Blue Bloods

Charlie finished setting up the sound system. “This party is going to be out of this world. Pun intended.”

Angela threw a carrot at him. She’d been hovering around the food since some of the napkins blew off the roof. Mostly she’d been trying to make sure nothing else would blow away, but Charlie had given that up as a bad deal after watching things for thirty seconds. They’d lose some of the paper goods, no way to avoid that. Charlie’s guys would clean it up, which meant Charlie, Troy, and a few of the part timers. Charlie had the contract for cleanup of the parking lot, after all.

“What? What did I do?”

Angela responded, although Jesse looked like she was about to. “You let that horrible pun out. Keep those things to yourself?”

“What would you prefer I share?”

Steve’s voice rasped already. Ever since he’d taken some smoke pulling a kid out of a house fire, it got that way when the weather got cold or damp. It wasn’t cold per se, but the roof had a fair wind chill. “Geez, guys. Get a room already.”

“Hey, I keep asking, but the girls keep turning me down.”

That earned him a celery stick from Angela, a hair band shot rubber band style from Jesse, and a dirty look from Drew. A moment later, the dirty look turned speculative, and he turned back to his portable stereo with a suppressed shudder. Drew wasn’t bad looking, even if she wasn’t up to his normal standards, and she was in great shape, but she had a violent streak wider than the interstate. One wrong move and he’d wind up begging Angela to sew him back together.

“Ok, guys. I’ve got some CDs burned. You gonna let me be DJ again?”

Jesse replied for the rest of them. “You always do. You’re getting pretty good at it. When’s the show going to begin?”

The wind had picked up, and the emergency helicopter blades' vibration nearly drowned out Steve’s quiet comment. “It already has. Look up, guys.”

Charlie looked at Steve, and followed his arm, pointing up into the sky. There, less than two hand spans from the moon, was another one. It moved visibly, if slowly, across the darkening evening sky. Charlie opened his mouth to say something, but nothing he thought of really captured the awe he felt. Quickly, he activated his tripod mounted video camera, then pulled out his smart phone and started filming. The camera on the tripod would track the projected path of the meteor automatically, but filming something like this was too ingrained a habit to resist.

Jesse’s voice seemed to come from a million miles away. “It’s supposed to tag the atmosphere, isn’t it?”

Angela’s reply sounded equally distant. “Yeah. Ought to happen any time now.”

More to reassure himself than out of any belief the others were listening, Charlie summarized what he’d read on a website earlier. “The meteor is going to hit at a very low angle. With most stuff, that would make it bounce off. With something this size, they figured it would tumble, but radar imaging showed it’s actually incredibly smooth. It ought to bounce, but it’s going to skim the upper reaches of the atmosphere first. Gonna make for some ugly weather.”

“Do they think it’s artificial?” Angela’s sounded distracted, probably by the sight of the thing growing until it filled a huge portion of the sky. It blocked off more and more of the early evening stars. Charlie knew his own answer sounded equally distracted. Any moment now…

“They have no idea. If it weren’t such a huge pain in the ass, I’m sure we’d be trying to land people on it to find out. Man, that would be so cool.”

“Scratch that techno player surface, you’re pure…” Drew’s voice cut off when the center point of the huge thing in the sky erupted in searing, brilliant light that tracked from east to west across the sky.

Most of his friends swore or groaned, rubbing their eyes. Charlie slid his welding goggles to his forehead and looked around, then slipped the goggles back on and looked at the light in the sky. This was the coolest thing Charlie had ever seen; a miles-wide falling star that would never hit the ground. The point of contact shone as bright as any weld he’d ever done. He couldn’t imagine how hot it must be up there right now.

Without taking his eyes off the meteor, he ran safety lines from the tie downs in the roof to near each of the partygoers. Fortunately, he’d done the same thing for incoming choppers so often he could do it without looking at what he was doing. When the winds of the thing’s passage finally reached the ground, he didn’t want to be cleaning anyone up off the parking lot, and he was sure Angela didn’t want to sew them back together if they lived.

“Thanks, man.” Steve’s voice sounded really ragged. Charlie would have to talk with him again, maybe this time he’d actually go talk to Angela, see what could be done about his throat. Too much macho wasn’t good for you. At least he was smart enough to wrap the end of the safety line once around his wrist.

In the moment Charlie took his eyes off the meteor to see to Steve’s safety precautions, something changed. He wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t have the goggles. He wouldn’t have noticed if he’d just kept staring; the light shone so bright it made it hard to make out details. The movement had done it. Something had visibly changed about the outline of the burning shape, and not just the normal moment to moment variation of a fire, either. The edges expanded, flickering. Almost like something had broken off the main body of the thing.

He blinked. Something had broken off the main body of the thing. His friends each stood motionless, staring at the thing in the sky, but he’d moved. He could see something had entered the sky, separate from the meteor. A single glowing coal in the middle of a blazing fire, incredibly hard to pick out. He took a moment, trying to remember the astronomy class he’d taken a few years back. That caused him some confusion. He didn’t need details from the astronomy class. He needed the military history class, and a comment the grizzled old vet teaching at the community college had made.

“If something doesn’t look like it’s moving, and it’s getting bigger…”

“What’s that?” Drew had a touch of whine in her voice, probably from trying to see while shielding her eyes from what she looked at. Her voice brought Charlie back from reminiscing to the here and now. Steve laid on a deck chair, Jesse next to him. That left Angela, Drew and Charlie himself standing. His decision practically made itself. Angela wouldn’t beat the hell out of him.

“Incoming!” Charlie screamed and threw himself at Angela, trying to knock her flat, to lower her profile, to make shrapnel less likely to lacerate her.

He only acted a second too late.

***

Damien was a positive wizard when it came to a video camera, but he couldn’t work magic with the roads. The planned evening in New York had become an evening at the new super multiplex in Newark. With the late change of plans, the romantic comedy they’d planned on had become a disaster flick. Whatever, she got to wear something sexier than her professional wear, and he wore a nice shirt and tie instead of an old ratty station-issue crew jumpsuit.

If the office gossips who whispered about their relationship could see him now, they might understand her attraction. Part of it, anyway. The harpies would likely get it all wrong. They’d think he was some kind of player, stringing her along until he found a better meal ticket. The truth was he paid most of the bills on their dates. He even helped her keep her bills under control, which meant she could spend most of her pitiful salary on clothes and makeup.

She wasn’t stupid, despite the vapid persona she’d carefully cultivated. She was smart enough to know that brains would get her absolutely nowhere as a newscaster. She wasn’t nasty enough to get a spot as a commentator, which meant she needed to head the reporter to anchor route. Since she was a girl, she would be judged on her looks instead of her journalism. So, she bought clothes and makeup and spa treatments.

Damien didn’t complain. He only got odds and ends, but he got the odds and ends of a woman pretty enough to make a play for a national market in a few years if she worked her career right. She blushed to think of herself as pretty, but she’d seen the pictures, compared them side by side with other national anchors at her age.

Damien looked over at her, noticing her sudden shyness despite the darkness of the theater. With the empathy that made up most of the reason she’d stuck with him, he reached up and brushed his hand across her hair, whispering “Don’t let it get to you. Hang with it. You’ll break in eventually. I’m really proud of you, you know.”

She snuggled into his shoulder, nuzzling his ear and whispering her reply. “Mister, if you keep that up, we’re going to miss the rest of this movie.”

She barely heard his murmured reply, “Anywhere you want to go, anything you want to do, I’m up for it, as long as I’m with you.”

He always made her feel like this; on fire, incapable of staying still, but at the same time utterly content. Ignoring the explosions and catastrophe on the screen, she slid a hand under his shirt. To heck with it, she might not get a chance to do this again any time soon.

The world dissolved in light and noise.