In the Arms of Lachiga: Stories

Touching from a Distance

Touching from a Distance

The welding torch blazed in Kael’s hand, spitting flecks of scorching plasma that chewed away at his blackened armored work suit. Behind the flaring face shield, beads of sweat dribbled across his blistered forehead. Nine hours of laboring felt a hell of a lot longer in a low-pay, low-gworking environment: tedium amid the slow-motion dance of the cosmos.

Kael had been shuttled into lunar orbit wearing the pins and medals of a distinguished soldier, but not long after arriving on-station at habitat Leonov he’d discovered the real truth of the UNE Starbound Corps: Instead of keeping humanity safe and moving further outward into an increasingly wondrous galaxy, the SBC was really just a clever ruse to get able-bodied persons into a factory ten hours out of the day.

A fucking robot’s job.

The assembly unit wasn’t all bad, he supposed. It kept qualified warriors working jobs, which was an astonishing feat in a solar system presently free from the threat of war. It also, unfortunately, sent a lot of good men and women back home to Earth with a surprise or two—cardiac arrhythmia, most often—in addition to the unavoidable muscle atrophy that was the shared bane of all UNE soldiers living on the curved inner surface of the massive cylindrical station.

The flightless, newborn starship Kael had worked on for the better portion of his shift bore the trappings of an unarmed commercial vessel. Emblazoned on its smooth, rounded sides were the markings of some ridiculously influential megacorp conglomerate. The heat-resistant paint artfully depicted the long-feathered head of a mythical phoenix next to a stylish mess of bold Chinese glyphs.

The plasma torch let out a whoosh as it powered down, and its brilliant light vanished.

Kael slapped his suit’s mask open, winced as the naked luminance of the fluorescent tube lamps overhead struck his eyes. The rush of oxygen-rich air, however, felt incredible against his warm face. He heaved a few long breaths, and then trudged across the hanging support structure that wound like a snake amid row after row of unfinished craft within the spacious facility.

He stood in line for a good twenty minutes or so, waiting his turn for retinal scan at the time clock. After the red lens atop a thin metallic pole had flashed a point of light across his eyes, he exited the assembly area and stepped out into the vast central hub-tower of the colossal station, strode on in his cumbersome welder’s attire.

When at last he reached the cramped, lozenge-shaped tram capsule beyond the factory, he hunkered down inside, sinking deep into the soft aerofoam. With a flick of the console beside him, the tiny door slid shut, sealing him inside. Kael punched in the designation code for his living quarters, and the capsule rocketed through the kilometers-long vacuum-shuttle tube en route to the residential zone of the habitat.

Where, from his private quarters, he could temporarily escape.

The military came with a basic set of advantages, not least of which was the cutting-edge tech that civilians back home could only fantasize about. Aside from his underground app sales business getting phased out during the recession, that had been one of the biggest draws for Kael to enlist. Access to the most awesome technology in known existence…and credit.

— — —

Kael flushed the remains of a hearty vegetable broth and a soggy, half-eaten soy roll, took a revitalizing piss, then crossed to the broadcast throne that sat at the center of his apartment’s tiny living area. He stepped over the tangle of electrical cables and fiber-optics that surrounded it, then sat down in the reclined chair. It enveloped him, caused his implant to tingle in anticipation.