Searching for the Fleet Read online

  “Yes,” Dix said.

  “Ship destroyed, crew scattered, the Fleet never notified before it happened, you think those kinds of scenarios had hope?”

  “Steal a ship, buy one, get back to the Fleet,” Dix said.

  “Without an anacapa drive,” Coop said. “Not possible.”

  “But the hope—”

  “Is a myth, Dix. You were in the same classes I was. You had the same training, the same instructors. Did you miss the parts about ships getting lost forever in foldspace? Do you think those crews had hope?”

  “Until they died, yes, I do,” Dix said.

  “Did you have this kind of hope when we were stranded in foldspace?” Coop asked.

  “Yes,” Dix said calmly. “I was convinced we’d get home.”

  Coop harrumphed. Yash thought back to those horrid weeks just over a year ago. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about getting back to the Fleet. Nor had she let herself think about foldspace as much more than a theoretical problem. The Fleet used foldspace as a tool to travel long distances. The Fleet believed that the anacapa drive created a fold in space, so that ships could cross it quickly.

  But Yash hadn’t been sure that they entered a fold in space. She thought maybe they had traveled somewhere else, a different sector of the universe, somewhere far away. Or maybe they had entered some kind of interdimensional portal. She had kept those thoughts to herself when the Ivoire was trapped in foldspace, because she needed to fix the ship, figure out what had gone wrong, to create some kind of chance—

  “I wasn’t convinced we’d get back to the Fleet,” Coop said.

  “But you said you were.” Dix sounded surprised. Apparently, he had trusted in Coop’s words.

  Yash had too. She had thought Coop amazingly calm throughout that entire ordeal—as much as she had paid attention to him. She had spent so much time in engineering that most nights she had even slept there.

  “I said I believed we could escape foldspace,” Coop said. “One problem at a time. Remember, Dix? It’s part of the training.”

  Dix flinched.

  Yash nodded. She was rather astounded that Dix had to be reminded. One problem at a time was a core principle of the Fleet. She had been operating on that very principle when the Ivoire had been trapped in foldspace.

  “And I was right,” Coop said. “We escaped foldspace.”

  “We didn’t do anything to escape,” Dix said. “These people we’re stuck with, this Lost Souls thing, they got us out.”

  Yash clenched a fist. How dare he? He knew how hard everyone worked to get out of foldspace.

  She finally spoke up. “You’re mistaken, Dix.”

  His head swiveled toward her as if he had forgotten she was there. Coop, too. He frowned at her in surprise.

  “We fixed the anacapa drive just enough,” she said, “so that when a signal came from another anacapa drive, we had the energy to assist in the pull from foldspace. If that signal had come one week earlier, we would still be stranded there.”

  Dix’s eyes narrowed. “You believe that.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  Coop nodded. “One problem at a time,” he said. “That’s what we did in foldspace. We worked the problem.”

  Dix’s lower lip trembled, making him look like a little boy who got caught in a lie.

  He squared his shoulders, then said, “So what’s the current problem? Getting back to our time period? Getting back to the Fleet?”

  If he had actually been doing his job the last year, he would know what everyone was working on and how they were coping.

  Although not everyone was coping. And Coop was managing those people as well.

  To his credit, he didn’t say that. He leaned forward, putting more of his weight on his flattened hands, then peered at Dix as if unable to believe that Dix had no idea what was going on.

  “We’re five thousand years in the future,” Coop said. “Five thousand years of technological advances. Five thousand years of changes. Five thousand years of Fleet history.”

  “Technology is backwards here,” Dix said, interrupting Coop’s flow.

  “Here at Lost Souls, yes,” Coop said. “It is. But we haven’t found the Fleet yet. And once we find them, if we find them, we have no idea if they’ll believe us, help us, or work with us. But I don’t care. One problem at a time, Dix.”

  “We’re searching for the Fleet?” Dix asked.

  “We never stopped searching for the Fleet,” Yash said.

  Dix shifted slightly on his chair. “And you think that when we find them—”

  “If we find them,” Coop corrected.

  “You think they’ll help us get back.” For the first time in a year, Dix sounded almost joyful.

  “No,” Coop said. “I make no such assumption. One problem at a time.”

  “But the new technology, as you said.” Dix was smiling, but his smile was that intense weird smile he had had on Starbase Kappa. “Their technology will be better than Boss’s. They’ll know how to get us back.”

  “A lot of assumptions in that,” Yash said. “We don’t know if the Fleet still exists. We don’t know if the Fleet of the present—if there is one—has better tech than Lost Souls. We don’t know if they’re going to want to send us back, because it might cause all kinds of problems. There are time lines—”

  “And alternate realities, and yeah, yeah.” Dix waved a hand. “I believe in that less than I believe in foldspace.”

  Whatever that meant. He had gone off the deep end after all. After the apology, Yash had hoped the old Dix had come back. She missed him. Before the Ivoire got lost in foldspace, he used to sit in this bar with the two of them, and work shipboard problems as if they were nothing.

  The man in front of her only resembled that man. The man in front of her had Dix’s shell, but not his courage. And she was beginning to think he didn’t have Dix’s brain either.

  “Are we going to even try to get back?” Dix asked Coop.

  “When?” Coop asked.

  “What do you mean, when? If we get a chance. Are we going to try?”

  Coop looked away, focusing on the windows. Yash looked too, saw the lights of a small ship as it left the space station on a mission she probably would never know about.

  Coop took a deep breath. “One problem at a time, Dix.”

  Dix slammed his hand on his table, making his glass jump and spilling just a bit of the whiskey. “I need to know, Coop. I need to know we’re trying.”

  “Getting back to the Fleet and to our time period is an extreme long shot, Dix.” Coop spoke softly. “And I’m not sure it’s worth attempting. Because—the training, Dix. We’re trained to make the most of the situation we’re in, not to wish we were somewhere else.”

  The color fled Dix’s face, leaving only two red spots on his cheeks, almost as if Coop had physically slapped him.

  “I lost the love of my life,” Dix said.

  “Most likely,” Coop said, and Yash tensed at the bluntness. Although she knew that was part of the training too. No use sugarcoating anything, because that didn’t help anyone deal with change.

  Better to face it straight on.

  “But you would have lost her if her ship got damaged in some battle,” Coop said. “You would have lost her if we remained stranded in foldspace. Hell, Dix, you would have lost her—or she would have lost you—at the end of your lives. One of you would have had to die first.”

  Dix pressed his lips together. His eyes had filled with tears. “You’re a mean son of a bitch, you know that, Coop?”

  Coop gave him a languid, sideways look. “I never pretended otherwise. You don’t get to be the captain of a DV-Class vessel by being kind, Dix. I thought you knew that.”

  Dix ran a shaking hand over his face. “I didn’t know anything.”

  Yash frowned at Dix in surprise. Of course he had known what it took to be captain. He had been on the captain track. There were personality tests, and stress tests, and
a willingness to do exactly what Coop had done: disregard someone’s feelings to get that someone back in line.

  Had Dix forgotten that? All of it? Or had he tested well, only to perform poorly in the field?

  Coop folded his hands together as if he had to hold them in place to prevent them from—what? Grabbing Dix and shaking him?

  Because Yash wanted to do that.

  “Remember who you are, Dix,” Coop said. “Use your training. You’re second in command on this ship.”

  “Not any more,” Dix said bitterly. “You sidelined me.”

  “You need to face forward, Dix,” Coop said, ignoring Dix’s accusation. His accurate accusation. “We need you to work the problem.”

  “The problem, the problem,” Dix snapped. “As if it’s something minor.”

  Yash glanced at Coop. His expression was calm, but he was gripping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

  “DV-Class ships never deal with something minor, Dix,” Coop said. “You know that too.”

  “They don’t deal with something like this, either,” Dix said.

  “How do you know?” Yash asked.

  Both men looked at her with surprise. She shrugged. She had been thinking about this a lot.

  “Dozens, maybe hundreds, of ships have disappeared forever, lost to foldspace. Those are the ones we know about, the ones that were actually observed entering foldspace. But we lose a lot of ships because they never return from some mission, and we can’t track them down. We don’t know how many other ships, how many other crews, how many other captains have dealt with this very thing.”

  Dix stared at her, his eyes tear-filled, his nose red. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “We’re not here to make you feel better,” Coop said.

  Dix turned that hideous gaze on Coop.

  “None of us feel better,” Coop said. “But most of us are working.”

  “Yeah,” Dix said. “Working every angle. Sleeping with that woman who found us. Must be nice to have her to warm your bed.”

  Coop’s impassive expression vanished. In its stead, he gazed at Dix with compassion.

  “I know you lost Lenore,” Coop said, clearly trying a different tack. “And I know you loved her more than anything.”

  “I won’t replace her,” Dix said. “I won’t try.”

  “I’m not suggesting you do,” Coop said.

  “You have no idea how this feels,” Dix said.

  Coop nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.”

  Yash frowned. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Was this another attempt at calming Dix? Or was this just Coop, tossing away any attempt at caution?

  “I don’t know if I ever will know what you felt for Lenore,” Coop said. “They tested me. They test all candidates for captaincy. We’re less likely than other members of the Fleet to have long-term romantic relationships. When have you ever heard a captain use the phrase, ‘The love of my life’?”

  “Are you saying I’m not captain material?” Dix asked.

  Good God. Everything was about him. That wasn’t the point, and if he had been listening—

  “It would have depended on how you tested out on other things,” Coop said. “But a willingness to sacrifice deep human connection in favor of the right decision for the ship, a certain bloodlessness, if you will, or, as you said, a willingness to be a mean son of a bitch, that’s damn near the number one requirement.”

  “So you’d leave Boss for the Fleet?” Dix said.

  “You’re under a misapprehension,” Coop said. “We’re close, but we’re not in a relationship.”

  Yet, Yash thought. But they would be.

  “If you were.” Dix’s tone implied that he didn’t believe Coop’s denial. “Would you leave her to go home?”

  Home was an interesting word choice. Although Yash empathized with it. That was the thing: the Ivoire felt like home, but this time period did not.

  “Yes,” Coop said. He relaxed his hands. They were still clasped together, but loosely. “Here’s what you miss, Dix. I would leave a loved one for any mission, if ordered to do so by the Fleet. I would, and I have.”

  “Even someone you thought you could spend the rest of your life with?” Dix asked.

  “Yes,” Coop said.

  “And never see them again?” Dix asked, voice trembling.

  “That’s the risk,” Coop said. “That’s what we all agreed to when we joined the crew of this vessel. I thought you understood that.”

  Dix blinked and looked away. A single tear hung on the lashes of his left eye. Yash stared at it, wondering if he knew it was there. Wondering if he cared.

  “We lost everything,” he whispered.

  “Face forward,” Coop said. The words were brutal. His tone was brutal. “That’s what the Fleet does, Dix. Forever forward. You know that.”

  Dix nodded. The tear fell, landing on the edge of the table and falling out of Yash’s line of sight.

  “I forgot,” he said, his voice thick with tears.

  “I know,” Coop said gently. He put a hand on Dix’s shoulder. Dix jumped. “Drink with us. Yash and I have been talking about all of this since we got here. We’ll catch you up on our plans.”

  Dix’s Adam’s apple bobbed—a nervous swallow.

  For a moment, Yash thought he was going to stay. For a moment, she thought they would be able to reclaim the team that they had been just over a year ago.

  Then Dix shook his head. “I have enough to think about for one night.”

  He stood, reached out one hand toward Coop.

  Coop took it.

  Dix shook.

  “Thank you,” Dix said. “You clarified things.”

  “Good,” Coop said. But he didn’t add, as Yash might have, Glad I could help. It was almost as if he didn’t believe the conversation made any difference at all.

  “Join us tomorrow?” Yash asked, partly because Coop didn’t. Partly because it seemed like Dix expected it.

  He smiled at her, and the smile was warm. “I’ve missed these moments,” he said.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  He picked up his whiskey, knocked it back, then carried the tumbler to the cleaner/recycler.

  “I am sorry,” Dix said.

  She nodded. “We know.”

  Then he waved his fingers, a small goodbye. He left the bar.

  Coop picked up his own drink, put his feet back on the table, and leaned back in the chair. He still didn’t take a sip.

  Yash watched until she was certain Dix was gone. Then she settled back into her spot although she didn’t feel as relaxed.

  “He did apologize,” she said.

  “He did,” Coop said, as if it didn’t matter.

  They sat in silence for a long time. Then Yash said, “He’s not the man you thought he was, is he?”

  Coop finally picked up his glass. He peered into it, then—finally—took a sip.

  “He’s the man I feared he was,” Coop said. It was, in its own way, the closest Coop had ever come to saying he had picked the wrong first officer.

  Yash finished her drink, and thought about getting another. This night, it felt wrong to get drunk. Maybe she was past anesthetizing herself. Maybe she had moved to another stage.

  “He’s right, though,” Coop said.

  “About what?” Yash asked. She braced herself. She hadn’t ever expected Jonathon “Coop” Cooper to talk about loss.

  “I’ll never know how he feels,” Coop said, and finished his drink.

  Two

  The next morning, Yash arrived on the Ivoire early to run the monthly systems checks. The Ivoire didn’t need that many checks, but they made Yash feel better.

  No one knew how often she came here, not even Coop.

  She walked into the bridge, lights coming up as she entered. No matter how many times she had come here since they had arrived in this strange future, she still felt uncomfortable in the empty brid
ge. It had been built for activity, with dozens of work stations, and the captain’s chair in the very center, waiting for someone to take command. A door to her right led into a small conference area, and a line of storage cabinets covered the wall beside that door.

  She always glanced at them, afraid someone had tampered with them. She didn’t trust everyone at Lost Souls, even though none of them should have had access to the Ivoire’s bridge.

  The bridge felt even more uncomfortable than usual this morning, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. The hair on the back of her neck had gone up the moment she stepped into the main part of the bridge.

  The only anomaly she could see were the screens. They had been shuttered, blocking the view of the docking bay she had seen just the night before.

  She thought that odd; she liked having the portals open, liked seeing everything in real time. The shuttered portals were how she knew she hadn’t been the last person up here. That too was odd, but she didn’t think too much about it because Coop had been in the ship with her last night.

  They no longer lived on the Ivoire, taking larger berths in the converted space station, but a handful of crew members still did. Coop did not discourage them. He wanted someone to continue manning the ship. He probably would have done it himself if no one else had volunteered to stay.

  But he was gradually easing his grip on the past, and moving off the Ivoire had been one of those steps for him. Just like it had been for Yash.

  She actually liked her new apartment. She liked the extra bedroom, which she had cluttered with equipment. She liked the large kitchen, and the bathroom was a religious experience.

  She too, apparently, was easing her grip on the past.

  The conversation last night, the apology from Dix, had buoyed her mood. Maybe others who were having trouble moving into the future would do so if Dix did.

  She had gone to sleep hopeful, and had awakened with even more hope. She was humming as she went through some of the start-up routines.

  As she saw it, one of her duties as chief engineer was to make sure each system activated and functioned. She had developed a cycle in the past year, a way of working through each system, checking it and its readings against the readings made before the Ivoire got trapped in foldspace, and also against the readings made after the Ivoire had come here.