Encounter on Starbase Kappa Read online

  Coop walked over to the anacapa drive. He could hear it thrumming softly. The anacapa seemed invisible to those who worked with it regularly, but it wasn't. It made small noises, and caused small motions like that slip he'd felt earlier.

  Coop had never learned exactly how to work on an anacapa —it wasn't required for command—but he did know enough about it to recognize that the drive was still intact. Dix had just gone into the center of it to adjust it, somehow.

  And Coop had an idea as to how.

  Dix didn't look up as Coop approached. Dix's environmental-suited arms were deep inside the drive, his hands—probably still gloved—tinkering with the interiors. The light from the anacapa illuminated Dix's face, adding shadows where there generally were none, and making him look thinner than he usually did.

  Or maybe that wasn't the light at all. Maybe Dix had grown even more gaunt than usual. Maybe he had been wasting away, and Coop hadn't even noticed.

  "Dix," Coop said. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm getting us back," Dix said.

  "The mission is to shut the drive down, remove it, and take it back to Lost Souls," Coop said.

  "It's a stupid mission," Dix said, and at that moment, Coop knew his friend had gone over an edge. His first officer would never talk to him that way. Dix had expressed that kind of opinion in his darkest moods months ago, but had returned to the exceedingly competent man Coop had known.

  Everyone around them shifted, as if they expected Coop to lose his temper. He wouldn't lose his temper—not here—unless it was appropriate. And right now, nothing was appropriate except getting Dix away from the anacapa.

  "I told you," Dix said. "I told you repeatedly that we needed a functioning anacapa that was as old as the one on Sector Base V to get us back. This is it, Coop. You know that."

  "We fixed our anacapa," Lalliki said before Coop could stop her. "It's not in the same condition that it was in six months ago. Even if we found a way to link the two devices—"

  Coop held up a hand, silencing her.

  "I had forgotten, Dix," Coop said softly. "You should have reminded me before we left on this mission."

  He crouched so that he was closer to Dix and so that he could see Dix's hands inside the device. He was working on the controls, but Coop didn't know which ones. Most of the anacapa access happened on a control panel, not inside the device itself.

  "You wouldn't have listened if I had said anything. You would have left me behind," Dix said.

  Coop would have, too. He would have had to leave Dix behind because the very idea of tampering with an anacapa without training meant that Dix was unstable.

  "You want to get back," Coop said, careful not to frame that as a question. "We all do."

  Dix raised his head. His eyes had deep shadows beneath them.

  "You all believe it's impossible," Dix said. "You wouldn't even try. We're stuck here, Coop. Stuck. And Starbase Kappa is our last chance."

  Coop swallowed hard, trying not to show the nerves that had suddenly infected his stomach. Sometimes ideas on the far side of crazy were the right ones. Sometimes those ideas were the difference between succeeding at something and complete failure.

  But he also knew he wanted to get back as badly as Dix did. So did the entire team. Their training, though, their training included acceptance of things they couldn't change. They weren't supposed to reach for a scenario that had a 5 percent success rate.

  Although, if Coop thought about it, this one scenario—hooking up the old Starbase Kappa anacapa to the Ivoire's (repaired) anacapa —probably had a less than 1 percent success rate.

  "You're right," Coop said, hoping he didn't sound patronizing. "Dammit, Dix, I hadn't thought of any of this and I should have."

  Dix's eyes narrowed. Had Coop overplayed his hand? Dix knew him extremely well, better than almost everyone else on the crew except Yash. Dix and Coop had served together for more than fifteen years.

  "Yes, you should have, and you didn't, and now I'm working. Let me finish," Dix snapped at him, and Coop realized that the Dix he expected, the Dix who would have seen through his playacting, was submerged in a mixture of hope, confusion, and some kind of mental break.

  "One second, Dix," Coop said.

  "I knew you'd try to stop me," Dix said. "Get the hell away or I'll break the damn drive."

  Which would be better for everyone at the moment, but Coop didn't say that. He didn't want Dix to know what he was thinking.

  "I'm not trying to stop you," Coop said in his calmest voice. "I'm trying to help you."

  Dix made a dismissive sound and turned his attention to the drive again.

  Coop could have phrased that better. A lot better, in fact.

  "What I'm saying here is that you're not an anacapa expert," Coop started, "and we have four people who know the drive better than anyone else on the Ivoire. Let's get them involved—"

  "Why?" Dix said, raising his head so quickly that it looked like it hurt. "So they can screw this up? They didn't come up with this idea. They say it's impossible. They say the conditions are wrong for the anacapas to mix. I say how can you know without trying? They say we'll get stuck somewhere worse, maybe foldspace again, maybe a hostile alternate universe, maybe our past instead of our future. I say what can it hurt? They say we're pretty well set-up here in this future, with the help of that woman you're screwing and the little band of so-called scientists around her. I say—"

  "I've heard the arguments," Coop said, trying to ignore the insubordination, recognizing it for the crazy that it was. "And I'm telling you, my old friend, that I believe you. They're part of my crew. They'll have to do what I tell them. If I tell them to follow my instructions, they'll have to."

  Dix shifted just a little. His arms had to hurt, being in that position for so long.

  "You tell them to instruct me what to do and I'll do it," he said.

  He clearly wasn't going to let go of those controls. Dammit.

  "The anacapa is delicate," Coop said. "I think they'll need hands on—"

  "See, that's where you think you're so clever, Captain Cooper," Dix said, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. "And you're not. You're not clever at all. You want me to let go of the interior of the drive so your people can put me into the brig, and you can go ahead with this crazy mission that will destroy the drive and our chances to get the hell out of here. You want to stay because you've fallen for that woman, and you don't care who it hurts."

  Coop winced, and hoped Dix didn't see it. Yes, Coop had developed a relationship with Boss, but it hadn't become sexual—yet. He had a hunch it would. He wasn't ready. And he certainly wouldn't give up his whole life and everything he knew for her, no matter what.

  But Dix didn't believe that. Dix, who needed to get home to the woman he had left behind. Dix, who probably loved her in exactly the way he accused Coop of loving Boss.

  "Dix," Coop said as calmly as he could. "I'm afraid that you're the one who is going to screw up the drive so badly that we won't be able to get back."

  Dix snorted with disbelieving laughter. "I'm sure you don't believe that, Coop. You know better."

  "No," Coop said firmly. "You know better. You know that we're not certified to work on anacapas, but we are the ones the others trust. We're the ones who give the orders. So, listen to me: I agree with you. We need to combine the anacapas and see if we can get back to our Universe, our people, our Fleet. But you and I aren't the ones who can work on the drives. We're the ones who tell others what to do, even if they don't agree with us. Remember?"

  Dix froze. Coop could actually see him thinking.

  Coop's heart rate started to increase. Dix was contemplating what he said. Maybe Coop had managed to reach the last part of Dix that was thinking clearly.

  "Captain?" The voice didn't belong to anyone in the anacapa room. It belonged to Anita Tren, whom he had left in charge of the transport they had brought to the starbase from the Ivoire.

  Everyone moved, which meant everyone h
eard the voice. Even Dix. Tren had not used a private channel.

  Another dammit. Coop didn't want Dix to be distracted, to have time to think. (Or, to be more accurate, to revert to the worst of the crazy.)

  "We have a problem, sir," Tren said without waiting for Coop to respond. "Are you there?"

  Dix shook his head, and leaned even closer to the anacapa, hunching away from Coop as if he expected Coop to strike him.

  "I'm here, Anita," Coop said. "What is it?"

  "Sir," Tren said. "Twenty soldiers have arrived. I think they're from the Enterran Empire."

  Coop frowned. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this. "Twenty? They're in ships?"

  "No, sir. They're on the starbase. Apparently they docked on the far side from us, several levels down. We weren't looking for them because we didn't think anyone came to this base. I'm sorry, sir."

  "They're on the base?" Coop couldn't quite wrap his brain around it.

  "Yes, sir. They look hesitant, sir, but they're armed."

  Armed. Coop didn't repeat that one. Armed. He hadn't expected it. Should he have expected it? He hadn't expected Dix either.

  Clearly, Dix wasn't the only one whose thinking had been clouded of late.

  "Dix," Coop said. "I want you to step back from the anacapa. Let the experts do the work you're trying to do."

  "No," Dix said. "They won't listen."

  "Dix, I don't have time—"

  "Yeah, I know," Dix said. "And neither do I. You have a military mission, Captain. I have a humanitarian one. Let me finish what I'm doing."

  Whatever chance Coop had had of convincing Dix to step back was gone. Coop stood.

  He could stun his old friend, but weapons fire in this closed space wasn't the best idea. And the environmental suit, with its three layers of protection, limited their options.

  "Keep an eye on him," Coop said to Yash. And then he added her on a private channel, "See if you can figure out a way to stop him."

  "I'll do my best, sir," Yash said through that same channel. "Be careful."

  Coop nodded an acknowledgement. He couldn't promise her that he would be careful, however, because he didn't know what careful was any more.

  4

  "No," Boss had said when he told her his plan. "You can't do this."

  They were inside her office. The Lost Souls Corporation had bought a space station in the Nine Planets Alliance. The station housed two former Fleet ships for study, and parts of several others that had been discovered over the years.

  Boss's office was large. It had three separate spaces—a huge entrance area with separate seating groups, a private area where Boss spent most of her time alone, and a conference room that was even larger than the main area.

  Boss met with everyone in the entrance area. No one went into the private area. Boss was the ultimate loner, and she was still getting used to running a corporation. Sometimes Coop wondered how she had ever managed to command a ship—even a small ship. All that time with people had to wear her down.

  She sat on the couch, frowning at him. She wasn't pretty—she was too thin for that—but she was athletic, with close-cropped hair and the graceful movements of someone comfortable in her own body.

  He found her exceptionally attractive, and he tried to ignore it. If he were back in his own time, he might act on it—he rarely met someone his equal whom he was attracted to who wasn't also part of the Fleet—but here, he didn't know if he was just being needy and lonely, in search of a distraction and a bit of human contact.

  Still, he touched her too much, casually in conversations, and usually, she touched him back.

  On this day, though, she didn't. Her eyes had become steely and her mouth was in a thin line. Her arms were crossed.

  "You can't do this, Coop," she repeated.

  He almost said, like a child , I can do whatever I want.

  Instead, he said, "You told me that the Room of Lost Souls has been a danger to everyone who comes near it for its entire history. It clearly has a malfunctioning. My people can shut it down. Then we'll come back."

  She shook her head. "You don't understand what could go wrong."

  He felt a flare of anger. Of course he understood. He understood better than she did. She had no connection to the technology, and while he couldn't fix it himself, he knew more about the anacapa than she and her people ever would.

  "I'm just telling you this as a courtesy," he said. "We'll do what we have to do."

  "Coop." She leaned forward and touched his knee, as if she needed to get his attention. She had his full attention, so she didn't need to touch him.

  And for the first time since he'd met her, her touch irritated him.

  "You'll need our maps," she said.

  "I know where the Room of Lost Souls is," he said. "It was our starbase, remember. It hasn't moved."

  "You don't know that," she said. "It doesn't behave the way we expect it to."

  "We can find it," he said.

  He was shaking. The mission meant more to him than he wanted to say. He needed something to do. He had to feel useful, instead of a charity case. Look at that man. He used to be the captain in a legendary fleet. Now he doesn't understand anything. He just lives off the goodwill of others, and dreams of a home he'll never find.

  He shook the thought away.

  "That's not what I'm worried about," she said. "The Room of Lost Souls is deep in Enterran space."

  "I'm not at war with your empire," he snapped.

  "I know." She was using a tone he'd never heard from her before. It was the tone that people used with a child or a sick person or someone incapable of understanding a certain concept. "But we don't want the Empire to know that Dignity Vessels actually work."

  He hated that term, Dignity Vessel. She promised not to use it, but she lapsed all the time. The Fleet hadn't used the term Dignity Vessel in generations (well, thousands of years if he started counting from now). The term grated, showed her ignorance, and made him feel even more out of place.

  "The Empire won't know. We're not flying in and flying out," Coop said. "We're using our anacapa. We'll arrive near Starbase Kappa and then we'll shut off the star-base's anacapa and return. We'll be gone a day at most."

  "And if an Empire ship is there?" she asked.

  "You said that the place is uninhabited," Coop said.

  "I said that regular ships don't stop. They heed the warning. But the Empire has been running experiments in stealth tech, and knew years ago about the Room of Lost Souls. I'm sure they're still running experiments there."

  Coop shook his head. "The technology at Starbase Kappa is ours. It has killed how many of your people?"

  "I don't know," Boss said tightly. Her arms were crossed again, and she was leaning back on that couch.

  "You've lost some people there," he said.

  She took a deep breath. "My mother and one of my closest friends died in that Room. They didn't have the genetic marker that you and I have that would allow them to work inside your stealth technology."

  "It's not—"

  "I know," she said. "It's not stealth technology, and you don't fly a Dignity Vessel. Old habits die hard, Coop. And you know what I mean. You're picking nits so that we don't deal with what's really going on."

  Now he crossed his arms. "What, in your opinion, is really going on?"

  "You need something to do. You have a ship and no mission. It's not natural for you."

  She saw him more clearly than anyone else ever had. Maybe that was why he was attracted to her.

  Or maybe he just showed his emotions more these days, and anyone could have made that deduction.

  "This is not a fruitless mission," he said with a bit more passion than he planned.

  "No, it's not," she said. "Eventually, we'll have to deal with the anacapa on your starbase. But right now, everyone in the sector knows that the Room of Lost Souls is dangerous. It's an approach-at-your-own-risk site. Most ships don't land there. So there's nothing pressing about go
ing."

  "Yes, there is," he said.

  She sighed. "Coop—"

  "You were right. My ship is in need of a mission. But it's not just me. It's my crew. They're going crazy here. They're getting trapped in all of their losses and feeling as if they have no future. We need—I need—to remind them who they are and what they can do. I need them to become a crew again, Boss, not just some people who ended up five thousand years in the future."

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She was thinking about his point, clearly. Then she shook her head slightly, as if she had been arguing with herself, and finally she sighed.

  She opened her eyes, brought her head down, and scowled at him.

  "I don't like this mission. Can't we find something else for you to do?"

  "We're not children," Coop said. "We don't need to be entertained."

  "That's not my point," she said. "My point is—"

  "That's exactly your point. I need my crew on a real mission, one any ship in the Fleet would take. The trip to Starbase Kappa is such a mission. We know that our tech is malfunctioning and killing people. We have to stop that. It's a real mission with a real objective, and it won't take a lot of time. It'll shore up some rusty skills and it'll get my team working together again. It benefits all of us."

  "The Empire—"

  "I don't care about your empire," he said. "If a ship shows up and threatens us, we'll destroy it. But if the starbase is as isolated as you say, that probably won't happen."

  "The Empire can't know that stealth tech works," she said. "And I used the term deliberately. Because that's what they call your device."

  "They won't know," Coop said. "How could they? Even if they see us appear, they won't know that the drive did it."

  "And then they send the information to their headquarters and it won't matter if you destroy their ship. They will have seen a Dignity Vessel come out of nowhere, and they'll see the so-called stealth tech in action."

  "The ship will show up near a place of superstition, a place that some of your people believe is haunted. Surely the sighting will be discounted."

  He sounded a bit desperate even to himself. He didn't want to, but he wasn't giving up this mission.