SoulMatch
by
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?”
