by Linn Schwab
Oh, no, she fretted, I’ve lost them already. She realized the chances of finding them again were slim. With her options limited, she switched on her scanners and adjusted them to locate metallic surfaces. The results indicated two contacts nearby: one to her rear, and another to her right. Reasoning that the source to her rear should be the Lily Pad, she altered her course to move in on the other.
As she weaved her way through the scattered rocks, she cast an occasional glance at her scanner to make certain she was still closing in on her target. In the final seconds before making visual contact, she switched the scanner off in an effort to mask her approach. Through the fog, she caught a glimpse of the object she was tracking. It turned out not to be what she was expecting. Rather than a pair of enemy cruisers, what she found was a single Sentinel destroyer — a ship that had the weaponry to blast through heavy armor. Exactly what was needed to take out those gunships.
After pulling alongside it she read the ship’s name and attempted to establish contact with its crew. “Cricket, this is Lieutenant Virginia Scot. I’m in need of your assistance. Please respond.”
“Virginia, is that you?” she heard Mindy say.
In an instant, she plunged straight from elation to despair. Her heart suddenly felt like it was stuck in her throat. This can’t be happening, she told herself. It can’t be them. Why would they be out here?
“Virginia, are we glad to see you!” Robin said. “Can you help us find our way back to Volaris?”
For a moment, she struggled to find her voice. Her plan to attack those heavy cruisers had to be completely abandoned now. She was not about to put Robin’s crew at greater risk. Things were already bad enough for them at the moment without the added danger of being fired upon.
“What are you girls doing out here?” she asked. “Please tell me this wasn’t Suzanne’s idea!”
“Commander Eldridge sent us out to look for something. She asked us to scan for a hidden base. I don’t think she was expecting this cloud.”
An idea suddenly came to Virginia. One that involved far less risk to Robin’s crew than asking them to engage in combat. “Listen, Robin, I need your help. A pair of enemy ships just passed by here. I need you to help me locate them.”
Robin glanced around at her crew in unease. The looks on their faces expressed what they were feeling. Just knowing there were enemy ships nearby was enough to send all of their heart rates soaring. She swallowed and asked, “What do you want us to do?”
Sheri immediately reached for her controls.
“The first thing I need you to do,” Virginia said, “is adjust your course twenty–three degrees to starboard.”
“Twenty–three degrees to starboard,” Robin ordered. Caroline complied. “What next?” Robin asked.
“Set your scanner to search for metallic surfaces and continue to follow this heading for a while. I’m gonna fly out to the edge of your range. With both of us searching we can sweep a larger area. Make sure you let me know if you find anything. And DO NOT attempt to engage them in combat. Just keep them at the edge of your range if you can.”
“Understood,” Robin replied. She looked out through the Cricket’s starboard windows and watched Virginia’s fighter speed away. “Anything on the scanners yet?” she asked.
Michelle and Sheri both shook their heads. “Just Virginia’s fighter,” Sheri said as she watched a blip race across her screen.
A few moments later, they heard Virginia’s voice. “Caroline, is it safe to increase your speed a little?”
Caroline looked to Robin for approval.
“Do it,” Robin said. “But be careful.”
The Cricket’s engines let out a faint growl, and the rocks outside the windows flew by a little faster.
“That’s good,” Virginia said. “Just keep moving forward.” After that, the intercom fell silent for a while.
Robin’s crew remained on the edge of their seats, listening to the audible report of the scanner. Every few seconds, they heard a single ping, informing them Virginia was still within range.
Minutes rolled by with no sign of the enemy. Occasionally Virginia would fall off the scanner as she veered around a dense concentration of rocks. But she was never out of contact for more than thirty seconds, and then the familiar pings would return.
After more than an hour had passed, Robin felt as if some of the tension was receding. A lull was gradually settling in as the prospects of encountering the enemy seemed to fade. When a sudden burst of static assaulted her ears, she instructed Mindy to switch off the intercom and monitor radio calls through her headset. Moments later, the scanner fell silent again. Virginia’s fighter ceased to register a ping.
With anxious ears the girls listened to the scanner, expecting the pings to resume as before. Thirty seconds passed. Then sixty. Then ninety. Robin turned to Mindy and said, “Call her!”
“Virginia, this is the Cricket,” Mindy said.
Before she could continue, the scanner broke its silence. But this time it filled the girls’ hearts with terror: PING–PING…
Dead silence, then again: PING–PING…
“Two contacts!” Sheri yelled. “Twelve kilometers out!”
“Katrina, zoom in on those contacts!” Robin ordered. She ran to Sheri’s side and said, “Sentinel I.D?”
Sheri shook her head.
Katrina said, “Got ‘em. Two ships in enemy camouflage scheme.”
Robin looked up at the surveillance scope screen as the camera continued to zoom in on the ships. A single shudder passed through her body when she realized both of them were heavy cruisers. The same class of ship she’d encountered once before, when her efforts had resulted in near catastrophe.
“Virginia, if you can hear me, we found them,” Mindy said. She looked at Robin and shook her head to inform her there was no response from Virginia.
“They’re changing course,” Sheri announced. “They must have detected the signal from our scanner.”
As Robin watched the two blips on the screen, they quickly moved out of range, and the scanner once again fell silent.
“Thirty degrees to port,” Robin ordered. “We have to keep them in scanner range.”
As Caroline steered leftward, the blips reappeared. Within seconds, both of them changed course again, to a heading that concealed them from the Cricket’s scanner.
“Thirty degrees to starboard,” Robin ordered, determined not to lose track of them.
Once again the blips reappeared for a moment before veering off on a different heading.
“They’re trying to stay hidden from our scanner,” Sheri said. “Maybe we can use that to our advantage. If we can figure out where they’re trying to go, maybe we can push them in the opposite direction.”
Robin looked out through the starboard windows. In the distance was a vast expanse of fog which she assumed was concealing Valhalla from her. “That’s where they’re trying to get to,” she said. “We need to turn them away from Valhalla. Push them back into enemy space.”
She looked at the scanner and selected a heading she was certain would reveal the ships’ whereabouts again. “Any word from Virginia yet?” she asked.
Mindy shook her head. “There’s a lot of interference right now. I can’t hear anything but static.”
“Alright,” Robin said. “Let’s see if we can find them. Fifteen degrees to port, Caroline.”
As the Cricket swung left, the scanner pinged once, then filled the girls’ ears with a deafening screech. Sheri reached for the controls, but the screen went blank, and the screech died down to a momentary fizzle.
“What happened?” Robin demanded. Her ears were ringing.
“The external array malfunctioned,” Sheri said. “It’s gonna take me a minute to bring it back online.”
“Reduce speed,” Robin ordered. “We’ll have to wait for her to fix it. I don’t want to risk getting too close to those cruisers.”
The girls held their breath as Sheri
worked on the scanner. In less than a minute she had it up and running.
“Is it working?” Robin asked. “I don’t hear anything.”
“They might have slipped out of range again,” Sheri said. “If we want to be sure it’s functioning correctly, we may have to get close enough to make visual contact.”
Robin looked out through the forward windows. The enemy ships were still hiding out there, somewhere amidst the remains of Pangea. If she pressed onward, she risked falling prey to an ambush. But if she didn’t, the cruisers might slip away from her and wreak untold havoc on Sentinel forces. A difficult decision. She wavered for a moment, then ordered Caroline to proceed straight ahead.
“We can’t let them sneak around us,” she said. “We have to keep them away from Valhalla.”
As the Cricket crept forward through the labyrinth of rocks, the girls kept watch for anything that might look suspicious. They were all well aware that at any moment, they could stray into the sights of an enemy turret and take fire before they even had a chance to react. And considering the armament of heavy cruisers, just one direct hit could be the end of them. None of them needed to be reminded what a single glancing blow had done to the Wallaby. It wasn’t just Sheri that bore the scars from that attack. It was deeply etched in all of their memories.
For a while the bridge remained painfully quiet. The girls could almost hear each other breathing through the stillness. Then without warning, Katrina flinched and grabbed her headset. “Robin,” she insisted, “there’s a friendly out here!”
“She’s right!” Sheri said after checking her instruments. “Someone just scanned our I.D.”
Mindy gasped and suddenly reached for her throat, then started rapidly fanning her face with both hands.
“Mindy, are you alright?” Robin asked.
Too stunned to force any words from her mouth, Mindy reached for a switch on her console, and a voice poured out of the Cricket’s intercom:
“Attention, fellow Sentinel vessel. This is the battleship, CVS Triton. If you can hear me, please respond.”
The girls all looked at each other in surprise, their jaws slung open in shock and disbelief. The voice they’d just heard was unmistakably male. Seconds later, they heard the same voice call out to them again:
“Attention, fellow Sentinel vessel. This is the battleship, CVS Triton. If you can hear me, please respond.”
“Mindy, tell them to stand by,” Robin ordered as she struggled to pull her wits together. Could this be for real? Or was it some kind of trick? She knew she had to find out for sure, but her thoughts were a jumbled mess at the moment.
The bridge of the Triton was standing room only, with the overflow crowd spilling into the adjacent corridor. The door was propped open so everyone could listen in. With bated breath and anxious ears, they awaited a response as if carrying a lifetime of nervous anticipation. The radio operator was the only person seated. His face was awash in perspiration. Crowded in around him, shoulder to shoulder, was an audience hoping desperately to hear a friendly voice — men and women, boys and girls, of all different ages, dressed in uniforms fashioned from undyed fabric. When the words, “Stand by, Triton,” came over the loudspeakers, the crowd erupted in a joyful cheer of celebration.
Robin’s heart was pounding wildly in her chest as she struggled to determine what she should do. “Have any of you heard of the Triton?” she asked. The other girls shook their heads in response. “Sheri,” she said, “see if there’s a listing in the Cricket’s database.”
Sheri entered the name in her console. “CVS Triton,” she confirmed, reading from the listing. “Amazon–class battleship. Last reported as missing in action…” She slowly turned around in her chair to face Robin. “…one hundred and eleven years ago!”
Michelle leapt to her feet in excitement. “I told you, Robin!” she shouted. “I knew the stories were true! I knew it!”
“Remember what we talked about,” Robin cautioned her.
“I remember,” Michelle said with a sigh of dejection, and sat back down in her chair to mope.
“Mindy, switch the cabin microphone on,” Robin said. It was time to have a talk with someone on the Triton.
“Shh–shh–shh–shhhhh!” Connor admonished the crowd. “Everyone be quiet! I can’t hear a thing!”
Just as the crowd noise died down to a murmur, a female voice broke in over the speakers:
“Triton, this is Captain Robin Starling, of the Sentinel destroyer, CVS Cricket. Who is your commanding officer, please?”
Still seated in front of the communications console, Connor looked over his shoulder at Gunther, and gestured for him to step closer to the microphone. “That’s you,” he said. “Talk to her, Gunther. You’re the closest thing to an officer we’ve got.”
Nervous and uncertain, Gunther took a deep breath and said, “Captain Starling, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. My name is Gunther Lowell. It’s a bit of a long story I’m afraid, but we don’t have any true officers on board. I’ve been elected to serve as acting captain. You’re welcome to address me as such if you deem it appropriate.”
“Understood,” Robin said. “We can talk about that later. Right now we have something more important to discuss.”
Connor carefully put his hand overtop of the microphone. “Is it just me, or does she sound a little young?” he whispered.
Gunther nodded. “That first voice we heard sounded pretty young as well. Maybe it has something to do with their equipment.” He gestured for Connor to pull his hand away. “Go ahead, Captain Starling. I’m ready when you are.”
“Captain,” Robin said, “you may be in danger. We’ve been chasing a pair of heavy cruisers, and they could still be in this immediate vicinity. Are your weapons systems operational?”
A gasp of concern rippled through the crowd on the bridge. Gunther exchanged a worried look with Connor. “Uh, that would be a negative,” he said to Robin. “Our weapons are currently out of commission.”
“Robin!” Mindy whispered insistently. When Robin turned to look at her, she pointed at her headset and said, “Virginia!”
Robin held a finger up and nodded at Mindy, signaling her to hold on for a moment. “Understood,” she said to Gunther. Before she had a chance to finish speaking, Katrina suddenly cut her off:
“There they are!” she said, pointing through the forward windows.
Robin strained her eyes to peer into the distance and could just see the outline of a battleship approaching. She quickly issued some instructions to Gunther. “Captain, I need you to continue on your current heading. I advise you to switch off all of your scanners and maintain radio silence for now. We’ll be pulling alongside you in just a few minutes. I’ll be in contact with you again shortly.” She reached for Mindy’s headset and said, “Virginia, where are you? Our scanner isn’t working right now.”
“I’m about twenty kilometers from your present position. Have you found any sign of those cruisers yet?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to explain this, Virginia, but I need you to join up with us right away. There’s something that … well … you’re not going to believe this. Just get here as fast as you can. Cricket out.”
She handed the headset back to Mindy and walked forward to stand at Caroline’s side. The Triton continued its slow advance.
“Here they come,” Caroline said. “What do you want me to do, Robin?”
“Establish a parallel course,” she said. “Fifty meters off their starboard bow. Our mission just changed,” she informed her crew. “Our first priority now is to protect that ship.”
As Caroline swung the Cricket around, Robin moved to the port side windows to get a closer look at the Triton’s hull. The bow of the ship seemed relatively clean, but the stern showed definite signs of battle damage.
“One of their engines is dead,” Sheri said. “The other three look okay from here.”
“If that really is the Triton,” Phoebe said, “how did the
y manage to survive for so long?”
“You’re right,” Robin said. “That’s a very good question.” She signaled Mindy to connect her again. “Captain, Lowell, can you still hear me?” she asked.
“I’m standing by, awaiting your instructions,” he replied.
“I need to ask you something, Captain. How many people are on board the Triton?”
“Twelve hundred, approximately. Men, women, and children. Why do you ask?”
“According to our records,” Robin said, “your ship has been missing for more than a century. I’d like to know how you managed to survive for so long. That’s a long time for anyone to live on a battleship.”
“Actually, we haven’t been living on the Triton. Most of us were born on the David Livingstone.”
Robin gasped and said, “You found the ark?! Where is it?” she insisted. “Did you bring it with you?”
“The Triton’s original crew found it,” Gunther explained. “They were our ancestors. It’s in orbit around one of the outer planets. A little worse for wear, but still operational.”
“Here comes Virginia,” Mindy whispered to Robin.
“Hang on for just a minute, Captain Lowell,” Robin said. “There’s someone I’d like you to introduce yourself to.”
The instant Virginia laid eyes on the battleship, the first thing she felt was a sense of relief. “Oh, good!” she said as she approached the Cricket. “You found us some help! Nice work, girls! Now we’ve got the edge on those heavy cruisers.”
“Umm, Virginia,” Robin said, “that’s not exactly what’s going on here.”
“What do you mean?” Virginia asked.
“Captain Lowell,” Robin said, “would you say hello to Lieutenant Scot, please.”
“This is Captain Lowell, of the CVS Triton. It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you, Lieutenant.”
Struck speechless when she heard Captain Lowell’s voice, Virginia struggled to collect her thoughts. A man in charge of a Sentinel ship? How could that be? Was it a trick? Could the earthlings have captured a Sentinel dreadnaught?