S69Q-1 (The Cosmic Inferno Book 3)

by Riva, Aline

  She laughed as the flush to her face turned scarlet.

  “Oh god... you heard me! I've been here a long time, Jinx... Jody even trained me so I could help care for you. I guess from the moment I saw you at the space port I felt something. After you saved us all in the crash I definitely couldn't walk away.”

  He reached for her hand and took hold of it gently.

  “It's not long until I'm out of here,” Jinx said, “I'll get better quickly now I'm recovering. When I am out of here I'd very much like to get to know you better, is that okay with you?”

  Her face lit up in a radiant smile.

  “Of course it is,” she said warmly, and she leaned in and gave him a soft kiss that was brief but left him feeling pleasantly surprised.

  “Now get some rest,” she told him, “I'll be in to see you again tomorrow.”

  Jinx reached for her, pulling her into a tight embrace.

  “See you tomorrow, Cora,” he said, and long after he had let go and she had left the room, he still had a smile on his face as he thought of the woman who had managed to reach him even when he was locked in a coma, joining him there to make a nightmare more bearable, she had reached him and maybe she had been reaching him right from the start – he was certain she was someone he needed in his life now, in fact it felt as if she had always been there, he couldn't imagine her not being around. He got the feeling this was probably the moment he had realised he was in love.

  Then his smile faded as he picked up Mack's camera and settled back against the pillows, looking to the screen as he wondered if he ought to replay the painful days he could not recall. He was partly afraid to do it, because the guilt over his own stupidity with the drugs was weighing heavy now, but Mack had made these recordings for a reason, to show him the impact of his actions. Knowing that was enough to give him the courage to face what ever was on the camera...

  Jinx took a deep breath and turned on the camera, then he opened up the menu and scrolled down the videos. It was then he stopped, his eyes growing wider as he caught sight of a piece of film set apart from the list that was named Jinx Please Watch! He selected the video and then looked at the frozen image, hesitant to press play as he stared at the sight of a large mansion house set into the middle of what looked like open countryside. It was very old, with steps leading up to a large door and the porch way was framed by pillars. The building was of old red brick and in the distance he caught sight of a very modern docking space built in and a runway that stretched out into the distance. On that dock was the princess galaxy cruiser. The skies in the image looked very much to be those of earth, but the name of the video had set ice in his blood as he stared at it:

  The film clip was titled Shyra-K1.

  Jinx broke out into a sweat as he carried on staring at the image on the camera.

  “What the hell is going on?” he whispered.

  Chapter 10

  Jinx didn't ask about the chilling name of the house in the video, mainly because he was surrounded by those who were associated with it, were around him constantly. Jody was always checking on him, Cora was a frequent visitor. Mack came in every other day when he wasn't doing cargo runs. Jody had said, he would be out of the clinic by the end of the week and Jinx had been counting down the days.

  On the day he had woken from the coma, after being left alone with the camera, it had taken a while to get over the shock of seeing that film clip of the house with that name, but then he had pulled his shattered nerves together and played the video.

  It was a fifteen second clip.

  A shot that showed the house in the distance, the ship docked nearby, then Mack had walked into the middle of the shot, thrown his arms wide in a grand gesture and bowed to the camera. That was all he had seen, there was no more to see but it still left him with no answers...

  Then he had watched the other films, the ones marked Jinx Please Watch!

  Seeing footage of the days following his collapse, then clips of later on, months later, then a year later, then further on into his treatment had made him realise he had put Mack through a living hell as he waited to learn if his best friend would live or die, and by the time he had finished watching two hours later, the guilt he had felt on the reason for his coma weighed even heavier.

  He was still concerned about the naming of the house after all he recalled from the long and terrible nightmare, but Mack and the others seemed so harmless and ordinary, not at all insane. He kept reminding himself of that fact as the days went on, these people were his friends. He just hoped they were not the crazy cannibal friends he knew in his bad dreams – Jody had since told him that the smart drugs used to repair his injuries had to be the cause of his freaky dreams, but there was only one way to find out if she was telling the truth, and he didn't doubt that soon he would learn it because when Mack had given him the camera, he had made no attempt to hide the video clip. Perhaps he had wanted him to see it, but he didn't mention it all. He didn't need to mention it, because on the day Jody said he could go home, Jinx had just finished buttoning his shirt and had put on his jacket when the door opened and Mack had entered the room with Jody. They exchanged a smile and looked at him and he knew something had been planned, and wondering exactly what it was made his guts churn.

  “We have a surprise for you,” Mack said, “We bought a big house out in the countryside...guess what? You part own it too. Me, Jody, Cora and Zeke put some cash together and I put yours in for you too – not much, it was just a few month's interest you earn on the invested cash so you lost nothing – and now we own a big place where we can do what ever we like.”

  His face paled.

  “What exactly goes on there?”

  Mack looked at him in surprise.

  “We live there, you idiot! Anyway, you're coming with us, right now. Cora's already there waiting for you and Zeke has been getting the place ready, he's got some food in and he's preparing dinner. We can take the Pharaoh, I sat her down on the runway at the back of this place. Let's go, Jinx, you're getting out of here at last!”

  As they left the clinic and went out by the doors that led to the gardens and then went up the path where at the bottom, a locked gate showed a view through the bars of an open field where the Pharaoh sat waiting, Jinx felt like throwing up. It suddenly struck him as ironic that in his dream he had been the leader of the cannibals at Shyra-K1, yet here he feared becoming a victim...

  Jody unlocked the gate and they began to walk towards the ship. Mack put an arm around his shoulder as they headed for the hatch.

  “I've missed you, so have the others – they've all got to know you through me, I've told them all about you.”

  He thought back to conversations shared with Cora that had grown deeper as he had recovered and then Jinx smiled.

  “I hope you didn't tell them as much as you told Cora!”

  Mack laughed.

  “Oh yeah, they know all about you!”

  He laughed too, feeling more at ease.

  “Thanks a lot for that!” he joked, and then they reached the hatch and Jinx followed Mack and Jody inside.

  Seated beside Mack as co pilot felt strange after so long away – Jody had taken a seat behind in the passenger area, and as he looked at the controls and recalled the nightmare of crashing on an alien planet, then finding the wreck of the Pharaoh years later, abandoned and sand blown, he felt strange, recalling that none of it had actually happened. Memories of the burning transporter falling towards them and then him taking over the ship and making an emergency landing on earth replaced the false memories quickly, as he felt more at home he reached for the controls and Mack shot him a warning look.

  “No,” he reminded him, “You may be sitting in the co pilot's seat but you won't be flying today. No flying for two years, you've had a head injury and been in a coma. I know it's only short distance and it's not space flight but I do worry about my license. The controls are locked to me for now.”

  Then he fired up the engine and took the Phar
aoh down the runway for a take off that saw the ship glide into the skies, heading out into blue pitted by small white clouds. For a brief moment Jinx recalled purple skies and the transporter trailing smoke and flame, heard the scream of metal as the roof was torn open, then he took a deep breath and Mack asked if he was okay. Jinx looked ahead and saw the blue skies stretching out before them like an ocean and nodded.

  “I'll be fine,” he said.

  The flight was over in half an hour, as they began to slide down from the endless blue and towards the runway that led to the place where the luxury cruiser was docked, he saw the house behind it. The place didn't look like the grand white mansion in his nightmare, instead it looked like an old country house full of rural charm. But they had named it Shyra-K1... That thought chilled his blood and by the time they were heading in to land, Jinx had broken into a light sweat.

  “I'll take her down on the fork to the smaller runway,” Mack remarked as the landing strip loomed closer, “Then I'll boost her up and spin her round tomorrow when I have to pick up cargo...”

  Jinx glanced at him.

  “I thought it was illegal to spin a space vessel on a landing site when there's another ship docked?”

  Mack laughed.

  “Now that really was too much sticking to the rules, Jinx! I don't care about space flight rules here – I do what I like in my own back yard!”

  Then the ship touched down, glided along the runway and Mack brought it to easy stop on the fork to the shorter runway and shut down the engines.

  “Home sweet home!” he announced.

  Jinx was still sweating.

  “Great,” he replied, forcing a smile as he looked to the sight of the luxury cruiser in the distance and the house that lie beyond it....

  On leaving the ship Jinx walked with Mack and Jody up the runway, past the cruiser and on to a path that led up to the house. The closer they got, at least he felt reassured that the house was nothing like the one in his nightmare: There was wide gravel drive way leading up to the house of red brick where ivy rambled on its walls. Roses were in bloom outside the windows at the front of the house. There was a path that led around to a tall wooden gate, and Mack led him towards it, glancing back with a smile on his face.

  “I smell barbecue!”

  Jinx thought back to the barbecues in his nightmares and felt slightly sick. As they passed through the gate and went down to the back of the house, the area opened up into a wide patio, beyond it was a swimming pool and further up, another, lower gate led to a large walled garden. There was a smell in the air of meat cooking over flame and it smelled good and he didn't want it to because he had spent so long stuck in a nightmare and to come here, knowing the name of this place, brought the memories rushing back with startling clarity.

  As he stepped on to the patio, Jinx gave himself a silent reminder of the facts:

  There had been no crash landing on an alien planet.

  None of them had ever gone crazy or become cannibals.

  Alien parasites did not exist – at least, not in the so far discovered galaxy.

  S69Q-1 did not exist, either. He had searched every star map he could lay his hands on. The planet was an invention of his dream...

  Jinx sat down on a bench as Zeke said Hi and carried on turning the meat on the barbecue. Jinx smiled back, then dared to look at the meat:

  Fingers.. Human fingers.

  He blinked and looked again.

  Sausages. Just regular sausages. Next to it was some chicken. It was definitely chicken, too...

  Mack cracked open some cold beers and handed one to Jinx, who drank from it and then felt a little more relaxed. The food was not human meat. They were not cannibals. This was normal life. A house in the countryside, a barbecue with friends... He felt brave enough to ask the question he had held back for so long.

  “Why is this house called Shyra-K1?”

  They looked at him and saw a spark of fear in his eyes.

  Zeke laughed.

  “You said that like you're scared! Oh my god, you don't believe that old urban myth, do you, Jinx?”

  Mack started to smile.

  “Seriously man, you don't think that was a true story, do you?”

  Jody giggled.

  “Kids believe in that story, Jinx! How could a crew go missing and go mad and never be found again, no one escaped to tell the tale, yet everyone knows about it?”

  Jinx felt his face start to flush.

  “Yeah, I know that...”

  “No you didn't!” Mack said as he laughed, “Oh Rik, you idiot! Just drink your beer!”

  “So why did you call it Shyra-K1?” he asked, setting his beer down and looking intently at his best friend, “I saw it on the video -”

  “You saw me in front of Rosewood House, that's the name of this place! I was joking around, saying we ought to call it Shyra-K1 after being marooned in a field full of cow shit for hours after you did the emergency landing!”

  Then he laughed, and so did Jinx, but Mack's smile faded as he thought about the truth.

  “Actually, it wasn't at all funny, not at the time. We were all waiting for rescue to get you airlifted to hospital. I was worried sick.”

  “And that will never happen again,” Jinx vowed.

  Then Zeke said the food was ready and teased Jinx about Shyra-K1 and said maybe the chicken wasn't really chicken. Jinx laughed and said he was going for a walk and would eat later, then he wandered towards the gate and headed for the walled garden to finish his beer in the sunshine, in a house that was nothing like the place of his nightmares – if only he could keep reminding himself of that fact...

  Jinx stood alone in the garden as he heard laughter from Mack and the others as they joked again about his belief in the myth of Shyra-K1, then he smiled as he drank again from the beer bottle and shook his head, life had been crazy, but now it was finally making sense again...

  “Hi Rik.”

  He turned around to see Cora had entered the garden. She wore a short, light yellow summer dress and as he looked at her, he felt his heart miss a beat. There was nothing to hold back for now, he had finally laid the ghosts of his bad dreams to rest. No danger lurked here, there was only the love of his friends who had never given up on him, and the love of this woman who made his heart glow.

  She walked over to him and smiled as she looked into his eyes.

  “How are you?”

  “Very well now,” he replied, putting the beer down on a nearby wooden table, then he glanced about the gardens as the scent of barbecue mixed with the summer air.

  “I'm glad you're here,” Cora added, “I've been waiting all week for this. It seemed longer than a week.”

  “Same here,” he agreed.

  As he looked at her, he briefly recalled the crazy lunatic he had become in his nightmare, right now as he stood with Cora, he had never been so grounded in reality. He was the real Jinx, the man who had made it through the nightmare and come out of the coma, and this house would make a great home. That was the moment he decided that Mack wouldn't be the only one getting married soon...

  “This has been a long time coming,” he told her.

  “It has,” she agreed, “But the bad stuff is over now.”

  He stepped closer, smiling as his eyes sparkled.

  “It's time to start a new chapter of my life. And I want you to be in it.”

  Then he reached for her and pulled her closer and the two of them kissed under a sunlit sky that was definitely not alien, as they stood in the garden of Rosewood House, that was definitely not called Shyra-K1.

  As the lovers shared their first real embrace, further back towards the house, Mack, Jody and Zeke were still laughing and joking about Jinx and how he had believed in an urban space legend, as they ate meat from the barbecue that was definitely chicken.

  This day felt like a new start for all of them because now, no one was missing, and although the urban myth of Shyra-K1 would live on for generations, the reality here was
simply a reunion, an end to dark times, the start of a better future.

  End