The Reaper Diaries: Supernova, Part 3
07 Jan 2016Michael Wolfe
Hello, everyone! Sorry about the delay getting the third chapter out. Fallout 4. That's all I'm going to say. Anyway, here's the first and second chapters if you're just now tuning in! -Matt“Yeah, I’m certain. It’s something I want to do.”
My mother and father were sitting on the other side of the table from me. I hadn’t been out of high school for more than two weeks, but my mind was made up. Now, they were staring back at me, with concern in their eyes.
“Look, it’s nothing against you two. You’re great, just…” I shook my head- “All my friends are leaving. I’ve lived here my entire life, in the same house, in the same room”- I gestured towards a window- “I could walk around for thirty acres in any direction blindfolded and not run into anything because I know exactly where everything is! I’ve been living on the same patch of ground my entire life, and- I just want something different!”
My mother just looked down at her lap, and my father just nodded. Obviously, he was trying to come to grips with what I had just told them. He leaned forward, his eyes sad.
“And the only way you thought you could do that was to join the Imperial navy? Just like that? Without telling us? Without mentioning anything until you had”- he shook his head- “already obligated yourself to them?”
I leaned back and crossed my arms. “Yeah. I needed to do something on my own for once. Without you two. Something I could point to and say, ‘I did that’. Don’t you understand? I’m sorry if it disappoints you.”
My mother looked up, barely holding back tears. “You haven’t disappointed us. You can’t. You’re our son. It’s just”- she sighed and shook her head- “A parent gets used to having their only child around. And it’s hard to say goodbye.”
For a long time, we just stared at each other, me on one side of the kitchen table, and my parents on the other. Then, my father stood up, walked around the table, and motioned for me to rise. Unexpectedly, he put his arms around me, holding me close to him.
“Well”, he said, his head close to mine, “You might be old enough to make these kinds of rash decisions, but you’ll never be too big for your old man to hug if he feels like it.” Releasing me, he held me by my arms and took a deep breath. “No matter what path you take, you mother and I will always love you.”
Then, both my mother and my father embraced me, damn near bringing tears to my eyes. Not only because I was overwhelmed by their acceptance of me and my decision, but also because their touch set my body on fire with pain…
I opened my eyes and gasped for air. The first thing I saw was brilliant white light, flooding my vision. The next sense to report in was touch. Everything hurt. Everything. My skin, my eyes, my head- I could actually feel my bones. It was unlike any pain I had ever experienced. Like being on fire even as my bones were broken. Even breathing deeply hurt.
Where am I?
With great pain and effort, and turned my head to the side. I was in the bunk of my Asp, but certain things in the pilot’s cabin were… off. A differently placed compartment here, an unfamiliar shade of bulkhead- nothing was right.
What the hell is going on?
Then, like a collision, the events of the last day hit me.
The job.
The girl.
The wrecked Anaconda.
The ambush.
The escape pod.
I tried to sit up, but I was held in place by the emergency restraints. The hell? I looked down, and there was Nova, sitting on the edge of the bed, her head in her hands. I tried to smile.
“Well, if this is the afterlife, I’m a little disappointed- but at least I’m in good company.”
Her head shot up at the sound of my voice. She looked at me, shock in her eyes.
“I… I thought… you were…”
Again, I tried my best to smile. “Yeah. Me, too.”
I tried again to move. “Think you can help me out here?”
Nodding, she unbuckled my restraints. Slowly, I sat up in the bunk. Ow, ow, ow, ow.
I looked up at her. She still seemed a little spooked to see me- or was it the whole mission going to shit?
“So, I’m guessing that I’m out an Asp?”
She looked down and nodded..
“Yeah. One of those Eagles was making a run for you. I knocked him off course with some cannon fire, but he still smacked into you.”
So that’s what that first impact was.
“Then, they stopped trying to scoop you and opened fire on your pod. You must have been a hard target, or I knocked out your beacon, because they weren’t hitting you very much. I killed one of them that was firing at you, then I scooped you up and hit the emergency supercruise. Had to do it at unsafe speeds.”
My eyes narrowed. “There ain’t such thing as an 'emergency supercruise'.”
A little of her old self returning, she smiled and laughed. “There is if you install the right bypasses and don’t care about a little wear and tear on the engines.”
Huh. So that’s how we made it out.
I patted the bunk. "How'd I get here?"
She shrugged. "I cracked open the escape pod and drug you all the way here." The barest hint of a smile crossed her face. "Coulda damn near pulled you through one of the hull breaches, though."
I shook my head. Everything was still coming to me so fast, and I could still see my parents’ faces in front of me from the dream. I looked up. “So, is the ship damaged? Are you hurt? Do you still have the data core?”- I checked my pockets- “what happened to the disk? Did you-“
“Matt?” Her eyes had a pleading look to them. Even the glowing red one.
I looked into them. “Yeah?”
She scooted up to face me, hands resting on my shoulders. Ow. “Shut up.”
Slowly, hesitantly, she shook her head and put her arms around me- and then pulled me towards her. “Just shut up.”
Not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around her, as well. Raising my arms hurt. Having Nova squeeze me really hurt. I felt her torso expand as she sighed, letting out the last few remnants of her anguish.
As she rested her head against my shoulder, I kissed her on her brilliant blue hair and brushed it from her face. “First time you’ve ever had a job go south?”
I felt her nod her head. “More than that,” she said. “First time I got backstabbed. First time I almost died. First time the Bluebird got shot up really bad. First time I almost lost a partner.”
Despite the pain, I found myself weakly chuckling. “Got to watch out for them big-money jobs, darlin’. Never know what you’ll end up with.”
She looked up, a mocking gleam in her eye. “Well, I ended up with you, didn’t I?”
Both of us laughing weakly, she helped me lay back down. Kneeling by the bunk, she pulled the blanket up to my neck. “I’ve got a few things to take care of. You should probably get some rest.”
I shook my head. “Don’t you think I’ve rested enough?”
Standing up, some of her old self started to filter back into her tone. “You ain’t in any shape to do anything but rest. Just take it easy. I’ll be back before you know it.”
My aching, on fire, broken body heartily agreed with Nova’s recommendation. I closed my eyes, and the blackness took over.
“These here are cargo containers.”
My trainer at naval dock technician school didn’t fit any mold in any Imperial recruitment brochure. He seemed barely literate, looked like a damn hillbilly, spoke like a damn hillbilly, and seemed like the sort who wasn’t incompetent, per se- but who was best unseen by visiting officers. Now, he was delivering his opening lecture for we recruits with the most obvious statement in the ‘verse. No shit that’s a cargo container, I thought.
“For the length of your time as a dock technician, cargo containers will be your job. You will load them, unload them, stack them, unstack them, and ensure the Empire’s glorious destiny- one cargo container at a time.”
He patted the upright metallic vessel, and continued. “You will learn about the different types of containers. You will learn safety regulations. You will learn hazmat procedures. You will learn how to operate heavy equipment.”
Walking up and down the line of us recruits, he looked at us, his head cocked at an angle. “You have all of you somehow graduated from naval boot camp, which is a sorry statement about His Majesty's recruitment standards. Now, it's time to go to work. In one month, you will be proficient at your jobs. In three months, you will be bored of them. In one year, you will dream of nothing but cargo containers. And after that?” He smiled a grin that was missing a few teeth. “You will all be functional alcoholics, drinking yourselves stupid on leave to get the images of cargo containers out of your heads!”
He centered himself and clasped his hands behind his back. “None of you are here because this was your first choice. You are here because if a sack of meat passes Basic, the Imperial Navy is legally obligated to provide it with some kind of employment, no matter how useless that meat is. Welcome to the next six years of your life! All hail the Emperor! All hail the Empire!” There had been just the slightest touch of sarcasm in the man’s voice.
I didn’t dare roll my eyes at the giant sack of bullshit that had been handed to me, but I damn sure wanted to. Still, the man had been right- when I joined up, I had requested in my paperwork (in order of preference) naval intelligence, flight school, weapons tech, reactor tech, and even galley work just to be around the food. At the very bottom of my preferred MO list, I had reluctantly written “dock technician”.
At least I would get to be around the ships, I had thought. Besides, I’m sure to get one of my more preferred choices, right?
I tuned out the twangy-voiced little man explaining the basic features of cargo containers.
Just think of the ships and what it must be like to fly them, I reminded myself. Cling to that, and you’ll make it through the navy still able to walk upright and form words.
I woke up again, and this time, it was dark in the cabin. Nova had turned down the lights, and was sleeping in the bunk above me. I heard her drowsy voice above me. “You awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Still in pain?”
“Yeah.”
I heard a fabric rustling, and saw Nova’s legs dangle in front of me. Then, she dropped down to the deck and went to the ship’s head.
She returned a short while later with a pill and a glass of water. It looked like she was wearing a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts. They had the Pilot’s Federation logo on the rear. Cute.
“It ain’t hospital grade, but it should let you get back to sleep.”
I nodded and swallowed the pill, washing it down with the water. She went back and put the glass away, squeezing my shoulder in a gesture of support before climbing back up to her bunk.
The pill must have had a sleep-aid in it, as well, because even though I had been sleeping for most of the day, a kind of druggy drowsiness started to take over.
This time, I didn’t dream.
My eyes opened to the sight of Nova dressed again in a flightsuit, fixing herself some coffee and adding cream and sugar. She turned to look back at me, smiling. By her feet was a spacewalking suit that looked like it had been haphazardly thrown off.
“Want a cup?”
Oh my sweet baby Jesus yes.
I just sat up (ow on my hands and body), smiled, (ow on my face), and nodded (ow in my neck). Instead of bringing me some coffee, she sat down at my side, a gun-like object in my hand. Smiling, she loaded a white cartridge with a red medical cross with lots of warning fine print on it. I raised my eyebrows.
“Is that a stim?”
She bit off the end of the protective cover and spit it out. A drop of clear liquid was already forming at the end of the hollow needle, which retracted as she loaded the cartridge.
“Sure is. You want to feel better and be useful, or do you want to lie in bed all day and be in pain?”
I shrugged. “I could use a break from the hurtin’.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Good. Tilt your head to the side.”
As I did so, she swiftly pressed the gun to my neck and pulled the trigger. I felt the needle insert itself into my vein and deliver the liquid. Almost immediately, the pain all over my body began to subside, replaced by a deadened, heavy feeling.
I looked back over at Nova. “You’re pretty slick with that.”
She smirked and held up the expended cartridge. “Comes from my years of tending bar. People drink themselves silly, and it’s either this or an ambulance ride.” She smiled a little wider. “We would just add it on to their tab. Even a seasoned drinker tends to need one after a Supernova or two.”
I gingerly raised my legs, slowly getting out of bed. “You’ll have to make one of those for me sometime.”
She chuckled and poured a cup of coffee. Handing it to me, she shook her head. “In your condition? It would finish you right off.”
“Another time, then.”
I took a sip, and raised my cup to her. “And I appreciate this.”
For a long time, we just drank our coffee in silence. Eventually, she spoke up.
“So… what now?”
I looked up at her and shrugged. “Well, normal procedure is to call it day, accept that we’ve been had, and go our separate ways. But I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“Why is that?”
I swirled my coffee, re-mixing the creamer that had separated. “We’ve still got the disk and the data core.”
“Can’t we just jettison the things?”
“Sure we can- but it wouldn’t do a lick of good. Whoever was behind that ambush wanted us dead. If they’d wanted the core or the disk, they’d have demanded it. But they didn’t. So- keeping it on us might be our only shot at figuring out what's going on.”
Nova’s eyes widened. “So- they’ll come after us again?”
I took a deep breath. Feels good to do that without feeling like my ribs are going to snap.
“I reckon they will if they get a chance.”
“So… what do we do?”
I looked around and set my coffee mug down. “First, we dock someplace safe for repairs. Second”- I looked down at my flight suit. It was covered in tears, scratches, and was pretty much junk. ”- second, I buy some new threads once we’re there.”
“And then?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Then?” I pulled out the disk from my pocket. “Then we plug in this doohickey and see what all the fuss is about. What say we set course for the nearest repair depot?”
Nova didn't say anything, only pursed her lips and stared nervously into her coffee. "Yeah, about that."
"What's wrong?"
She looked at me, let out a sigh and then looked back down. "Remember that emergency supercruise I told you about?"
I narrowed my eyes. "What about it?"
Nova looked back up, worry in her eyes, "Well, there's a reason people don't do it. It got us out of there, but it shredded the engines."
My jaw dropped. "What happened to 'a little wear and tear'?"
She looked back at me, smiling bravely. "You were still coming out of a drug-induced stasis, in a world of hurt from getting banged around in an escape pod. I figured you didn't need the news."
Well, no wonder I'd never heard of it. It only trades one kind of danger for another.
"So, how bad?"
She gestured around us. "I've got maneuvering, and while you were asleep, I've been outside in a space suit trying my best to get something like regular thrust back online. No dice so far."
"What are you saying?"
Nova sat up and finished her coffee. "I'm saying that we're dead in space. Unless we figure out a way to get the supercruise back up, it could be months or more before we hit a port on regular power. Juicing the supercruise like that put in the middle of nowhere."
I looked down at my coffee. Shit.
"And we ain't got months worth of supplies, do we?"
She shook her head. "We sure don't. Not all of us live out of our ships, you know."
I shook my head and finished my coffee. "Well darlin', when I said to 'give it a few years', this ain't exactly what I had in mind!"
