by Linn Schwab
Caroline nodded and grabbed the flight controls, giving a quick test to see how the ship responded to her inputs. Robin bent down and whispered to her. “How do you feel about this, Caroline?”
Surveying the rocks out in front of the ship, Caroline took a deep breath and nodded. “I think I can do this. But which direction do you want me to go?”
“Just pick a clear path,” Robin said. “But try to keep us as close to the same heading as possible. Don’t change direction unless you absolutely have to.”
“Okay, I’ll do my best. Here we go.” She eased the flight controls to the left, guiding the destroyer past a cluster of rocks. The Wallaby’s movements were fluid and smooth. Caroline smiled and let out a sigh. Controlling the ship would not be a problem for her, as long as the rocks remained far enough apart.
Virginia stood by the windows in the lounge, gazing out in the general direction of Pangea. On the inner surfaces of the windows, she could see the reflections of the other girls behind her. Some were at the tables, some were on the floor, some were leaning against the inner wall. Four fighter squadrons and three training squads — all of them gathered together in silence, waiting anxiously for news of the missing destroyer.
The Calypso drifted slowly along, skirting the outer edge of Pangea. Repeated attempts to radio the Wallaby had so far yielded no reply, and repeated attempts at persuading Delia had failed to convince her to enter the debris field.
The ship’s bridge remained uncomfortably quiet as her crew scanned the area outside with their eyes. The thought of such a young squad perishing in space left their hearts heavy with sorrow and dread.
“I have an idea!” Jennifer announced. “We could try to capture images of some of the rocks to use as a guide to find our way out. Kind of like marking a trail.” She looked at each of the other girls, anxious to see what their reactions would be.
Delia frowned and shook her head. “Every last one of those rocks is moving. It’s an interesting plan, but it’s just too risky.”
Jennifer sighed in frustration. “There has to be something we can do.”
“What about our rockets?” Wendy suggested. “They have beacons in them. We could activate the beacons and set them out through the rear hatch. Maybe we could make a trail that way.”
Delia looked at her in silence. The other girls remained quietly hopeful. It appeared as though she was considering Wendy’s plan. Perhaps a rescue attempt was still possible.
The Wallaby moved forward at a steady pace, her crew still sitting at their respective positions. Their eyes remained fixed on the rocks outside, keeping track of their positions until they passed safely by the windows. The proximity alert had been deactivated, having been deemed an unnecessary distraction by Robin. With so many obstacles passing close to the ship, the warning chime had become a constant annoyance. The girls were now relying on their own observations to alert them if a collision seemed imminent.
Mindy suddenly flinched and reached for her ear. She listened intently into her headset.
“What is it?” Robin asked her. “Do you hear something?”
Mindy shook her head in uncertainty. “I thought I did. Just for a second, I thought I heard a call from another ship.”
“Look!” Phoebe shouted, pointing excitedly. “A ship! I can see another ship out there!”
The others looked in the direction she was pointing, peering between the rocks to catch a glimpse of salvation. The girls cheered in relief when they saw the destroyer, hovering not too far off in the distance, decked out in glorious Sentinel gray.
“You see,” Robin said, “I told you they’d find us. Caroline, try to get us in closer. Mindy, see if you can contact them.”
Mindy leaned forward and reached for the transmitter. “Hello, hello,” she called, “this is the Wallaby. Can anybody hear me? Over.” She waited. There was no response. She tried again. “Hello, hello. This is the Wallaby. Can anybody hear me? Over.” Again, there was nothing. “Robin,” she said, “they’re not responding. I can’t get them to answer me.”
Robin remained silent in thought. “Wait until we get a little closer,” she said. “Maybe these rocks are interfering with the signal.”
Mindy nodded and sat back in her seat, and kept her eyes focused on the distant destroyer. Caroline moved the Wallaby in the other ship’s direction, searching through the rocks for the safest path. As they drew nearer to the other destroyer, the girls began to notice that something seemed wrong. The ship wasn’t moving. None of its lights were on. The hull was battered and heavily damaged, seemingly ravaged by asteroid collisions. The girls remained silent, still hoping for the best, but the ship appeared to be dead and abandoned.
“I don’t like this,” Michelle complained. “That looks like it’s been here a very long time.”
Robin frowned. “Caroline,” she ordered, “pull up in front of them and bring us to a stop. Let’s see if we can find out anything.”
Caroline brought the Wallaby around so the other destroyer was off her starboard side. She set the controls for station keeping, then stood up and walked over to the starboard window, where the other girls were standing and looking out in silence.
“The ‘Ganymede,’” Sheri said, reading the name on the side of the ship. “Has anybody heard of it?”
The others shook their heads in silence, transfixed by the darkness of the Ganymede’s bridge.
Phoebe tried to swallow, then hesitantly asked, “Do you think … anyone’s on there?”
A few seconds of uneasy silence followed, then Michelle replied, “I hope not. If there is, I don’t want to know.”
“Maybe they’re just sleeping,” Sheri suggested. “Maybe that’s why they haven’t responded.”
Robin closed her eyes for a moment, dreading the thought of what had to be done. “Katrina,” she reluctantly ordered, “shine a search light over there, please.”
Katrina leaned over the nearest console and switched the starboard floodlights on. Illumination swept through the Ganymede’s bridge, revealing the lifeless bodies of her crew. Their hair still glistened and their uniforms were spotless, but their faces and skin were horribly shriveled. The girls on the Wallaby recoiled from the sight, and turned their eyes away from the gruesome image.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Robin said. Her voice was weak and her body was trembling. Katrina reached up and switched off the floodlights, returning the Ganymede’s crew to their slumber.
“What could have happened to them,” Sheri wondered aloud as she studied the damage to the Ganymede’s hull.
“They must have been killed in battle,” Robin said.
Michelle shook her head in disagreement. “Then how did their ship end up in here?” she argued, gesturing toward the asteroid field.
“Maybe it just drifted inside,” Robin answered, “bouncing off the rocks until it finally stopped here.”
Katrina drew a breath and started to say something, but the Wallaby was suddenly rocked by a collision, transforming her statement into a scream. The ship immediately went into a spin and the girls were all hurled against the outer walls of the bridge. Their bodies slammed into the control panels and windows, where they became firmly pinned by centrifugal force.
Robin impacted squarely on her back. The air was violently purged from her lungs. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Her mind was spinning from the force of the collision and her body was thoroughly engulfed in pain. She gasped and struggled to catch her breath while straining to get her eyes to refocus. She tried to peel herself away from the wall, but the Wallaby was spinning with such extreme forces that her muscles weren’t strong enough to overcome them. Warning lights were flashing and alarms were shrieking in her ears, adding even more to the paralyzing confusion. An asteroid! she realized, collecting her thoughts. An asteroid hit us while we weren’t paying attention. And if we don’t stop the ship from spinning, the next collision might tear us apart.
“COMPUTER!” Robin screamed, “FIRE T
HE STABILIZING THRUSTERS!”
“Stabilizing mode cannot be activated,” the computer informed her. “Directional gyros are not synchronized.”
Robin could feel shades of panic setting in. The collision must have knocked the gyros out of sync! We’ll have to stabilize manually! She turned her head to see where everyone was. Mindy was closest to the thruster controls.
“MINDY!” she yelled over the din of the alarms, “WE NEED TO STABILIZE OUR ORIENTATION! GIVE ME A FIVE SECOND BURN ON THE STARBOARD THRUSTER!”
Mindy looked at Robin and nodded, then struggled to pull herself closer to the helm. Her muscles strained against the force of rotation. Her body felt many times heavier than normal, and her arms and legs quickly felt the sting of fatigue. But the battleship laps had given her a measure of stamina and a wealth of experience with weary muscles. As the other girls watched and quietly pulled for her, she stretched her right arm toward the thruster controls. Her fingers fell short by just a few centimeters. With a final burst of determination, she lunged forward with her entire body and slapped her hand down on the ignitor control.
The starboard thruster roared to life, immediately slowing the ship’s rotation. As the forces that had pinned them dissipated, the girls all lowered their feet to the floor and staggered back to their respective stations, gingerly nursing their aches and pains.
“Thank you, Mindy,” Robin praised her sincerely, enveloping her in a firm embrace. “You just saved us all.”
Still breathing heavily from her strenuous exertion, Mindy looked around at each of her comrades, basking in their quiet expressions of approval. She suddenly felt as if she could now look them in the eyes as an equal rather than just a helpless tagalong. Never once had she doubted their affection for her, but the depth of their respect for her had always been suspect — clouded by her own feelings of inferiority. But now she had shown them she could pull her own weight. That she wasn’t necessarily just a hindrance to them. And it was unclear to her, as she looked into their eyes, who among them was more overjoyed at the moment — herself, or the companions who had stood by her for so long, patiently and persistently lending their support.
Looking out through the forward windows, Robin and Phoebe surveyed the damage. The impact had occurred toward the nose of the ship, inflicting considerable damage to the hull.
“Looks pretty bad,” Phoebe said. “Lucky thing that rock wasn’t moving any faster.”
“Sheri,” Robin ordered, “run a full diagnostic. See if all of our systems are working.” She fell silent as she turned toward Caroline, disturbed by the look of concern on her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked, dreading the response — knowing the strength of Caroline’s spirit.
“We’ve lost our heading,” Caroline answered. “I can’t put us back on course.”
Robin shook her head in confusion. “Why not? Doesn’t the computer keep track of that?”
“The computer keeps our heading stored in memory, and displays it to me on the directional indicators. But it needs the gyroscopes to measure deviation. All the gyros have to be in sync.”
“Sheri,” Robin asked, “is there any way you can synchronize the gyros?”
“They’re self–synchronizing,” she explained. “Just leave them alone for a couple of minutes and they’ll gravitate back toward synchronization.”
“That won’t restore our heading,” Caroline insisted. “We still won’t know what direction we were going.”
Robin sighed and lowered her head. “Then we’ll have to plot our own course. Volaris either can’t or won’t help us, so we’re just going to have to help ourselves. Michelle,” she said, “take a position reading and get a fix on our coordinates.”
“What good will that do?” Michelle complained. “We can’t plot a course without a destination, and we don’t know where Volaris is. They never gave us the station’s coordinates. We don’t know where anything is.”
“Yes we do,” Robin assured her, trying her best to keep everyone calm. “We know how to find Valhalla. If we can just get back to Valhalla, we can find Volaris from there, or at least get directions from one of the other stations.”
Michelle sighed and smiled in relief, realizing Robin was right about that. She began the process of taking a reading, but as soon as she hit the COORDINATES button, the computer responded with, “Unable to chart.”
“What!” Michelle exclaimed in irritation. She tried the COORDINATES button again.
“Unable to chart,” the computer repeated.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
“Oh no,” Michelle said, “I think I know what the problem is.” She turned to Robin with a look of despair on her face. “The sensors can’t see enough stars to take a reading. All those rocks are in the way.”
The girls all looked at each other in silence. Each of them fully understood their predicament. There were rocks as far as they could see in every direction, and they could easily end up flying in circles until they simply ran out of fuel.
“We are lost,” Katrina said, staring out the window in helplessness. “We’re never going to find our way out of here.”
Phoebe looked over at the Ganymede again, convinced that she now understood the crew’s fate. “This must be what happened to them,” she said. “They must have gotten lost in here and run out of fuel. And couldn’t call out to anyone for help.”
“What should we do, Robin?” Caroline asked.
Robin buried her face in her hands as she desperately tried to come up with a solution. “Just … plot a course at random, Michelle. We’ll try to keep flying in a straight line if possible. That seems like our best chance of getting out of here.”
Quietly, Michelle began to make her calculations, then nodded to Robin when the course was plotted.
“Let’s go,” Robin said to Caroline. “Keep the throttle set at point zero three. Try to use up as little fuel as possible.”
As the Wallaby started moving forward again, Robin took one final look at the Ganymede, touched by a sense of loss for her crew and moved by the sacrifice they had made for Valhalla. She held her right fist over her heart in respect, and somberly whispered, “Goodbye, sisters.”
FATIGUE 034
Fifteen hours into the Wallaby’s flight, Katrina yawned and tried to stretch her muscles. She looked beside her at Caroline, studying her face as she continued to guide the ship along. There was a weariness in Caroline’s eyes that filled Katrina with a sense of despair. She stood up and walked to the captain’s station, and whispered into Robin’s ear.
“Robin, Caroline’s getting tired. We all are. What’s going to happen to us if she falls asleep? She’s the only one who knows how to fly the ship.”
Robin closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. There were four bunks in the small corridor behind the bridge. The girls could easily take turns resting. But Caroline would first need to show one of them how to operate the ship’s flight controls. She looked around at each member of her squad and tried to decide which of them should be first. It was a daunting task, she realized — learning how to fly in an asteroid field. It should be someone who was bold and confident. Confident enough to face up to the challenge.
Memories began to sweep through Robin’s mind, of times spent exploring on Valhalla with her squad. There was a forest adjacent to the academy, where they had sometimes gone hiking together in their spare time. Trekking through the woods, along the winding paths, it had always been Phoebe leading the way. Whenever they had come across a hill they could look out from, Phoebe had always been the first to reach the summit. Whenever they’d found a tree that was climbable, Phoebe had been the first of them to scramble up its branches. There was an adventurous spirit inside her that seemed to make her the logical choice for this task.
“Caroline,” Robin said, “I want you to show Phoebe how to operate the controls. And then I want you to get some rest. We’re going to have to sleep in shifts. Sheri, Mindy, and Katrina, go lie down now. The rest of us will
take the second shift.”
Phoebe got up and walked over to the helm as the others made their way toward the bunks. Caroline slowed the ship to a crawl, then motioned for Phoebe to sit down in her place.
“The important thing,” Caroline said, “is to keep the indicator needles properly aligned. That’s how you maintain your heading. The needle on the left shows your vertical deviation, the one on the right is for horizontal. Keep the left needle as level as possible, and the right one pointed straight ahead of you.”
Phoebe nodded and grabbed the controls while Caroline continued her explanation. Robin walked over to Michelle’s station and directed her attention to the helm as well. “Pay attention to what Caroline is saying,” she told her. “You’re next in line to take over for her.”
Commander Jeffries stepped out of the control room to clear her thoughts and take a short break from the search. She retreated to the peaceful solitude of her office and lowered herself into the chair behind her desk. Closing her eyes, she leaned forward and carefully laid her head down on the desktop. She knew this would only be a short rest for her. The potential loss of ECHO 5 was certain to dredge up unwelcome memories. She sensed that the voices would be returning soon. In fact, she imagined she could hear them already.
“Help us, Commander! Help us, please!”
They were every bit as clear in her mind today as when she’d first heard them just a few years earlier — the voices of young Stacey Ennicado and her crew as they battled a fire on the CVS Eaglet. She could still see Stacey’s image on the display screen — her face and hair blackened from the soot and the smoke. And she could hear her own voice relaying orders to Stacey, informing her how to best contain the blaze.
“Try to isolate the flames toward the rear of the ship,” she told them.
