Searching for the Fleet Read online

  She flopped back into her captain’s chair.

  Heyek shook her head and went back to her station. Only Rettig remained.

  “You stay onboard long enough,” he said quietly, “and you’ll understand why that was probably not the most politic response you could have made.”

  “It’s that bad?” Coop asked, speaking as softly as Rettig had.

  “No,” Rettig said. “It’s worse.”

  Twelve

  The Arama arrived at the area of space where the Voimakas entered foldspace at the exact moment Heyek said they would. This was one of those regions of space that felt far away from anything. A star glimmered in the distance, with a dozen planets in its habitable zone. But those were all far enough away to make them points of light on the small two-dimensional holoscreen he kept open below one of the larger screens.

  He hated not having portals on the bridge, so he created his own. He felt vaguely insubordinate doing so, but no one had told him not to. In fact, he doubted that anyone had even noticed.

  The crew had gone from the slapdash organization that Coop had seen on the previous missions to a focused, if slightly uncomfortable, group.

  They seemed ready to take on the challenges the change in procedure presented.

  Nisen sat upright in her chair, a holoscreen floating in front of her. Coop couldn’t see what was on that screen.

  She had asked him to double-check his coordinates, and then had Rettig monitor them as well. She told the other ships that the Arama would go in first, then cut off the protests she got in response.

  She did not tell Command Operations her plans.

  “I am changing our procedure inside foldspace slightly,” she said to the bridge crew. She had her back to them, which Coop thought odd, but she was staring at that screen as if it held the secrets of the universe.

  Maybe it did.

  “We will enter and remain for three minutes, rather than the usual one. We will conduct a normal high-speed scan along with mapping, but we will take a little extra time.” Her voice was flat and unemotional. “If all goes well, we should emerge from foldspace around the time that the other ships arrive.”

  She didn’t have to say what might happen if things did not go well.

  Coop’s mouth had gone dry. Fear, apparently, was contagious, and there was a lot of fear on this bridge. He was used to ignoring his emotions as he worked, concentrating on getting the job done.

  But the worry around him made him question his own plan. Perhaps he was going to get the Arama lost in foldspace.

  Then he forced himself to take a deep breath. The risk of getting lost in foldspace did not change just because of the entry coordinates. The entire ship might get lost anyway. Or it might not. The odds remained the same each time a ship traveled into or out of foldspace.

  He had seen nothing in the research that suggested otherwise. And, he had to believe, if there was research that showed an increased danger when a ship executed certain actions, the Fleet would issue a caution or would prevent ships from taking those actions.

  It was expensive to lose ships, both in materials and in personnel.

  “We will gather as much information as we can as rapidly as we can,” Nisen said. “Then we will return. The only change will be the time limit. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Heyek, apparently speaking for all of them.

  No one else looked ready. Li actually grabbed the edges of his console. Rettig stood stiffly behind his workstation. One of the officers closest to the exit actually looked at it as if it might provide an escape.

  Coop opened three small screens—one that read heat signatures, one that would give a three-D rendering of whatever was outside the ship, and one that ran every bit of telemetry coming into his console. On any other ship, he would have assumed that someone else was running the same kind of three-screen scan, but he wasn’t going to assume anything here—even though the crew had shaped up, just a little.

  It really irritated him that the captain did not monitor all of the information she had available. She was unlike any other captain he had ever served with. That alone made him continually feel uneasy.

  Nisen opened the left arm of her chair, revealing a small command module. She pressed two fingers on the tiny screen.

  The Arama stuttered and bumped as if it were a ground vehicle that had hit holes in a road. The anacapa drive had been engaged.

  Coop should have been used to that stutter-bump feeling by now—he had gone in and out of foldspace enough with the Arama—but he wasn’t. The Arama’s entry into foldspace always felt a little too hard, as if something had gone vaguely wrong.

  The shift into foldspace took only a few seconds, and then the stutter-bump stopped. The Arama eased into position. Another ship loomed much too close to starboard. So close, in fact, that it was pretty clear the Arama had just barely missed hitting it.

  “The hell,” Nisen said as Heyek said, “Good God.”

  Coop bit back a curse as well. Everyone else looked at the captain and her second in command as if they had done something wrong.

  Which meant that only three people on the bridge even knew how close they had come to hitting that other ship.

  Using his right hand, Coop adjusted his two-dimensional screen so that the image zoomed outward. He wished it were as easy to adjust his heart. It was pounding, hard.

  “That’s the Voimakas,” he said, relieved that his voice sounded calm.

  “If that’s true,” Heyek said, annoying him, “then this will be the easiest rescue we’ve ever had.”

  “You haven’t looked at her clearly, then, have you, Lieutenant?” Nisen asked. The lieutenant she referred to was Heyek, not Coop.

  Coop hadn’t looked at the ship clearly either. He had simply found her ship’s signature, and compared it to the Voimakas. Now, he looked.

  She listed, as if her attitude controls weren’t working. Her escape pods were gone, leaving small holes in her side. The holes would have looked like part of the design to anyone who had never seen a DV-Class ship before, but to someone like Coop who studied the ships continually, the Voimakas looked denuded.

  There were no other ships nearby. Stars winked in the distance, and a milky white smudge appeared to port. Coop didn’t even investigate what that smudge was. It was too far away to consider as anything more than a point on a grid map.

  That thought made him realize everyone was focused on the Voimakas, and not on the grid map they usually did. He hit three controls and had three different systems map the area. He also recorded as much of the information he had taken from the Voimakas as he could.

  “We’ve got life signs,” said Li. “But not a lot of them.”

  “And weirdly,” Rettig said, “it looks like all the ship bays are empty.”

  Nisen stood, then looked at Coop. Her glance was measuring, and for one brief, insecure moment, he thought she was blaming him for something. Then he realized she was looking to see if he understood what had happened here.

  He did not. He could guess, but he didn’t believe in guessing. He shrugged ever so slightly.

  She sighed, and turned away from him. Then she raised her single holoscreen, glanced at it, and shook her head.

  “Hail them,” she said to the screen as if it were part of her bridge crew.

  “Already have, sir,” Li said. “There’s an open channel, but I’m not getting any response.”

  Coop found that surprising. He would have responded immediately.

  “No one is on their bridge, sir,” Rettig said.

  Nisen nodded as if she expected that. “Can you access their system enough to open a ship-wide channel?” she asked Li.

  The timer in front of Coop said that a minute had gone by. If they continued to follow the original plan, they only had two more minutes before they had to jump back to regular space.

  “Yes, sir, I can,” Li said. “It’s done. Go ahead.”

  Coop looked at him in surprise. On other ships,
the captain usually had to tell the communications officer her exact plan. Apparently not here. Li had known what she planned.

  Maybe Coop had too, but he wouldn’t have presumed.

  “This is the Arama,” Nisen said, in a somewhat louder and more formal voice than she usually used. “We are part of a five-ship rescue team sent to pull you out of foldspace. I would like to speak to Captain Golan.”

  There was a pause that ran seconds too long for Coop’s taste. Nisen didn’t move, but Rettig shifted, as if the silence made him nervous.

  “This is Captain Golan,” said a tired female voice. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Captain Debbie Nisen of the Arama.”

  “That’s not possible,” Golan said. “Please leave. We will defend this ship if need be.”

  Coop glanced at Rettig, who shrugged. Li’s head was bent over the console, as if he were working at something.

  Coop went back to his screens, looking for a way to penetrate the Voimakas’s hull, to see if he could identify the two heat signatures.

  “Why is that not possible?” Nisen asked.

  “Just leave,” the female voice said.

  “We can’t,” Nisen said. “We’re here to bring you back to real space. Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  Golan let out a bitter laugh. “I gave them permission to leave the ship five years ago.”

  Rettig raised his head, looking startled.

  “Captain,” Heyek said, speaking softly, “we only have thirty seconds.”

  “We’re staying a moment longer, Lieutenant.”

  Not, Coop noted, an exact time. A vague time. The nerves he had felt earlier rose again.

  “Can you recall your crew quickly?” Nisen asked.

  “I have no fucking idea where they ended up.” Golan let out another half laugh. “You really are Debbie Nisen, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” Nisen sounded surprisingly calm, even after the mention of five years and Golan’s earlier disbelief.

  “Goddammit,” Golan said. “God-fucking-dammit.”

  “I need you to activate your anacapa drive,” Nisen said.

  Coop looked at her in surprise. He hadn’t realized the Voimakas’s anacapa drive wasn’t operational. But Nisen had clearly checked.

  “We’re going to hook to it and pull you back through foldspace,” Nisen said.

  “There’s only two of us left,” Golan said. “It’s not worth it. Go back before you can’t.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you, Captain,” Nisen said. “Activate the drive.”

  “We think it malfunctioned,” Golan said.

  “You don’t know?” Heyek asked. Nisen whipped her head around and glared at Heyek, but the damage was done.

  Coop folded his hands behind his back, watching and listening.

  “We inspected it several times,” Golan said. “It seemed fine, but something wasn’t engaging.”

  Past tense. They hadn’t tried for a long time.

  “Captain.” Rettig spoke softly to Nisen. “If I may…?”

  She nodded at him.

  “Captain Golan.” Rettig spoke louder this time. “I’m Kyle Rettig, chief engineer on the Arama. You don’t have to fully activate the anacapa. Just toggle it to rest mode. Can you do that?”

  “It might blow us all to hell, but I can try,” she said.

  “Please do,” he said, and hurry, he mouthed.

  The bridge crew watched each other as if they were the ones taking action. All except Nisen, who stared at her screen.

  Coop looked back at his. He shifted the telemetry to focus on readings from the Voimakas. He saw the exact moment they activated their anacapa.

  Apparently, so did Nisen.

  “Now!” she ordered.

  The Arama shuddered and bumped. A light glowed from the anacapa drive half hidden under a panel in the wall directly across from Coop. He’d never seen a drive do that.

  His heart rate increased, and he forced himself to look away. The bumping and shuddering felt stronger than it had when the Arama had left real space. The bumping and shuddering also went on longer.

  Now, no one made eye contact. Everyone was either studying their consoles or had their eyes completely closed.

  Coop had the odd sense that some of them were praying. The nerves on the bridge were palpable. He made himself focus on the telemetry screen. The numbers helped him focus and stay calm. Even when the screen blanked for five seconds, he remained calm.

  That data stream blank was normal. It happened whenever a ship traveled into or out of foldspace. Normal, he repeated to himself, so that he wouldn’t focus on what could go wrong. Or what had gone wrong for the Voimakas.

  Five years in foldspace. The crew gone. The captain and one other person remaining.

  The shuddering eased. The Arama bumped two more times, then the telemetry reappeared on Coop’s screen. As did all the other images on his other screens.

  The bridge crew burst into spontaneous applause, although Coop didn’t join in. Neither did Nisen. She remained standing, head bent toward her screen.

  Coop examined the two-dimensional images, and saw the Voimakas appear beside the Arama. They were surrounded by four other ships: The Soeker, the Tragač, the Iarrthóir, and the Ofuna.

  Either they had arrived at record speed, or the Arama had been inside foldspace longer than anticipated.

  “Captain,” Li said, “you’re getting congratulations from the other ships. Would you like me to put those on speaker?”

  “Nice of them to show up,” Nisen said. “And no, I don’t want to hear it. I’m heading to my quarters. I’ll deal with this mess there.”

  Then she shut down the screen in front of her, whirled, and marched up the aisle. She had nearly reached the exit when Heyek said, “Captain? What would you like from us?”

  “Fifteen minutes of peace,” Nisen said, and left the bridge.

  The rest of the bridge crew stood very still, as if she had told them not to move a muscle. The euphoria from a few minutes ago had completely disappeared.

  They had completed a successful mission—they had brought the Voimakas out of foldspace—but not in the way anyone anticipated. It would be impossible to call this a victory, really. The entire crew, minus two people, was lost.

  “Li,” Heyek said. “Coordinate with the Tragač. Find out how long we were in foldspace.”

  “Already done, Lieutenant,” Li said. His voice sounded thin and reedy. “We’ve been gone for two hours.”

  Two hours. Coop gripped the edge of the makeshift console. Time really had operated differently in that part of foldspace.

  “Why hadn’t they started the search, then?” Heyek said. “That’s procedure. If the other ship—”

  “They had, Lieutenant.” Li spoke softly. “They started mapping the grid ninety minutes ago.”

  “But they didn’t see us?” Heyek asked.

  “No, sir,” Li said.

  “Tell them I have a grid map and imagery of where we ended up,” Coop said. “I also have coordinates from inside foldspace.”

  “So do I,” Rettig said. “I would like to compare our grid map with theirs.”

  “I’m sure the captain is working all of that out,” someone from the back said, somewhat primly.

  “I’m sure she hasn’t gotten to that yet,” Heyek said. “They’re going to have to figure out what to do with the Voimakas.”

  Her words resounded in the bridge. What to do with a ship that had been missing only a day, but whose crew was gone—five years gone—and whose captain and someone else had remained on board to…what? Guard the ship?

  Coop couldn’t imagine what they were feeling at the moment. Elation to be back? The pressure of the loss and lost time? Something else, something he couldn’t even understand?

  He supposed he would find out eventually. He was feeling a little unnerved having lost hours.

  The Voimakas had lost years.

  “So share the information,” Heyek
said. “It’s something we all need to know, after all.”

  Coop glanced at her over the screens. She looked no different than she always had—except for her eyes. They seemed smaller, as if she was trying to keep them open somehow.

  Her gaze met his and, for the first time, he felt no hostility from her. Then she looked away.

  He gathered the information, and forwarded it to Li in a form someone else could easily understand. As he did that, a grid map arrived on one of his screens. He didn’t recognize it.

  “Is that the grid map from the Tragač?” he asked.

  “Compiled by them, the Soeker, the Iarrthóir, and the Ofuna,” Li said. “They were in and out of foldspace nearly twenty times before we came back.”

  Twenty times. Coop didn’t want to consider that. It did mean that his theory was right, though. The Arama had gone into foldspace at the exact coordinates the Voimakas had. Not close to the same coordinates. The same ones.

  And had ended up nearly on top of the Voimakas. But not anywhere near the other ships.

  At least their maps would be extensive. Maybe they had entered that part of foldspace some distance from the Voimakas.

  He was breathing shallowly, working on the information in front of him. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the fact that the Arama had come close to getting lost as well.

  The Arama hadn’t been in foldspace long—maybe five minutes—and had lost two hours. Yet the ship managed to bring itself back and the Voimakas back as well.

  The Arama had a functioning anacapa drive; Captain Golan believed that the Voimakas’s drive had malfunctioned.

  Not believed. If she had been in foldspace for more than five years, then she would have known that the drive wasn’t functioning properly.

  She had been worried that activating it, even minimally, would damage both ships.

  It hadn’t, though.

  The Voimakas was just fine—or as fine as a ship could be, considering.

  Coop swallowed hard, and focused on the maps before him. He took the grid map from the four sister ships, and overlaid it on the grid map he had made.

  He wished he had more than a grid map from the other ships. He’d like to see what features the space around that area had. The other ships’ grid map didn’t seem to extend far enough.