Soul of a Gambler

Part XVIII - "Everything's Eventual"

A lifetime ago, a boy named Jackson Davis had fallen asleep across two poorly padded vinyl chairs in the waiting room of a Texas hospital. The surgeons said they didn't know how long she would be, but when every moment is an eternity, does the relativity of time have any meaning? So he decided to shut the world out. 

He felt an icy hand grab ahold of his shoulder and give him the slightest shake. The boy groaned and tried to slap the hand away, muttering groggily beneath his breath. He hand shook harder and he popped up with one eye closed, imprints of his canvas jacket across half of his face. 

Sleep washed from him with the infusion of ice water in his veins at the doctor's solemn expression. He had seen this expression before, after the initial Blackwatch siege sputtered out, just above a neatly folded flag holding his father's cigarette case and dog tags. The apology was the same. There was nothing they could do. 

The boy felt the last half of his heart fall away, and in the silence he fought not to cry. The doctor waited with him. His grandparents had been contacted, as there was a great deal of work to be done regarding the new estate and the orphan she left behind. 

"Everything's eventual, Jackson. I see a lotta' death, but nobody should have to pay for a lapse in character with their lives." The doctor said between attempts to cajole the boy not to smoke himself into an early grave.

Not that there was any sympathy that could cleanse what had afflicted the boy. In the end he went out for a smoke anyway, the first cigarette of the rest of his life. His parents taught him the habit, so in this moment facing the sunset with his back against his Corvette, he felt close to them. As time would march on, his habit would again wither to being just what it is. 

While there wasn't much of a deeper to go in terms of sadness, Jackson felt something else fade away when his haggard grandfather and sobbing grandmother pulled into the parking lot all the way from El Paso. Under normal circumstances, his grandmother would have taken a sandal to the side of his peach-fuzzed face for having a cigarette between his lips. 

His grandfather implored him to come in and sit with them. Be united with what little family they had left. He agreed on the condition that he could finish his cigarette, and when they were out of eyeshot he got in his car and left.

His destination was the Dallas Starport. Humanity didn't have a whole lot of friends out there, but anywhere was better than here. Jackson had a drive he couldn't ignore, a hot coal burning through his gut stoked by each thought of his beloved mother. 

"She told me to tell ya', when she woke up between procedures, that she wants you to play it safe while she isn't around. You have the soul of a gambler, and she wants ya' to cash it out."

He intended to cash out for certain, but it was not his soul that would render payment. If he couldn't beat the crap out of the lowlives who killed Susan; he knew where to find the ones who killed his father. They had a name too.

The Blackwatch.

---

Jax woke up on the icy floor of the Prototype with Rocky staring down at him. The soft light of an alien star penetrated the bridge through the projection-window, barely eclipsed by the terran beauty of Soria which hung weightlessly in the distance. 

"Why the hell am I on the floor?" Jax thought to himself, straining to pull himself upward.

As he did basically a lazy-man's sit up he felt a bolt of searing pain fire through his gut like a bullet from a gun. He felt his belly and ran his hand into the cauterized gash from where he was struck with the shrapnel of a Krazoran ship, creating a wave of frustrated tingling in his gut.