Soul Match (short story) Read online



  SoulMatch

  by Drew Avera

  copyright 2013 Drew Avera

 

  “What do we have?” the surgeon asked as the gurney sped into the triage area of the field hospital.

  His uniform was marred with the blood of other soldiers whose lives he had fought to save until the bitter—inevitable—conclusion. It was the kind of hellish nightmare that only people in our line of work could understand. War was its own torture device, making prey of both sides, and reveling in its disastrous certainty.

  “He’s with the Messenger Corps, sir.” I said. “They apparently dismembered him in an attempt to extract the latest message from the Court. My men found him about twenty minutes ago... alive.” I shook the bloody images from my mind. Each messenger was given a surgically-implanted chip that held information about military formations and other logistical data. It was the kind of information that would get you killed if caught. Few survived to deliver their message.

  “Dammit, I’ve never seen them go this far before,” the surgeon said as he inspected the body for other injuries beyond the obvious. “It used to be just the hands, now those monsters take each limb and leave the torso to die. This war has brought out the worst of their kind.”

  He continued to mutter while my mind drifted. Our own side had also carried out horrific deeds in order to preserve a government that should have ended a couple of hundred years ago. “It takes all kinds, sir,” I said, hoping he had taken my awkward silence for shock, exhaustion, or whatever one called the empty feeling and frayed nerves associated with this kind of work. “If you need me I’ll be on deck standing watch. Let me know if he pulls through.”

  I left the surgeon and nurses to prepare the body for whatever life-saving operation they could manage on a man better off dead and headed for the exit at the end of a gleaming white passageway. The makeshift field hospital was state of the art, big enough to hold a triage center and recovery wing as well as house its staff, all on a mobile platform hovering five meters off the ground.

  The technologically advanced native Daliqians had been instrumental to our survival as a human race. Problems crept in when the Daliqians and humans began to cross-breed and a new race known as the Hybriums made an appearance. That was about a thousand years ago. Civil war wiped out most of the Hybriums, the rest were driven underground. Strife is the only common thread between our two races now, the two purest life forms on the planet each fighting to preserve something that never should have existed in the first place, one’s racial dominance over the other.

  The piercing light of the moon reflected its silver sheen over the colonies, looming in an amber sky that stifled all but the closest stars in our galaxy. The moon cast a glare nearly as strong as the twin suns that fed the daytime sky their warmth and illumination. The burning shades of violet swirls that emanated between the two sparring partners were a sight to behold when the sky was clearest.

  Unfortunately those days were scarce due to the war or wars as we’ve come to know them. I leaned against the railing that guarded the port side of the medical craft and looked at the dirt field below me. I could still see the remains of the town that centuries ago had dominated this landscape. Clumps of gray ash were scattered like millions of mice frozen in time, devoured then expelled in a whirlwind of destruction. This place was now a ghost town, and it would forever be this way, regardless of whatever foreseeable future lay ahead.

  “Sir,” a woman’s voice woke me from my thoughts.

  “Yes?” I responded as I turned to look at her.

  “We lost him, I’m sorry,” she said sincerely, with a hint of familiarity, if I noticed correctly.

  “I understand. The surgeon did all that he could?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t enough. The messenger had lost too much blood. We can only spare a few pints per patient and the doctor had to take that into consideration as well.”

  “I’m sure he made the right choice,” I said, not meaning to sound cold, but the loss of life caused little dread in our world anymore. We were a people with little purpose, and nothing more. The only quickening of my heart came when I gazed into her stare. The brown irises of her eyes drove into me like some kind of beautiful ornate piercing I had never experienced before. I was paralyzed by wonder as I beheld her. Her dark hair contrasted against her pale flesh, like night against day. Everything about her being carried over into her eyes, they were the gateway to her soul. It was not as if I had never seen a woman before, but she captured my attention.

  I extended my hand towards her. “What is your name?”

  “Coralene,” she said through ruby lips and perfect teeth. “You?”

  “Gresham, May Gresham,” I said, perhaps a little redundantly. I was not used to first names in the Corps. I felt the need to clarify that my first name was not Gresham, not that it really mattered.

  “May? That’s a beautiful name,” she said.

  “Thank you; it was my grandfather’s name.” Our hands made contact with each other briefly, but I could tell that her skin was soft and warm. I was enraptured by her and did not want to be released from my captor. I felt like prey being seduced by my predator. I knew that I was in trouble, but I didn’t seem to care. All that mattered were those eyes, and that skin, and that smile.

  I wasn’t sure how long I was staring into her eyes before the shockwave occurred, a concussion effect that seemed to emanate from underground. It was a sickening sensation much like falling to your death, or watching the blade of your adversary swing like a one way pendulum straight towards your face. I felt nauseated, the feeling kept spreading, and I was certain of asphyxia approaching as the heat evaporated the moisture in my throat. I watched as our bodies repelled from each other like oil and water poured violently into a cavity. The despair that I felt in my heart was unlike anything that I had ever imagined. The numbness of solitude had never bothered me in my life before. I was not prone to attachment, even to my next breath, but I was confounded and angry that my last thought drifted away from her.

  Just as suddenly as the sensation had washed over me I found myself standing in front of her again, albeit with a certain recoil in my legs to keep from falling over. She looked immaculate, as if nothing had happened at all, and I could see the expression on her face move from puzzlement to acknowledgment as I collected my thoughts.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, but I sensed that she already knew the answer. She knew because she was the cause of whatever the hell it was that had just happened.

  “What did you do to me?” I asked sharply.

  “I did nothing,” she said as she draped her hand over my shoulder. “It was merely a glimpse into the future, May. Nothing more.”

  “A glimpse? I thought I was dying!” I struggled to regulate my breathing as the images reconnected in my mind.

  “One of many possible futures. It is the gift—”

  “Gift? Are you mad? That was not a gift,” I said, cutting her off. I rubbed my ashen hand over my eyes and pushed back the thoughts digging deeper into the crevices of my mind.

  “It is a gift, only because it is triggered by a soul’s match.”

  “Soul’s match? What are you talking about?” I asked, annoyed at my weakness, annoyed because I longed to look strong in front of her.

  “My gift is to know predisposition. The future is already written based on the decisions we make. You can make any myriad of turns in life and yet the outcome of each is already known. Do you believe in fate?”

  I hesitated. I had never given much thought to fate, something predetermined by a god or council of gods who toyed with us like puppets on a string. “I can’t say that I do,” I answered.

  “I understand. Life
has been hard for you, stripped you of any hope for faith,” she said sadly as she looked down at her hands, her fair skin reflecting the light of the suns in a shimmering kind of way. “What if I could show you your fate?”

  “Will it be as painful as what I just experienced?” I asked nervously.

  “Perhaps, but you can endure it, I know that much.”

  “Then show me,” I said. No sooner had the words escaped my lips than she was on me. With her arms wrapped around my body and her face shoved into my chest, she gripped me with a strength that I did not know she had. It took a moment for the vision to come, but when it did it was paralyzing. The craft on which we stood was engulfed in flames as a swarm of Daliqian bombers rained ordnance onto the area around us. The already ashen landscape was once again in flames, and I could see people much like myself scurrying to find relief from the heat that radiated around us.

  My skin burned at the image that she was putting into my mind, it felt so real, so immediate. My mind could barely contain every nuance of detail, from the smell of charred flesh, to the sound of creaking metal that warped as the fires raged. Everything was