Catch a Falling Star (6 page)

“Well, you know how
it is, Farley. I guess he was never taught manners and proper
respect for women.” The irony of talking to her big neighbor
about someone else's manners and respect wasn't lost on her. It
was then strengthened as her expression suddenly turned to
disgust. She moved some distance away from her enormous
neighbor, waving a hand in front of her face.

“Farley! 
Speaking of manners. Gag! I've told you before. Give a girl some
warning when you're going to break wind. I think the inside of
the metal carcass there has cleaner air than out here with you
right now.”

Farley grinned yet
managed to look contrite at the same time, not moving and
obviously not minding the quality of the air now surrounding him
– or he was immune to it. “Sorry.” He said it because he knew
she expected him to but he didn't put much sincerity behind it.
“Say, where'd your fancy boy go, anyway? Is he in there shuttin'
down the security field?”

Staring back at the
ship, she wondered the same thing. What
was
he doing? “I
don't know. Yeah, I guess maybe he is.” She hoped, if he was
looking for a working communicator or beacon, he found it soon.
It didn't look at all healthy to be inside there.

She took several more
steps toward the fighter. “Maybe I should see if he needs help.”

What Lyrianne and
their oversized friend did not know, was that the ship was
attuned to her pilot’s unique resonance, as all of the
starfighters of this class were. It was not just a precaution
for the present eventuality, but a way for the pilot to
communicate his actions even before his own body had registered
the commands from his brain.

Miguel had triggered
the release of the security field just by his proximity; there
wasn’t anything he had to do to get into the craft’s interior.
Except for jump in, which he was doing right then. The pit was
like a hollowed out canoe, deep enough that he had to reach for
the lip to pull himself back out when it was time.

Unaware of his
audience outside the screaming metal wreck, the pilot had to
stop moving when his ship bellowed and tipped a few inches
forward on the already beleaguered nose. The sudden tilt nearly
threw him into the cave where the HUD used to sit.

A gasp escaped from
Lyrianne as she saw the ship take a groaning tilt before finding
its balance again. She knew she should stay back but, he was
taking so long. Wasn't he? She'd lost track of just how long
he'd been in there; it seemed too long.

She tried to reason
with herself that if he was taking so long because he'd been
hurt, or overcome by the smoke, she would be of little help. For
one thing, she'd left the flashlight back at the mule and it was
dark, the moons still not above the tree line. They were hardly
providing light to see by outside and would be no help inside
the ship, especially with the heavy smoke. Besides, who was he
to her? Nobody. Right? Even as she was arguing with herself,
however, she was moving forward, pulling on her leather gloves
to protect her hands from the heated metal.

“Stay here, Farley.
I'm just going to be sure he's okay. I don't want to let him get
away from me by dying before he signs that marriage contract.”

Farley snorted, the
sound reminiscent of the old hog who used to be lord of the yard
when Lyrianne was growing up. The girl couldn't help but respond
to the sound; she was laughing silently when she turned to
follow the way Miguel had gone.

She managed to pull
herself up to the lip where she'd last seen him to squat
precariously at the edge of the dark interior. Leaning forward
she called out. “Hello? Miguel? Are you okay? Hello?” She leaned
a little farther, trying to force her vision to pierce the
darkness, when the ship tilted just a fraction more before
settling again. She was suddenly falling in with a yelp of
surprise.

Chapter 5

She didn’t hit solid
metal as she had expected, but what she did hit was solid enough
and unmistakable. This was the what? Fourth time now that his
arms found their way around her?

“What are you doing
in here?” His accent thickened much like the smoke and he was
soon coughing again. “We need to get out of here. Now!”

Turning her with his
hands, they found her hips and took hold. “Grab the edge when I
lift you. Ready?”

She'd taken in a
lungful of the foul air when she'd fallen and she was coughing
too much to answer. Instead she nodded and held her hands up,
trying to see the dim opening through the smoke induced tears
stinging her eyes.

She let him lift her
until she felt the rim. Her hands gripped the edge tightly and
she pulled herself out. She had a lot of strength for her size
thanks to years of manual labor and she made it out without much
difficulty. She immediately turned while wiping at her eyes,
managing to speak through another coughing spasm.

“Okay, I'm up. Do you
need me to help you?” She wondered what the huge hurry was. It
didn't seem the ship was going to go anywhere but a little more
topsy-turvy, still she'd wait until they were both out before
she questioned his urgency.

Before she could ask
him again, he was hauling himself up out of the wreckage, one of
his boots squeaking on the metal as he braced himself to jump to
the ground. “Down, get down!” He balanced himself and reached
for her, intending to bring her with him if he had to.

She suddenly got that
stubborn, contrary look again then scowled at his outstretched
hand. “Not until you tell me what the hurry is. And if you found
what you were looking for.” She couldn't believe he was still
trying to boss her around. And he wasn't even thanking her for
risking the nasty smoke that burned going in and coming out. Her
throat hurt now all because she'd tried to help him, though she
still wasn't sure why.

His eyes flared wide
and he looked faintly murderous. Was she seriously going to pull
the stubborn act on him now? When his craft was about to become
a smudge on the landscape? He didn’t ask permission, he just
grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her against him, stepping
off the side of the doomed vessel and dragging her with him at
first, then switching to carrying her.

Something in that
scary look he turned on her, or his body language, or – she
wasn't sure what – told her to not fight him. She listened to
it, allowing him to carry her away from the fighter. She'd give
him what-for once he put her down and explained himself, she
decided.

Farley had watched
the stranger manhandle Lyrianne away from the wreckage in a
hurry. All he could think of was that the barrier that had kept
him out of the ship was down now. This was his chance to get in
there and take first dibs on something, or many somethings,
while they were busy with each other. He waddled at his
quickened pace toward the promise of credits for salvage or
maybe the lucrative finders fees for the high tech stuff the
government would claim. Good fortune, he was sure, was in his
near future.

Neither Miguel nor
Lyrianne spotted the farmer with a dream as he pushed his bulk
closer to the ship. By now, it had canted close enough to the
ground that the heavyset Farley could wheeze and claw his way up
the fuselage and onto a wing. Thanks to the heat resistant
metal, the lean aircraft didn’t burn the flesh from the enormous
intruder’s hands but it was still hot enough to demand caution.

Huffing and puffing
and grumbling, Farley managed to get his knees on the wing but
slipped when the heat seared through the thin material at his
shins. With a howl swallowed up by the racket the plane was
making, Farley fell straight back off of the wreck, smacking
forcefully against the ground hard enough he should have left
his own crater. As it was, his follow-up scream was loud enough
to break the sound barrier and brought the pilot to a skidding
halt, just at the edge of the trees.

“
Dios mio
,”
Miguel choked, setting Lyrianne on her feet. He barely had her
standing before he was running back across the field. Heart
pounding in his ears, the adrenaline jockey should have felt a
surge of excitement knowing he was racing the clock, but he
wasn’t a stupid man; just a semi-loco one. That Farley was a big
dude…

Reaching the vessel
faster than he’d run from it, Miguel performed a running slide
that took him skating under the wing and slamming up against the
side of the plane that had tipped so far down that he could
stand up and look inside the empty cockpit. Sure enough, the
little warning light was strobing, deep down in the nose of the
fated ship.

Gagging on the thick
smoke, Miguel squinted and turned his face away from the heat.
“Fat man!” he shouted, coughing. He had no trouble finding the
prone farmer; not with the sheer size of him and the capacity of
his lungs. “Get up!” The pilot grabbed the closest bit,
squeezing painfully the substantial calf. “The ship is going to
blow,
amigo
! Move or you will die with it!”

And move the fat man
did. He managed to get to his knees then to his feet, moving
away from the threat to his life and limbs at a speed he
shouldn't have been capable of. Fear could only carry him so
far, however, and he went down in a heap mere feet away from his
heavy duty hovertruck. Blubbering loudly, he rolled his bulk up
into the closest resemblance to a fetal curl that he could
manage; knees sort of tucked in and his arms over his head. Was
he far enough away? He could only pray and wait and whimper
because he was incapable of going further.

Lyrianne had followed
Miguel back to the wreck at a much slower pace thanks to her
ankle. She'd heard what the spaceman had shouted. The ship was
going to blow? What had he done? Had he accidentally triggered
some fail safe or had it been something he'd done deliberately?
Is that why he'd insisted they come back? Not so he could signal
his people to retrieve him but to rob her of the bounty his
wrecked ship could have provided her? Well, maybe Fat Farley,
too.

Farley! She watched
the big man struggle to get to his feet then make astounding
progress in a weird rolling run. Once he'd collapsed again, she
decided she had to make a decision.

If none of them
managed to get far enough away when the ship blew up, who would
she prefer to be with in her final moments? Should she go to the
neighbor she'd known all her life? When he was sober, he was
tolerable, at least, and mostly harmless. Should she go to the
stranger? He was arrogant, pushy, maddening, self-serving. He
was her nominal enemy and in less than an hour's time had
managed to turn her life upside down and inside out and then
betrayed her trust.

She ran as fast as
she could on the bad ankle toward Miguel, grabbing his hand and
pulling on him to move faster. There were questions and
accusations behind the terrified gaze she fastened on him, but
they would wait until she was sure they were safe. That's what
her goal was, she told herself. To make sure he was safe so she
could then strangle him with her bare hands.

Miguel looked
flummoxed but willing to be urged back to the trees. He knew
they'd never make it but as long as they were far enough...

The explosion came
with surprisingly minimal noise. Heat, however, was not in small
quantity. A wave of super-heated air flattened the three people
within its range, slamming and holding them to the ground with
concussive force.

Before any of them
could think “I'm going to die”, the violence lifted, the
blast-wave dispersed, and no one had been turned to jelly.

Miguel lifted an
elbow to peek under it. Where his much-loved starfighter had
been was now only a black sun of scorched earth, its radial arms
stretching in every direction. The tree that had caught it was
torn from the ground, roots cooked and curling like a dying
spider's legs. The top half of the tree was simply gone.

Laying on its side,
the tree should have reached across the exposed soil but
wherever it made contact with the smoking ground, it had been
incinerated away. Miguel didn't have to see the cauterized trunk
to know what the damage would be. He could see where the tree
was not and should be, and the blackness of the site was darker
than the night around them.

A hand came up to
touch his face, wiping at a smudge of dark on his cheek. She was
lying under him, pinned by his leg and hip. She wasn't sure she
wanted to move if she could but she hadn't really tried. She
didn't feel any injuries or pain except for a spot on her back,
just over the shoulder blade. It ached from a rock that was
pressed against it. Her ears and head felt congested by the
concussive force of the explosion and her throat still hurt, but
she didn't care. Her fingers found his lips and she traced them,
feeling his warm breath with relief. “Are we alive?”

He turned his head to
look down at her, his hands planted firmly on the ground to keep
from burying her beneath his weight. His lips curved in a rakish
grin. “I think so. Or I have died and gone to heaven.”

Maaaan, really
?
He could just hear Rabbit's voice in his head. His friend would
be groaning and rightly embarrassed, which made Miguel grin even
wider. Rabbit was going to love hearing all about this little
excursion over the lines.

Her throaty chuckle
at the age-worn line was interrupted by a wince as she felt the
rock dig into her shoulder blade again. She arched her back to
try to get away from the pain then stopped, her mouth parted in
surprise. His shirt – her brother's shirt – had left a great
deal of his chest exposed and the feel of his bare skin against
what was revealed of her breasts sent a shock wave as forceful
as the blast rushing through her body. This was pure pleasure,
though. Her leg came up on its own in response to the feeling,
rubbing against his thigh. Eyes opening even wider, she couldn't
force herself to move from the inadvertent increased contact
she'd just created.