by Linn Schwab
Her eyes shot open. The nightmare was over, but the tears were still present. She reached up to wipe some of the moisture from her cheeks, and realized her entire body was shaking.
“Bad dream?” Robin asked.
Caroline nodded. “I never want to be an officer,” she said. She sat up in her bunk, wrapped her arms around Robin, and waited for the shakes and the tears to subside. “What’s happening now,” she asked her captain.
“The fog is still bad,” Robin informed her. “We still haven’t been able to contact anyone. And we still have no idea where we are.”
Caroline glanced at a nearby clock. A full day had now passed since a wall of ice and fog had swept out of Pangea and swallowed the Cricket. Those first few hours had been terrifying, with unseen rocks or other objects bumping up against the outer hull. And since they couldn’t see anything outside the windows, all they could do was just sit tight and endure it as the tide of debris swept them out of position. By now it was impossible to know where they were, or just how far they’d been dragged along.
“Robin!” Phoebe suddenly called from the bridge. “It looks like the fog is starting to clear!”
“Come on,” Robin said, pulling Caroline along with her. “Let’s see if we can find our way back to Volaris.”
Commander Eldridge paced back and forth in the control room, helpless to do anything about the situation. “This a nightmare,” she said, glaring at the fog outside the windows. “An enemy fleet could be passing right in front of our faces, and we wouldn’t have the slightest idea they were there.”
“They wouldn’t be able to see anything either,” Suzanne said. “Ships should be every bit as blind as we are.”
Commander Eldridge stopped at Veronica’s side. “Speaking of ships, have you heard anything from the Zephyr yet, Lieutenant?”
“Not yet, Commander. The only transmission I’ve received so far was from the Terrapin, and that was so sporadic I couldn’t tell what they were saying.”
“No word from Captain Starling?” Major Richards asked.
Veronica simply shook her head.
“Virginia’s still out there too,” Lindsey said.
Commander Eldridge gave her a dour look. “I think we can assume Virginia is dead, along with our escaped prisoner. With all the all rocks and ice chunks that keep slamming up against us, I don’t see how anyone in a fighter could have survived out there for very long.”
“What about the Hornets?” Suzanne asked her. “Where were they when this happened?”
“They were supposed to be on their way back from Orion. We can only hope they hadn’t departed yet, or this could prove to be a very costly turn of events.” She turned to Janine, who was sitting at a nearby console, still sifting through information on her archive interface. “Have you learned anything new yet?”
“Not much,” she said. “But based on what I’m seeing in Commander Stinson’s entries, I’m convinced she was planning to relocate this station. Most likely to the same place you sent Captain Starling. She made multiple requests in that regard to Command–net, but it looks like she never received a reply.”
Suzanne looked at each of the other senior officers with shock and outrage plainly showing on her face. “Are you saying Command knew this was going to happen, and they didn’t bother to give us any warning?”
In the back of her mind, Commander Eldridge could hear Captain Starling asking her a question. “Would you ever fire missiles at your own personnel?” She nodded in somber acceptance. The two situations were similar enough that she could understand completely what Robin must have felt.
“What else could they do?” she said to Suzanne. “It’s not as if we could just run away and hide. Someone has to be here to hold the line. And it isn’t clear if we’d be better off elsewhere anyway. Who knows how far out this cloud extends. What is clear is that we need to come up with a plan for how to deal with what happens when this fog finally disperses. Keep working the radio,” she said to Veronica. “We need to find out how many of our ships survived this.”
The Alabama’s bridge was quiet and serene. Her entire crew seemed to be holding their breaths as they waited for the next chunk of ice to strike the hull. So far the ship seemed reasonably intact, despite a vicious pounding from the comet’s remains. But the same could not be said for the light cruiser, San Joaquin, whose outline could be seen through random gaps in the fog. The smaller ship was mangled near beyond recognition, and appeared to be drifting, silent and dark.
“There could be survivors over there,” Peter said, staring solemnly at the San Joaquin’s battered hull.
“Yes, there could be,” Captain Schiffer agreed. “But do we risk sending a shuttle over there to search for them?”
Admiral Sands shook his head. “Not in this fog. There’s still too much ice floating around out there. A good–sized chunk could make quick work of a shuttle.” He summoned Lieutenant Porter to his side. “How much longer can we expect this to last?”
“There’s no way to be sure,” the lieutenant insisted. “It could be hours, or it could be days, weeks, or even years. The destruction of that comet was so intense that there are likely to be trillions of ice chunks out there, in just as great a number of different shapes and sizes. And many of them appear to be continuing to off–gas, which is only going to make things worse for a while.”
“And this off–gassing is what’s creating the fog?” the admiral asked.
“To some extent, yes,” the lieutenant confirmed. “Some of it is dust, some of it is gas, and some of it appears to be ice particles. A good part of it was probably created by those warheads, with even more being added when the ice struck that asteroid field. I’m sure the sunlight is causing a great deal of it as well, but there may also be other factors at work here since comets can have more than just water in their ice. Those detonations may have sparked some sort of chemical reaction that won’t expire until all the fuel is used up.”
“Alright, Lieutenant,” the admiral said, “as you can see, I’m in a bit of a bind here. That comet swept the rest of my ships off to who knows where, and communications still seem to be down at the moment. I need your best guess on what to expect when this fog eventually starts to clear.”
“A mess,” Lieutenant Porter said. “It’s gonna be a real mess. For us and for them. Some of our ships may find themselves in enemy space, and some of their ships may already be behind us. Just imagine a big bowl of alphabet soup stirred up by a soup spoon the size of a comet.”
“And what about the fog itself, Lieutenant? What’s your best guess on how it might recede?”
Lieutenant Porter stared out at the fog as he pondered the admiral’s question for a moment. “I think what we’re going to see fairly soon is corridors of clear space start to appear, interspersed with remaining pockets of fog.”
Captain Schiffer rapped his knuckles on the top of a console. “That could alter our tactics dramatically,” he said.
“It certainly could,” the admiral agreed. “A new twist on the game of cat and mouse. Question is, which side will it benefit the most? And how can we use it to our advantage?”
MEADOW SONG 098
The trilling of bird songs tickled Karl’s eardrums, interspersed with the sound of leaves blowing in the wind. He opened his eyes to a lush canopy of green held aloft by an abundance of sturdy tree limbs. Through gaps in the trees he could see a blue sky, and a radiant sun peering down from above. A sensation of floating induced him to wonder if this scene of tranquility was only a vision.
“Am I dead?” he posed a question out loud. As his eyes swung downward he saw that the ground was a good twenty meters beneath his dangling feet. “No, perhaps not,” he said with a start. The fear of falling convinced him he was still very much alive.
A realization finally came to him that the force of the ejection must have knocked him unconscious. But he was still alive, still strapped in his harness, with his chute snagged somewhere in the tree line
up above. What he needed now was a way to get down to the ground which did not involve falling twenty meters to his death.
Upon checking himself over for injuries, he found that he was relatively unscathed by the landing. A small rip in his flight suit appeared to be the worst of it. But given the nature of his current surroundings, he could easily have woken up to find himself impaled. Most importantly, he hadn’t suffered any broken limbs. He would need the use of all of them to reach the ground uninjured. The nearest branch that looked strong enough to safely hold his weight was just beyond his reach, a few feet above his head. Much to his dismay, in order to climb down he would first need to ascend.
“If only I were a gymnast,” he muttered as he reached for one of the parachute lines. It took all the hand and arm strength he could muster to hoist himself up high enough to reach the branch. Once he’d established a firm enough grip, he swung his legs up and overtop of the limb, and pulled himself into a resting position. He then paused to allow his muscles to recover while he scanned his surroundings for a path of descent.
Fortune appeared to be with him this day. The tree was blessed with a network of branches that would bring him within safe jumping distance of the ground. So long as he didn’t twist an ankle on landing, he might still reach the planet’s surface unharmed. What would happen to him then remained an open question, though. Perhaps there were dangers lurking in the shadows. It was tempting to remain in the safety of the tree, beyond the reach of treacherous claws and fangs. Of course if there were any Shere Khans or Kaas waiting for him, they were likely to be better climbers than he was.
Determined to see as much of this world as possible, he made the decision to abandon his refuge and take his chances on the ground. After slipping out of his parachute harness, he lowered himself one branch at a time until the forest floor was just a few meters below him. In the end, he didn’t even have to jump. He simply shimmied out along the lowest branch to its end, where his body weight was sufficient to pull it downward. When his feet touched the ground, he released the branch slowly, to minimize the noise when it sprang back upward. He took a moment to carefully observe his surroundings and decide what his next course of action should be. Despite the fact that nothing jumped out at him, he just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he was being watched.
Are there any animals here? he wondered, recalling the ambitions of the Livingstone’s crew to recreate a world with an abundance of species. His ears still told him there were birds up above. He searched the forest floor for indications of wildlife and discovered a variety of insect species. No hoof prints or paw prints that he could see, though. But the ground here was covered with a blanket of leaves, and he wasn’t exactly an experienced tracker to begin with. There could very well be animals just beyond his sight. But just how successful could the Livingstone’s crew have been?
The trees he could see were all species from Earth. The insects seemed very much familiar as well. But those are the easy parts, he reasoned. Those things could have easily been transplanted. Where are the rhinos, and the leopards and zebras? Where’s the evidence that these people could actually do what they claimed? Apparently he would have to look further for proof. It was time to move on and explore new ground.
A slope that seemed to dominate the forest around him led him to conclude he’d set down on a hillside. The downhill direction led to nothing but trees, but there appeared to be a clearing uphill a short distance. After weighing his options he headed for the clearing to see if he could figure out the lay of the land. His instincts were borne out when he stepped from the tree line into a spectacular hilltop vista.
In the foreground, a sunlit ocean of ankle high grasses covered the hilltop in a blanket of green. An army of wildflowers dotted the landscape, playing host to a fluttering armada of butterflies in a dazzling array of vivid colors. Across the meadow a rugged gray mountain peak reached upward toward the clear blue sky overhead. To his left he could look overtop of the forest at an endless expanse of savannah in the distance. And to his right, which he now knew was the east, the hillside fell away into greenish–blue water which appeared to stretch out all the way to the horizon.
A sudden wave of trembles overtook him when he realized just how fortunate he was to have pulled the ejection handle when he did. Any further delay might have proven fatal. If he’d come down another half mile to the east, he might very well have ended up in the ocean, unconscious — or at the very least, disoriented. Would he even be able to swim in his flight suit? He shuddered at the thought and sat down in the meadow to shake off the effects of his recent brush with fate.
As he sat there, taking in the beauty of the meadow, savoring its sounds and smells and sights, a shadow soon appeared on the ground to his left, in the shape of a person standing behind him.
From the features he saw in the shadow’s outline — the narrow shoulders and the length of the hair — he decided it most likely belonged to a female. Didn’t take them very long to find me, he mused. It seemed his luck had all been used up in the landing. His dream of enjoying the wilderness was over. Perhaps he could buy himself a little more time by striking up a conversation with his captor.
“I’d forgotten about butterflies,” he said to the shadow. “Completely forgotten they even existed. How could that have happened? I remember everything. Every useless fact I’ve ever heard is permanently etched away in my mind, and yet I somehow managed to forget about butterflies. Maybe that’s what forty years in space does to a person.” With a sigh, he resigned himself to his fate. “Have you come here to kill me?” he asked.
“No,” a youthful voice replied softly. “You’re already dying.”
A single faint laugh forced its way through his lips. “Is it that obvious?”
The voice didn’t answer.
He looked over his shoulder and saw a young girl, perhaps only twelve or thirteen years of age. She had pale skin, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair, and was dressed only in an oversized white button down shirt with the name Charlie embroidered across the left breast. Her facial features strongly suggested she might be of germanic or scandinavian descent. With the sunlight dancing in her golden hair, she was like a vision straight out of an old Norse legend.
“Have you come here to kill me?” she asked, though she didn’t seem particularly frightened of him.
“No,” he assured her. “I’ve never killed anyone. And I’m certainly not about to start now. At least I can die without that on my conscience.”
A tentative smile appeared on her face. “Why did you come here then?” she asked.
He gestured toward the meadow in front of him and said, “Well … I came here to see things like this, Charlie. To experience the beauty of nature again.”
“Don’t you have nature where you came from?”
“Yes, we do. But that’s a very long way from here.” Glancing around at the meadow again, he remembered he hadn’t seen any signs of civilization prior to pulling the ejection handle. “By the way,” he said, “how did you find me?”
“I saw you floating down from the sky,” she answered.
Concerned there might be others who had seen him as well, he asked her if she lived nearby.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“And who do you live with?”
“No one,” she replied.
“You live all alone out here?”
She nodded her head.
Karl found himself at a loss for words. How could this young girl have survived in the wilderness on her own? “How old are you, Charlie?” he asked with concern.
“Why do you keep calling me Charlie?” she asked.
“My apologies,” he said. “I hope I didn’t offend you. I saw the name on your shirt and just assumed it was yours. Perhaps we should properly introduce ourselves. My name is Karl. What’s your name?”
A puzzled expression fell over her face as she searched through her mind for a distant memory. Her gaze slowly drifted away from him as the look of co
ncentration in her eyes intensified. Overhead, the skies began to darken as water vapor rapidly condensed into clouds. A subtle rumbling of thunder seemed to rise out of nowhere, and a cold wind suddenly raced across the meadow.
As Karl observed this astonishing progression, there was no doubt in his mind that she was influencing the weather. In his wildest dreams he would never have imagined he might one day experience a phenomenon such as this. All at once, all the wasted years were forgotten, and any lingering regrets that remained were pushed aside. This was without question the opportunity of a lifetime. He just had to understand the true nature of her power.
With the weather becoming increasingly disconcerting, he soon found himself wondering just how far she would take this. Would a bolt of lightning fall from the sky and strike him dead? Would a gust of wind uplift him and slam him to the ground? He could almost hear the gears turning over in her mind as she forcibly willed herself to remember. Then just as he decided he should try to intervene and see if he could coax her out of her spell, the look in her eyes began to soften, and the clouds overhead showed signs of dissipating. The last rumble of thunder rolled away from the hillside, and the wind died down to a gentle breeze. Apparently having conjured up an answer to his question, she emerged from her trance and said — “My name is JoEllen.”
TANGLED WEB 099
Somehow the seams were still holding together. The engines still worked, and the controls were still responding. There was plenty of fuel yet remaining in the tanks. But with every minute that passed now, Virginia became more and more convinced that this fighter would end up being her coffin.
It was just pure luck that she was still alive. The wave of ice particles that emerged from the depths of Pangea should have ruptured the airtight seal of her cockpit. But somehow her fighter had remained in one piece, despite being slammed against the surface of an asteroid so violently that both of her wings were bent downward. In a strange twist of fate, that collision had probably saved her, as an outcrop of rock became a shield from further impacts, deflecting the flow of debris away from her canopy.
