The Tornado Sojourns (5) – Chapter 2 – Coll Musak

 

Coll Musak stepped out of the run-down Mission Clinic and tried to think of a time when he had left that dreary building with good news, but he couldn’t, so he proceeded to the tram stop through the mist, murk and smog.

It was cold, and damp and the air was foul, the smog was so thick that it was impossible to discern where the buildings ended, and the sky began.

When he reached the Tram stop he sat down on what passed for a bench, leant his walking stick against the bench beside him and then reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a flask and put it to his lips and took a swig.

“You shouldn’t do that you know, it’ll kill you it will” A voice said from the other end of the bench.

He turned his head to see that the voice belonged to a small skinny Gouveian woman of indeterminate age wearing shabby clothes, who he had seen on the Tram several times before, but they had never spoken. 

“It killed my husband” she continued “And he was much younger than you”

He smiled and nodded then he took another swig.

Coll was fifty-nine years old, almost sixty, and he gave up drinking thirty years before when he met Silia, who soon after became his wife, and he remained tee total, even though war and grief, until a few weeks before that day when he was first diagnosed with a rare brain tumour, inoperable.

There were treatments of course but they would merely delay the inevitable, the prognosis was that without treatment he would probably see his sixtieth birthday but definitely not his sixty first, so he figured a drink wouldn’t hurt him

“I will just have to take that dear lady” he said to her and smiled.

 

Coll was a big man; over six feet tall and broad shouldered and despite his need to walk with a stick he still carried himself with a military bearing and apart from Plasma shell remnants in his leg, hence the need for the stick, and the fact that he was dying he had felt ok, an occasional nagging headache but no more than that.

He had lost a little weight of late, not a bad thing in itself he had been a stone or two overweight for a good few years, and he had felt tired a good deal which he put down to his age, he wouldn’t have seen a doctor at all but for the fact he had had an accident and been knocked down in the street by a man running from the Prefects.

But in those few short weeks since the initial diagnosis the pain had started, and it was getting worse, pain like he had never known before, even when he was blown up in the war it didn’t hurt so bad, and he was starting to look gaunt and skin hung loosely about his neck.

He thought back to the conversation he had had with the Mission Doctor, barely an hour earlier, a man who looked older than his years who smelt of whisky and peppermint and had tremors in his hands.

“You have a little time to get your affairs in order” he said to him.

“But you will deteriorate very quickly”

“Just as well I have no affairs to get in order” he had thought to himself.

He had no one to miss him or mourn him; his passing would be as insignificant as a ripple on a pond.

Silia, his wife of 19 years passed away more than ten years previous after a Legion air strike, and his only child Kered died a few days later of his wounds.

He had lost touch with the friends and comrades from the war and those friends he had made on Eikon Major were either already dead or unable to recognise him, so there were no beneficiaries of his meagre estate.

There was enough in his savings to deal with his mortal remains but no more than that.

He wasn’t scared, he was ready to die, he had had enough, his life had been almost intolerable since Silia died, lonely and meaningless, but the last year had all but broken him and he was ashamed of himself and that was something he thought would never happen, but he had allowed himself to become a victim, giving in to intimidation and what was most unforgivable of all he had become a coward.

 

After flying the Spider Hawk to Eikon Major, Lyris and Zerrad parked at the space port, then caught the Hi-speed Shuttle from the capital City Rendon and travelled for three hours to the grimy run down former industrial power house of Ditton, where they rented a Runabout.

The Skeets, Oshwin Lemik and Coll Musak were all from Shax and all fought against the Legion in the Shaxon War, the Skeet brothers were fighter pilots, Oshwin was Logistics Commander and Coll Musak was a Corvette Captain.

When the war came to an unsatisfactory conclusion for the Shaxson rebels the Legion exacted a heavy retribution which lead to some of the former fighters having to turn their backs on their home worlds to escape the Legions punitive punishments.

None of them had any reason to stay when the war was over so even if the Legion had been prepared to allow them to live in peace there was nothing left to bind them to their birthplace.

After leaving the Shaxon System they all went their separate ways, and it was just a twist of fate that they had all ended up in the Eikon Cluster.

Oshwin had been there the longest arriving within a year of leaving Shax and Coll arrived a few months later, though neither knew of the others existence, the Skeets arrived some years after that, but they had only learned that Coll was in the system after Oshwin passed on a message to them from Vinid Cupra, comms officer in the transmitter hut at the Odekka landing field on Achrem, to say that he had been drinking with some Shaxon Grain Freighter hands, and they told him they had met another compatriot in a shithole of a town called Ditton, on Eikon Major, and whilst in his cups, he let slip that he was planning to kill someone.

It was that news which caused them to act, he was clearly in trouble, and that they had to help him because they owed him, had it not been for Captain Coll Musak the Skeet brothers would be dead.

Which was why they were in Ditton, and they had been in town for three days before they tracked him down, and they were parked in the street when they saw him leave the Mission Clinic and watched him cross the road.

They knew that Coll was a proud man, so they couldn’t let on they had gone there to find him, it would have to appear that they had stumbled upon him and make the chance meeting as casual as possible.

So, they watched him walk towards the Tram Stop, then sitting on the bench and talking to an elderly lady and when he took his second swig from his flash they drove towards him and when the Runabout was parallel to the Tram Stop Lyris leant out of the window and shouted

“Captain Musak! Is that you? My God it is! As I live and breathe”