Star knight a space oper.., p.1
Star Knight: A Space Opera Fantasy, page 1
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Chapter 1
Splat. Another dragonfly rushed into my windshield and transformed into a pile of green goo with wings. Like all the others who came before him, this guy was ready to be windshield-wiped into the slush pile of bugs that I’d accumulated on this morning’s school bus journey to Hart Middle School.
Hey Marcus, didn’t one of the steers from your dad’s ranch go missing?
What? What are you talking about, Jason?
I heard Chris’ mom swallowed it whole!
Hey, what the hell, dude?
A group of young boys with cracking voices behind me melted into a fit of giggles and jeering. Jason was a particular offender when it came to telling stupid jokes and pulling pranks on his buddies. But at the same time, they were probably about twelve, and if there was a time to be stupid and pull pranks, it was now.
The principal of Hart Middle School asked me to reprimand the students if I ever heard any swearing, but there was no way in hell that I was going to drive a school bus and discipline a gaggle of unruly preteen boys at the same time. Besides, I remembered the thrill of acting out in silly ways when I was their age, so I just let them have their fun while they could.
The familiar chorus of middle schoolers singing the latest TikTok songs and screaming over each other in the back of the bus soon drowned out any other sounds. It was like every other Wednesday morning on the job, and the eleven to fourteen year olds were just their usual loud and rambunctious selves.
Honestly, I had no idea how anyone could have as much energy as the uproarious middle schoolers at this time in the morning. Sure, I was awake and being paid to work, but all I really had to do was drive the ever-familiar journey from each bus stop to the local middle school. It’s not like I could memorize and perform snippets from the latest online parodies and pop songs without a good dose of caffeine first.
As I stopped at a railroad crossing, I looked up at my nametag, which was swinging back and forth from the end of a lanyard on the rearview mirror. I hated the thing, both for the cheesy picture that made me look like I’d been stoned at the time and for what the piece of plastic represented. There was no way I was actually going to wear that thing every day, and since I almost never entered the school, no one ever complained. I glanced at the shaggy blond guy in the picture and the giant font that read Jacob Reilly and shook my head. I had never had a grand vision of what I wanted to be, but being a school bus driver definitely hadn’t been part of my dreams.
I’d been working as a Hart School District employee for about eight years, which had flown by just as quickly as every morning journey between my house, the bus depot, and the familiar old route to school. When I first started, the whole thing was a novelty to me, from the pleather seats to the sheer amount of noise the kids made. The simple act of stepping into a school every day to learn something new about the world at large was something I’d never experienced.
That was the one thing I envied about the kids I drove around town. Because even though I’d grown up in the area, my parents were die hard homeschooling religious fanatics who didn’t teach me or my sister anything outside of their cult for my entire childhood.
As a kid, my only refuge from the tiny, ideologically strict community I grew up in was to sneak into the local library and read books when I was supposed to be handing out pamphlets. I would spend hours and hours poring over history books about anything and everything, like the Samurai, Ancient Egypt and the Classical World. It was such a far cry from my life and from my local sphere of knowledge that everything felt like it was a fantasy.
There were only about a hundred people in our cult, and we all lived in the same small collection of houses on a self-sufficient compound. I hadn’t even left the state until I was eighteen years old. My parents had found their preacher in the 70s when all the cults started to pop up, even though most of the original members had started to drift away. By the early two thousands, only a few die hard families remained, and that number dwindled again when the leader died.
There was never much money, since everyone was either a door-to-door salesman or involved in a never-ending chain of failed get-rich-quick schemes that the community thought up. The only thing of any value was the land, which the cult had bought for cheap in the seventies, but that was locked up in a trust that no one had the money to break.
I didn’t ever really talk to my family anymore. My sister had stayed and gotten married to one of my fellow homeschooled kids, but I’d decided to leave and venture into the real world. My parents didn’t really want to hear about my life outside of their narrow idea of what made life worth living, which was pretty much listening to recordings of their old preacher all day and attending town meetings with other families.
After a stint doing some factory line work and acting as a farmhand, I’d eventually landed this job as a driver for the local middle school driving a classic Bluebird school bus. There wasn’t much going on in my neck of the woods for a guy without even a high school diploma, so I had been grateful for the work even though it was pretty monotonous. It meant I could share a small apartment in town with another driver and read as many library books as my heart desired. And video games had been a pretty great discovery when I first ventured into the real world.
Now, at twenty-nine years old, I felt like I was ready for a change of scenery again. But of course, I had no idea what that looked like. Hell, I’d barely been able to afford going to Vegas for my roommate’s twenty-fifth birthday, so I certainly couldn’t leave the country or anything. I’d considered getting into truck driving so that I could see the rest of America, but I knew that if I had to work those crazy hours without a chance to enjoy a good book, I’d surely go totally insane.
At least the terrain in Hart was usually pretty flat, with gorgeous mountains in the far distance, so I could ponder my future while I drove without putting the kids at risk. My route took me through residential country roads into the small town, which was pretty much just a strip of road with the essential stores and a gas station. And of course, the library.
I made a right turn by the small wooden house that had been converted into the tiny town library and headed for the only hill for miles. The morning was clear and bright, and barely any cars passed us as we headed for the part of town where the schools, the town hall, and the fire station all sat side by side.
As I neared a tall, grassy hill, I started to hum a song that the kids had been singing all week and zoned out a little. I barely paid attention to the world around me, but since nothing ever changed in Hart, that wasn’t such a big deal. I knew it’d be nice to have a job one day that didn’t almost fully rely on muscle memory, but for now, I didn’t quite have that figured out.
Time to regain my focus. I barely registered when another bug had kamikazed itself into my windshield. I squinted and tried to wipe it away, but the black speck didn’t go anywhere. In fact, it almost looked like it was still moving.
I had to stop at the top of the hill anyway, so I took the opportunity to look a little closer at the insect, but then I realized that there wasn’t a bug on my windshield after all. What I was seeing were three black specks that seemed to be flying in the distant sky.
It wasn’t that weird, since hawks and other raptors often rode the thermals near the town. And there was an Air Force base not too far away, so we sometimes saw jets pass overhead. But there was something about the specks that felt different, though I couldn’t say what seemed wrong about the whole thing.
My passengers began screaming in mock horror at our hill descent, so I shook my head, feathered the brakes a bit to slow us down, and figured the dot would go away in a few seconds.
But the three dots were still there when the bus reached the bottom of the hill, and they were getting larger by the second. I wouldn’t usually get all freaked out about this kind of stuff. My parents had scared me so much about the rapture as a child, so I’d built up a few defenses against the weird and unexpected things that tend to happen in life. I’d tried to block out that instinct when I’d left the compound just so I could enjoy the world for once, but that strange sense of dread was suddenly back in full force.
The three black dots had grown even larger, so that I knew they were getting closer. But what the hell could they be? Luckily, I was the only one who had noticed the dots, otherwise the kids would have been having an absolute field day that would have involved a great deal of screaming and possibly a few tossed objects.
I weighed up the situation in my head. At least the long road that led to the school was pretty much deserted, so no one honked when the bus started to slow down. On the downside, that meant we were the only witnesses to whatever the hell was about to happen, and a bunch of kids on the edge of puberty didn’t seem like the most reliable kind of people to have in a potentially bad situation.
I glanced back up at the sky, and yep, those things were getting bigger and closer. I tried to make out the contours of the objects, but all I saw was that they had a rocky exterior.
So it probably wasn’t something from the Air Force base, but could there really be a meteor shower happening right now, in front of my eyes? That was the kind of thing I’d only ever read about in library books.The shapes hurtled closer and closer, but it was hard to make out how big
Well, this was certainly a day to remember. I took a deep breath and decided that three meteors were hurtling toward earth, and I’d been lucky enough to witness it. Maybe when they recovered them in some faraway state they could interview me, and if I ever had grandchildren, I could tell them that I saw the meteor shower that changed everything we knew about science.
Something red flashed in front of me, and I realized we’d reached the town’s one stoplight. I brought the old bus to an abrupt halt that sent the kids into another fit of fake hysterics, but that was nothing new.
The bus hummed underneath me as we waited for the light to change. With some difficulty, I peeled my eyes away from the three random objects and forced myself to watch the road. I still had my job to do.
The kids jeered at each other like they did every weekday morning. But today, something felt different. I tried very hard not to get distracted by those meteors that were definitely getting closer.
Hey Chris, is it true that you want to kiss Señora Tegan? I’m going to tell her in second period.
Jason you better not! God, you’re such a skeeze.
Whoa! Now I’m going to tell her that you swore, too!
No way!
The light didn’t seem inclined to shift to green anytime soon, so I looked back up at the sky to witness what was sure to be one of the more significant events on the news for the next week.
The meteorites were definitely way bigger, and I was pretty sure they were closer than any plane that had ever passed overhead. They were near enough now that I could begin to make out their appearance a little quicker. Black and shiny, like obsidian. It looked like someone had taken fragments of a jagged rock and tossed them in the air.
Still, who was I to make these assumptions about what the objects were? I didn’t know much about space, but it checked out with every space documentary I’d seen before. I wondered where they would land, and what the aftermath would be. I didn’t have any field trips or anything that day, so when I dropped this round of kids off, I could Google it and maybe swing by for a look before I had to do the pickup at the end of the day.
The light suddenly turned green, and I pushed the old bus forward along the empty road. The gears groaned in protest while the kids continued their teasing, and I tried to keep my eyes locked on the pockmarked strip of asphalt. But I was drawn back to the black shapes, and I heard myself gasp when I saw just how close the things were.
They were hurtling straight at me.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that. In a mere five seconds, the meteor had turned from a distant thought to a pile of rock the size of a tractor. Sun glimmered from the shiny craters, and for a split second, I thought that it looked more like it was made of some kind of metal than rock.
My body took over for me as I slammed on the brakes. The bus came to a grinding halt that pitched everyone forward, and I heard a deafening crash in front of us.
“Get down!” I shouted just in case anything smashed through the windshield.
“Shit!” one of the kids yelled.
There were genuine screams this time, but it sounded like everyone had ducked down.
When I peered over the steering wheel, all I could see was a heavy layer of smoke that seemed to swallow up the town and everything in it. The boom from the meteor crash had rattled the bus and the buildings opposite, but now an eerie silence took over the whole place. The smoke had begun to clear, but I still couldn’t see anything ahead of me.
Damn. I’d been in this line of work long enough that I knew exactly what was coming next.
In three, two, and…
One.
The first shriek came from a kid in the back of the bus. I didn’t know who it was, but it pierced the silence for a good five seconds that felt like an eternity.
Then came the uproar.
I stood up slowly and looked behind me as a bunch of snotty, shrieking middle schoolers started to lose their minds.
The black hoodie and jeans-clad Jason, who had spent the good part of the journey taunting his classmates, was in tears. His face was red, and for some reason, he had crawled into Marcus’ arms out of complete fear.
“Is it terrorists?” Jason blubbered. “My dad warned me about terrorists.”
“It’s aliens!” a thin girl with thick glasses yelled as she tried to crawl under her seat. “They’re going to kidnap us and experiment on us!”
More kids started yelling, and we were only a few seconds away from a complete meltdown of epic proportions unless I could convince the tweens that the world wasn’t ending.
I took a deep breath and moved to the front of the aisle. I was by far the biggest guy there at six feet, and the leather bomber jacket I wore gave me a cool guy vibe that the kids respected as much as they could respect any adult.
“Hey, middle schoolers!” I shouted.
The screaming continued as half of the students tucked into balls while the other half pulled out their phones and started to film everything in true contemporary youth fashion. Girls in bright pink pants with furry backpacks clung to each other while brace-faced band kids with tuba cases looked at each other helplessly and held hands.
“Hart Middle Schoolers!” I yelled over the din.
The chaos gradually died away, and the kids turned to look at the one adult to be found. There were still a lot of teary faces, but at least I could hear myself think.
“Look,” I said breathlessly. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to see what’s outside, and it’s going to be fine, okay? But I need you to do something for me first.”
“But you’re just the bus driver,” some kid who I couldn’t place in the back of the bus sobbed.
“I am,” I agreed. “And what’s the rule when you’re on the bus?”
“We have to obey the bus driver,” a kid who was clutching his trombone said.
“Okay, bus driver,” a quiet girl named Janice replied.
“My name is Jacob,” I said. “Jacob Reilly.”
“Hi, Mr. Reilly,” several of the kids said.
“Good,” I said as the kids started to relax. “Now, I need you guys to do something for me real quick. Do you know what a drone is?”
“Like a drone strike?” Jason replied.
I looked at the front seat, where the taunter was curled into his obliging friend’s arms. Yeesh, if my pal had been making jokes about me all morning, the last thing I’d want to do is hold him while he cried about a meteor shower.
“No,” I replied as calmly as I could. “No, like the noise. Like a musical drone, when they have everyone singing one note underneath a choir.”
“I do,” the trombone boy in the back exclaimed as his hand flew up, and the bespectacled kid’s eyes brightened.
“Very good,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“My name’s Sidney,” he replied.
Jason immediately crawled out of his friend Marcus’ arms like he’d been revived, and looked behind him.
“That’s a giiiiirl’s name,” he shouted, to no avail, since the kids were still too scared to laugh.
“Shut up, Jason!” Sidney shouted back, much to my surprise.
“Okay, okay,” I said before a fight broke out in the middle of an already tense situation. “Sidney, stay with me here. And Jason, don’t interrupt again.”
“Whatever,” the revived menace said and slouched back in his seat with crossed arms. “Are you actually going to make us sing?”
“It’s not quite singing,” I said. “It’s cooler.”
“Fine,” he said and rolled his eyes.
I’d never thought to call anyone a little punk before, but these kids made me want to sometimes. And Jason was always at the top of the list.
“Sidney, on the count of three, we’re going to drone,” I said, before turning my attention to the rest of the bus full of middle schoolers. “The rest of you join in, so that we’re one big drone, okay?”
The kids all looked at each other and shrugged, while some of them wiped their noses.
The situation was already bizarre enough that making them drone to distract them wasn’t going to make it weirder. Besides, I had proof it worked. Whenever my sister and I were fighting or stung by bees or something, my mom would bring us into the kitchen and make us hum a low note until our brains were clear of everything. It worked every time, just like magic.
