The Last Coffee Shop

Chapter 2: A Man in Motion

The health inspector was silent and cryptic as usual, humming at the leak in the ceiling, and ahemming at the water damage in the hall.

Mads was trying to stop from chewing her nails off in anxiety when Krill burst into the kitchen.

"Mads! Somebody crashed in the field!"

The inspector looked up from his report and cleared his throat. "Is there something you need to attend to, Miss Capot?" His expression suggested that nothing should be so dire as to take her away from this biannual tour of shame.

Krill ignored Mads' frantic shushing motions and continued, "Really! There's smoke and fire, we need to call the safety department!" This last part was almost a wail.

Mads sighed and grabbed the kitchen fire extinguisher. "Excuse us, inspector. Feel free to continue without me." She followed Krill outside and past the barn.

Mads saw the smoke first. A small blue-gray mushroom cloud enveloped a patch of synth-sky, blocking out the sun simulation. However, the dome's inner-layer air-cleansing filters gnawed at the cloud's edges, and water rained down from the synth-clouds to aid in the clean and containment process. "Looks like the department's on it. I hope it isn't more kids stealing and wrecking hovers."

However, as they got closer, Mads realized that the wreckage didn't belong to any of the vehicles favored by joyriding teens. Its sleek metal angles and cracked silver fuselage marked it as a tiny personal spacecraft. And an expensive one, at that.

"See, told you," wailed Krill, blue tears pooling in her indigo eyes. "Somebody died on our farm!"

"Stop it, Krill," snapped Mads, harsh with worry. "We don't know if they're dead." She broke into a jog, stopping just short of the downed craft's right wing. It was a nasty, twisted mess, and Mads feared that Krill was right about the occupants. It looked like the landing gear had engaged just before the craft collided, but judging by the size of the dent it had made in the wheat field, it hadn't been going very fast.

"Where did it come from?" Mads muttered, shading her eyes to peer up at the "sky" above them. The dome seemed intact, but it was hard to tell from this distance. It was built to recognize spacecraft, and the material of the dome would open a pocket for landing ships, switching them through the surface like an airlock, and then forming again above them. If this ship really crashed, it might have ruptured the dome.

Unless someone had "crashed" it on purpose. But why would anyone do such a thing?

Mads wasn't hearing any alerts or sirens, and most of the fire had been extinguished with just the surrounding dirt and her kitchen foam extinguisher. There should have been more fire. But maybe the flames hadn't caught in the fuel tanks. Yet.

Holding the fire extinguisher in front of her, Mads stepped closer to the wreck. The wheat around the craft was all burnt, and black with chemical spills. It made her sick. This was years of work, destroyed in minutes by some careless idiot.

"Hello?" She sprayed a nearby flame and kicked aside part of a window. "Hello?"

There was no sound but the snap and hiss of flames and water, and the quiet rumble of settling debris.

"Hey!" Krill had rounded the wreck, and she was calling from the other side. "Mads, come look at this."

Mads joined her and bent down to see what had gotten her so excited. The rumpled grass around the wreckage bore a distinct boot print.

Krill grinned at Mads. "Someone did survive!"

Mads rose and looked around at the serenely waving wheat. She didn't see anyone. "I don't know . . ." She followed the prints down a row, but they quickly became indistinguishable from the hillocks and clumps of dirt. "Other interested parties, maybe? And if they were survivors, why did they go this way? Why wouldn't they go for help?"