[FAN FICTION] BEACON Part 1

Lex awoke with a groan, finding himself bent awkwardly over a toppled piece of cargo racking, a jagged piece of steel snagged underneath the bottom of his chest plate. Its jagged point piercing his undersuit and scraped against the bottom of his ribs with every breath as it worked itself further into his diaphragm with every inhalation. With a muffled scream and a weak push he dislodged himself, his vision fading to black with pain as he hit the floor. He lay face down, the steel plating of the hangar cold against his tacky skin. Short, shallow breaths stirred up clouds of dust as his vision cleared. Slowly he rolled over onto his back, the pain forcing a growl through his teeth. He probed his chest wound carefully and raised his hand above his face, his fingers red with blood. The bleeding didn't seem out of control. You need to move. Now.

Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself into a seated position and shuffled back with his hands until he felt a cargo crate push up against him, small pieces of metal and glass embedding themselves in his palms. His face burned with what felt like a thousand flaming needles and he realised he couldn’t see out of his left eye. In a panic he scratched at his face, numb fingers trying to assess the damage. He felt countless cuts protest at his touch, and a deep gash above his left brow was pouring blood into his apparently undamaged eye.

With relief he dropped his hands into his lap and lowered his head, eyes closed and breathed heavily until he had some semblance of calm. His chest popped and crackled as he breathed in and wheezed a wet rasp as he exhaled, blood trickling from the punture the steel had made. He could feel ribs grinding on his right side where he had hit the tangled mess. He gently cocked his right elbow and could see that the metal and ceramic of his plate under his arm was completely ruined, the metal casing had been torn away and the ceramic compound inside shattered, chunks falling out of the metallic wound with streams of white dust.

“Well… shit.” He mumbled through broken teeth and swollen lips.

Bloody drool drip out of his mouth as he sat, too tired to wipe it away. He opened his heavy eyelids and could see with some satisfaction that the steel plates of his leg armour had done their job too. Deep ridges had been carved out of the plate covering his right thigh although the black under armour around the plates did not fare so well, it was torn and singed along with the skin underneath. A sticky warmth pooled on the floor underneath his legs. You’re good, its not spraying everywhere. He could see the top of his S38 still in its holster on his right thigh and two glowing red medpens strapped beside it. He grabbed one and stabbed it into his forearm with a sudden burst of desperate energy and groaned with the sudden and euphoric absence of pain. His body registered a deep warmth pushing out to his extremities and his skin came alive with a near unbearable itchiness as his many wounds began to heal at a vastly increased rate. His chest spasmed and left him in a fit of coughing convulsions and he brought up an endless amount of clotting blood as his ribs began to extricate themselves from his lung and knit themselves back together. His mind began racing as fast as his heart as the amphetamines stopped him passing out with shock.

With a start, the world came alive with noise as Lex’s eardrums repaired themselves, startling him. Being too busy dealing with the pain he hadn’t noticed he couldn’t hear anything. Alarms screeched in an endless wail as he sat, now looking around as his body burned like he’d been dipped in antiseptic. Small rocks pinged off the metal services of the floor and settling metal girders scattered about the hangar. A fire roared on the far side of the hangar and lit the room with a flickering amber light. Any other hangar in the system would have functioning fire-suppression systems, but Grim Hex had long since abandoned anything not immediately necessary.

About him lay the demolished remains of the hangar’s equipment and the cargo it was moving. Crates that had been ready for export in his ship were scattered about the place like a giant toddler had walked in and thrown them about like building blocks. Five meters away from him he could see Garth looking at the ceiling with vacant eyes with a vague expression of surprise on his undamaged face, his left arm and part of his chest disappearing under a crate labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES. Dust and ash had already begun to settle on his dark skin and crested his wrinkled face like tiny snow topped mountains. Lex could see no sign of Mallory.

Ahead of him he could see where the steel floor panels had deformed and warped under the force of the explosion, shards of ice, stone and torn support beams lay in a tangle concentrated around the explosion’s epicentre, the steel hangars floors had only absorbed a small portion of the force and deflected it up and out which left a gaping chasm in the hangars stony ceiling. He noticed that all cargo crates lay scattered in a circle around the crater, noted absently that the bomb must’ve been in with the client’s cargo.

He forced himself up like a toddler who was unused to getting off the floor and stood, swaying drunkenly. He clung to the crate with his left hand to stay upright as his ears attempted to find out where up is and upholstered his pistol with his right, its weight comforting. A sudden powerful ache between his brows extracting a few new slurs from Lex, his eyes watering. Still leaning against the crate, he looked at the ceiling blinking furiously and with a painful spasm let out a profoundly feminine sneeze, a large clot of dust and blood escaping his sinuses and relieving the pressure and making his eyes water. Stood in the middle of destroyed hangar with klaxons blearing, fire filling the room with a thick smog and a dead cookie-cutter man meters away, Lex started laughing hysterically. The absurdity of the ridiculous sneeze mixed with the amphetamine induced euphoria shoving aside the shock and releasing all his emotions like a burst dam; the mix of pain, trauma and shock proving too much to contain.

Lex stood in the back of his mind, suddenly too tired to intervene, and watched as the child in his brain took the command, alternating between laughing and sobbing for a few moments and slowly reeling himself in. Grow up and get moving, he thought to himself as a last sob escaped from his healing mouth as he angrily swiped away the tears distorting his vision. Someone tried to kill you, and they'll be coming to make sure. Absently aware that he was no longer holding on to the crate and his feet felt steady beneath him. Anger began building to replace the hole the pain had left behind. With one last look at Mallory's ashen face he started moving, eyes scanning the destruction for movement.

He tried to open a connection to the client and was met with a dead connection. He tried Mercy, who picked up immediately within seconds.

“What the hell do you drop on me?” He started, making no attempt to stop anger filtering into his voice.

“I’m sorry?” Her normally monotonous voice sounding confused.

“You said this was just a fucking transport job. The hangar bloody exploded, one of the idiots has gotten fucking mashed and I woke up speared like a fucking kebab. No eyes on the other two”.

He tapped his unholstered pistol against his thigh as he spoke and headed towards his ship and where he last saw the client, pistol at the ready as the torch did little to cut through the smoke. With some satisfaction he could that aside from some cosmetic damage the Gambit looked mostly unscathed, though it listed to one side on a collapsed landing gear. He stepped over a fallen girder and cursed as a piece of metal grazed the back of his un-plated ankle.

“How did you get this number?”