Encounter on Starbase Kappa Read online

He stood, cradling the drive. It had to feel bulky and heavy. Coop had never held an active drive. It probably vibrated too. He wasn't quite sure how Dix managed to keep his arms around it.

  "Better yet," Yash said, "let's put it in here."

  She emptied her equipment case. It didn't protect against the effects of the anacapa —it wasn't designed for that—but it looked official.

  On the private channel, Dix said, "Engineer Zarlengo, let's do it my way."

  "The case locks, Dix," she said on the same channel. "They won't be able to mess with it in time."

  Then she glanced at Coop, as if expecting him to resolve this.

  But he didn't have to. Dix set the anacapa in the case. Yash shut it, locked it, and then picked it up. It took both hands.

  She extended the case to the civilian. "Be careful," she said. "These things can be tricky."

  He took the case. "We know," he said in that much too eager voice.

  Then he cradled the case to his chest, and walked toward the main door, still a bit bouncy.

  "Let's go," he said to the two soldiers who were supposed to guard him.

  "But the commander—"

  "She'll understand." He looked over his shoulder at Coop. The civilian clearly trying hard not to grin. "You'll evacuate like you said, right?"

  "We gave you our word that we were leaving," Coop said.

  "You still haven't shown me how to work the door," the civilian said.

  "We'll leave it open," Coop said. "And unlocked."

  The civilian nodded. It had been a long time since Coop had seen someone this greedy and gullible, and Coop had never been able to use both to his advantage before.

  "Thank you," the civilian said, and bounced his way out of the room.

  "Now," Dix said on the private channel, "all we need is the Ivoire and we're ready." Coop glanced at him. His first officer had believed all of this too.

  "The first step is to get to the transport," Coop said on the same channel.

  "Don't we want to go to the Ivoire?" Dix asked. He really wasn't thinking clearly.

  How long had he been this off?

  "We don't want them to see it, Dix," Coop said gently. "They'll become even more suspicious than they are."

  "Oh yeah," Dix said with a creepy grin. "Then let's get the hell out of here."

  Coop couldn't agree more. He signaled his team to leave the room, and head for the transport.

  "Close the door after us," he said to Yash. "And make sure shutdown protocols are in place."

  She nodded.

  "Won't they notice?" Dix asked, sounding worried.

  "Believe me, Dix," Coop said, "they're not going to notice a damn thing."

  9

  They got Dix onto the transport first. Coop didn't have to tell Lalliki to watch him closely; she already was.

  Coop went to the cockpit. It was crammed. Anita Tren was here, and Yash joined them. Windows on three sides were clear, and the screens were up, showing the entire station and the Empire's ship.

  It was larger than Coop thought it would be, about half the size of the Ivoire. Unlike the Ivoire, the ship was long rather than wide.

  "They're having a hell of an argument," Tren said. "I've tapped into your comm.

  You want to hear it?"

  Coop looked at the images on the screen. Three people stood on the lower landing area to the Room of Lost Souls. One was crouched.

  "No, I don't need to hear," Coop said. "They're not letting him onto their ship, right?"

  "That's right," Tren said. "They're afraid he's too close now. They're telling him that the stealth tech is creating a field near their ship and he has to leave it behind. He's telling them he can shut it off, and he's trying to open Yash's case."

  "Let them worry about that, then," Coop said. "We need to get out of here."

  "You're going to leave them with the anacapa?" Tren asked.

  "No," Coop said. "You're going to give me the controls."

  She moved aside, and as she did, the door to the cockpit slid open.

  "Where's the Ivoire?" Dix said. "You promised the Ivoire would be here."

  "The Ivoire won't be back for—what is it, Anita? Four hours?" Coop settled into the pilot's chair.

  "About that," Tren said.

  "You promised!" Dix said. "We need the Ivoire."

  "Get him out of here," Coop said. He bent over the controls.

  Dix yelled in the background, mostly shouting Coop's name, shouting that he'd promised, that someone should stop Coop because Coop had lied to all of them. Coop hit the controls, taking the transport slowly away from the starbase. He slapped his palm on the comm, activating it. "I want everyone to strap in. This won't be fun."

  Dix was still yelling, but Coop wouldn't turn around.

  "I can't get him out of here, Captain," someone said. Coop didn't recognize the voice without looking, so he didn't look.

  "Then strap him in here," Coop said.

  "Nooooo!" Dix said, and something banged behind Coop. "You can't do this."

  Actually, no one else could do this. Oh, Coop supposed almost anyone in the team could follow his orders, but he didn't want them to. It wasn't right. He'd gotten them into this mess. He was going to get them out.

  He set the target, and he set the speed. Then he waited until the transport was at the edge of the weapon range.

  "They stopped arguing," Tren said. "They've powered up their ship. I think they're coming after us, Captain."

  "I don't think so," Coop said. He felt calm. In fact, he hadn't felt this calm in months. "I think they're getting their ship away from the anacapa drive."

  And that was smart, if most people on board that ship did not have the genetic marker.

  "I thought you wanted to target all of them," Tren said, and he smiled just a little. His staff knew him. He hadn't said anything about targeting anyone.

  "Coop, you can't!" Dix said. "You can't!"

  The transport reached the very edge of the range. Coop slammed both hands onto the controls. One palm hit the speed setting while the other sent every weapon the transport had at the landing deck of Starbase Kappa.

  "Coop, nooooo!" Dix screamed.

  The transport went from a cruising speed to its maximum in less than a second. Everyone got knocked back, even Coop. He had plugged in coordinates near the Ivoire's last position.

  At that moment, the weapons fire hit the landing deck. It exploded. Starbase Kappa pinwheeled away, mostly intact, but bits scattered. Coop wasn't close enough to see, but he knew what it was: pieces of the starbase, pieces of Yash's case, pieces of the civilian and his two guards.

  The wave from the anacapa wasn't visible, but it hit them all the same, loud and screeching and heart-pounding. Coop had been hit with a destroyed anacapa wave before and it felt awful. The scientists didn't know why, and until this moment, he hadn't cared.

  He gripped the seat, his breath coming in big gasps.

  He couldn't see the wave move outward from the explosion, but he knew it had, and he knew that the Empire ship wasn't out of range. It bobbled, then rolled, and then floated, as all of its systems died.

  The Fleet's transport ships had been built to survive an outside anacapa explosion. No ship in Boss's universe had been built that way. The wave would continue outward and would probably hit all of the Empire ships guarding this part of space. It wouldn't take out any other ships, since the Empire ships were keeping interlopers out of here.

  At this moment, the crews of the Empire ships were probably still alive. But they wouldn't be for long. The ships' systems were down, along with everything else, even the environmental suits. Gradually, the environment would leach out of all of the ships, and the crews would die.

  He doubted any ship could save them. Functioning ships were too far away to arrive quickly enough.

  Coop stared at the Enterran ship for a moment. Its commander had had the right idea; she had just been too late. He felt for her. She had been in the wrong place at the wron
g moment. He had known that the second he saw her, and he had known he couldn't warn her.

  He found a stable orbit near a moon not far from the site where the Ivoire would return. He kept the cloak on.

  His crew said nothing. Even Dix had grown silent.

  Coop ran a hand through his hair, and turned around.

  Dix looked like he had died along with the. His eyes were sunken, his lips bleeding where he'd clearly bitten them.

  "Do you know what you've done?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

  "Yes," Coop said. He sounded firm and confident, and like the captain he had once been.

  The cockpit crew stared at him with the same expression Dix had. Apparently they had all held onto a bit of hope. Maybe they had thought that the insane scheme that Dix had come up with would reverse the circumstances of their journey into the future, and send them back to the proper place in the past.

  Even Coop had felt that hope, not as a real thing, but as a pressure.

  He had destroyed the pressure.

  But unlike the crew, he wasn't feeling sad. He was feeling alive, for the first time since he got here.

  He hadn't resurrected Captain Jonathan Cooper of the Fleet. That man was gone.

  But he had found a new man, Coop Cooper, who captained the Ivoire.

  He had done what he set out to do. He had destroyed the malfunctioning anacapa.

  No one would die in this area of space ever again because of his people.

  And he had kept his promise to Boss. The Empire didn't know about the Ivoire or his working.

  His first mission in this new place had been a success after all. Just not the kind of success he'd expected it to be.

  Dix's lower lip was trembling. His eyes were filled with tears. He was shaking his head.

  "We're never going to go home again, Coop. Never. The circumstances will never ever be right again."

  They hadn't been right this time either. Coop had argued that and argued that. So had his engineers and scientists. But apparently no one had believed them.

  "I know," Coop said. "This is our home now. This place. Our training taught us how to move forward. It's time we do that."

  "I can't," Dix said.

  "You will," Coop said.

  They needed time to mourn their lost lives. But first, they had to accept that their past lives were lost. He had helped them with that this day. That was the greatest success of the mission, the fact that it had exploded the false hope along with the damaged anacapa.

  It had helped him. And now that he was back on firm footing, footing he understood, he would be able to help them too.

  The Ivoire had been missing its leader. He was back now, and he would make the best choices he could.

  The first thing he was going to do was return to the Nine Planets. Now the fight against the Empire was his as well as theirs. His actions against the Empire would be seen as an attack. He would take the blame for that, just like he would take the blame for destroying his crew's hope.

  He had broad shoulders.

  And it was time he finally used them.