by Linn Schwab
Once he got over the initial shock of stepping out through the hatch, Pogo managed to keep his fears in check as his team members pulled him across open space toward the enemy destroyer on the Lisbon’s bow. Thankfully the hull doctors — as the commander referred to them — had years of experience in EVA suits. Even with their equipment and Pogo in tow, they made the jump across the gap seem effortless. Before long they were standing on the enemy vessel, trying to decide on an entry point. Pogo suggested they try opening the rear cargo doors, but the technicians seemed convinced that would be a waste of time. There was too much stress on the hull, they insisted. The doors wouldn’t budge unless they cut their way through. Commander Ingman had introduced the men as, “Smith, Cobb, and Dixon. Three of the best hull doctors the fleet has to offer.” Smith and Cobb both had cutting torches strapped to their belts. Dixon had an implement they referred to as a spreader, which was clearly intended to push things apart by utilizing hydraulic pressure.
After having a quick look around, Cobb pointed to the tear in the side of the ship, where the Lisbon’s nose had sliced it open. “I say we go in through there,” he said. “That should get us inside the cargo hold without having to cut through the outer hull.”
Pogo glanced at the gap between the two hulls. “It looks pretty tight to me,” he said. Not only were the ships wedged tightly together, but the destroyer’s hull bristled with jagged edges which could easily tear a gash in the EVA suits.
“Not to worry,” Cobb insisted. “Dixon’s gonna open it up for us.”
As Pogo stood back and watched, Dixon moved in with the spreader and positioned it vertically between the two hulls. When he pressed a button the spreader expanded, pushing the two surfaces away from each other. The destroyer’s hull, being the weaker of the two, buckled and cracked as the opening grew wider.
“Careful now,” Smith cautioned. “We don’t want to break her loose. Right now the Lisbon is holding her nice and steady for us.”
“Got it,” Dixon said, easing off on the pressure. A few minutes later he removed the spreader. “Who’s first?” he asked.
“You’re closest,” Cobb told him.
Dixon shifted his body and pushed off against the Lisbon, pulling the spreader through the opening with him. Cobb went in next, then Pogo behind him. When his feet touched the floor, the magnets in his boots held him steady.
“Alright,” he said, “how do we get to the bridge?”
“This way,” Cobb told him, pointing to a mangled pressure door.
“Are you sure?” Pogo asked, glancing around at the wreckage. “Have you ever been inside an enemy destroyer before?”
“Not exactly,” Cobb replied. “But it shouldn’t really matter. They borrowed all of their current ship designs from us.”
“I know of one thing they didn’t borrow from us,” Pogo said.
“What’s that?” Cobb asked him.
“The cipher we’re trying to break.”
“He’s right,” Smith said as he caught up with them. “There’s no telling what kind of changes they might have made to this design. For all we know the whole ship could be wired with booby traps. We need to be careful about what we try to cut through.”
“Right,” Cobb said reaching for the torch on his belt. “But we don’t have a choice about cutting through this door.”
Commander Ingman watched from Melbourne’s bridge as Pogo and his team disappeared inside the wreck. To his left stood Captain Garrett Hutchens, commanding officer of the UES Lisbon. Captain Vance was paying close attention as well just in case there was a reason to move his ship away.
The commander couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the destroyer, or his mind off what might be learned from its capture. “This definitely has to be a first,” he said. “How the hell did you manage to pull this off?”
“It was just a fluke,” Captain Hutchens explained. “We were flying blind in that fog, just like everyone else. Just like the crew of that destroyer, Commander. Only fate was a little kinder to us than to them. We never even saw them … just felt the collision. And I doubt they even realized what plowed into them.”
“Fate can be cruel,” the commander observed. “But it can also provide us with favorable opportunities. It’s amazing to think how much can hinge one way or the other on just being in the right place at exactly the right time.”
“Or the wrong place at the wrong time,” Captain Hutchens added.
Commander Ingman responded with a solemn nod. “Quite true,” he said. “As we can plainly see.”
“Commander,” the radio operator said, “Lieutenant Amarelli just arrived at the bridge.”
“Put him on,” the commander said, gesturing toward the intercom. “Lieutenant Amarelli, what can you tell me?”
“We’re just outside the bridge right now, Commander. Smith and Cobb are cutting through the doors as we speak.”
“Have you seen any sign of the crew yet, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir. Not a one. They must all be on the bridge. To be honest, I’m really not looking forward to going in there.”
“Can’t say as I blame you. Dead bodies are always difficult to look at. Just try to stay focused on what you’re there for.”
“Yes, sir,” Pogo said, pausing for a breath. “Alright, the door is open, Commander. I’m going in now. I can already see there are bodies inside.”
“Are there any males among them?” the commander asked.
“Oh, Jesus,” Pogo mumbled, his voice heavy with dread.
“What is it? What do you see, Lieutenant?”
“Something no one should ever have to see.”
“They’re all women, I take it?”
“I’m not sure I’d call them women, Commander. Not one of them looks a day over seventeen years old.”
A hush fell over the Melbourne’s bridge as everyone turned to stare at the ruined destroyer. Commander Ingman knew he should try to say something, but all he could manage was a somber, “Very well. Carry on.”
The bridge remained quiet for a moment afterward while the crew went about their work without speaking. Commander Ingman gave Pogo a little time to recover before asking him about the state of the ship’s instrumentation.
“Lieutenant Amarelli,” he finally said, “…about that radio.”
“It looks promising, sir. All the equipment on the bridge still seems to be intact.”
“Is it still powered up?”
“No. Everything is shut down. But if we bring it back to the Melbourne with us, I’m pretty sure we can get it working again.”
“Alright. Have your team get to work on that right away. Let us know if there’s anything else you need.”
Someone stepped to the window beside Commander Ingman and stared at the enemy ship in contemplation.
“Ah, Jay,” the commander said. “I’m glad you’re here. I was just about to have Lieutenant Berens page you.”
“So it’s true,” Jay said in quiet fascination. “I thought it might just be a rumor that was spreading through the ship.”
“Lieutenant Amarelli is over there right now, trying to get his hands on a working radio. If he succeeds, this could be just the break we needed. Just imagine if we could suddenly eavesdrop on their transmissions, and find out exactly how their forces are deployed. Hell, we might even be able to speak with them, Jay.”
“If you could speak with them, what would you say, Commander?”
Surprisingly, the question threw him off balance. He looked at Jay as if he’d just been punched in the chest. What would I say? he wondered. And would they even bother to respond?
“Listen, Jay,” he said, trying to shake the question from his thoughts, “I know there was some fighter contact near the edge of that fog. Did we lose anyone back there?”
“I can’t speak for those on the Belfast, Commander, but all of our pilots made it back safely.”
“Good. That gap through the asteroid field is closing up, but we need to be ready in case the e
nemy tries to sneak through before it’s gone.”
Looking toward the rear of the bridge, Commander Ingman saw an officer standing just inside the entrance. A ship’s captain. But which one? He couldn’t remember. The face seemed familiar, but the name escaped him.
“Excuse me for a minute, Jay. Looks like I have an unexpected visitor.”
“Commander Ingman,” the newly arrived captain greeted him, “I hope you’ll pardon my intrusion. I have something I’m sure you’re going to want to see, and I thought it important I deliver it in person.”
Commander Ingman read the name on the man’s I.D. “Captain Kerwin, forgive my memory,” he said. “I know the two of us have met before. Remind which ship it is that you command?”
“The UES Hirsch, Commander.”
“Heavy cruiser?”
“Right. We’re normally assigned to sector J–eleven, but we recently got swept pretty far off course.”
“That’s not surprising, given what we’ve just been through. What have you got for me, Captain Kerwin?”
The captain handed him a storage chip. “Just before that ice made contact with my ship, our instruments intercepted a very interesting transmission.”
Commander Ingman placed the chip in a nearby console, and an image immediately popped up on the display. At first he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but then he realized he was looking at the surface of a planet. And the planet he was looking at wasn’t Earth.
“Son–of–a–gun!” he exclaimed. “He made it through! Hey Jay, come over here and take a look at this!”
Jay rushed to the console and looked down at the screen. “What is it?” he asked.
“The enemy homeworld. These are pictures from Karl’s fighter. He made it, Jay! Somehow he managed to get through their defenses!”
Though the images appeared to be sharp and clear, they would need to be analyzed before much could be learned from them.
Commander Ingman grinned as he flipped through the pictures and gave Jay a celebratory slap on the back. “What an incredible turn of events. All at once it seems like things are turning in our favor.”
“Commander,” the radio operator said, “I just received a message from Admiral Sands. The Alabama is en route to rendezvous with us, and should arrive here in less than three hours.”
Virginia awoke curled up in a fetal position, with Zoe’s archive interface clutched against her chest. The room was empty, save for herself. The others must have chosen to mourn Zoe elsewhere, and decided to give her some time alone. She couldn’t remember crawling into her bunk. Couldn’t remember walking to her room from the hangar. It was all a blur to her now except for Lisa’s voice, and the flood of tears that were streaming down her face.
Zoe’s dead.
It couldn’t be true. How could the universe continue to exist without Zoe? There must be some mistake. Directly across from her was the bunk that Zoe had slept in. And in her hands was a device that Zoe had held. She couldn’t be gone. It just didn’t make sense. She was a thread in the fabric of everything. She was every bit as real as all these things she had touched. And since they still existed, shouldn’t she as well?
Gradually denial gave way to acceptance. Virginia sat up in her bunk and stared blankly down at the archive interface, full of stories she could never read to Zoe — never share with her as they huddled together when the heroes’ fates were hanging in the balance. She considered reading them aloud anyway, on the chance that Zoe might be listening in. After all, if Samantha could somehow hear her pleas, perhaps Zoe would be able to hear her as well.
She switched the device on and attempted to read, but couldn’t see clearly through the tears in her eyes. A few moments later, Nancy came to check on her. The two of them sat side by side for a while, leaning on each other but saying not a word. Then one by one, the remaining members of the squadron came in to lend their support to her. But Suzanne didn’t come. Suzanne couldn’t come. Her new position wouldn’t allow for such things. “Don’t let go of me until I’m finished crying,” Suzanne had told her the last time they’d shared a emotional embrace.
Are you crying for Zoe, Suzanne? Virginia wondered. Is that not worthy of a momentary lapse in protocol?
No matter how many times Suzanne looked at the data, the timeline did not make sense to her. And no matter how many times she wiped her tears away, the streams from her eyes continued unabated, as if their very source was the oceans of Valhalla. Unlike the others from her squadron, she had to cry alone now. There was no soft shoulder for her to bury her face in. This is my punishment for leaving them, she convinced herself. But it isn’t their fault. I did this to myself.
She wanted to blame herself for Zoe’s death. And why not? It could easily be argued she’d left the squadron short–handed. There hadn’t been enough time for Jenny to replace her yet. If only she’d been with them, perhaps she could have saved Zoe.
But that was the insidious nature of fate. Random occurrences could absolutely drive a person crazy, causing them to second guess themselves, and over–analyze the details of tragic situations. And in perhaps the greatest irony Suzanne could imagine, it had been Zoe herself who had lectured her on this, by way of lecturing Virginia about it.
Virginia had insisted she was to blame for an enemy attack on the carrier Tempest, which resulted in the loss of 120 lives.
“Don’t you see, Zoe?” Virginia had argued. “If I hadn’t asked you to finish that practice flight with me, all of those girls might still be alive. That destroyer was obviously hiding in the wreckage field so the crew could make some emergency repairs. They were hoping we would leave so they could sneak away. But they panicked when you and I got too close to them.”
But Zoe had insistently disagreed with her, and proceeded to admonish her for blaming herself. “You can’t possibly know that for certain,” she’d argued. “Things might have turned out far worse for us if you and I hadn’t come across that destroyer when we did. Don’t waste your time agonizing over the whims of random fate. The only thing you’re going to find there is perpetual anguish.”
Suzanne took a deep breath and tried to clear her head. There was nothing she could do to help Zoe now. But there was still a war to fight, and still Sentinels to train. And she still had her duties to fulfill as a commander — including making sense of Robin’s mission report, which no matter how she looked at had a chunk of missing time.
Determined to figure out what was wrong with the timeline, she decided to try comparing the Cricket’s log to the cockpit data from Virginia’s fighter. But that only made things even more confusing. And in fact, after studying the gaps in the data, she began to suspect that some of it had been deleted. Whether intentionally or not, she couldn’t yet say. The only way to know for sure would be to question those involved. That put her in a decidedly awkward position, since all of those involved were upset over Zoe’s death at the moment.
Reluctant to issue the order directly, she reached for the intercom and called the control room. “Lieutenant Marlowe?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“I need you to do something for me. Locate ECHO 5 and Lieutenant Scot, and have them report to classroom A.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Suzanne waited a few minutes after speaking with Veronica so the others would be present when she entered the room. They were quiet when she arrived. She could see they were puzzled. “Form a line and stand at attention,” she told them.
Virginia stood at the left end of the line, with Robin and the others spaced out to her right. They were clearly beginning to feel uneasy. Suzanne felt somewhat guilty for putting them through this.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve called you here. I’ll try to make this as easy as possible for you. One of my responsibilities, now that I’m the commander of this base, is to file reports on every mission that originates from here. In looking over the data from the Cricket’s log, I’ve discovered there seems to be a gap in the ti
meline which no one has made an effort to explain to me yet.”
She walked down the line, pausing to study the girls’ reactions. Each one of them avoided eye contact with her. And each one of them also had tears in their eyes. They were clearly distressed, but she couldn’t be sure why. The tears in their eyes could very well be for Zoe.
She stopped in front Robin and observed her closely. Her lips were quivering from emotional conflict. Deciding to spare her, Suzanne moved on to Virginia.
“Lieutenant Scot,” she said, “is there any information you can share with me that might explain the missing time in these mission logs?”
Virginia glanced to her left at the younger Sentinels, then swallowed and whispered an emotional appeal. “Please don’t ask us about that, Suzanne.” It was a heartfelt request to a former companion. A desperate plea for a personal favor one could only expect from a very close friend.
Suzanne could feel herself starting to cave. It didn’t help that Robin’s entire squad was in tears. There was no way she bring herself to deny Virginia’s request so close on the heels of Zoe’s death. But she also couldn’t verbally acknowledge it, so instead she simply said, “Dismissed,” and watched as the others filed out of the room, with whatever secret they were hiding still safe for the moment.
When they were gone, she immediately headed for the spur, driven on by a burning sense of curiosity. If she couldn’t get the answers she needed from the crew, perhaps there was something she could learn from their ship. After spending countless hours reading up on destroyers, she was more familiar with their systems than she’d ever been before, and felt certain she could find a way to piece things together.
Upon boarding the Cricket, she headed for the bridge and inserted her card key in the ship’s ignition slot.
“Welcome, Commander Carillo,” the computer greeted her.
She walked to Sheri’s console as the systems powered up. “Computer, display systems console keystroke log for mission ACAP–1127.”
The requested log appeared on the monitor in front of her.