Starlight Cavalry (Sentinels Saga Book 4)

by Linn Schwab

  “It doesn’t appear to be locked,” he said. “Are you noticing any discomfort yet?”

  She shook her head and followed him inside. A second pair of glass doors blocked their way. He pushed on one. It swung open for him, revealing a large central chamber with polished stone floors and scattered banks of seating. The layout looked somewhat familiar to him. It reminded him of a hospital waiting room.

  “I think this was some kind of medical clinic,” he said. There were doorways in both of the chamber’s side walls, which no doubt led to examination rooms, physicians’ offices and the like. On the wall to his left was a receptionist window, and a sculpted relief depicting a mother and infant. “Yes,” he said, immediately making the connection. “Maternity clinic. This is where babies used to be born.”

  JoEllen clasped her hands in front of her chest and studied her surroundings with muted apprehension.

  “What’s wrong?” Karl asked her. She didn’t answer, but he could tell she was feeling out of place for some reason. He watched her for a moment, trying to guess what she was thinking, and then suddenly it all became clear to him. “Sentinels aren’t born,” he remembered her saying. No wonder she feels uncomfortable, he realized. What took place here must seem alien to her. Either that or it makes her feel inferior. “Ohh,” he said. “I’m sorry, JoEllen. It didn’t even occur to me…”

  She stopped in front of the relief on the wall and stared at it as if it held some mystifying meaning.

  Karl walked over and stood by her side in support. “Try not to let this bother you,” he said. “From what I’ve seen, you’re every bit as human as those of us who were born. More so than many I’ve met, I might add. Just being born doesn’t seem to be enough in some cases to instill the finer qualities of humanity.”

  He left her alone with her thoughts for a while and returned to the center of the waiting room. Overhead was a circular opening which looked up through the center of the fabric roof structure. Though most of it had torn and blown away over time, there were sections still dangling from the metal framework, and a few scattered pieces that had fallen to the floor. He picked up a scrap and examined the texture. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it. But when he looked up again it all fell into place.

  “Air conditioning.”

  “What?” JoEllen said.

  “These peaks are part of a passive cooling system. I’m guessing the fabric must have been sprayed down with water. Then when the water evaporated, cool air would flow down into the lobby. It’s a clever solution. And it suggests the people who built this community were concerned about reducing energy use. That could mean they were reliant on renewable sources which don’t produce electricity in great abundance.”

  “Is that bad?” JoEllen asked.

  “Not for our purposes. If they were using a combustion based system to produce electricity, then we’ll need to locate a suitable fuel source to get it up and running again. That could pose a very big problem for us, depending on what type of fuel is required. But, if they were using something like wind or solar, that could make our task much easier.”

  He walked to one of the interior walls and fiddled with some switches on a lighting panel. As expected, nothing appeared to happen.

  “Well, wherever this building got its power from, it doesn’t seem to be functioning right now. Let’s go see if we have better luck somewhere else.”

  They left the maternity clinic they same way they’d entered and approached another building lying just to the east. It was similar both in size and design to the first, and like all of the buildings Karl could see from the marketplace, it was elevated to sit well above ground level. As he climbed the front steps, he caught a brief glimpse of the ocean off to his left. Suddenly one thing made sense to him.

  “Looks like they were worried about storm surge,” he said. “That’s why these buildings all sit on raised terraces.” He found the glass entry doors to be unlocked, and once again JoEllen followed him inside.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  He glanced around the interior searching for clues. It looked like the office of an engineering firm, with a circular audience hall directly at its center. A sign on one wall read:

  GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

  “I think this was a meeting place for scientists,” he said. After testing various objects such as desk lamps and intercoms, he determined the power was out here as well.

  “No luck,” he said. “Shall we try one more?”

  After leaving the building, they walked further east. In the distance Karl spotted an isolated structure that was much too small to be an office building.

  “Let’s have a closer look at that one,” he said. “It looks like some kind of utility shed.”

  The smallish structure had stone block walls and a metal roof with a modest slope. To one side was a bank of solar panels that were heavily shaded by tropical foliage.

  “Perfect!” Karl declared. “It appears to have its own dedicated power supply.”

  JoEllen eyed the little building with curiosity. “What is it?” she asked.

  Karl began pulling branches away from the solar panels. “It’s a pumping station,” he explained. “Probably used to pump water out of low lying areas. If these plants hadn’t grown up and blocked the solar panels, there’s a chance it still might have been powered up when we found it.”

  After clearing all the foliage he could reach on the ground, he climbed up on top of the structure’s roof and started tugging and tearing at some dangling palm fronds.

  “Are you feeling anything yet?” he asked JoEllen.

  She glanced at a door on one side of the building. “Don’t we have to go inside?”

  “Well, if I’m right about this…”

  Before he could finish, she reached for her forehead and scampered away from the pumping station.

  “Guess I was right,” he mumbled to himself, then climbed down from the roof and hurried after her.

  He found her sitting in the grass about thirty meters away from the station. She was shaking, but otherwise appeared unharmed.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I should have been more cautious. I didn’t realize it would affect you like that so quickly. Does it hit you right away when you sneak inside the academy buildings?”

  “No. I’m usually inside a few minutes before it starts to hurt.”

  “Hmm. Maybe those panels started working again before I even climbed up on the roof. The good news is, I think we’re closer to understanding what’s giving you these headaches.”

  Behind him something let out a mechanical clunk, followed by a steady thrumming noise.

  “What’s that?” JoEllen asked.

  “Sounds like the pumps just kicked on,” Karl said. “They may have been stuck after sitting still for so long. I’m a little surprised they still work at all.”

  After allowing JoEllen a few minutes to recover, he asked her if she was ready to resume the experiment. “I’d like to find out just how close you can get before the electromagnetic field starts to affect you.”

  When she was ready, they advanced toward the station in five meter increments, then paused a few moments to test her tolerance. At a distance of approximately eight meters from the station, she raised her hands up and was forced to pull back.

  “Alright,” Karl said, “here’s our line in the sand.” He used his right heel to leave a mark on the ground. “I don’t want you to step beyond this mark, but I’d like to know what you feel as you get closer to it.”

  JoEllen nodded and inched her way forward.

  “When you start to feel this discomfort,” Karl said, “does it hit you all at once, or does it come up gradually?”

  She stopped and looked at him in confusion.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The voices,” she said. “They’re getting louder.” She mustered the courage to take another step, then grabbed her head and pulled back again.

  “What happened?” Karl asked. />
  “They got really loud. So loud it made my head start to hurt.”

  “Did it feel like the same pain you experienced before?”

  “Yes,” she insisted. “Exactly the same.”

  “So now we know what’s causing it,” Karl said. “I suppose the next step is to figure out why.” In the distance he heard a faint stuttering sound. “Okay now, what was that noise?” he asked.

  JoEllen gasped and turned toward the east. An instant later she was running toward the ocean, bounding over obstacles like a gazelle until she disappeared completely from Karl’s sight. When he caught up with her again, she was chest deep in the surf, with dolphins frolicking all around her. Enchanted, he sat down on the sandy beach and watched her play with her aquatic companions.

  “Old friends of yours?” he asked when she emerged from the water, too tired to continue the encounter any longer.

  “I’ve only seen dolphins once before,” she told him. “And that was a long time ago, at ECHO academy.”

  “Curious,” he said, “that they would show up here right now. And call out to you like that when they couldn’t even see you. I suppose they could’ve detected the vibrations from those drainage pumps, and decided to come see what was making all that noise..”

  JoEllen sat down on the sand beside him and watched the dolphins beckon to her from the shallows. “You think they’re the voices in my head,” she observed, after a quiet moment of thought.

  He grinned at her and said, “What do you think?”

  She gazed at the dolphins and focused her attention. “I don’t know. What makes you think it might be them?”

  “Besides the fact that they just happened to show up here right now?”

  “I thought you said they came here because of those pumps.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps not. From the way they kept bobbing up in front of you out there, I got the impression they were trying to tell you something. Did you get any sense of that at all from them?”

  She shook her head. “I think they just like being around people.”

  “Well, they certainly seem to like you,” Karl said. “But there’s something I noticed earlier that makes me wonder if there might be more to it than that. The first time you mentioned these voices to me, you happened to be staring out over the ocean, almost like you were in a trance. Do you get a sense that these voices come from the ocean?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. “I think so,” she said. “But I’m not really sure.”

  “So it could be them.”

  She shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Let me tell you what I think is going on here, JoEllen. Someone on this planet is watching out for you. That much I’m absolutely certain of. Maybe they’re trying to communicate with you, or maybe they just feel comforted by your presence. But electromagnetic fields somehow hide you from them, and they get upset when they lose contact with you. That’s why the voices in your head grow louder. Like a lost baby animal crying out for its mother.”

  JoEllen didn’t seem convinced. “What makes you think someone is watching out for me?”

  “Because it rained last night, and you slept right through it. And the storm split up and went around us anyway.”

  She seemed completely surprised to hear this. Her eyes displayed a deep state of confusion. “Who could it be?” she wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Karl said. “But I think we may have a way to find out if it’s the dolphins, assuming they stick around a while longer.”

  He stood up and led JoEllen to the top of a sand dune, then pointed her toward the pumping station.

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on your friends,” he said, “to see if their behavior changes when your head starts to hurt.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, then headed back toward the station.

  He watched her endure several seconds of pain, but the dolphins seemed oblivious to her distress.

  “Well?” she asked when she rejoined him on the dune.

  “I think we can rule out the dolphins,” he informed her. “They seemed perfectly at ease while you were wincing in pain. So for now I guess the voices remain a mystery.”

  JoEllen seemed eager to find the answer. “Is there anything else we can try?” she asked.

  “I’ll have to do some more thinking on that. In the meantime, I’d like to look around this village some more. Maybe we’ll get some insight on what happened to these people. It doesn’t look to me like this community was slowly abandoned over time. Everything I’ve seen here seems to suggest they just up and left all at once.”

  He allowed her ample time to comment on his observation, but if she had any idea what had happened here, she was intent on keeping it to herself for now. Either that or she was still dwelling on the question of who the voices in her head might belong to.

  “If you like, you can stay here with the dolphins,” he offered. “I’ll come back and let you know if I find anything.”

  “What are you hoping to find?” she asked.

  “So far all we’ve seen are public buildings. I’d like to find out where these people lived. What their homes looked like. Where they slept at night.”

  JoEllen quickly considered his offer, then said, “I want to see that too.”

  They left the beach and headed back to the marketplace, then turned south and ventured further into the trees. Before long they found a cluster of smaller buildings which looked to Karl like single family dwellings. Like their larger public counterparts, they were built on elevated terraces to give them some protection from ocean storm swells. Their designs were straight out of a modernist’s vision, with cantilevered decks and walls of glass looking out over lush green tropical foliage.

  “Beautiful,” Karl said. “These are absolutely gorgeous. It must have been a truly wonderful experience to live here.” He noticed there were no roadways, no vehicles, no garages. No signs of any form of mass transportation. “Everything they needed must have been within walking distance. That sure would eliminate a lot of problems. No road construction, no one way streets. No struggling to find a parking space.”

  JoEllen seemed puzzled by some of the words he was using.

  He laughed and said, “There’s something to be said for simplicity. Let’s see if we can get inside one of these.”

  They walked toward the front of the nearest dwelling and climbed up a series of organic shaped terraces which led to what appeared to be the main entry. Karl tried the door and found it unlocked. He opened it cautiously and stepped inside, with JoEllen following right on his heels. The foyer opened into a family room, with a kitchen and dining area at one end, complete with appliances and cooking utensils. Aside from the presence of a few dead houseplants, it almost looked like the owners could be out for a stroll, and might walk in the door at any moment. Furnishings were still clean and tidily arranged, as if they hadn’t been touched since the residents had last seen them.

  Family portraits on the walls showed a man and a woman, with three young children — two girls and a boy. Though their faces gave the home a sense of living history, their joyful smiles couldn’t mask the fact that something tragic must have happened here.

  “They left everything,” Karl said. “Even photographs. It’s like they completely abandoned their past.” He ventured a few steps into the kitchen and discovered there were unwashed dishes in the sink, and containers of cooking ingredients on the shelves. A child’s plastic toy lay on the countertop, and clinging to the refrigerator doors were several crude drawings in colorful crayon. He reached for one of the drawings and let out a chuckle. “Some things never change, it seems.”

  JoEllen stared at the colorful scribbles, apparently confused by their prominent display. “These drawings aren’t very good,” she insisted.

  Karl grinned and explained, “To a loving parent these are priceless works of art, conceived and brought to life by an adorable child.”

  For a moment she appeared to be transf
ixed by the drawings — another childhood rite of passage that had been denied to her. Once again Karl found himself feeling sorry for her. How much deprivation must one young girl be made to suffer?

  “Come on,” he said, giving her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. “It doesn’t look like we’re going to find any answers here.”

  They stepped back outside and took care to pull the door closed behind them, sealing in the memories of those that had lived here long ago. With the sun beginning to sink low in the sky, they wandered back to the marketplace and stopped to rest for a moment beside a decorative pond. Though the water in the pond seemed perfectly clear, the bottom of the reservoir was mucky and brown, suggesting it hadn’t been cleaned in ages. Algae clung to the concrete perimeter walls, giving them a greenish hue in places. Amidst some tall weeds sticking out of the water, Karl noticed the flitting of colorful insects.

  “Dragonflies,” he said, pointing them out to JoEllen. “When I was a kid, I used to love watching them. It’s fascinating how they can hover in one place like that, staying perfectly still except for their wings.” As he watched one of the dragonflies showcase this ability, a frog suddenly leapt from the edge of the pond with its stomach intent on a dragonfly snack. The insect deftly darted aside, but the frog changed direction right in mid air and reeled its prey in with a flick of its tongue, then casually fluttered back to its resting place.

  “Umm…” Karl said to JoEllen, “did that frog just sprout wings and fly?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, as if it was quite normal.

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, perplexed by his expression.

  “Where I come from, frogs do not have wings.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Positive,” he said. “Do all frogs here on Valhalla have wings?”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure. But some of them do.”

  “Apparently so. Do you suppose you could catch one of them for me? I’d like to examine one a little closer up.”