by Linn Schwab
Too weary to go chasing after Mindy through the station, Robin let out a sigh of frustration and closely examined the wall once again. It appeared no different to her now than before. What is it she’s looking for? she wondered in anguish. She stood there in the passageway a few minutes longer, then finally gave up and returned to her bed. I wonder, she thought before fading off to sleep, if there’s something unusual on the other side of that wall.
RIDDLES 062
The lights were still dim on Volaris when Commander Eldridge entered the cafeteria on a quest for an early morning cup of coffee. She found Janine sitting at one of the tables, staring down at a Portable Archive Interface.
“Any luck yet?” the commander asked her.
Janine tapped her fingers on the surface of the device. “I’m getting there,” she said. “It seems that a Commander Gabriella Stinson was in charge of this station prior to Commander Jeffries’ arrival. I’ve been able to determine it was Commander Stinson who ordered the guns to be disassembled. What I haven’t been able to determine yet is why. The addenda to her orders don’t seem to offer any explanations.”
“Where is Commander Stinson now? I’d like to ask her to explain her reasoning.”
“I think she must be dead. Either that, or she just simply disappeared. There’s no record of her serving anywhere after Volaris. For all we know, she could still be on this station ... tucked away in some room no one’s looked inside for years.”
“That’s not a very comforting thought. Is there anyone on the station who was assigned here during the time she was still in command?”
“I don’t know. I think I’d be surprised to find out that there are.”
“Why do you say that?”
Janine glanced around herself in unease, peering into the shadows along the edges of the room. “Don’t you get the feeling there’s something strange going on here? That something just doesn’t feel quite right about this place?”
“Strange in what way?” the commander asked. “It seems just like any other station I’ve been on.”
Janine shook her head and said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. But when I look at these orders Commander Stinson was issuing, it seems very much like she intended to abandon this station. Look here,” she said, holding the interface out to Commander Eldridge. “For two solid weeks, right up until the very last order she issued, everything she did here seemed to revolve around transferring things away from this base. Personnel, supplies, equipment, ammunition. All of it being spread around to other defense stations.”
“Does it say where any of the personnel were transferred?”
“Pretty much everywhere. Cirrus, Cumulus, Orion, Pegasus...”
“Good. We should be able to track some of them down, then. Any idea where she was planning to transfer the guns?”
“Let me see,” Janine said. She looked down and scrolled through the data on the interface. “I don’t see any orders to transfer them. I do see the order to disassemble them, and in the notes, she’s inserted the word ‘Valgrind.’”
“Valgrind? We don’t have a base by that name.”
“I know.”
The commander rubbed her eyes as she tried to determine what to do next. “Try entering that word as an inquiry.”
Janine keyed the word in. “It says, ‘Valgrind. Gate to Valhalla.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all I can see.”
“That doesn’t tell us much. Gate to Valhalla. What could that mean?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think of anything that would fit that description.”
The commander heard a sudden noise behind her and turned her head to see what had caused it. The first riser from Robin’s battalion wandered into the cafeteria alone and started searching through the kitchen for an early morning snack. As Commander Eldridge watched the girl rummage around, she continued to contemplate the disassembled guns and the entry’s vague description of Valgrind. “Well,” she finally said to Janine, “wherever this mysterious Valgrind is, I’m going to take a wild guess that it doesn’t need these guns as badly as Volaris does right now. I want you to ask around and see if anyone on this station remembers Commander Stinson. Meanwhile, I’m going to focus my attention on getting those artillery pieces reassembled.” A clattering noise rang out from the kitchen as the young Sentinel inadvertently knocked something over. The commander nodded in satisfaction. “And I think I know exactly where I’m going to get the manpower.”
* * * *
When Robin awoke in the morning, Mindy was asleep in her bed again, just as if she’d never been missing. Robin sat up and rubbed her eyes, and noticed Christy was sitting up as well. She stood up and walked over to Christy, then sat down beside her on the edge of her bed. “How do you feel?” she said. “I’m sure you must still be worried about Tabitha.”
Christy nodded. “I feel so helpless.”
Robin closely examined Christie’s eyes. “Well,” she said, “at least it looks like you’re sleeping a little better now. Did Major Richards give you something to help you?”
“No. Actually, it was Mindy who ended up helping me.”
“Mindy?” Robin said in surprise. “How did Mindy—”
“Attention, Sentinels!” Commander Eldridge announced, stepping into their sleeping quarters. “Since your formal training has been placed on hold, I have a special assignment for you. I want all of you to go through your morning exercise routine, make sure you eat your full breakfast rations, then report to me on the control room level.” She gestured toward the door and said, “Get moving! I want to see all of you up there in one hour’s time!”
As the other girls got up and scrambled out through the door, Robin remained where she was sitting and looked up at Commander Eldridge in distress. “I can’t,” she said, lowering her gaze to the floor.
“I know,” the commander said to her. “I can see you’re still much too weak to do laps. Take a couple of days off and regain your strength. Make sure you get plenty of food and rest. If there’s still anything left to be done, you can join the rest of us when you’re strong enough to work.”
Robin watched the commander leave, then stood up and walked into the corridor. In the light, she studied the wall’s surface once again. It appeared to be nothing but gray painted steel. She leaned in a little closer to the wall and gave it an icy glare of contempt. “Leave. Mindy. Alone!” she insisted, then waited to see if anything happened. Her eyes darted back and forth along the wall, but there seemed to be no response to her demand. In frustration, she stormed off along the corridor and headed straight to the hangar bay. She looked through the personnel working on the fighters until she located the station’s senior technician.
“Genevieve,” Robin said, tapping her on the shoulder.
The technician turned around to face her. “Captain Starling,” she said, “what brings you down here? Is there something I can do for you?”
“I need to ask you something. Would you come with me, please.”
“I suppose I can spare a few minutes.” She grabbed a towel and wiped some grease from her hands, then followed Robin out of the hangar.
Robin led her back to her quarters and pointed at the section of wall outside the doorway. “This is it,” she said. “Can you tell me what’s behind this wall?”
Genevieve shrugged. “Let’s take a look.” She pulled an archive interface out of her pocket, called up a detailed schematic of the station and zoomed in on the area behind the wall. “From what I can tell, it looks like there’s a power distribution station back there. She leaned forward and placed her left ear against the wall. “Yeah. I can just barely hear it humming away.” She looked at Robin in concern. “It isn’t keeping you girls awake at night, is it?”
Robin crossed her arms and stared at the wall in contemplation. “Is there any chance it could cause people to have hallucinations?”
“It’s hard for me to say. That’s not really
my area of expertise. I suppose it’s possible, though. There is an awful lot of energy flowing through there at times, depending on which systems happen to be powered up at the moment. Who knows what kind of effect that might have on someone. Why do you ask? Are you having bad dreams?”
The recurring nightmare suddenly surfaced in her thoughts, but she found herself wanting to avoid the subject. That’s not why I brought her here, anyway, she decided. And besides, I had that same dream when I was in the infirmary. “No,” she insisted, “I was just curious. One of my squad members thought she might have seen something, that’s all. I’m sure it was probably just her imagination. Or maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her.”
“Ha!” Genevieve exclaimed with a laugh. “She wouldn’t be the only one, then. People are always seeing things on this station.” She leaned closer to Robin and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Tell her if she happens to see a pair of white bunny rabbits, to do me a favor and tell them I miss them, okay?” She gave Robin a gentle nudge on the shoulder, then turned around and headed back to the hangar.
Robin examined the wall’s surface again, even more confused now than she had been before. She wanted to believe Genevieve was just joking about the rabbits, but her intuition told her that wasn’t the case. The look on her face had been too sincere. I’ll never figure out what’s going on here, she decided. The only thing I can do is ask Mindy what she’s seeing. But that means putting her on the defensive. It’s not like her to keep things hidden from me. If this was something she felt comfortable discussing, she would’ve brought it to my attention already.
* * * *
The night passed without bringing much sleep to Dave. He found himself watching through the open door of the infirmary to catch a glimpse of personnel walking by outside the room. Only rarely did anyone pass by the door. When they did, it didn’t escape his attention that every last one of them appeared to be female. It also didn’t escape his attention that they all seemed to linger as they passed by the opening, to see if they could get a quick look at his face. But as soon as they realized he was looking back at them, they turned away from him and hurried on their way. Their reactions struck him as being a little odd, and only added to the ongoing questions in his mind. Where are all of this society’s men? And why does their military seem to be strictly female?
Eventually, he managed to doze off for a while, though the sleep he experienced was fleeting and shallow. The room’s lights startled him back to consciousness when Lieutenant Marlowe turned them up to full brightness in the morning.
“I brought you some breakfast,” she cheerfully told him as she carried a serving tray to his bed.
Dave propped himself up on his right elbow and shielded his eyes with his left hand as they adjusted to the light. “Ahh, Lieutenant Marlowe,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again. Any idea what’s on the menu for today?”
His question drew a look of confusion from her.
What did I say to confuse her? he wondered. “Sorry,” he said, “it was meant to be a joke. You do have jokes on your planet, right?”
She smiled and set the tray down in front of him. “We have jokes,” she said. “They just don’t get used very often.”
Dave could tell she was trying to be friendly, but the mention of humor being scarce on her world exposed a sentiment of sorrow in her voice. He sighed and hung his head in regret. Things must be just as bleak here as they are back on Earth. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that there isn’t much room for humor in their lives. We’ve certainly killed enough of them over time that they must be living with a great deal of sadness. “Okay,” he said, hoping to revive the conversation, “if I can avoid putting my foot in my mouth again, maybe I can squeeze in a couple bites of food. Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He picked up a spoon that was lying on his tray and used it to poke at the samplings of food. “These all look familiar enough. This is obviously some sort of biscuit. Strawberries, grapes, pineapple.” He paused and looked at Veronica with sincerity. “If you get food like this on a regular basis, you have no idea how lucky you are.” Turning his attention back to the tray, he sank his spoon into a heap of white mush. “Oh wow, are these grits?”
“What’s grits?” Veronica asked.
“Something I haven’t had in years.” He pulled the spoon up to his mouth and sampled its contents. “They are grits. And they taste just like what I used to eat back home. Imagine that,” he said. “It looks like our two worlds have a few things in common.”
Veronica smiled at him and headed for the door. “I have to go. Major Richards should be here in a while.”
As Dave began to consume his breakfast, he heard the sound of heavy footfalls approaching in the corridor. That’s not someone walking, he realized in concern. That’s the sound of someone running! Could the station be under attack already? As he listened, he soon became aware that there were more than one set of footsteps involved. Peering out through the open doorway, he saw a young girl in a short green dress run by. Seconds later, he saw another. And then another. And another. They didn’t appear to be in a state of panic, so he determined it must just be some kind of fitness drill. He lost count of how many girls ran by, but when the last set of footsteps faded in the distance, he decided it must have been more than twenty. Circling around on the fringes of his thoughts was an awareness that all of them had been female. But the foremost concern on his mind at the moment was the fact that they had all appeared to be so young.
Those girls are just kids! he thought in bewilderment. What are they doing on a military base? He contemplated whether the station might in fact be civilian, but the girls’ dresses had seemed very much like uniforms to him. School uniforms? he wondered. Or could that just be a fashion trend here right now? After a few moments, another group of young girls ran by. Or perhaps it was the same group again. He couldn’t be sure. But he made a point of getting a good look at their dresses and concluded they appeared to be military issue. His mind lingered on the troubling possibility that if girls this age were living on a military base, they might also be present on enemy warships...
“Good morning,” Major Richards greeted him. She casually strolled in through the doorway and walked directly to the side of his bed. “How are you feeling today?”
Dave struggled to clear his thoughts. “Major Richards,” he said, returning her greeting. “Well, it’s funny you should ask. I feel very much like I’ve been shot in the leg.”
The major responded with a half–hearted chuckle. “Other than that?” she insisted.
He shrugged. “Helpless. Stranded. Nervous. Trapped. I keep wondering when someone is going to walk through that door brandishing a collection of torture instruments.”
Major Richards looked at him in concern. “Is that really what you think of us?”
“Well, you aren’t exactly gentle with us on the battlefield.”
“You do realize we could say the same about you.”
Dave bit his lip and nodded in acceptance. “My apologies. I should be more thoughtful about what I say.” He found himself searching for a way to change the subject, and once again noticed the grits on his tray. It intrigued him that Lieutenant Marlowe hadn’t seemed familiar with the name he used for them. “I’m curious about something,” he said, lifting some of them up in his spoon. “What do your people call these?”
The major looked at them and shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. I don’t even know if they have a name.”
“Hmm,” he mused. “That’s interesting. Have you ever had them before?”
“Of course. We eat them all the time.”
“And you don’t know what they’re called?”
She shrugged. “Does it really matter what they’re called?”
Dave found her answer troubling in a way, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it bothered him. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by another person walking into the room. The instant he saw her face, he knew it was the pilot who’d res
cued him.
“Major Richards,” he heard the girl say, “I think my bandage needs to be changed.” For an instant, she glanced over at Dave and the two of them made eye contact with each other. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but she turned her attention away from him again.
“Step right over here,” the major said to her, leading her to an examination table. The girl sat herself on the edge of the table and allowed Major Richards to inspect her bandage.
After peeling the bandage back, the major noticed some leakage around the wound. Her expression suggested she was mildly concerned. “This doesn’t appear to be healing the way it should. Have you been subjecting this arm to any strenuous exertion?”
The girl made eye contact with Dave again. “You mean like using a fighter to tow a stranded pilot to safety?” Her eyes seemed to express a slight hint of hostility.
Dave chuckled and lowered his head in embarrassment. “I have to admit,” he said with sincerity, “that was an impressive feat you managed to accomplish. I’d wager there aren’t many pilots on either side of this conflict who’d be able to pull off something like that. Myself included. I never would have guessed what was going through your mind, though. For a minute there, I was convinced you were just gonna blow me away.”
Her disposition toward him appeared to soften a little. “Just be thankful you aren’t a Tiger Shark,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t be sitting there right now.”
“Tiger Shark?” he asked, expressing confusion. “Ohh, you must mean the elites.” He pictured the shark teeth in his mind and nodded his head in understanding. “Interesting that you call them that. I guess I can see how you came up with it, though.”