Earth Star

19

When I woke up, every inch of my skin seemed to be on fire. Impact suits are designed to protect the wearer, but high magnetic fields do terrible things to them, turning them into a torture machine. They contract, crushing the victim inside, their material distorting into a mass of jagged points.

I should have died, pulled helplessly towards whatever was generating that magnetic spike, my suit continuing to squeeze me until I was crushed into pulp. I was in agony, but still alive, because Fian hadn’t cut power to the lifeline beam.

He’d known exactly what would happen, because the safety lectures spell it out. Strong magnetic fields create a power feedback in lift and lifeline beams. That’s a very calm sentence to describe a nightmare situation. When a magnetic alarm goes off, everyone hits the beam emergency power cut off buttons and runs for their lives, praying the sleds won’t explode before they’re out of range. Fian hadn’t done that, he’d pulled me out of the grip of the magnetic field instead, and he’d paid the price for it.

I opened my eyes to see a blurred, demonic red sky swaying drunkenly above me. My eyes still worked, since the strip of special material that let me see out of my impact suit was rigidly inflexible. I could hear my comms too. There was a confusing babble of voices talking on broadcast channel.

‘This is Earth 3. We can come and meet …’

‘Negative! This is Dig Site Command, repeating negative. Sector 21 is now code black. Earth 3, acknowledge that.’

‘This is Earth 3. Acknowledging code black.’

‘This is Dig Site Command. Emergency evac portal 57 is active. Earth Africa Casualty is standing by to receive critical injuries.’

‘This is Asgard 6. Estimate four minutes from portal. Tell them to prep two tanks.’

Playdon’s words were staccato, as he panted for air between them. I must be on a hover stretcher, and Playdon would be running alongside, guiding it with one of the handles. Months ago, I’d helped transport injured members of the Cassandra 2 research team and send them through one of the small, one way, emergency portals that were linked to casualty units. Now I was strapped to a hover stretcher and headed for one myself.

My brain was stupid with pain, but it finally processed Playdon’s words. He’d said tanks. Two tanks. I forced out a single word question. ‘Fian?’

‘Jarra?’ Playdon sounded startled to hear my voice. ‘Fian jumped at the last minute. The blast caught him, and he was hit by flying debris, but his suit says he’s alive.’

I made a noise that was something between a cry of pain and relief. Dalmora spoke, the direction of her breathless voice telling me Playdon was running on one side of my stretcher and Dalmora on the other.

‘Can we give Jarra pain meds?’

‘No!’ Playdon shouted the word. ‘There’s no time and we mustn’t open her suit unless she starts drowning. Hold on, Jarra. It won’t be long now.’

Fian was alive. I concentrated on that and enduring the pain one second at a time. A fragment of my mind chased something that didn’t make sense. How could I drown in an impact suit?

The crimson sky made a sharper swing than usual and stopped moving. What was happening? I couldn’t hear properly now, my ears were full of liquid, and I just caught a murmur of words without meaning. They’d stopped running so we must be at the portal. They’d send the stretchers through first, one at a time, followed by the rest of the class and finally Playdon. I wasn’t moving, which meant they were sending Fian through first.

I waited several interminable seconds, before my stretcher started moving again. They were sending me through the portal, which meant Fian was already safely in casualty. He’d make it now, surely. He wasn’t sick like Joth, just injured. They had to get him in a tank, but …

The face of a woman appeared above me, and she opened the front of my suit hood. The liquid clogging my ears trickled out and I could hear again.

‘Jarra, you’re in Earth Africa Casualty,’ she said. ‘You’ve got whole body surface wounds and have lost a lot of blood, so we’ll sedate you, take off the suit, and get you into a tank.’ She turned her head and shouted. ‘Get the rest of those people out of our way!’

Blood, I thought, that’s how you can drown in an impact suit. I felt a nardle pride in solving the puzzle. The woman turned back towards me, smiled, and held a tube to my neck to give me a shot of sedative. The pain stopped and the world went away.