Searching for the Fleet Read online

  He hadn’t had time when he’d been in foldspace to find what was unique about that nearby planet. But he had seen that milky white smudge. He hadn’t identified that either. From his perspective in space, without focusing any telescopes or other scanning equipment on that area, he had no idea if he was looking at a distant galaxy, a dense asteroid belt, the remains of a planet, or something else entirely.

  If he had known exactly what that milky white smudge was, he would have been able to look for it with more precision. But he didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.

  That’s why comprehensive mapping was important to finding lost ships in foldspace. Most rescue ships didn’t stumble on their targets. Most rescue ships found the lost ship through thorough and detailed mapping, covering vast areas of foldspace small sections at a time.

  The other ships’ map had a lot more detail than his did. His was a one-time capture, the beginning of a search—and not a very good beginning at that.

  Theirs followed procedure; the map was precise, accurate, and clear.

  Still, he should have been able to find something. That planet, something.

  “I’m not working with a lot of data here,” Coop said, “but I’m not finding any points in common.”

  “Me, either,” Rettig said. Apparently, he had been working on this as well.

  Of course he had. He was clearly as curious about these things as Coop was.

  The entire bridge was silent. Then Heyek cleared her throat.

  “We’ll deal with that later,” she said. “I’m sure the Voimakas has extensive maps of that sector of foldspace. We’ll get better answers when they’re ready to work with us.”

  Answers. No one had actually spoken the question out loud. That question was: Had the Arama and the Voimakas been in a completely different sector of foldspace than the four other rescue ships?

  Based on what he was seeing right now, Coop would have said yes. But he had more than enough science training to know that he didn’t have enough data to make that determination with any kind of accuracy.

  Just a gut sense.

  A gut sense he didn’t entirely like.

  Thirteen

  For the rest of the day, senior officials went in and out of the captain’s quarters. Even though Coop’s rank placed him higher than some of the people Nisen was talking with, Coop had not been invited.

  When his duty shift ended, he headed to the mess for a meal. He wanted information, but he couldn’t get any more than he already had.

  It wasn’t that the senior staff had locked him out; it was simply that he wasn’t entitled to know more than he already did.

  Usually, he didn’t mind the segregation of information. He understood the chain of command and the need-to-know basis of all information that came through a ship daily.

  But this experience had been so unusual that he was curious about what had happened to the Voimakas and what would happen next. If he had made any close friends among the crew, he would have asked if they had lost time in foldspace before, but he didn’t know anyone well enough.

  He supposed he could go through the records, but that felt like he was taking the wrong matters into his own hands. He would learn what he needed to learn when he needed to learn it.

  As frustrating as that was.

  His stomach growled as he arrived on the recreation deck. He passed the empty recreation room. The smell of seared beef, peppers, and onion came out of the mess and made him even hungrier. He would indulge in a high-calorie meal, just because he had nothing better to do.

  He passed the ship’s only bar as he headed toward the mess’s open doors. The bar was a large room with no windows. It had an actual bar in the center of the room. The bar itself, which had a shiny black surface, ran in an oval, with only one way to get behind it. Whoever stepped into that oval and got caught became bartender for the night.

  Someone always had to step inside, too, because all of the alcohol was stored in cases below the bar’s surface. Coop had learned that the hard way on his first visit to the bar on his second night. He had wanted a drink, and he had not received it because he had spent the entire night making drinks for everyone else.

  He glanced inside as he walked past, and was startled to see the captain sitting near the door, her feet up on a black table, an overflowing pilsner glass in her hand.

  “Lieutenant Tightass!” she shouted. “Come in here.”

  She’d shouted at him as he walked by the bar in the past, usually telling him to join the group or to have a drink. Answering her summons had been how he’d gotten trapped behind the bar on that second night.

  “Thank you, Captain. May I have my dinner first?” he said, stopping.

  “This is not a request, Tightass. I need your shapely buns in this chair across from me right now.” She set the pilsner glass down and did not signal for a drink for him, also a change from the other times she had brought him inside.

  He let out a sigh that he knew she couldn’t hear. A dozen people were scattered at various tables around the bar, and Li stood behind the bar, mixing a bright blue concoction that fizzed and popped.

  Coop stepped inside, pulled back the molded black chair, and sat down. Heyek came over, holding a glass half full of the blue fizzy stuff.

  “I gotta have a private conversation with Tightass,” Nisen said to Heyek. “Make sure no one gets close for the next ten minutes, all right?”

  Heyek nodded, then clapped her hands together, getting the patrons’ attention. “Door’s off limits for the next ten,” she said. “You gotta leave, do so in the next thirty seconds.”

  Rettig sprinted from the far side of the room to the corridor. He gave Coop a thumb’s up as he went by. No one else left.

  In fact, the remaining patrons moved as far from the captain’s table as they could get. Coop had seen this before. The captain liked to have private meetings here, no matter who it inconvenienced.

  Heyek sauntered to the edge of the actual bar, and sat on a stool, far enough away that she couldn’t hear the conversation, but not so far away that she couldn’t get up and block anyone who came too close.

  Nisen swung her feet off the tabletop. She leaned forward, close enough to Coop that he could see her eyes. They were no longer red. She might’ve been drinking, but she wasn’t drunk.

  “You think I’ve been picking on you, don’t you, Lieutenant Cooper?” she asked.

  “What I think is immaterial, Captain,” he said.

  “From anyone else, I’d call that a ‘yes.’ But you’re one cautious man, aren’t you, Lieutenant?” She shoved the pilsner glass out of her way. “You keep all of your opinions to yourself.”

  When he didn’t know anyone well, he did. And he knew no one well enough to trust them on this vessel.

  “You performed amazingly well today,” Nisen said. “I was impressed.”

  He hadn’t expected her to say that. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “You beginning to understand what it’s like to serve on a foldspace rescue vehicle?”

  “I think so, ma’am.”

  “Because it’s not all fun and games and high-level math.”

  “Clearly, ma’am.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Today was a victory. We found two people alive. We lost over five hundred, but we got two. By their reckoning, they’ve been gone six years. The captain and her first officer remained to protect the ship and guard the anacapa. They weren’t trying to get back. They’d given up on that. But they knew someone would be searching for them. As soon as their supplies ran out—and they had another six months—they would have destroyed the ship. That’s why we find so many exploded ships in foldspace. It’s procedure after it looks like no rescue will come. Did you know that, Lieutenant?”

  He felt cold. “No,” he said.

  “Yeah, you probably haven’t hit that level of command training. And so what you probably don’t know is that we rarely find ships with living crews. Sometimes they die before t
hey can blow the ship. Sometimes, I think, they refuse to do so.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to that. This entire conversation was making him feel off balance.

  “Our mission really isn’t rescue. It’s recovery. We’re supposed to pull vessels out of foldspace and return them to the main part of the Fleet for scrubbing. We also use any information gathered to learn more about foldspace.” Her hand moved to the pilsner glass, then moved away as if she had thought the better of it.

  Heyek was watching from the stool, her eyes glittering. Coop couldn’t tell if she knew what Nisen was talking to him about.

  The remaining crew was talking and laughing in their corner, thumping fists on tables, and occasionally shouting insults. Everyone seemed to be working hard at ignoring this conversation he was having with Nisen. Everyone except Heyek.

  “Working these ships is life-threatening and ugly,” Nisen said. Then she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands across her stomach. “This is where anyone else would ask me why we do it. But you’re not going to, are you, Coop?”

  He started. She had used his nickname. She had never done that before.

  “You really are a tightass. One of those regulations-are-regulations guys.” She made that sound like a fault.

  He had no idea how to respond. He had never had a conversation like this in his career.

  “I know you think I’m a drunk and a fuck-up,” she said. “You also probably assume I’ve been assigned here, and I’m just waiting until my retirement.”

  He had to hold himself very still so that he wouldn’t nod.

  “I volunteered for this assignment,” she said.

  “Ma’am?” He couldn’t prevent the word from escaping. He was surprised.

  “Not this rescue of the Voimakas,” she said, as if that was the question he was asking. He wasn’t sure if it was or not. “I volunteered to captain a foldspace rescue vehicle. And your poker face isn’t as good as you think, you know. You’re wondering why anyone would volunteer.”

  He had been wondering that.

  “I volunteered because I was waiting for you, Tightass,” she said.

  He didn’t move. She wasn’t hitting on him, was she? Because it sounded like she was, but it didn’t feel like she was.

  “I knew you were coming,” she said.

  “Me, ma’am?” he asked. This wasn’t making sense. She had been captain of the Arama for eight years. He had checked the ship’s records before he had come on board. He had done that on every vessel he’d been assigned to.

  “Not you, exactly,” Nisen said, sliding down in her chair. “But someone like you. I was beginning to think that I wouldn’t find you.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, ma’am,” Coop said.

  “No, I don’t suppose you do,” she said. “You’re a natural leader, Lieutenant. On top of that, you’re bright and you’re an original thinker when you let yourself relax. You could be one of the great captains of the Fleet. Don’t let them promote you higher.”

  He frowned, not sure what she was telling him.

  “But your regulations-are-regulations attitudes are going to get in the way of you doing your job,” she said. “You couldn’t run this ship.”

  “I’d like to think I can, ma’am,” he said.

  “I know you’d like to think that,” she said. “And maybe, ten or fifteen years from now, if your ass loosens up, you’ll be able to. But now? You’d have a ship full of failed officers, or suicides, or you’d face a mutiny. Running a foldspace rescue vehicle is a delicate balance. Your crew will see everything and anything. They’ll have to be reckless enough to enter foldspace repeatedly without freezing up, and they’ll have to be compassionate enough to handle people like Captain Golan and her first officer upon the return from hell, and they’ll have to be willing to fail almost continually.”

  Coop wished now he’d gotten a drink before this conversation started. He at least wanted something to do with his hands. Instead, he folded them together.

  “They can’t be the brightest officers in the Fleet, but they have to be creative enough to take whatever is thrown at them. They need to be a good crew, but not a great crew. You understand?”

  He was beginning to think he did.

  Nisen leaned forward and put an elbow on the table. “I’ve processed a lot of captain candidates through here. I was starting to think that I had made up this idea that there were great captains in waiting. I was starting to think that there were good candidates and horseshit candidates and nothing beyond that and nothing in between.”

  Coop frowned.

  She nodded toward the crew in the corner. “They’re going to get drunk tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after that, if we don’t get a new assignment. And the other shifts, they’ll get drunk in their off-duty hours or they’ll screw like insane teenagers. I’d like to say I don’t care, but I do. I picked them because they can blow off steam, and I let them do it. They’re not going anywhere. This is their past, present, and future. When they leave the Arama, they’ll retire. If experience is a judge, they’ll retire as far from anacapa drives as they can get.”

  Coop resisted the urge to glance at the crew. Some of the people at the far end of the room were still in their twenties. And she had already written them off.

  “This job ruins you for extended time in foldspace,” she said. “And yet we require all of our captain candidates to serve on a foldspace rescue vehicle.”

  “To understand what happens in foldspace,” he said.

  She shook her head. “To see if it breaks them. Half the candidates we get here leave the career captain track when they leave the Arama. If they leave. Heyek didn’t.”

  Coop’s gaze flicked toward Heyek, and then he silently cursed himself. He was usually better than that.

  “Why did she stay?” he asked.

  “Because she realized she had only a few years to spend around foldspace. She decided she would be useful instead of fearing the jump every time. She’s almost at the end of her service, and she knows it. I know it too.”

  Coop swallowed. “But you’re not?”

  Nisen’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Foldspace already destroyed my life. I lost everyone I cared about decades ago, and it wasn’t even my fault. I wasn’t on that ship. I was heading home from another assignment.”

  He waited, immobile, trying to see what else she would say.

  “I insisted on doing the grid search,” she said. “I found the ship. And I’m not going to describe to you what I found inside—what we found inside. But I will tell you that the captain’s chair you look at with barely concealed contempt came off that ship. It’s my reminder of the stakes here.”

  “The stakes,” he repeated, not quite a question, but not quite a statement either.

  “Yeah.” Her voice took on an edge he had never heard before. “Everyone on that ship died because their captain followed regulation to the letter. The original tightass, unwilling to bend a regulation to save three hundred lives.”

  Coop opened his mouth to respond, then realize he had no idea what to say.

  “So I monitor captain candidates. I wash out the ones who would strand their crews in foldspace because the rules are too important.” She was staring at him.

  “And that’s what you think I am,” he said.

  “Hell, no,” she said. “You could be, if you don’t fix that ass of yours. But you’re also bright, and you’ll listen. You know how to conquer your fear—don’t think I didn’t see it in your face this afternoon—and get the job done. And you only question your assumptions when it’s worthwhile to do so, not in the middle of the work.”

  He sat stiffly.

  “Which makes you,” she said, “the first captain candidate in eight years that I didn’t send back for more training, keep on this ship in a different capacity, or wash out entirely. I’m transferring you out of here, Lieutenant, and I’m sending you with a commendation.”

  He frowned
. “Not to sound ungrateful, ma’am,” he said, “but I didn’t do anything worthy of a recommendation.”

  She laughed. The laugh was big and brash and it filled the room. The laugh also stopped all conversation, and everyone looked at their table, which made it clear the laugh was as unusual as Coop thought it was.

  Nisen waved her hand dismissively, and Heyek turned to the crew. They turned away, without Heyek having to say anything.

  Nisen said, “You found us a ship that we wouldn’t have found without you. You didn’t balk when you realized you were sending us into a dangerous situation, and you didn’t apologize when you realized you nearly got us trapped as well. You reminded me that I needed to follow some regulations, not because of my ship, but because the Fleet might need those regulations followed for other reasons. You changed a lot of things today, Lieutenant, and you did so as a matter of course, not because you were gunning for a promotion.”

  He didn’t gun for promotions. He never had. But he didn’t say that. He had a hunch she already knew it.

  “I am going to recommend one thing, though,” she said, her eyes glinting with humor. It transformed her. She looked younger when she smiled, even when the smile was a bit feral. “I’m going to send a request with your transfer. For the first month in your new posting, I’m going to demand as a condition of your service that your C.O. call you Lieutenant Tightass.”

  His cheeks heated.

  “It sounds frivolous,” she said. “But it’s not. Because if that nickname sticks after that month, then you’re going to end up being a danger to whatever crew you lead. But if the nickname vanishes within six months because it no longer applies, then you’ll be as good a captain as I think you can be.”

  He stared at her, feeling like he was in between foldspace and real space, stuttering along, hoping he’d get by.

  “Now,” she said, “get the hell out of here. You look like a man who needs a meal.”

  “I actually think I’m a man who needs a drink,” he said.