Instantly the inside of the canopy turned crimson, my blood splattering against my Heads-Up Display as the decompression alarm sounded. Air hissed out the hole, sucking the blood splatter towards it and out into the void like some bloody flower blooming right all over my cockpit. My wound didn’t hurt, but I knew this was bad. I hadn’t seen this much blood since the accident. It’s the year 2037. My name’s Mike Williams, but everyone calls me Magnet. I’m an Australian Air/Space Force pilot and I fly the SSF-01 Wasp. It’s a zippy little space fighter that looks something like a F-4 Phantom with stubby little wings, wings which really just serve as mounts for the reaction control system and as hardpoints to mount missiles. Wings in space don’t do anything much, although their weight does steady the craft a little bit, and the reaction control system that allows us to do fine maneuvering requires them. They call me Magnet because it’s short for Chick Magnet, which is good old-fashioned military humour at its finest.
What do You think about Magnet (Lacuna Short Stories)?
