Light of Mirigan Issue #1

Note: I have changed the name of this story from Arrokoth to Light of Mirigan.

Fred never flew in his life, but there he was sitting with his dad in the cockpit. Looking down his youthful eyes could see the lights from the rides at Luna Park, and soon those sights were replaced by the blue of the the ocean. Often he dreamed that his dad would take him to Tasmania, they always talked about going there sometime. Now the sun was setting, and looking out into the black void below, Fred could sense that something was off.

“Mission control I got a craft following me. It’s getting pretty close to my tail.” His father said over the radio.

“There’s no identified craft in your area.” The radio crackled back.

“Don’t bullshit me.” His father barked back. “I see four lights behind me, looks like landing lights.” 

“Captain I don’t know what you’re seeing but it’s not one of ours.” 

Before Fred could see it, he could hear it, this incredible screeching sound, as if the atmosphere itself was screaming. Then he could see it, it was like the X-wing straight out of Star Wars, and it flew over them. 

“It looks like this thing is toying with me!” The Captain said in frustration as the screeching sound hit again and the unknown craft darted to the east. 

“Shoot em down dad!” Fred said excitedly.

“Captain, you are probably seeing lights from some atmospheric phenomenon.” the voice said dismissively over the radio.”

“Don’t tell me it’s fucking Venus!” His father said angrily as the craft now orbited his plane. “I can see it’s got a metallic surface and there’s some kind of green light on it.”

“Dad!” Fred screamed as their engine began to sputter. The plane shook hard in the air as smoke bellowed from it’s engine.   

“Can you identify the aircraft?”  The voice on the radio asked. 

His father grew eerily quiet. Fred could see the beads of sweat forming on his foreheard. Never in his young life had Fred had seen his father scared. Then, in a quiet trembling voice his father answered, “It’s not an aircraft.”

Green light bathed the cockpit as his father froze. Fred couldn’t bring himself to say anything, and he realized that he himself couldn’t move. His vision locked on the image of his father, a coffee cup he kept near his seat floated in the air as if it were in zero gravity. For a moment there was no sound, but then he heard it, metallic scraping sounds all over the aircraft. 

Fred now was plunging toward the black sea, he could feel the moisture from the salt water rushing up to his face. An image of his mother floated before him, looking up from outside their home, calling out his name in tears. 

Fred’s whole body shook on the mattress when he awoke. He hadn’t dreamt of his father in a while. Fred was only 13 when his dad disappeared, it was quite the news story for a while. He had been flying off the shores of Melbourne when his plane disappeared. Most people figured he had simply crashed into the sea, but his plane was never recovered. Then there were the UFO nuts, people that said he was abducted by aliens. There was one part of his dream Fred knew to be true. His family was allowed to hear the recording from the flight that night, and there was that last thing his father said, the last thing he would ever hear him say. “It’s not an aircraft.”

A morning jog through the city was probably the best thing to clear his mind. Today he was meeting with the Melbourne chapter of Australia First Fitness; a local fitness group. The usual crowd was there, his friends Dennis and David. Zane came today, he was the oldest of the group and didn’t always come. 

“How is your mom doing?” Alexander, the head of the local chapter asked. 

“She’s ok I guess, thanks.” Fred answered as they jogged by Fitzroy Gardens. The giant branches of the trees reached out over the trail, providing some shade from the summer sun.

“She still in the hospital?”

“Yeah, the Dr. says she’s stable, nothing serious lately.”

“I’m glad to hear that Fred.” Looking back at a young couple, who were two new members of their group. “You think they’ll last?” 

Alexander laughed when Fred answered “Doubt it.” Fred laughed to, as he understood what the group leader was getting at. As Fred himself looked back at the pack, he noticed Harry running along. He was also a new member who’d been coming the last few weeks. “Harry is here.” Fred observed.

“Yes we are definitely happy to have him.” Alexander said with a smile. “He is going to fit in just fine.” As they were running they drew closer the Melbourne Cricket Center, commonly known as the MCG. Looking at the large grey circular structure, Alexander noted. “In fact I hear he’s a hell of a cricket player.” 

Fred kept looking back at Harry, who on the surface he seemed like an ideal member, but Fred couldn’t shake this uncanny feeling that something was off.

As Fred was laughing he knew the new couple wouldn’t last long. The eyes of the dark skinned girl widened in revulsion back at the bagel shop. The group always stopped there after the jog, as it was owned by Alexander. Her and her boyfriend quietly went out the door once Alexander told his joke. 

“Don’t come back now ya here.”Fred jested as everyone else laughed. Alexander nodded at Fred in approval. “PC shit was destroying their nation.” Fred thought to himself. 

“Alright now that that’s out of the way let’s get down to business.” Alexander said, and he proceeded to hand out several envelopes to the remaining group.

The young aborigional youth stared defiantly at the policeman’s finger as it pointed to him accusingly. “If I catch you tagging buildings again I’m gonna send you off to juvi, you understand!”

“Police always want to put my people in jail.” 

At first the child’s mother was mortified at her son’s attitude, but she couldn’t help but laugh a little as she saw the look on his face when he heard his native tongue spoken by the policeman. “I promise you,” officer Eades said in the language of the Gundungurra people, “no one at this station wants to see you be anything but a strong and good man.”  Then in English he finished with, “Now go on go home.”

“Thank you officer. And don’t worry, Derek here will be under house arrest with me.” The mother said as she took her child out of the station. 

Officer Eades sat down at his desk as he saw Harry enter the station in his street clothes. “How was the Hitler marathon?” Eades asked. “Doesn’t look like you broke a sweat.”

Jokingly pointing to the gut of his superior officer, Harry answered “I ran it faster than you ever will.”

“You got that right!” Officer Eades leaned back in his chair laughing. “So what do you got for me?”

“Nothing big.” Harry handed an envelope across the desk. “Just some petty shit going down night.” 

Looking through the contents he then heard Harry say. “You know I could understand teenagers doing shit like this, but grown adults?”

“Oh I hear you.” Officer Eades reflected. “When I was thirteen I once got caught graffiting.”

“Really?” Harry was surprised. “An upstanding Aborigional citizen like you?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know it was the Police museum.”

“Bullshit!” 

Eades raised his hand as if taking an oath. “Swear to your god hahaha.”

“Holy shit man!” Harry laughed, slapping his knee. “Let me guess you wrote fuck da police?”

“No, man,” Eades answered, pointing to a piece of aborgional art on his desk. “I was trying to make a dreamtime picture, but to the police it was all the same.” Both men were now laughing out loud, drawing the attention of everyone else at the station. 

The expression on Eades’s face then changed as he looked at a note Harry included. It was a list of people at the meeting, mostly first names. He grew quiet for a moment as Harry continued laughing, then Eades smacked the paper on his desk exclaiming “Ah shit!”

“What?”

Eades’s index finger pointed to one name on the paper, Eades asked “This bloke, Fred, you didn’t catch his last name?”

“No sir.” Harry said,

“How old do you think he was?”

“Bout the same as us I suppose, why?”

Brushing the paper away and looking away Officer Eades concluded, “Ahh, never mind, good work officer, that’ll be all.”

This was an important mission, one where he and his friends were going to take back their country. They would be regarded as heroes, saviors of their civilization. This is what Fred thought to himself as spray painted “Go Home” over the sign at the Middle Eastern Restaurant. He and Dennis had been assigned Elizabeth street, where, well past midnight, they would wreak havoc in the name of spreading their message. That afternoon Fred’s group had been put into pairs by Alexander and each assigned an area of the city to hit, and a message would be sent to who the country belonged to.

Officer Eades rode in his cruiser toward downtown, fearing the worst regarding the activities that were to go down tonight. “Officer Eades,” he heard over his radio. 

“I’m on my way to my position.” Eades answered.

“We’ve been getting a few calls about some weird lights down by Saint Kilda beach.”

“Can’t someone else cover that?” The officer said. 

“You’re the closest available, it’s probably nothing just go check it out.”

“Look at this shite!” Fred heard Dennis yell. “Bunch of shapes and colors in a big mess. They call this garbage art.” Dennis was standing at the window of an Aborigional art gallery looking in at the paintings. Fred had to stop himself, as in the past he would have immediately  explained the picture. In his youth his best friend was Anatjari, whose dad would take them camping in the Outback. His friend and his dad were artists and he learned some of the symbolism of Gundungurra people. These memories were quickly shattered by the sound of breaking glass as Dennis threw a trash can through the gallery window.

“It’s not an airplane.” A late night beach goer told the officer as he pointed to the green lights in the sky. Officer Eades walked slowly on the beach watching the object. In the moonlight he could barely make out what looked like a metallic object, but it had four green lights shining from it. It hovered still in the sky as the ocean waves slowly crashed near their feet. 

“Why do you think it’s not an aircraft?”

“Officer, I’m telling you, I saw this thing zipping around the sky,” the man explained, frantically moving his finger throughout the air. “No aircraft can do what thing was doing.” 

“Doesn’t look like it’s doing much now.”

Looking at the shattered glass Fred cracked up laughing “We’re gonna wake up the whole neighborhood!”

“Good!” Dennis boasted recklessly as he hopped through the window and knocked the indigineous paintings down. Fred followed behind and snickered at the destruction. A western style painting was spared from the wrath of Dennis, something else made childhood memories return to Fred’s mind. It was a scenic image of the Blue Mountains from New South Wales. The image again reminded him of his excursions to the outback. The rocky formations formed cylindrical like shapes that erected out from the greenery of the trees. The sun shining through the sky giving the mountains a tint of blue. Then the blue began to flash in intensity, and then became mixed with flashes of red. Fred could sense danger was near.

Back at the beach Officer continued to observe the unknown object in the sky. It remained still, but then, as impossible as it seemed, it expanded in size. Could it have possibly been moving this fast. The civilian fell back in the sand as he feared the object was coming straight towards him. Officer Eades reached for his radio, but then, before he could say anything, the object disappeared from sight. 

“Jesus Christ Fred how did you get over there that fast!” Fred now saw his partner from a distance as his chest heaved heavily. He didn’t remember bolting across Elizabeth street, and looking down the empty street he felt as confused as Dennis

The street was not empty for long as a patrol car raced towards Dennis with lights blaring, then another from the opposite direction. “Fuck man!” Dennis yelled. Fred immediately ran away as he heard from behind “Get down on your knees!”

Another set of flashing lights approached as he ran through a parking lot. He turned back to see he was being pursued as he made a right on Therry street. “Stop right there!” Fred heard over a bullhorn as he turned into a street that ran behind the Victoria market. The red and blue lights reflected off the concrete buildings around him and he could hear the engine of the patrol car drawing closer. 

It wasn’t until officer Eades got in his cruiser that he realized, whatever he saw, it never made a sound. After radioing in what he just witnessed he slowly cruised down Cavell street. The lights at Luna Park were off, but a few kids were still loitering about. “Doing just the usual stuff” he thought to himself, smoking, getting high. His presence caught the eye of some of the kids. Most of them just stood in their tracks, a few slowly crept away. Turning right on Carlisle street he saw a familiar face. It was Derek. He was sure his mother didn’t go easy on him, but there he was, standing in the street. The kid showed no fear either, as he recognized the officer slowly riding by. He simply nodded his head, giving him that cocky grin that Eades seemed to see on all kids these days.

In the alley the police car stopped and two officers got out. “Hold it right there!” One of them shouted. Fred found himself at a dead end in the back of the alley. Then he felt it, it was like his dream, but opposite in a way. He felt the night air brushing against his face when he realized there was nothing below his feet. It felt like he was falling, no, not falling, more like he was, no, not that, it couldn’t be true. Next thing he knew he felt something solid below his feet. He was baffled as to what took place, but way below him he heard the voices.

“Where did he go?”  

“I don’t know, but we got enough of them, let’s go.”

It was only then he realized where he was. Looking down at the dead end where the cops were standing, he couldn’t believe it. Only one thought came to mind.

“How the hell did I get on the roof?”

Next week comes the final new entry of the blogverse. In Los Angeles, the grandson of a Mexican wrestler stumbles into the world of underground fighting. 

In two weeks, the fan favorite Ghost City returns with all new thrills and mysteries.

Jaquar returns in three weeks. Who is the mysterious benefactor and what do they want?

And of course come back in thiry days for issue #2 of the Lights of Mirigan. What are the mysterious lights over Melbourne, and is Fred’s group merely a bunch of hoodlums, or are they up to something more deadly. Find out in 30!