Canis Major | Keith Kogane

1

(BACKGROUND OF COVER IMAGE CREDIT: GREG RAKOZY ON UNSPLASH)
[I really fell in love with the image and giving credit to Mr. Rakozy is the least I can do :)]

Elle looked up at the night sky. Thousands of dazzling stars decorated black canvas. As she laid on one the cool roof tops of the Galaxy Garrison building. She stared at the Canis Major constellation, it was the only one she recognized which Iverson gave Elle so much crap about.

On most occasions Elle heard someone on the higher rooftop open the doors and sneak on for what she assumed was alone time as well. They didn't bother her so she never thought much about finding the identity of the person behind the mechanical keyboard.

Tonight, however, was different. Elle heard the doors open again for a second time tonight, the footsteps sounded heavier with a deep thump as they walked across the rooftop above. Elle sat up straight, almost giving herself whiplash. There was a good possibility that bullies may have come after the light-footed stranger, it's not like the students at the academy were all saints.

She was able to jump up to a ledge, pull herself up, then jump to a nearby column, and shimmy herself up using her belt like she had seen in an animated movie. Elle would not be doing that again because there were spiderwebs towards the top of the column. The webs didn't even need to have actual spiders in there, just the feeling of a spiderweb on her was enough to give Elle the jitters. But she quickly forgot about those, as she wanted to make sure the occupant of the roof above didn't have any unwanted guests. Unfortunately, she made too much noise hoisting herself up on the ledge of the rooftop. Trying to use her belt as a way to climb up should be a last resort because that took the wind out of her.

"Is there someone there?" a nervous voice asked in Elle's direction.

"Calm down, Hunk! I bet it's a hot chick! The ladies can never get enough from me." An overly confident one chimed in.

As Elle hoisted herself up from behind the solar panels, she recognized the team that failed their flight simulation earlier that day. "Sorry for the intrusion," she began, "I meant to be sneaky but-"

"Dude I was right!" one of the boys whispered to the other.

"Chill out Lance," the one sitting on the floor shot back, "Um, what are you doing here?" they asked Elle.

Elle shyly rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm Elle. I'm usually down on that rooftop, the one right below this one. It's connected to the dorm and I climb from my window to gaze at the stars." The trio of boys stared back, still curious. "I-I usually hear when, and I presume it's you," she motioned to the one sitting on the ground, "I hear when the doors open and I can tell by the sound of it you're alone. This time, when I heard more people stopped by I was worried about possible bullies you know? But now I see it's clearly not the case."

One of them stepped forward, Elle was worried. Did she come off as kind of creepy?

"That's a sweet story, know what else is? My name. The name's Lance. These two you see, that's Pidge and that's Hunk. I'm the leader of this team." He put his hand on his hip and one to his chin.

Elle lightly scoffed. It was a cute attempt but she wasn't interested. She turned her eyes toward Pidge, she saw a doodle of something called 'Voltron' and a computer that seemed to be made of multiple components.

"Build that yourself?" she asked, turning her attention away from Lance.

"That's right," Pidge said with a proud smirk.

Hunk, who was crawling around on the floor flipped on his back. "Okay I get this sudden new girl is super cool and all but Pidge. Are you serious? Aliens!"

Lance chimed back in giving Elle insight on the situation. "Oh yeah, Pidge is crazy now."

Pidge shot a look at Lance. "I'm being serious. I picked up some alien chatter and tonight it's going crazier than I have ever heard it."

Elle raised an eyebrow, "How crazy?"

Almost immediately, the alarm system went off. "Attention all students!" the PA system boomed, "We are on lock down! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: All students are to remain in barracks until further notice."

Elle would probably panic if she paid attention to the handbook what 'Zulu Niner' was. But it didn't sound good.

"What's going on?" Hunk asked. He pointed to a sudden bright light, "Is that a meteor? A very, very big meteor?"

Pidge pulled out some binoculars, "It's a ship!"

Lance immediately stole them away from Pidge, "Holy crow! That's not one of ours!"

"No," Pidge agreed, "It's one of theirs."

Hunk seemed extremely nervous, and for all the right reason. Even with the advanced tech the Garrison had there was nothing in the solar system that gave signs of any life from that wasn't from Earth. To Elle, was both bone chilling and exciting to know that there was more out in space than modern science realized. Elle was so engrossed with her few thoughts of the ship she didn't hear Hunk's panicked words about aliens.

When the ship finally made contact with the Earth, Elle immediately heard land rovers from below turn on to scout the crash site. Her newfound friends were eager follow the rovers to the crash site.

"Hunk, come on!" Pidge called to his friend.

"Hey, Beautiful. You coming?" Lance asked.

Brushing off Lance's flirt, she nodded excitedly. "I'll grab my pack first, you guys go on ahead. My dorm is super close. Meet up at the back entrance?"

Lance gave Elle a quick nod. She then sat on the edge of the ledge and let herself down quietly, not to disturb any occupants of the dorms below her feet. She made her way to her usual star gazing spot, made her way through her window, and landed a little clumsily into the dorm. It wasn't a perfect landing but she was able to be discreet.

Elle spotted her backpack that she used whenever she headed out into town which was already filled with basic essentials like a spare set of clothes and a water bottle. She decided it wasn't worth her time to reorganize the whole bag and grabbed her packing cube filled with hiking gear that she hadn't used since the last time the Garrison gave their cadets time off from training. She needed the rope from the packing cube to climb back up the column to avoid getting caught by any patrolling staff.

Elle sighed. She really needed to work out her forearms.