Magnet (Lacuna Short Stories) Read Free Page B

feel, after a few moments futile struggle I gave up.
    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.