Jamilla and Dante’s podcraft was hurtling towards the surface of the planet at an unhealthy rate. Their honeymoon was about to be cut short due to a terminal case of gravity. Little did they know that they had a lot more detective work to do. They simply thought they were about to provide a lot more work for their office.
They had headed to Altair 5 as a cover anyway. Too many other podcrafts had gone down unexpectedly in the past month to be a coincidence. They knew from their many years of working for the office of Judge Jones Malone that sometimes the best way to solve a crime was to become part of it.
They were peacekeepers, both of them, but they were also in love. Dante had noticed Jamilla first. She’d sashayed into Judge Malone’s office that dusty August afternoon, plaspapers in hand, looking for a job as a detective. Her mechanical horse Rusty Nut was tethered up just outside, refueling at the energy trough. Dante thought she sure filled out her crimson chaps well. The fringe swayed in a way that made him look at her a bit longer than he thought he was supposed to.
But there wasn’t time for such memories now. The planet that they had looked forward to spending some quality time on was coming up far faster than they liked, and there wasn’t anybody else on board to help. It was up to them.
And the angels.
In the middle of the cramped podcraft, filled with everything they’d need for a vacation that also was a cover for an investigation, Jamilla put her hands together. She prayed like she always prayed, out loud, unscripted. She prayed to God, the Creator, the Source of all. She prayed to the same God who parted the sea so the Israelites could escape from their enemies. Even though there was no sea this time, the danger was the same. She had no idea what God could do in this situation, but she knew that God could do anything, and hey, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
And the angels came, four hundred of them strong. They came out of nowhere and they surrounded the craft, lifting, buoying it up. Some of them held it on their winged shoulders. Some of them fluttered their wings nearby to keep the ship cool from the reentry. They came, gloriously, triumphantly, majestically.
They were invisible as always to everybody but Jamilla. She could see them from the podcraft’s port window, crowding together. The spaceport tower controllers were oblivious to what was going on. They just thought that the ship had suddenly righted itself. All they knew was that they were going to have a lot less paperwork to fill out now.
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(This is what happened when I tried to combine as many categories as I could. I ended up with African American, Mystery, Romance, Christian, Western, and Science Fiction. If you tried to put all those stickers on the spine of one book, you’d never see the author or title. )