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Stars
Posted By: A Halo Fan...natic<mikeandrewp@gmail.com>
Date: 11 May 2008, 6:47 am
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The blackness opened up and stars wheeled past Oscar's face.
They were staring at him. The peeked through rips in the hull, laughing, leering, distorted by the gentle curve of the bubble. "What are you doing?" they asked him, "Do you really think you can live?" Oscar shook his head no. They laughed at him and he turned from the outer bulkhead.
Bernardo was behind him. He was floating, freeze-dried, surrounded by a faint cloud of glittering red. His suit was ripped and torn. His left leg was gone entirely. His dark face was twisted by the violent eruption of his trachea from his mouth. It looked like a pink Christmas tree, a gaudy, macabre artwork to celebrate an old friend…. Bernardo seemed to be staring at him accusingly. Why did you let me die? the body asked. I didn't, I didn't, Oscar cried inside his head, but he couldn't speak, he just retched and coughed and blood flew from his mouth to splatter on the inside of his life support and Oscar tried to launch away from him and he looked up and there was the whole bridge crew, and he was sick, sick, then a sharp pain in his head, then…
He was at Maria's wedding, the reception. The warm Santa Ana wind blew in from the west, blowing away the Los Angeles smog, carrying with it the faint traces of yesterday's forest fires. The reception hall was a bastard mix of Spanish hacienda and Gothic cathedral, but it was pulled off well. The wide front steps were lined with rows of short trees, palms standing conspicuously tall amongst the native yucca. Oscar stood a moment in the beautiful California day, looking at the cloudless sky. After a moment, he looked back down.
Two figures stood at the top of the steps. As the chauffeured car drove away behind him, Oscar stepped forward and they turned towards him. A well built young woman, mestizo with dark hair and a heart shaped face, and a tall, strapping young man, more white but still obviously Hispanic.
"Daddy!" It was Maria. She ran down the steps, trailing Pedro in her wake. She hugged him, her dark hair falling across his shoulder. "I'm so happy, I'm so glad you could make it back for me, I love you, I'm so happy…" She was almost crying.
"I'm proud of you," Oscar whispered in her ear. He looked over her shoulder at Pedro. "You take care of her."
"I will, Mr. Sanchez," he said quickly.
"Don't let anything happen to her, you hear?"
Pedro's lips moved, but no sound came out. Oscar repeated, "You hear me, boy?" Pedro opened his mouth again, and blood poured out, and then Maria was dead, dead—
--then he came awake, blood clotting his nose, globules of bloody vomit making the air thick and rank. Or maybe that was just the CO2.
Lieutenant Commander Oscar J. Sanchez, UNSC, XO of the UNSS Sagittarius, floated in his life support-bubble and was afraid. His lungs hurt every time he inhaled, and blood kept collecting in his nostrils. He could already start to feel the itch that would turn into the burning rash that preceded his skin sloughing off…
Oscar knew he'd taken a fatal dose of radiation poisoning, and in any case his air was running low. Survival bubbles were only meant to last a couple of hours, and he'd spent the first half of that unconscious. The question was, which would get him first, and how long it would take?
The faces of the bridge crew stared at him, ruined, tortured faces. Captain Kgoali, chest torn half away by flying shrapnel, his proud Zulu face shrunken against his skull. Lieutenant Robertson, freeze-dried by the harsh vacuum of space. That technician there; Oscar didn't even know his name. He'd come aboard last time they were in port and he'd stayed mostly in the crew quarters. Oscar almost started to cry.
He shook his head to clear the tears. He had to figure a way to survive. If anyone could live long enough to be picked up by a rescue ship, it was Oscar Sanchez, best XO in the Navy!
Yeah right.
He tried to work out the math to see how long he had to live, but he couldn't figure out how to make the figures add up.
He couldn't figure out how to make the figures add up. Sine squared times cotangent squared over secant x plus one equals… The young Oscar Sanchez shook his head and glanced at the desk next to him. Jimmy always had the answers. He could make out half of the answer on Jimmy's paper… He scribbled, "cos x + tan x…" Jimmy's hand was in the way! He leaned a little farther over…
"What do you think you're doing, Mr. Sanchez?" Oscar jumped. Mrs. Haire was in his face. "Just what do you think you're doing?" He tried to answer, but she rode him down. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"What do you think you're doing!"
Oscar wheezed. He could feel the heat in his chest. His internal organs must be cooking from the inside out. A plasma blast wasn't quite as radioactive as a nuke, but it still put out quite a lot in the X-ray band.
It put out enough to kill him.
What am I doing? he thought. I'll be dead soon anyway. If the rescue ship hasn't come already, it isn't coming at all. We must have lost. Tears came to his eyes, and this time he let them flow. He had no chance. No chance at all.
"She's got no chance at all!"
"Keep trying!"
"What's going on!?" Oscar demanded. The delivery room was crowded; there must have been a half a dozen nurses and specialists, as well as himself, his brother, and Juana's parents.
A nurse glanced up at him long enough to say, "The baby's stuck in the birth canal. We might not be able to get it out. If we can't, we'll have to abort it or your wife will die."
His breath caught in his throat. Juana's mother began to cry. Juana was on the operating table, her legs wide open, two doctors and a midwife trying to do their tasks and getting in each other's way.
"Push, push!" A scream, something crying, shouts, another scream, then something pink was wiped clean and wrapped in a blanket and Oscar Sanchez saw his baby girl…
Tears don't run in free fall; they just pool over the eyes and form a stinging, salty lens. Oscar wasn't just crying; he was sobbing, bent double, turning gently in the negligible gravity. He tried to wipe the tears from his eyes, then shrieked as a bloody strip of skin peeled away from his arm. The salt tears were mixed with blood now and he could barely see. He rubbed at the sticky mess covering his face with his fingers until finally he could see the boils and sores covering both his arms.
Glowing in the dark…
He screamed in rage, in fear, in hopelessness, and banged on the transparent plastic wall of the bubble prolonging his misery. He'd looked for a way to open it from the inside. There was none. He beat until his fists were red…
… and the sealed container burst open and the survival bubble popped out. He struggled to get into it in time, vision fading, ears probably gone, vacuum tearing at his lungs…
"…What do you make of these orders, Lieutenant Commander?"
Oscar looked over the sheet that Captain Kgoali handed him. While he read, Kgoali continued. "I always wished I could go in a blaze of glory… But at least doing something worthwhile!"
Oscar looked up. "It's not quite a suicide mission…"
"No," the captain sneered. "Not quite. But damn near close to it! We're supposed to attack a fucking Covenant armada with fewer than two-dozen ships? And with Rear Admiral Du Gualle in charge!? Insanity!"
Oscar nodded…
…And the air was almost out. The needle was down to the red line. Oscar was starting to have trouble breathing. Maybe he'd die of asphyxiation before the radiation completely fried his brain…
Oscar smiled as Juana finished eating. She noticed him looking and put her fork down. "Okay, what is it? You take me out to one of the nicest restaurants in Fresno and order me one of the most expensive things on the menu. Is this what I think it is?"
His smile turned to an outright grin. "That depends on what you think it is." Before she could respond he was on his knees. He removed the little box from his pocket and opened it. Juana gasped. He gathered his courage and managed to choke out, "Juana… will you marry me?"
The nearby tables had gone silent. She stared at him, mouth agape. Had he made a mistake? But then her face turned radiant, and she cried, "Yes, yes, yes, I'll marry you, I love you…" And then he stood and they kissed, and it was good, and then Bernardo was staring him in the face, and Oscar pushed against the plastic, pushed himself as far away from the corpse as possible, and Juana asked, "What's wrong?" and Oscar cried and cried, and Maria fell with a bullet in her chest as the car drove away, and Kgoali was shouting, shouting as the ship turned too slow, and—
Oscar looked up at the stars. The space between them seemed to grow until the darkness swallowed them all, all but one little speck of light, until that, too, was gone.
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