Catch a Falling Star
By Fay McDermott
For anyone who has ever wished to catch a falling star.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Illustration & Book Copyright © 2012 by Fay McDermott
Cover art & design by Fay McDermott & ghostmoongraphics.com
http://www.facebook.com/FayMcDermott
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 1
After sliding the heavy barn door closed, the young woman rested against the battered metal surface, brushing back the stray strands of hair that had escaped her long braid. Her eyes went to the streaks of purple and gold that painted the horizon, the final rays of the summer day giving way to the night. It would start to cool down now, she thought thankfully. The sweat that dampened and darkened her brown hair also coated her skin, making her itch if she allowed herself to think about it. A bath would be lovely but she had no time for it. Not yet.
Pushing away from the big door, she put one hand to her back, stretching to relieve the tightness. Her gaze went up to the second story of the old farmhouse, the dim light of a lantern barely visible in the room she looked toward. She headed off for the house and the kitchen to prepare the meal that she would carry to that dimly lit room.
With a bowl of soup and a glass of water balanced on a tray, she opened the door. The stairs had had to be taken carefully since she'd twisted an ankle out in the fields; there was enough pain that she was careful on it though she didn't think it was anything serious. She deliberately did not limp, however, once she stepped inside, just in case he was awake and watching the door for her.
She quietly moved to the bed and set the tray on the side table. “Papa?” Her voice was just above a whisper as she watched his dear, gaunt face. “Are you awake? It's time to eat again, Papa.”
He turned his head toward her, the wasting of his illness starkly evident when she turned the lamp's light higher. Her smile faltered but she kept it in place. He was her father. He was all she had left.
She had two brothers though she didn't know where they were now. They'd gone to town for supplies and never returned. There had been a conscription crew making a sweep of the town and it was assumed they were among those caught up in the net. If so, they were truly gone. None ever returned once claimed by the Alliance to fill out their “volunteer” quotas. She kept hoping that hadn't been their fate, but inside she feared it was so.
That had been two years before. Last winter, a terrible one, had taken her mother and now her father was ill. The doctor had visited and pronounced there was nothing to be done but let time take its course. Her beloved father, all she now lived for, would recover or he would not. She was determined to make sure he lived but he was getting worse, not better. It became harder to deny every day.
His sunken eyes, once bright blue and full of laughter, were now dimmed and not really seeing her at first. “Genia? There you are.” The mention of her mother's name made his daughter pause, as it did every time. He didn't remember anymore that his wife was gone for nearly six long months now.
“No, Papa, it's just Lyrianne with your snack.” She gently corrected him, knowing he'd forget again. And again.
Helping him to a sitting position propped up by pillows, she settled his blankets. He watched her, his eyes watering and his gaze vague. He had to draw in air before speaking again, the weak, quivering voice hardly recognizable as his. “Lyrie? When you get a moment, send Del up to see me. We have to discuss the plans for the new springhouse.”
She started to explain that Delvin, like Samtel, was gone, but what was the point? He wouldn't remember, anyway; no more than he'd remember in a few minutes that he'd asked her to send her eldest brother up to see him.
She filled him on her day's work as she fed him the soup, relieved he was able to hold it down. He would only accept half the glass of water before he refused more, claiming he had to lie down again. She didn't argue. It would do neither of them any good to push him to take more.
Bringing the tray downstairs again, she set the kettle on to heat water for his sponge bath then sat down at the table with a slice of bread and a half bowl of stew. She ate because she knew she had to, not because she was hungry, but managed to get it all down.
The sponge bath was one of the most difficult times of her daily ritual, breaking her heart as it did every time. It was impossible for her not to see how terribly thin he'd become. Once done, she settled him comfortably under the covers again to sleep.
Downstairs again after ensuring he was sleeping as comfortably as he could, she stared about for a moment, her mind numb, then took in a deep breath and went back outside. The first moon was showing above the peaks to the east, the light of the second one already visible as its aura reached out toward the first.
Moonlight was soothing and she was watching the sky in that direction when she saw a flash, then another, then another, far too high in the sky to bring sound with them. She knew what they were and wasn't terribly surprised to see a sudden blossom of light appear, growing bigger and brighter by the second before it suddenly winked out. It was strange that a battle in space could look so peacefully beautiful when seen from the ground, she thought.
She was just about to turn back to her evening's work when she caught a comet-tailed flash of light that brought with it a faint whizzing sound as it seemed to arc toward her from the sky. It looked like it was going to crash on their land, maybe no more than a mile from the house. Her eyes wide, she watched its trajectory. It was not going to come down as close as she'd first thought, but near. The whomp of sound that followed the geyser of light as it hit shook her into action.
Rushing to the mule, she reached up and pressed the ignition, getting no response at first. With a frustrated growl, she kicked the metal side of the beast. Thankfully, she was rewarded with a mechanical wheeze followed by the whine of the engine, spiraling up to full power. She straddled the saddle-like seat, pulled her goggles into place then grabbed the control bars, pressing down the accelerator only to hear the engine wind back down to silence.
“No you don't, you freaking stubborn piece of junk! You will work. You have to work.” From the seat, she kicked the frame with her bad ankle, which hurt enough to inspire a string of expletives. She pressed the ignition button once more. Whether it was her “love” talk or not, it worked and the engine was as close to purring as it ever was.
The mule, as her brothers had named it, was a hoverbike which they'd liberated from a crash four summers ago. They'd rebuilt it, even claimed they'd improved it, and actually got it running. She'd kept up the maintenance as well as she could but it needed more than she could give it, including several new parts. Her inexpertly cobbled repairs weren't going to hold out forever.
It was her hope whatever had just crashed onto their lands would have parts she could harvest for use. If she couldn't use them, she could sell them. Either way, she had to get there first. Pressing on the accelerator while cursing in deceptively sweet tones to the mule, she braced herself as it took off in the direction of the smoke roiling and tumbling in the distance.
* * * * *
Following the path through the cloistered trees, a trail only she could see, Lyrianne directe
d the metal beast between tall sentinels and reaching fingers of the trees and ground brush. Where others would be caught and pulled and yanked from their seat, she felt only the wind in her face as she urged the stubborn mule to swifter speeds.
It was but a small miracle that her star had chosen the meadow in the heart of the forest ringing their land in which to fall. The wooded acreage did not belong to her family but she knew it best and was upon the wide open green in record time.
Broken tree limbs, uprooted bushes and large chunks of dirt and rock were strewn about the peaceful round and it wasn't until she'd completed the climb up the small hill that she saw the bulk of the disarray.
The crash had primarily broken the vessel into two chunks. Barely larger than her bedroom closet, the cigar shaped capsule she came upon first was a smooth, milky white metal with a viewport blackened and stained with smoke running near the whole length of the pod. It was a cast-off from the larger vessel screaming its death throes on the other side of the clearing.
Shutting off the mule's engine, the lack of its loud whine barely noticeable over the downed craft's noise, Lyrianne remained in the saddle and inspected the smoking wreckage farthest away. It would be too dangerous to approach it yet, she decided. Though there were only glimpses of visible flames, the noise and smoke coming from it was sufficient warning.
Instead she turned her attention back to the capsule. There must surely be someone inside though she couldn't see through the blackened, smoke obscured windows. She felt she needed to check but wasn't so foolish as to touch the metal. She knew how super-heated wreckage could get just from entering the atmosphere. She had to let it cool so she leaned over it and tried to see into the interior.
She considered her options, looking around after failing to see anything beyond the impenetrable black smudging that covered the window. Coughing as she accidentally breathed too deeply, drawing in some of the acrid smoke drifting her way from across the clearing, she waved a hand in front of her face then stepped back.
Directing her attention outward, beyond the clearing, Lyrianne listened for the sounds of others approaching. So far she heard nothing coming nearer but that was unlikely to continue. She had to work faster than it would take for the metal to cool down or be pushed aside by other scavengers. She was a woman, unarmed and no physical match for some of her neighbors.
Finding a good sized branch, she approached the capsule again. With a firm rap, she hit the pod then leaned in to listen for any response from the other side.
She could hear the shriek of metal warping the compromised hull of the spacecraft across the clearing. There were the intermittent creaks of heavy tree limbs the fighter had dragged down with it but not yet broken free of their trunks. There was nothing from the inside of the pod.
The young woman stared at the capsule and frowned. She gazed over at the bigger piece of the wreckage, picturing what the two parts must have looked like before they broke apart. The pod had to be where the pilot sat and she was pretty sure there wasn't room for more than one. If there were more crew, they would have to have been in the other section.
Leaving the closed capsule she walked over to inspect the rest of the ship. It was small, relatively speaking, for a space vessel, just under twenty feet from crushed nose to warped tail. The entire length of the ship's surface was marred by radiating scorch marks and other damage that she believed wasn't related to the crash. The fighter's bristling armament, now silent and harmless, she hoped, combined with its size and that it apparently had only one occupant meant it was a starfighter. Fast, deadly, and IFPG. Not that she needed to, but she confirmed its origin by what was still visible of the symbols on the side facing her.
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.
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