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Starsign, Chapter 2

The truth is out there...

By M. DarrowPublished about a year ago Updated 11 months ago 6 min read
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Starsign, Chapter 2
Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash

“Oh my god.”

Melody fumbled for her phone--left on the kitchen counter behind her--and quickly dialed 911. But when she raised it to her ear, she was met with the dull drone of an out-of-service dial tone. “What the hell?”

She looked at the screen. No bars. No internet. What… Sure, she was a bit in the middle of nowhere, but she relied on a solid connection to do her job for goodness sake, she’d never had it just go down like that!

God, what was she supposed to do? That--she had to tell someone! Maybe if she got out of the house, just got a little distance from--from whatever was interfering with her phone, she could…call the police? No, fuck, what would they do? Maybe emergency services? A hospital?!

She took a step back, struggling to get a pair of tennis shoes on with one hand while she continuously refreshed “check connection” on her phone with the other. She was so absorbed in the task that she didn’t notice the flash of orange in time--her cat was maybe a little bolder than the average feline, but she’d assumed he’d be hiding under the bed for a week after…whatever it was that had just happened.

Apparently not.

“Leo!”

He was already at the treeline, vanishing into the dark in a sunset blur.

“Leo! Leo, c’mere kitty, c’mere. Leo!”

Shit shit shit.

Still no service. Shit. She couldn’t leave him out there--shit.

She had to go after him now, before he got any further. Ignoring the slight tremble in her fingers, she flicked on the light of her phone, just barely managed to snatch his leash off its door hook, and took off in the direction her cat had gone.

Leo,” she hissed, slowing down as she entered the trees. She started to sweep the light back and forth over the trail, hoping that the fluffy terror had just hunkered down in a bush. “Leo? Here, kitty…”

Nothing.

She checked her phone again.

Nothing.

Shit.

Picking her way carefully along the path, listening hard for anything out of the ordinary, Melody found herself holding her breath as her mind began to race. It was so dead silent in the wake of…whatever had just happened that her thoughts were screaming.

Why would Leo run off like that? A few walks a week didn’t make him an outdoor cat--if he’d been spooked, why wouldn’t he find a hiding place? What if he’d hurt himself? What if he’d got too close to…to whatever had caused that light show? What was that? Who was she even supposed to call about that? Did 911 cover this sorta thing? How--

Her attention was so firmly divided between making as little noise as possible, trying not to utterly panic, and searching the trees for Leo that she didn’t notice the first chunk of wreckage until she was almost on top of it.

It was a metal cylinder of some sort, about as long as her leg; one end of it was still glowing with heat. She just stared at it for a moment, wide eyed, as she desperately processed.

Alright. That must’ve been a plane crash. Oh god, someone could be hurt, or-- Why wasn’t her phone working?!

“Leo…” Her voice wavered as she began to pick up her pace again, truly starting to panic. What do I do what do I do what do I do. “Leo! Le--!”

“Mmrrrmm?”

“Oh my god!” She whirled toward the sound and saw her erstwhile cat poking his head out from behind a scrap of foliage, ears perked curiously, and with not a trace of his earlier panic to be seen.

“Tiny idiot,” Melody gasped in relief, and she darted forward to scoop him into her arms. Instantly, he went liquid, purring and blinking up at her placidly. “Oh no,” she muttered as she wrangled his ragdoll legs through the loops of his harness. “This is a disciplinary hug, mister. Do not derive joy from it. You scared me to death.”

Even as she scolded, she was already looking in the direction he’d appeared from--the direction of the crash. “Did…you see what’s out there?”

“Mow.”

“I–I have to go look… What if… Maybe I can help?” Did she have time to take Leo back home? What if someone was hurt? Every second could make a difference, what if–?

Mrrp.”

“...Thanks for the encouragement.” She swallowed, secured her grip on the cat, then stepped off the path.

There was more wreckage scattered through the thin trees. Some of it, like the cylinder, was still so hot that it glowed or smoked. Luckily, the foliage was too wet to catch, but the second her phone was working she was calling the fire marshal. And the hospital. And the airforce? God, she didn’t even know.

The trees, already relatively sparse here, suddenly cleared. Or rather, she stumbled onto the edge of a crater where there had been trees about ten minutes ago.

“Holy…”

Well. It wasn’t an airplane.

Or rather, it hadn’t been an airplane. At least not like any she’d ever seen. The smoldering craft at the edge of the--not a crater, she saw now, but a deep, relatively short rift cut through the earth--was snub-nosed and wide-winged, with what looked like a finned tail of some sort…unless that was the front?

“Holy shit.” She gently placed Leo in the arch of a recently upended tree root and looped the end of the leash over a broken branch. “Stay,” she begged, before she started scrambling down into the ravine caused by the crash.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” She looked around as she cautiously made her way forward, not entirely sure what she was looking for. Survivors, she supposed. As far as she could tell, it was just machine wreckage--maybe it had been a satellite of some sort? Though admittedly the strangest she’d ever seen.

“Can you hear me? Is someone hurt? I--damnit, I still don’t have service, but I can go call for help…does anyone need help?”

She was almost to the main body of the crash, and she hadn’t seen even a hint of a living soul. Relief and trepidation warred in her chest: maybe it really was just some unmanned drone thing.

Or maybe the pilot was still inside, and couldn’t answer her.

“Please don’t let there be a dead body, please don’t be a dead body, please don’t be a dead body, please please please please…”

She stopped outside what she had to assume was the cockpit. Of the entire craft, it had clearly been reinforced the best--what looked like half a hexagonal panel had toward loose and was hanging toward the ground, but the general bubble shape of it looked surprisingly intact. She felt no heat from it, even cautiously reaching out to touch the metal with a single fingertip. There was some sort of hatch slanted toward the top of the bubble, door just barely cracked open--if she stretched, she could just grab the edge of it from the ground.

“Please don’t be dead,” she muttered one more time, then jumped to haul herself up the side of the craft and peer inside. The structure creaked ominously below her and she winced.

“Hello? Is…anyone…”

Her eyes moved slowly over the cockpit interior. “Whoa…”

This--okay. It was official. This had to be some sort of experimental, black-ops flightcraft or something. She didn’t care how much she suddenly sounded like Mica with their conspiracies, this was just…

“Insane,” she muttered, staring at the lights and switches and surround-bank control console--that had to be the control console, right? Control panel, maybe? What looked like some sort of cracked screen covered three-fourths of the interior, and there was a massive, sparking hole in the center of everything. In the space where she had to assume a pilot would sit.

It did have a pilot.

…So where were they?

Previous Chapter: here

Next Chapter: here

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

M. Darrow

Self-proclaimed Book Dragon working on creating her own hoard. With any luck, some folks might like a few of these odd little baubles enough to stick around and take a closer look. Mostly long-form speculative fiction, released as chapters.

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