Skirmishes (6 page)

Lalliki walked quickly toward Coop, but he signaled her to stop. He knew what was happening—or enough of it, anyway.

Dix knew a lot about a lot of things, but he was no
anacapa
expert. Still, he had spent most of the last six months studying the drive, trying to figure out what had gone wrong and what could be recreated.

He had come to Coop’s cabin late one night and helped himself to some whiskey that Coop had been saving.

We don’t understand these damn drives
, Dix had said.
We can work them, we can repair them, but we’re playing with things we only partially get
.

I’m sure the specialists would disagree with you
, Coop had said, deciding not to mention the whiskey. Instead, he had poured a glass for himself.

If they disagreed, they would know what foldspace is
, Dix said, then sighed.
I think we’re screwed, Coop. We need some kind of access to our own past, something still functioning. We shut down Sector Base V, and it was a mistake. We can’t make that mistake again
.

Coop had forgotten that conversation until now. It had been months ago, and he and Dix had had countless conversations after that. Many of them had been about Dix’s family, his love for the Fleet, and the woman he had left behind on the
Geneva
. Dix had been in love, the kind of love Coop had never experienced, and losing her was tearing him apart in ways Coop didn’t completely understand.

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

Coop never learned exactly how to work on an
anacapa
—it wasn’t required for leadership—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 with 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
too,” 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% 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 one 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 15 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 from 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 heard the voice. Even Dix. Anita 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,” Anita 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,” Anita 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.

SEVEN

IT FELT WEIRD, going through the familiar corridors of Starbase Kappa, only without the stores, the restaurants, the spectacular and different hotels. The starbase didn’t even have echoes of those old businesses. Nothing familiar remained except the shape of the hallways, and of course, the stairs.

Coop had a map of the old starbase in his head and the partial one Boss had made on the bottom of his visor, but even then, moving to the lower levels was slow going. He was actually afraid he might get lost.

He didn’t have time for that. Not with twenty soldiers from the Enterran Empire on a lower level.

Right now, they believed they had the element of surprise. He only had so much time before they realized they didn’t.

He had told ten members of his team to join him, but only one other officer. That officer, Joanna Rossetti, sidled up to him the moment she arrived.

“Let me handle this, Captain,” she said, as she should have. Fleet procedure did not allow a captain to go first into a hostile situation.

However, who would punish him now for disobeying regulations? The Fleet? It wasn’t nearby, and besides, the Fleet he knew hadn’t existed for five thousand years.

His crew could call for a court-martial and maybe even use procedures to remove him, and then what? He would still be stuck in this time period, and so would they. Someone else would captain the
Ivoire
, but what would that someone do, especially after some kind of crew rebellion?

“I got it, Jo,” Coop said.

Rossetti shook her head. She pushed past him as if she could protect him, which always made him smile. She was small, built for space—the small ceilings, the nooks and crannies. She functioned best in zero-g, unlike some of his team.