Carrick stumbled out of the cab, twisting his ankle as he hit the ground. He barely took in his surroundings, fixated as he was on the craft that had crashed before him.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, help is here! You're going to be okay!”

He reached the craft. Miraculously, though it was buried in shattered stone halfway up to the fuselage, not even the paint seemed to be harmed. The craft was not very large, certainly no bigger than a two-seater fighter jet.

Yet as he stood mere feet away from it, taking in deep breaths of air that stunk of ozone, it struck Carrick that he had never exactly seen a craft like this before. The iridescent blue of its body was nothing out of the ordinary, but he couldn’t recognize the letters scroll upon its side, and the engine on the back was like nothing he had ever seen.

It wasn't a meteor or a volcano after all. Surely the government had been performing experiments, just as the old facility had, to create a craft that could leave the planet and venture into space.

Unsuccessfully, it seemed. At least, it had failed to make a successful landing.

Carrick stepped closer, looking with hesitation into the hole created by the falling craft. Below, he could see what could be nothing other than the canopy of a cockpit. Using the crumbled stone of the hole’s wall to steady himself, Carrick slid carefully down the submerged wing of the craft, coming eventually alongside the canopy.

A dim, intermittent flickering came from within the dark glass. Carrick used the sleeve of his jumpsuit to wipe away grime and dust from the canopy, but revealed little more of the interior.

Carrick unhooked a portable LED from his belt, switched it on, and held it up to the glass. It revealed the interior of the cockpit to be filled with dark and heavy vapor. Carrick at first thought it must be smoke, but then he saw a figure within it move slightly.

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The figure had been leaning over the silhouette of a dashboard, as though it had crashed and died against it, but as Carrick’s light shone through, the figure raised its head just slightly. Through the vapor, Carrick couldn't tell if it was looking at him or not.

“Hold on!” Carrick shouted again. “I'll be right back!”

He clambered his way back up of the wing of the craft and dashed back to the truck, ignoring the pain in his leg from where he had twisted it. He climbed back into the truck and drove it to the falling craft so that its nose was close to the craft's tail.

Carrick exited, removed the excavation attachment from the front of the truck, and exchanged it for a tow winch. Praying that this wouldn't simply rip the engine free, he got close enough that he could toss the tow hook up against the simple exhaust grating on the engine's housing until it hooked through and caught.

Carrick re-entered the truck, set it in tow mode, and set the entire power of the truck to work as it anchored itself to the ground with pistons and then began hauling the much-larger craft out from its point of impact.

The winch creaked as Carrick put it under tremendous strain, and a warning flashed on the truck's dashboard, informing him that the winch mechanism was burning itself out and should be shut off immediately.

Carrick ignored it and gritted his teeth as the craft peaked slowly from its nest. Regardless of whatever reason it had remained intact upon its impact, the broken and protruding stones did indeed scratch and scrape the paint of its blue body as the craft retracted.

Finally, the main body of the craft boomed onto the ground of the chamber, though a good half of the cockpit and nose still hung over the edge of the pit.

Carrick powered down the truck's engine, ignoring the smoke pouring from the winch mechanism, and paused only to retrieve a plasma pick and first-aid box before dashing beside the craft. He powered on the pick and tried to cut open the canopy.

In moments, the canopy burst open of its own accord with a hiss, and Carrick discovered with a start that he had caused no damage to the craft itself. Vapor burst from the cockpit and washed over Carrick. It felt cool and almost calming. It carried a pleasant scent and made Carrick woozy. Maybe that was only the excitement of the moment.

Within seconds, the figure inside the cockpit rose, towering from its vantage several feet above Carrick. It wore a helmet like a gas mask, and was covered by something that was unmistakably a black flight suit with dull green metallic elements.

The figure slowly raised its hands to its collar and disengaged a lock, which then allowed it to remove the mask from its face.

To Carrick’s shock, he stared into the face of a creature who was certainly not human.