by Linn Schwab
But even with the worst of it behind her now, her life was still very much in peril. Unable to see beyond the nose of her fighter, her movements were severely restricted by the fog, which she already knew concealed a host of deadly obstacles.
“Which direction should I go?” she wondered out loud, half hoping for a clue to appear in the fog. She exhaled slowly and listened with her thoughts, to see if she could hear Samantha’s warning one more time.
Nothing came to her. Perhaps it was over, and her role in the conflict had come to an end. Or perhaps her thoughts simply couldn’t penetrate the fog. In any case, it seemed she was finally all alone — the very thing Samantha had cautioned her against.
Has Samantha abandoned me at last? she wondered. She was always there for me before. Or at least that’s what she’d always told herself. Suddenly a troubling thought occurred to her. One that filled her with lingering regret. I kissed a Tiger Shark, she realized. The same ilk of monster that killed my squadron. How could I have betrayed their memory like that? I don’t deserve Samantha’s help anymore.
With her will to survive displaced by feelings of guilt, she leaned back in her seat and let go of the controls, allowing her fighter to choose its own path. If they’ll still have me, I’ll be with the others soon. If not, I guess I’ll remain alone forever.
As her fighter drifted without any guidance, a source of light suddenly appeared through the fog.
“Sentinel pilot,” she heard a female voice call to her. “If you can hear me, come toward the light.”
Mystified and uncertain, she reached for her controls and steered her fighter closer to the light. Could this be the work of Samantha? she wondered. Has my transgression with Jason been forgiven? Are the others calling me to join them now? Will I see them again when I enter the light? As she continued moving forward, the fog began to recede, and the outline of a ship appeared in the distance, with a floodlight shining in her direction. She checked her scanner to determine the make of the vessel. It was too large to be a destroyer and too small to be a carrier, and it didn’t look at all like a Sentinel gunship. Through the glare of the floodlight, she could just barely read the name. It was the transport ship Lily Pad.
“Permission to come aboard, Lily Pad?” she asked, still somewhat uncertain what to expect.
The cargo bay doors slid open for her, inviting her fighter to slip between them. She set down on the floor of the cargo hold and waited for the chamber to pressurize.
When she climbed down from her cockpit a woman greeted her and introduced herself as Lieutenant Isabelle Wyman. “You don’t look like a mechanic,” Isabelle said, looking Virginia’s uniform over.
Virginia glanced down at the key in her pocket and realized it was the source of the confusion. “Oh,” she said, “I had to borrow this key on short notice. I’m Lieutenant Virginia Scot, of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Fighter Squadron.”
“Are there any more of your squadron nearby?”
“I don’t think so. I was flying all alone. Where exactly are we? Are we close to Volaris?”
“We’re not sure. The fog is starting to break in some areas, but we still haven’t been able to pinpoint our location.”
“Any idea what caused this?”
“We were hoping you could tell us. We were transporting fighters to the 2nd Fleet when this cloud came out of nowhere and swept us off course. We’re just starting to pick up some radio chatter, but it’s still very intermittent at this point. If you’ll follow me, Lieutenant Scot, our Captain is waiting for you on the bridge. I’m sure she’ll have a few questions for you.”
Commander Ingman stood on the bridge of the Melbourne, looking out at the only other ship he could see. From this view the Belfast appeared unscathed, but a damage assessment was still under way. The Melbourne itself had survived intact, despite a lengthy scuffle with the comet’s remains. Somehow the two carriers had emerged from the flow in close proximity to each other. But the rest of their fleet was nowhere to be seen, and could not be reached by radio.
Exactly where the Melbourne and Belfast had emerged was a matter which had yet to be resolved. For all he knew, they were deep inside enemy space and could be faced with an assault at any moment, or perhaps an opportunity to exploit the current chaos. In any case, the two carriers were all he had to work with. And one of them was under the command of Captain Hilliard — a man Admiral Sands had placed under surveillance, following the death of a UEF pilot. This left him with a difficult decision to make. Should he trust Captain Hilliard to perform his duties in a manner consistent with the fleet’s best interests, or find a way to replace him with another officer, at least until the current crisis was over?
After pondering the situation for a moment, he decided he should try to uncover the truth, even if it meant confronting Captain Hilliard directly. At this point, since he couldn’t even be sure if Admiral Sands was still alive, and with the lives of so many pilots and crewmen at stake, he felt justified in taking matters into his own hands. It was time to delve into the surveillance records, and find out if Captain Hilliard had something to hide.
For this task, he needed someone he could trust. Someone with the right skill set. Someone reliable. That someone, he decided, was Pogo Amarelli. Moments later he made his way to Pogo’s laboratory, and handed him a data storage chip.
“What’s this?” Pogo asked, eyeing the chip.
“New assignment for you,” the commander explained. “That chip contains a comprehensive recording of radio transmissions from the past several days. Every wavelength and frequency across the entire spectrum. Every signal the Melbourne’s equipment detected. I want you to comb through the data on that chip and see if you can find evidence of hidden transmissions.”
“Just what exactly am I looking for, Commander?”
“Anything that looks like it might be suspicious. I’m going on the assumption that there are covert operatives among us receiving instructions from outside the fleet.”
“Receiving instructions from who?” Pogo asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Lieutenant. Our primary suspect is Captain Hilliard, on the UES Belfast. Admiral Sands has reason to suspect him of subversion. Since the Belfast is currently our only backup, I want to know where the man’s true loyalties lie.”
“We’ll start with that, then,” Pogo said, plugging in the chip. “I’ll filter for communications coming to and from the Belfast.”
“How long will that take?” the commander asked.
Pogo’s fingertips danced across a keyboard on his benchtop. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to a graph on his monitor. “This timeline covers the past four days. The red bars indicate incoming signals. The green bars indicate outgoing signals.”
“That was fast,” Commander Ingman said. “Can we see where the incoming signals are coming from?”
“Show … source,” Pogo said as he typed the command.
A list of names appeared next to the red transmission bars. Each one appeared to be from a UES warship.
“Any of these look suspicious?” Pogo asked.
Commander Ingman shook his head as he read down the list. “Alabama, Alabama, Melbourne, Alabama.” Suddenly he stopped and pointed at the screen. “Dunkirk! That ship isn’t deployed in this sector! Why the hell would they be sending a message to the Belfast?” He continued down the list and found similar transmissions from the Alamo, the Norwich, and the Barcelona — all cruisers that were stationed far away from the Belfast. “Let’s see the outgoing side,” he said to Pogo.
A list of names appeared next to the green bars on the graph. The four cruisers were present there as well.
“Looks like you were onto something,” Pogo said.
“Yes, and it’s a shame we didn’t find out about this sooner. Play back a few of those transmissions, Lieutenant. I want to hear what they’re saying to each other.”
“Green or red?” Pogo asked.
“Let’s start with the green. I k
now Captain Hilliard, so I’d recognize his voice.”
When the message began to play, he heard Captain Hilliard speaking in a casual tone. “Greetings, my friend,” he heard the captain say. “I hope this message finds you well.” From there, Captain Hilliard went on to ramble about various aspects of daily life. At times what he said seemed to make little sense, but it was clear the message had a definite purpose.
“He’s speaking in code,” Pogo insisted, after listening to the message for less than a minute. “He’s obviously using generic topics to mask what he’s actually talking about.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the commander said. “That’s all I needed to hear. You can get back to work on that cipher now. And, uh … let’s keep this conversation just between ourselves.”
“Yes, sir.”
With the commander’s suspicions now all but confirmed, he returned to the bridge and pulled a young officer aside. “I’m sending you to the Belfast,” he told Lieutenant Berens. “You’re to fly over on a shuttle immediately and bring Captain Hilliard back here with you.”
Cassandra expressed her unease with the order. What he was asking her to do was highly unusual and was likely to meet with some resistance from the captain. “What should I tell him?” she asked. “He’s going to want an explanation.”
“Tell him our communications are down for repairs, and I need him here so we can discuss strategy.”
Lieutenant Berens swallowed as she headed for the door. She could obviously sense that something wasn’t right. Commander Ingman watched her leave, then moved to his office to await Captain Hilliard, and ponder how to best approach the situation. Should he accuse the captain right away, or try to string him along and see what came out? The debate continued to rage in his mind until more than twenty minutes had passed on the clock and Captain Hilliard was standing right in front of him.
“You wanted to see me?” the captain said, after carefully closing the door behind him.
“Yes,” Commander Ingman replied. “I’d like to hear your thoughts on our current situation. We need to reach a decision about what we should do when this fog finally starts to clear. Do we try to work our way in closer to the planet, or fall back to our previous position and regroup?”
Captain Hilliard hesitated briefly, then jumped at the chance to offer his opinion. “If you ask me,” he said, “we should definitely advance, and try to launch an assault on the planet if we can. This fog may present us with the perfect opportunity to catch the enemy forces off guard. It could be the chance we’ve been waiting for to put an end to this conflict once and for all.”
Commander Ingman stared at him in silent contemplation as he drummed an index finger on his desktop. “So you’re convinced we should launch an assault on the planet. You seem fairly certain that’s the right course of action.”
“That was the admiral’s plan wasn’t it?”
“If it was, he neglected to share it with me. In case you hadn’t noticed, Captain Hilliard, we’re not exactly brimming with assault troops at the moment. Two carriers are hardly an invasion force. What advantage could we possibly hope to gain by attacking the planet on our own?”
“Who’s to say we’d be on our own, Commander? The rest of our fleet may be advancing as we speak. If they are, they’re going to need fighter support. If we turn back now, we could be leaving them in danger.”
“Or,” Commander Ingman observed, “they might be pulling back to regroup. Either way, they could still be in need of our assistance. Don’t you think we should consider both possibilities?”
Captain Hilliard appeared to be losing his patience, as evidenced by the look of frustration on his face. “If Admiral Sands is still in command of the fleet—”
Commander Ingman cut him off, with the intention of stretching his patience to the limit. “If Admiral Sands is still in command, he’s ordering the fleet to fall back and regroup. I know how the admiral thinks, Captain Hilliard. A disorganized assault is not his M.O.”
“The admiral could be dead,” Captain Hilliard insisted. “If he is, you might be the ranking officer. And for right now, as far as these two ships are concerned, you ARE the ranking officer, Commander.”
“And as ranking officer,” Commander Ingman said, “you think I should give the order to advance. Even though we have nothing to attack with but fighters.”
“Listen to me, Joel,” Captain Hilliard pleaded, “we don’t even need to launch our fighters at the planet. Just get us in close enough to target their cities, and you can call in a nuclear strike from orbit.”
“A nuclear strike,” Commander Ingman observed flatly. “So that’s your endgame. I must say, I completely misjudged you, Captain. But I see now why you had Lieutenant Samuels killed. I was convinced your intention was to prolong the war, but what you were really holding out for is complete annihilation. You didn’t want to take the chance that we might negotiate an end to hostilities.”
Captain Hilliard looked at him in shock, struck silent by the knowledge that his secret had been revealed.
Commander Ingman pressed a button on his desktop to summon security personnel to the room. “Tell me something, Captain,” he said getting to his feet. “Why are you so intent on destroying this planet?”
As a pair of security guards approached Captain Hilliard from behind, he stared at the commander defiantly. “Because,” he said, “it has no business existing. What Jüergens Allers and his followers tried to do here was blasphemous. The creation of life is not our purview. It’s not something to be trifled with by mere human beings. Put an end to these people while you still can, Commander. Before their evil has a chance to spread beyond this world.”
“Evil?” Commander Ingman replied. “Some people might question your perspective on evil. I don’t see them killing their own pilots, Captain Hilliard.”
“Perhaps not. But that doesn’t change the fact that they need to be destroyed. Every last one of them should be eliminated, along with all that remains of their unethical technology. And right now you have the perfect opportunity to do so. You should ask yourself this question — and consider it carefully — before it’s too late for you to snuff out this threat: Have you ever seen a species that consists entirely of females? It’s unnatural. I’m telling you, these people aren’t human, Commander. They’re an abomination. And their continued existence should not be allowed.”
The commander gestured to the guards with his hand and ordered them to escort Captain Hilliard to the brig. When the door closed behind them he reflected on what he’d just learned, and how it might affect his decisions going forward. If there was in fact some sort of shadow command in operation, Captain Hilliard was most likely not involved. He was clearly acting on deeply held personal convictions rather than secretive orders from afar. His contacts most likely shared similar views, but they weren’t exactly a pressing concern at the moment, scattered as they were throughout the fleet. For right now, it was time to put the incident aside, and focus on leading his ship back to safety.
SPECIES 100
As if contemplating memories of her early life, dredged up by the effort to remember her name, the young girl crouched down at Karl’s side, and gazed out across the meadow, her hair wafting in the breeze, her eyes staring at a nonexistent point of focus. He gave her a moment to collect her thoughts before attempting to resume their conversation.
“It’s nice to meet you, JoEllen,” he said.
She seemed not to notice he was speaking to her.
“Do you have a family name?” he asked.
She flinched as if suddenly remembering he was there. “A what?” she asked, expressing confusion.
“A family name. Or a last name if you prefer. For instance, my family name is Millich. So my full name is Karl Millich.”
She swallowed and said, “My last name is Robinson. But I don’t have a family.”
He decided to let that pass for now. It was too early to press her on something so sensitive. “It’s a beautiful
world you have here, JoEllen. Would you happen to know the name of this planet?”
“This planet is called Valhalla,” she informed him.
“Valhalla,” he said, pausing to reflect on the answer. “That’s very interesting. Tell me something. The girls who are fighting us up in space… Do your people call them Valkyries?”
JoEllen appeared to be puzzled by the question. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a very old word,” he explained to her. “Associated with another place called Valhalla.”
“There’s another place called Valhalla?”
“Actually there are several places called Valhalla. But the one I’m referring to is just a legend. Part of an old myth handed down from long ago. There’s a good chance your planet was named for that legend. I’m just wondering what else the two places have in common.”
JoEllen seemed to cast all of her uncertainty aside in favor of curiosity. “Were there animals in the other Valhalla?” she asked.
“Animals? Yes, I suppose there were. Are there any animals on this Valhalla?”
JoEllen nodded and grinned. “There’s one of them right over there,” she said, pointing across the meadow with her hand.
Karl turned his head to look but didn’t see anything. “Where is it?” he asked. “Did I miss it?”
“No,” she insisted, “you’re looking too high. Look down in the grass.”
He let out a laugh when his eyes focused in on a little ball of fur. “Oh,” he said, “it’s only a rabbit. I guess that’s not quite what I was expecting to see.”
“What were you expecting to see?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Something a little bigger, I guess.”
“I could show you something bigger if you want,” she offered.
“Really? Like what, for instance?”
She shrugged. “What would you like to see?”
“Well,” he said, somewhat hesitantly, “this might sound a little crazy to you, but … I was kind of hoping I might see an elephant.”