Catch a Falling Star (2 page)

With another frown
she looked up at the portion of the night sky where she'd seen
the battle. This vessel had to have been a casualty of the
destruction she'd watched. Was it among a fleet of similar
predatory fighters that had destroyed an Alliance ship? Or had
the explosion she'd witnessed been that of this fighter's own
Federation carrier, blown to bits of space debris?

Some of that debris
would wind up planetside eventually. Whether that happened
through decaying orbits of the bigger pieces that were caught by
the planet's gravity or retrieval missions by the government, it
was happening more often. That was the only good thing she could
think of about having the war between the Federation and the
Alliance moving into their sector. It meant more metal and, for
the really lucky, technology to be scavenged by whoever was
first to claim it.

“That's going to be
me.” She mumbled the promise to herself as she went back to the
mule and began to set up the tow cables on the back of it. They
were a modification fashioned by her brothers to allow the
machine to pull things too heavy for any other means. After some
trial and error to get the cables attached to the capsule, she
climbed back into the saddle. Her ankle was throbbing, though it
was a dull ache, thankfully, and tolerable.

“Alright, baby,” she
patted the metal side of the hoverbike, “let's get this thing
back to the barn where we can puzzle it out without any
interference.”

As if agreeing with
her, the bike hummed to life without stalling. It was a slower
return trip than the ride out had been, but not by much. Leaving
the capsule in the barn she stared at it for a moment, still not
hearing anything from inside, now convinced the pilot had not
survived.

“Sorry, whoever you
are,” she addressed the silent pod. “Don't go anywhere.” She
wiped her hands on her coveralls then shut the barn doors. Papa
most likely was still asleep but she had to make sure. He was
always her priority.

Chapter 2

“
Come on you
octo-faced star jockeys! My 80-year old granny can aim better
on the pisser than you snot-nosed, nappy-wearing fly babies!
Rabbit, you-”

The crackle of
interference turned the rest of that morale boost to garbled
noise before cutting out, leaving the pilot alone with the hum
of the control console and the vibrations from the twin engines.

Cradled in the
cockpit of the deep space fighter jet, the Earth-born pilot
heard nothing from outside his winged coffin, the sporadic
bursts of color lighting up the star spangled black banner as
silent as a church mouse.

Deceptively serene,
the moment was short-lived, disrupted by a squawk of static.
Communications resumed. Listening just enough to keep abreast,
the pilot stayed focused on the task at hand.

Orders had come in
only 20 minutes before he'd buckled into his harness and fired
up the old broad. Green light bathed the cozy interior as he
flipped up the HUD's toggle and switched on his comms. The CO
was repeating the Op. Things had gone tits-up and now back-up
was needed to extract the back-up and he was part of the crew
that had to keep the tinmen off long enough to save their
people. Just another day in the Federation Corp. Oo-yah.

A beeping started and
the pilot flicked his eye over the display to see a red dot
closing in behind his yellow bird.

“
Madrid, man, you
got a tinman on your six!”

“I see him. Rabbit,
can you take him down?”

“No, man. No
chance. No chance!”

“Don't sweat it, eh?
I got this.” The pilot checked the display again, the proximity
alert picking up intensity. His hands were sweating inside his
gloves, the material only able to wick away the moisture so
fast. Timing was everything in this game.

“
Madrid, man-”
Rabbit's voice was getting higher, filling the cockpit with
palpable anxiety. Switching a millisecond later from the other
man’s call sign to his given name, emphasized how perilous his
wingman’s position. “
Miguel, Miguel, Miguel...”

The pilot in dire
straits glanced out the fighter’s window. A tinman rolled under
another Federation fighter, greasy black smoke trailing from it
like spilled intestine. That was a pretty image.

“
Miguel, you gotta
dive, man. Dive!”

Miguel felt the
trickle of sweat slide down his temple. “One more second,” he
murmured, back to watching the red dot blip faster on the
console. A second alarm went off and the HUD flashed crazily.

“
Dude!”

The pilot jerked the
stick hard right, keeping it planted against his knee as the
view outside the port turned brilliant white, his bird spinning
out, rolling in a barrel.

Several voices were
shouting now but the pilot was listening to his own rapidly
beating heart, calculating as much as intuiting when to pull
back on the throttle and when to punch it forward. Zipping
soundlessly through the starry canopy, the brazen pilot pulled
out all the stops, leaving no trick undone as he fought to lose
his tail.

Briefly the HUD
stopped flashing but it was soon screaming wildly again and the
pilot began to feel real fear. “What's it take to get this
asshole off me, eh, Rabbit? Where you at,
amigo
...”

A hollow pop rang in
the man's ears and his face contorted, his lungs wanting to pull
open and get rid of his heart as his friend's voice shouted loud
enough to be heard over the ringing in his head.
“We lost
Ceej! Bastard got Ceej!”

Manipulating the
joystick harder than it needed to be, Miguel tried to coax more
from his already taxed engines. He could feel the strain as the
fighter trembled. He still had his tail and his CO was competing
with the frantic shout of Ceej's wingman. His own wingman was
trying to get behind the tin tail but he'd never make the shot
in time.

“I got to do it,
man,” he mumbled, knowing Rabbit was listening. “Tell my sister
I am the better lookin' twin, eh?” He reached for the squid,
freeing it from its nest above the HUD.

“
Tell her
yourself, frankenbeans!”
Rabbit's shout was just this side
of panicked, Miguel could tell, but he trusted his wingman to
keep it together.

“See you on the flip
side,
amigo
.” Miguel pushed the squid onto his face and
jack-knifed his fighter into a dive. If all went well, the
crippled engines would hold together, taking him into the narrow
window for safe entry into the atmosphere he'd programmed into
the nav. just before diving. He'd take his chances on surviving
the beating the ship would take and the inevitable crash
landing; that was more his style than the certainty of his fate
if he did nothing. And, who knows, if he was lucky, maybe he'd
get the tinman on his tail to follow.

* * * * *

There was no pain.
Shouldn't there be pain? Unless he was dead and his body just
hadn't let him go yet. Maybe he couldn't find Heaven at all from
space. That would suck. He'd had such plans for Heaven...

Cracking an eye open
proved nothing, he was still in the dark. The musty, lizardy
smell from the squid masked any other odors but when he wiggled
his fingers he felt a mild resistance. That was good. If being
encased in a cube of impact-resistant gelatin was a good thing.
It reminded him of his sister's weird jell-o desserts, with the
fruit bits suspended in them. Gross.

First things
first.
Get out of the gel
. Miguel tried to move
his foot, looking for the tiny pedal that was supposed to
release the antidote.
Good thing I'm not claustrophobic.
His breath snorted out and the squid's fingers tightened around
his head, the breathing tube tickling his throat and aggravating
his gag reflex.
Now
he was going to panic.

Using all the
strength he could muster in his reclined position, the downed
pilot managed to squeeze his boot deeper and kick the cramped
space tucked beneath the console. A muffled hiss rewarded his
efforts and within seconds, the gelatin encasing him was broken
down into a harmless vapor.

Still in relative
darkness, he could now see smears of gray. He hoped the visor
hadn't been damaged. Moving his hands, he felt around for the
lock along the seam. Finding the mechanism intact, he disengaged
the lock, holding his breath when it stuck before the window
gave a hydraulic hiss and eased open.

It wasn't exactly
comforting and he didn't know what he'd expected but somehow he
felt a little deflated when it wasn't fluorescent lights, or
much light at all that greeted his return from the dead.

Unbuckling from his
harness, Miguel stifled a groan, his body telling him that
despite the shock-absorbent gel, he'd still been plenty rattled
by the crash. Putting his hands on the sides of the pod, he
hoisted himself up onto the rim and swung his legs over the
side. One hand moved automatically to the secured weapon in the
leg rig, his head turning to take in his surroundings quickly,
half expecting to be overwhelmed by an unfriendly audience.

“Where...?” Talking
into the squid made it squirm and his stomach heaved, trying to
dislodge the breathing tube. A moment of queer anxiety made the
pilot grab for the pressure points, just beneath the top arms,
forcing the parasite to release him. The tube slipped out and
his breakfast followed the thing to the floor, his knee hitting
a bed of straw.

Catching his breath,
Miguel wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and watched
as the squid curled in on itself. He'd acted rashly without
knowing the oxygen content around him. That could be him dying
on the floor right now.

Getting back to his
feet and shaking only a little, he loosened his helmet and let
it fall beside his boot, then ran a gloved hand through his
sweat damp hair and tried to get a read on his surroundings. The
LED lenses over his eyes had protected them from the impact gel
but otherwise they were proving useless. Somehow they'd been
damaged or he was just too far away from a viable signal.

Heavy beams were high
overhead and a lamp hung by a set of double doors. Scuffing his
boot across the wood floor, he inhaled deeply to clear the musty
odor from his nose and to pick up on any tells around him.

“I am in a barn,” he
said, his throat croaking from the squid's feeding tube. For a
boy raised on a cattle farm, there was no hiding it. A barn was
a barn was a barn, no matter what was in it and what planet it
was on. “How did I get in a barn...?”

Looking back up, he
tried to make out the shape of the ceiling, cursing his lens
implants for crapping out on him when he needed them most.
Obviously he hadn't come through the roof so his capsule must
have been relocated from the crash site. But who would do that
and where were they now?

Reaching again for
his leg rig, he unsnapped the safety on his weapon and pulled it
into his hand, feeling immeasurably better at its weight. He
needed to get out of this barn and find a signal to put out a
distress call.

Walking stiffly
towards the big barn door, Miguel made minimal noise, assuming
he was in hostile territory because anything else was likely to
get him killed for good this time. Getting the door to slide
open without creaking was nigh impossible but he slipped out
without being detected and breathed in fresh, clean air. Yeah,
he was definitely planetside. No dome could produce air this
pure. The shape of the house nearby confirmed it. He'd seen
plenty of this sort on the info vids and even in the relative
darkness of a sky free from electric lighting, he could tell
what he was looking at, just by its silhouette and the lights in
several of the windows.

If he was a betting
man, and he was, he'd bet his sister's firstborn that some poor
farmer had dragged off his pod hoping to make a little money
from it. The hick probably didn't even know the pod was from a
larger vessel and had a pilot in it. If he had, he'd have tried
to crack that nut surely, if for no other reason than to
eliminate the rightful owner of the property he'd just stolen.

Curling his lip
derisively, the dusky skinned Terran crept quietly across the
yard towards the house. He was about to burst somebody's bubble
in a bad way.

Chapter 3

Just inside the
house, Lyrianne was ready to head back to the barn. She carried
the hand torch though she hadn't turned it on yet in an effort
to save its fuel cells. Once they were depleted, she had no way
to pay for more; if she could even find any in town, that is.
For most other things, she'd given up on conserving, determined
to use them until they no longer worked before going to the
alternatives all farms had in place.

Her mind was on the
idea of going full retro with oil lamps and wood stove cooking
as she stepped outside, turning to lock the front door without
looking beyond the porch. She'd started locking the door after
her next to the nearest neighbor, Fat Farley, had let himself in
while she was out tending to the stock. He'd nearly succeeded in
overpowering her, despite his drunken state, before she'd
managed to knock him out. Even his week-long stay in the town
lock-up and his sweaty, slobbery apology didn't make up for the
scare he'd given her or pay to replace the lamp she'd broken
over his head.

“Disgusting.” She
shivered as she remembered the feel of his clammy, meaty hands
on her, his moonshine-tinged breath enough to gag an ox. She
turned, the flashlight in one hand, the other hefting the heavy
club she'd taken to carrying when going out of the house after
dark. That incident had taught her a caution she'd never given a
thought to before. She was a woman who was virtually alone, far
from the nearest source of possible help if someone else got it
into their head to take advantage. She knew how lucky she'd been
to escape the first time.