounted under the cockpit glass blast the whole thing free in one piece, with the forward thrusters blasting it up and away from the pilot. All the air in the cockpit gets sucked out in one big
woomph
which generally takes any kind of debris or loose items with it.

I remember viewing the whole first stage in slow motion. I saw the sparks as the rockets blew off the canopy, then I saw a few things – a stray coin, a condom wrapper, the business card of that fine hooker I met in Brisbane and tiny, perfectly spherical droplets of blood – all get blown out of the canopy as the atmosphere vacated it.

The second stage, which occurs milliseconds after the first, is the part which saves your life. Because there’s no atmosphere anymore there’s no sound at all except the faint hiss of air inside your suit. Heavy-duty rockets ignite under your seat, hurtling you out of your cockpit. Little cables attached to each one of your limbs pull taut, jamming your arms in against your chest, your legs in against the seat and your head against the back of the chair; this stops your limbs flailing around helplessly as you’re blasted into space.

I knew it from my training, but this part I don’t remember so well. Perhaps it was the wound, or my brain suddenly having fourteen times Earth’s gravity exerted on it, but I don’t remember much except a crushing force jamming me down into the seat, blasting me out into space. Since I had very few points of reference amongst the unmoving stars, aside from the pressure cramming me back into my seat I really had no sense of motion once I was clear of my stricken craft.

Then the doomed wreckage of my ship blew up below me as the Toralii energy blasts struck the fuel and ammunition reserves. The shockwave followed in my wake, almost dissipating when it caught up to the back of my seat... but it was enough to shake and rattle the chair, twisting it completely around right as the rockets died.

Carried by its inertia the chair spun, now, rotating on its horizontal axis. Without friction it continued to turn, the stars slowly tumbling by. I caught flashes of weapons fire, and saw through my limited perspective the Broadsword
Piggyback
fly into the fray, all of its cannons ablaze as it tried to fight off my attackers so it could save my sorry arse.

The cables loosened their grip and I kicked out, trying to stop the spinning. Eventually I worked the seat to something approximating stable, although due to my grogginess I couldn’t be certain. I could hear nothing but my own laboured breathing and the hiss of escaping air. I watched a mute battle from a distance,
Piggyback
firing its weapons in every direction as, like a trio of bees attacking a bear, the three Toralii warbirds stung at its thick hide. I didn’t see them get hit, but I knew that if they did, the Broadsword was strong enough to tough it out.

Droplets of blood floated all around me. I had left what I had spilled during the initial impact behind me as my seat had rocketed me to safety, so this was new blood. And there was a lot of it.

Lightheadedness began to take over. I didn’t have a radio system as I floated in space, just the emergency locator beacon that I couldn’t hear.
Piggyback
would no-doubt have a lock, though... I imagined crew of the Broadsword confirming their data even now as they fought their way towards me. With something approaching a mixture of idle curiosity and apathy I watched the flashes of gunfire in the distance.

After a few moments the battle no longer concerned me. I needed to know where I’d been hit and to do that I needed to be free of the ejection seat. I struggled, reaching around for the release clasps, yanking them with both hands. The force sent me tumbling out and away, and as the ejection seat and I separated I could see the damage... the seat of the chair was splattered with blood, thin wisps of exhaust trailing from the end, slowly expanding and dissipating to nothing.

The blood was focused around my abdomen. I reached down, feeling gingerly, trying to find the hole in me.

And then there it was. About the size of a coin, smaller perhaps, through my lower chest. I wiggled my finger inside and found it fit quite snugly... which also helped stall the rush of escaping air from my suit. What organs were in that area again...? Kidney? Liver? A hole in one of those would be bad. Organs were important for long term survival... and I’d had them all my life, so there was a kind of emotional attachment there. I pressed my finger in a little deeper and hoped that, if I passed out, there would be enough friction to keep the digit lodged in.

A fairly morbid way to spend your Saturday, I suppose.

I blinked away another wave of drowsiness. With my finger in the way the suit itself began to fill with blood. I could see droplets rising up in front of my visor, the force of my breath enough to suck them towards me, then away as I breathed out. For some strange reason I tried desperately not to swallow any, preferring to see them splattered against the thick glass of my visor.

I thought of my girlfriend, back on Earth. She was the sweetest thing... hotter than a chilli bean, funny, smart – she had a PHD in physics – and... legally blind.

People say that attractiveness doesn’t matter in a relationship, but it does. It does... and while Penny knew I wasn’t as beautiful as she was – she’d touched my scars, run her fingers along them – it wasn’t something she had to look at every day, so it was bearable.

I wondered how she’d react to the news that I’d bought it in my first real combat. I didn’t want her to think that it was a painful death – despite it all I felt no pain at all, even when I blocked the hole with my finger – but at age twenty six I still felt a little too young to be given the twelve gun salute and tossed in the ground to become fertilizer.

I’d never gotten to propose to her, either. I fumbled, reaching into my chest pocket with my unbloodied hand, retrieving the thin strip of metal that I’d stowed there. An engagement ring... a cheap one, nothing fancy. With the economy the way it was nobody could afford any luxuries these days; this simple steel band would have to do. We couldn’t afford diamonds – nobody could – so the ring was adorned with a simple red ruby shaped like a heart. The moment I saw it I knew it was perfect. With hands for eyes Penny wouldn’t be able to see the colour, but she could “see” the shape with her fingers. She would love it...

Well, she would have loved it.

I clasped it in my fingers, unfurling them gingerly, watching as the metal slowly floated up from my palm, spinning lazily in space. The metal caught the light as it spun, refracting off the gem and creating thin strips of white on the otherwise dark red gem’s surface. Spots of blood appeared on the metal and, acting on instinct, I reached up to wipe them off.

I missed, though, and knocked the ring tumbling away from my grasp. In the lever-less vacuum of space I could do nothing but watch as it slowly drifted away.

Blast
.

I wasn’t sure why, but the loss of my ship – and the injury I’d sustained – didn’t hurt me as much as the loss of that ring did. It was cheap, but... it was
something
. There was an emotional attachment to it that surpassed its value in notes and coins.

Like I said, she would have loved it. Penny was a Buddist, so I'm not sure what exactly they do for marriage. Something I suppose. Maybe I should have asked her that before I bought the ring.

My air was almost gone. Breathing became difficult and my visor began to fog up. Some part of me realized that my finger must have slipped out of the hole and I tried, blindly, to reinsert it. But now my hands were numb – my whole body was – and I couldn’t see to find the hole. Being unable to see or feel, after a few moments futile struggle I gave up.