by Linn Schwab
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to catch one before.”
“You’re not a fan of frogs then, I take it?”
“I like animals with fur,” she insisted.
“Oh. I suppose I can understand that. They do tend to be more cuddly than frogs. Are you afraid to touch them?”
“I’ll get one,” she said, accepting the challenge, then stood up and slowly worked her way around the pond until she found a specimen within easy reach. Her first attempt resulted in failure as the frog leapt away from her before she could grab it. Her second and third tries also came up empty, but with each attempt she managed to hone her technique. A few minutes later she returned with a captive, unharmed yet eager to escape from her grasp.
“He doesn’t seem to like you,” Karl observed. “Apparently your charm doesn’t work on frogs.” When she held it out to him, he grabbed the frog in one hand and unfolded one of its wings with the other.
“Fascinating,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken, your ancestors first arrived here around five hundred years ago. And who knows how long it would have been after that before they finally got around to introducing frogs. Under normal circumstances, I don’t see how a mutation as complex as this could’ve developed over such a short period of time.”
“What does that mean?” JoEllen asked.
Karl released the frog and watched it fly away.
“If I’m right, it means something on this planet is driving evolution.”
GATEWAY 107
“All for naught,” J Mac said, staring out at the cloud of fog in the distance.
“What’s all for naught?” Derrick asked.
“Our mission to stabilize that station.”
Just off the Mona Lisa’s port side was the recently relocated Paradise One. They’d been ordered to stand watch until the station’s crew returned, but as of yet they’d not seen a single ship on the radar. What they had seen, though, was a spectacular light show that somehow resulted in a huge cloud of fog. And from what they’d overheard amidst the following chaos, the fleet as a whole was in complete disarray now. All contact with the admiral’s flagship had been lost, and it was still unclear who was left to take command. Most of the fleet had gone missing as well, and presumably was trapped inside the cloud.
Captain Hoile had been left in an unenviable position, with orders to remain put until receiving further notice, and orders that precluded him from sending transmissions. How long he would stay there was anybody’s guess, but J Mac was hopeful the wait was nearly over. The war is lost now, he kept telling himself. It’s time for us to pack it in and start heading back to Earth.
“Our mission was a success,” Captain Hoile insisted. “What makes you think it was all for naught?”
“All I’m saying is,” J Mac replied, “if there’s no one left for that station to feed, we would’ve been better off if we’d stayed at the shipyard long enough to have our repairs completed.”
“Perhaps,” the captain said. “But it isn’t yet clear that there’s no one left to feed. And obviously we still need to eat. I can’t see how we’d be better off if we’d allowed that station to keep drifting away.”
“Captain,” the radio operator said, “I’m receiving a transmission flagged ‘Attention Mona Lisa.’”
“What’s it say?” the captain asked.
“Priority instructions. Proceed to Gateway immediately, by order of Commander Karen Parks. Prepare to receive and transport essential personnel.”
“Gateway,” the captain said. “How far away is that?”
“Approximately six hours from here,” Derrick answered.
“Very well. Set a course for Gateway, then. And prepare to take on passengers, I guess.”
“Prepare to take on passengers? How do we do that?” J Mac asked.
Derrick snickered and said, “We get out the fancy tablecloths, of course.”
A round of laughter briefly echoed through the bridge.
“Alright,” the captain said, “this is no laughing matter. Don’t forget we’re still operating with some structural damage. We need to make sure it doesn’t jeopardize the safety of our guests. With that in mind, Derrick, I confer to you the task of creating a hazard free accommodation zone. Go below and put together a cleanup detail. I don’t want this Commander Parks to lecture me on running an untidy ship.”
With some ribbing and teasing from the other crewmembers, Derrick went below to begin his new assignment. Six hours later he returned to the bridge, just as the ship was preparing to dock.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Housekeeping,” J Mac teased him. “Did you get everything all spic–and–span down there, mate?”
“Uhg,” Derrick moaned. “What an absolute mess. Those repair crews left us with an utter shambles.”
“Captain, another message,” the radio operator said. “Clearance granted to dock at bay seven. Commander Parks is standing by and ready to come aboard.”
“Oh, joy,” the captain said. “The commander is waiting to greet me in person. There’s a pleasure I didn’t realize I would have to look forward to.”
“Well, at least she’s a woman,” Derrick consoled him. “How bad can it be?”
J Mac started laughing and said, “I don’t know. But for some reason the term ‘battle–axe’ comes to mind.”
The captain cast a mischievous smirk at J Mac. “Jeremy Mackenzie, it occurs to me now that my duties preclude me from abandoning the bridge at this time. Since you seem eager to welcome the commander aboard, do me a favor and offer her my warmest regards while you’re down there.”
Derrick laughed and gave J Mac a slap on the back. “Ha-haa! What was that crack about Mr. Housekeeping again, mate?”
With a grimace on his face, J Mac got to his feet and made his way to the ship’s elevator, braving the comments and laughter of his shipmates while dreading every moment of what was to come. “Why oh why did I have to open my big mouth,” he muttered.
Someone behind him yelled, “Give a kiss to the battle–axe for us, Mackenzie!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied, “you’re a real barrel of laughs today.”
After riding the lift down to the lower hull, he walked to the primary docking airlock and waited for the magnetic couplings to engage. A mental image of the commander formed in his mind, though it was only a crude approximation since he had no idea what she actually looked like. Short and stocky, white hair, permanent overbearing look in her eyes. That was what his thought processes told him to expect. But when the airlock opened he was at a loss for words. This can’t be her, he told himself. She looks nothing at all like an old battle–axe. He was standing face to face with a slender beauty blessed with soft dark hair and a pleasant smile. Her face was so enchanting that he scarcely even noticed the two young children she was leading by the hand.
“Commander Karen Parks,” she said, introducing herself.
“Uhh … I’m Lieutenant Mackenzie,” he answered in kind. “On behalf of the captain and crew, I welcome you aboard the Mona Lisa, Commander.”
“And where is the captain?” the commander inquired.
The last thing J Mac wanted right now was to share Commander Parks with Captain Hoile and the others. “Oh, uh … the captain is very busy on the bridge at the moment. So he asked me to come welcome you aboard in his place, and make sure you have everything you need for the trip.”
“That’s very thoughtful of him,” Commander Parks said. “I hope my crew and I won’t cause you too much trouble.”
Her use of the word ‘crew’ reminded him she wasn’t coming aboard alone, and he finally took notice of the children at her sides. “Hello,” he said, stooping down to their height. “And who do we have here?”
“The young man’s name is Tobey,” the commander told him. “And the little lady is Annamarie.”
“Well, welcome aboard to you two as well,” J Mac said. “And my apologies that we aren’t a little more prepared for such fine guests.”
He stood upright and gave the commander a questioning look. “I never realized there were children caught up in all of this. You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little stunned by this development.”
“You’re not the first one,” she informed him. “It’s not widely known, for reasons that are perhaps best left unexplained.”
“Well, we’ll certainly do our best to make them feel at home. Are there any special accommodations you’d like us to make for them?”
“No,” she said, “not right at the moment. If you could just show us to our quarters so we can be on our way… We really need to get back to our agrispheres again, to make sure the crops don’t suffer irreversible damage.”
He looked behind her and saw a long line of women, some of whom were holding young children in their arms.
“Alright,” he said, “if you’ll just follow me, I believe we have some space set aside for you in the messdeck.” He led her through the airlock and along a corridor, taking care not to walk too fast for the children. As they walked, he tried to keep a conversation going, seizing every opportunity to shower her with charm.
“So … Parks,” he said. “Isn’t that a Scottish name? I seem to recall hearing that about now and then back home where I was raised.”
She smiled at him and said, “I really wouldn’t know. The history of names is not exactly my specialty.”
“Are the wee ones Parks as well?” he inquired.
“You’re asking me if I’m their mother?” she replied.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was just curious. I didn’t stop to think that it might seem inappropriate.”
She looked at him as if suddenly seeing what he was up to, and slowly responded with a coy grin. He wasn’t sure yet how he should read her reaction, but it was clear that she didn’t seem overly offended. Nor did she hint that he should mind his own business.
“Ahh, here we are,” he said, stepping through an entrance to the messdeck. “Our luxurious and spacious dining hall, with benches aplenty and tables galore. I hope there’s enough seating for everyone here.”
Commander Parks glanced around and said, “We’ll make due. Tell the captain he can leave as soon as he’s ready.”
“Right away,” J Mac said. He walked to an intercom and asked to be patched through to the captain.
“Captain Hoile, here. How are things going so far, Lieutenant?”
“Uhh, could take a little while to get things squared away down here, sir. Commander Parks has requested we get under way as soon as possible.”
He could hear the bridge crew laughing at him in the background. Ha ha, the joke’s on them, he thought smugly. If they only knew what they were missing out on…
“Very well,” the captain said. “Inform the commander we’re getting under way now. And take all the time you need, Lieutenant. We wouldn’t want our guests to feel neglected, now would we?”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, then switched off the intercom. That should keep them out of my hair for a minute or two.
By now the benches were filling up with women, and some of the children were seated on their laps or on the tabletops. He returned to Commander Parks and said, “We’ll be pulling away shortly. Captain says I’m to make sure you get everything you need.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The ship lurched and suddenly started moving. Annamarie shrieked and grabbed hold of the commander. J Mac could see she had tears in her eyes, and stooped down to see if he could offer her some comfort.
“What’s wrong,” he asked.
Commander Parks wrapped an arm around her. “She doesn’t like the motion of the ship. It frightens her. It’s not something she’s accustomed to experiencing.”
“Ohh, I see. Is there anything we can do for her? Maybe we can find a way to take her mind off the motion?”
“Well,” the commander offered in suggestion, “are you any good at telling stories, Lieutenant? That’s something all the children seem to thoroughly enjoy.”
“Annamarie, sweetheart,” J Mac said, eager to rise to the commander’s challenge, “have you ever heard the story of Jack and the Grapevine?”
The little girl shyly shook her head.
“Well, my dear … are you ever in for a treat!”
SYMBIONTS 108
“You found something?” Commander Eldridge asked as she stepped inside the conference room. Janine and Major Richards were waiting for her there, along with one of the station’s technicians.
“We think so,” Janine said. “But this is all still very speculative.”
Commander Eldridge sat down at the conference table, directly opposite the technician, Chelsea. “Proceed,” she said.
Chelsea looked at Major Richards. “Shouldn’t Commander Carillo be here for this?”
“She’ll be informed of your findings if I decide they concern her,” Commander Eldridge said. “As a base commander with very little experience, she has enough to deal with already, Miss Mitchell. Continue.”
“Yes, Commander,” Chelsea said. She pointed to a viewscreen on the wall behind her, displaying a still image of the map room’s interior. “We were able to verify what Genevieve was doing by observing security cam footage from the map room. We were also able to backtrack her movements, and piece together clues from her archive interface. While it still isn’t clear what prompted her to look into this, what she stumbled upon is actually quite remarkable.”
“It killed her, Chelsea,” Major Richards reminded her. “Remarkable is hardly the word I’d use to describe it.”
“Sorry,” Chelsea said. “I didn’t mean…”
“Do we know why it killed her?” Commander Eldridge interrupted.
“I’m not sure that we do,” Chelsea said. “But I think we can hazard a guess. It appears this device is a conduit for some sort of signal which none of our instruments are able to detect. But as you discovered yourself, Commander, our bodies seem subject to its effects. Or, perhaps to be more precise, the signal can influence something inside us.”
“Something inside us?”
“She means the virus,” Janine said. “Chelsea, play back the video footage from the map room.”
Chelsea pressed a button and turned toward the viewscreen. “Here’s the moment leading up to Genevieve’s death. As you can see she’s standing in the center of the lens, and looking very closely at her scanning device. At this point you can see a faint glow around her that wasn’t present in earlier camera footage.”
“And this glow is?” the commander asked.
“We think it’s the virus being extracted from her body.”
Commander Eldridge immediately turned to Major Richards.
“This is news to me,” the major said. “How did you two arrive at this conclusion?”
“The clues are all here,” Janine insisted, gesturing first toward the viewscreen, and then to a scanner on the table in front of her. “Before Genevieve devised this experiment that ultimately resulted in her own death, she discovered the virus is bioluminescent. We were able to find evidence of this in her scanner.”
The major’s face suddenly went pale.
“Major?” Commander Eldridge asked.
“I don’t know. It seems hard to believe a trait like bioluminescence could have gone overlooked for so long.”
“Maybe it hasn’t, Major,” Janine said. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Her light has gone out’ in reference to a Sentinel who has recently perished?”
“Well, yes. I’m sure we all have. But I never would have thought of it in that context. Now that you mention it though, when you look at a Sentinel’s corpse, it does seem that their bodies have lost a certain luster.”
Her eyes suddenly turned to the skin of her forearm, and a melancholy smile appeared on her face. “When Dave was here, he put his arm next to mine and asked me why my skin seemed so much more radiant than his. Perhaps he was more aware of it than we are since we’ve lived with the effect our entire lives.”
&nbs
p; “Yes,” Janine said, “and just before Genevieve collapsed where she was standing, she pointed the scanner at her own body and somehow realized she might be in trouble. Turns out this lens acts as a sort of magnet for the virus, and she kicked it into overdrive by turning up the voltage. At some point the breakers overloaded and tripped. But by then it was already too late for her.”
“So wait a minute,” Commander Eldridge said, “you’re saying it just sucked the virus right out of her?”
“And her life along with it, apparently.”
“Why?” the commander asked. “Why would that kill her? Her body showed no signs of tissue damage, right?”
Major Richards looked at the image of Genevieve lying motionless at the center of the lens. “It could be that we’ve developed a symbiotic relationship, and can no longer function without the virus in our system.”
“So a cure would kill us?”
“Perhaps,” the major said. “We’d have to look into it more closely to be certain. But if you’re thinking this lens could be the answer to our problems, I have to say that seems highly unlikely to me. I doubt it could clear the virus from a person’s body completely. And even if it could, it would only be temporary, unless we could somehow cleanse our atmosphere of it as well.”
The commander drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “The thought had crossed my mind,” she admitted. “What about the signal this thing is emitting? Have we learned any more about that yet?”
“My guess is it’s coming from the planet’s surface,” Chelsea said. “Which is interesting, because unlike our radar, it seems to pass through the fog like it isn’t even there.”
“But what is its purpose?” the commander asked her.
“That I don’t know. But I suspect it may be broadcasting in such a way as to extend some sort of field or bubble around Valhalla.”
“And what makes you suspect that? Given that your instruments can’t detect this signal.”
“Well, when the idea first occurred to me, I realized there would be a huge gap in coverage. Basically, the signal couldn’t reach the far side of Valhalla because the planet itself is in the way. So the only way to ensure there aren’t any gaps is to transmit simultaneously from opposite sides of the planet. And when I checked the coordinates of other Sentinel stations, I found this…”