Searching for the Fleet

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  It was something she had done so often that she had only noticed it after an anacapa (the Ivoire’s anacapa) had malfunctioned.

  “Fascinating,” she said to herself, as she dug into the work. “Absolutely fascinating.”

  Seventeen

  Coop still stood in the center of a screen barrier, but he had the visuals shut off on four of those screens. He was deep in his work now, figuring out exactly what he needed to do.

  The lab he was working in felt warm, and his stomach growled. It had been a long time since that breakfast he had forced into Yash. At some point, he would have to find her and drag her in for another meal.

  But he was finally beginning to understand her obsession. There was more information here than he could go through easily—and he wanted it all in his head. Right now. Although he knew that wasn’t possible.

  He felt a little internal push that lied to him and told him that he could get through everything if he just worked harder. If he skipped meals. If he slept less.

  He usually wasn’t a researcher. He had done research on his various jobs as he worked his way up to captain, but he hadn’t enjoyed it. Of course, he hadn’t done the work because he wanted to do it. He had done the work because it was assigned.

  And now, recognizing that he was on the knife’s edge of losing himself to the same obsession that was gripping Yash, he forced himself to get more coffee and another slice of bread.

  Besides, those moments away were good for him. They helped his eyes rest and his brain consider other things.

  On one of his walks to the break room, he had decided not to have the computers search for the information he believed he needed. Having the computers search would have been his old method—the one he had done on his various jobs. And he still might do that.

  But, right now, he wanted to see the data himself, wanted to get as close to it as he could, follow the trails he hadn’t known existed, trails he wouldn’t even see if he let the computers do the searching.

  On this short walk to the break room, he realized that searching for data this way was akin to doing some of the work in a starship himself. When he trained, he insisted on shadowing every job at least once. He needed to know what his people were doing.

  He needed to know how to do almost everything—or have an idea of how that work was structured, so he could bring in the right person. He was still using those skills here at Lost Souls. That enabled him to bring in a few people from outside the Ivoire crew to work the various DV-Class ships, people he believed had the skill set, if not currently the ability, to handle one of the ships in the future.

  He slipped into the break room. The soup smelled even better, the odors blending together. He couldn’t separate out the garlic from the other spices anymore.

  He thought of getting a bowl, but he wanted to wait until he had a bit of news so he could grab Yash and pull her into the room again. He believed—he hoped—he would have something to report shortly.

  He poured himself another cup of coffee, grabbed the heel of the bread, and then let himself out of the break room, thinking over the work he had already done.

  The runabout’s data files were segmented, just like Coop had hoped they would be. Apparently this “newer” runabout’s information systems were designed just like the information systems onboard a runabout on the Ivoire.

  The runabout had its basic controls, with the basic instructions, in the most easily accessible files. Some of the controls even had additional explanations in case whoever was piloting the runabout did not know the intricacies of the runabout’s internal systems.

  Then, the next segment held the basic information on the Fleet itself—not quite what it was, because anyone flying the runabout would know that—but how to locate help from the Fleet if the runabout went off course. That information, which Coop had looked at first, wasn’t very different from the information Coop had seen in his own day.

  That information followed the basic protocols—how to contact a Fleet vessel, how to approach one if the runabout’s identification system no longer worked, how to communicate what the runabout’s crew needed should that not be immediately obvious.

  The next segment contained Fleet history and background, much of it designed as entertainment for long voyages. Again, basic, but there would be a lot of information in that segment that Coop did not know. Two thousand years of information, minimum.

  He had flagged that file but hadn’t thought it worth examining first.

  The data files that had initially intrigued him the most were the logs. There were two sets. There was the permanent log, the one that covered every mission the runabout had gone on, who had piloted it, the point of the mission, where it had started and where it had ended.

  That permanent log was automatically generated and, he had noted as he set it aside to work on, it had larger data files attached. Most of those were also automatically generated—minute-by-minute records of what happened to the runabout and her equipment.

  That secondary permanent log was designed to be removed at a sector base when the runabout went in for its regular service. In Coop’s day, that regular service happened every five years or so on smaller ships. If the ships aged out or if they had taken on too much wear and tear, they were then replaced with a newer model.

  He hadn’t usually paid much attention to that procedure unless there were small ships that he favored—and there had been damn few of those. So he let the experts at the sector bases handle the upgrades of the smaller ships.

  He assumed that the size of that permanent log was large because the runabout had gotten lost/stranded/abandoned. It was still doing its job, even though there was no one to download the data.

  He figured that log would be helpful, not just to him but to Yash. She might be able to pinpoint what had gone wrong with the anacapa drive. He knew that she normally dove right into those permanent logs, and he suspected she had already downloaded a copy of these for herself.

  For all he knew, those were what she had been working on so diligently since she got the runabout data.

  In the logs, he also found the mission logs. Anyone who piloted a small ship was required to keep one, and it appeared that whoever this last pilot had been on the runabout had done so as well.

  He suspected the mission log had morphed into something larger, maybe a journal of sorts, for the sole survivor—that mummified woman who seemed to haunt Yash so.

  Provided that mummified woman had been a registered Fleet pilot, and not the person who had scavenged half the equipment out of that runabout.

  He stepped back into his circle of screens, the bread already gone. He set the coffee down, then brushed his hands on his pants.

  What he had decided to work on was the last mission: he wanted to know where the runabout’s journey originated and where the runabout had been going. He also wanted to know where it had run into trouble, and what kind of trouble that was.

  He suspected Yash knew what kind of trouble the runabout had had with its equipment, but he wasn’t about to interrupt her over that. He would interrupt her over food after he felt he had finished enough work.

  He dug into the mission data and did not find any assignment for the runabout’s last trip. No one had logged in a course, no one had set coordinates, no one had listed the names of the passengers and crew. Not, of course, that the runabout needed a large crew—a single person could operate it if need be. The runabouts were designed for short trips only—or had been in his day, which was why he was startled that this particular runabout had had an anacapa drive.

  As he stumbled through the data on the way to something else, he noted that the name of the model was unusual. It had an FS-Prime designation. He had never seen a runabout with an FS designation. And “prime,” at least in his day, had meant the first model of its type.

  He left his search of the internal mission logs and moved to a separate screen. He dug into the basic information about the runabout and felt relief when he discovered
that the “prime” designation hadn’t changed in two thousand years.

  Then he stopped work for a moment, and mentally chastised himself for feeling that relief. Things would change; his assumptions wouldn’t work. Neither of those two things should reflect on him or his knowledge. Nor did finding that something hadn’t changed in two thousand years mean he should trust his gut on any of the information he found.

  He ran a hand over his face, realizing he had been spending the last few days giving himself the speeches he sometimes gave the Ivoire crew. It seemed so easy when he said these things to them. It felt hard when he had to apply them to himself.

  FS-Prime. He dug deeper into the basic ship information and nearly gave up when he finally found what the FS meant.

  Foldspace. Apparently, this was the first iteration of runabout models that had anacapa drives built in.

  And something had clearly malfunctioned. He smiled grimly as he looked at the reason for the name. Yash had fought strenuously to keep anacapa drives out of small ships. It looked like the Fleet had finally decided to give that design a try, and it looked like—in this one case, anyway—the design had caused problems.

  She would probably be very happy to hear that her fight against anacapa drives in small ships had been on target.

  He left the screen open to the basic information on the runabout, but returned to the mission logs.

  It seemed odd that there was no filing, no information about this journey. Even top-secret journeys using small ships had some kind of internal method of tracking—or at least they had…

  “In my day,” he whispered, and then cursed. He was suddenly feeling old and useless. He’d only heard retired officers use that phrase, and he’d always felt for them.

  That phrase, at least to him, had meant that their best days were behind them.

  “But that’s not how I mean it,” he said aloud. His voice echoed in the large space. He wondered if Yash had heard him.

  Probably not. She seemed incredibly focused on what she was doing. Yash often didn’t hear anyone yelling in her ear when she was focused.

  He went back to the internal data from the previous mission. It had taken place nearly a year before the final liftoff, and that data tracking had all of the correct information.

  The runabout had left the DV-Class vessel, the Ijo, and had gone to a moon at coordinates that Coop did not recognize. The mission was a diplomatic one, judging by the ranks of two of the passengers. A single pilot handled the trip. The other two passengers had been security.

  The anacapa drive had not been used on that trip.

  He had the computer search the logs, looking for the last time the anacapa drive had been used. It had been nearly two decades since the anacapa drive had been used on a mission.

  But he found one other listing, which brought itself to his attention.

  The anacapa drive had been used on a short hop, taking the runabout from one of the ship bays on the Ijo to a location deep inside Sector Base E-2.

  He followed the information trail, and saw that the drive’s use had happened only a short time before the runabout’s final mission. Which seemed even odder to him.

  He dug even more, and found that the runabout had been scheduled for repairs. A woman named Bristol Iannazzi had flagged a note in the file. She had made a video, audio, and documentary record of that note.

  He clicked the video file and was startled to see a short-haired, middle-aged woman glaring at him from his screen.

  I am protesting the work that Captain Harriet Virji of the Ijo has assigned to me. Like so many captains, she believes she knows best when it comes to what she needs for her ship. She does not. The FS-Prime runabouts are dangerous. They should have been retired decades ago. I have made this complaint up the chain of command, but the orders have come through that as long as captains want to keep their FS-Prime runabouts, they can.

  I have made dozens of reports, as have my colleagues. The anacapa drive on a small ship like the FS-Prime runabout does not have the redundant safety controls that exist in larger vessels. There simply is not room for more than one backup safety control.

  I will work on this runabout under protest. Should it malfunction, I will not take the blame. I want my objections on the record before I even examine this runabout. I will also place these objections in the runabout itself. If you have accessed these files through the runabout’s control panel, then God help you. If you are having troubles, I’m afraid I can offer you no solace. Any troubles you have were foreseeable and were ignored by Captain Virji, the Fleet, and my superiors.

  Then the file faded.

  Coop let out a small breath. He wondered if the mummified woman had seen this or read something in the files. It certainly wouldn’t have brought anyone comfort. It would have frightened them.

  It certainly unnerved him.

  Almost as much as the captain’s name. Harriet Virji. Coop had worked with a Miguel Virji when Coop was a lowly ensign. Miguel had been the chief engineer on the first full DV-Class vessel that Coop had worked on, and the man had been tough. Coop had worked harder on other assignments, but he had never worked with as much fear of his superior before or after.

  Apparently, the Virji family remained in the Fleet in one capacity or another.

  Coop flagged that part of the file. Yash needed to see it, if she hadn’t already. He suspected she hadn’t, or she would have mentioned it to him.

  Maybe. If she remembered. She had worked herself past the point of exhaustion.

  That thought made him grab his coffee mug. The liquid was lukewarm now, but still good. He sipped, studied the dark screen, wondered at the depth of frustration it took for someone to make a report like that.

  He hoped he had never driven his crew to make those kinds of reports. He wondered if he would have known.

  He set the coffee mug down, and tapped his thumbnail against his teeth, thinking. The runabout was at least three thousand years old, the first of its design, and long past retirement when it had shown up in Bristol Iannazzi’s part of her sector base.

  Which meant that the runabout had been in use less than three thousand years ago.

  But he still didn’t have a date.

  He went back into the file. Bristol Iannazzi had time stamped her video. She had used a calendar system unfamiliar to Coop.

  He cursed. Of all the things that had to change. The calendar?

  He scrolled through the protest file, and looked to see if there was a different date on the document.

  There was. She had used a standard time code, one he still found familiar. She had protested twenty-four hundred years ago.

  He wondered if she had gotten the chance to fix the runabout—at least as best she could. He wondered if it had been in use long after that final repair.

  If not—and the data he had suggested hers were the last experienced hands to touch that anacapa drive—he wondered why someone or something would remove the runabout from the Boneyard. What would be desirable about that ship?

  Or was there something desirable on that ship?

  Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have remained. The runabout’s interior had been torn apart, and the only person who had been on board was dead.

  Depending, of course, on the mission.

  He dove back into the data, looking to see where this Bristol Iannazzi worked. Sector base? Starbase? It was clearly somewhere that Captain Virji had to bring her DV-Class vessel. And if it was a routine repair, then it was most likely a sector base.

  It took longer than he expected to find the information he was searching for. Bristol Iannazzi might have been good at her engineering and repair work, but she was haphazard when it came to writing down dates, times, and locations.

  Sometimes, it appeared, she used local time, dates, and names of areas. And sometimes, she followed Fleet protocol.

  She had been working “in her lab,” on various things. Her lab was deep inside the base in Sandoveil, wherever that was. Once she’d ment
ioned the Payyer Mountain Range. Another time, she had muttered something about visiting Fiskett Falls.

  Finally, when he was just about to give up on Iannazzi telling him the information he really wanted to know, he found out that she had worked on Sector Base E-2—just like he would have guessed.

  Sector Base E-2, according to the basic data on the Fleet he found in the runabout’s files, had been built on a planet named Nindowne. The coordinates placed it on a path that angled away from the trajectory he had seen with the previous eight sector bases.

  He leaned back, closed his eyes, thought for a moment, remembering all the arguments he had had with his crew about those sector bases. His main crew had always believed they could chart where the Fleet had gone simply by looking for habitable planets in the sectors on the direct path.

  But Coop remembered studying the way that the Fleet had built its bases. Occasionally, the advance team warned the Fleet that certain sectors were filled with bellicose societies—rather like the Empire was now—and that those regions were best to be avoided.

  And once, if his memory served, the Fleet had avoided an entire sector because a star had recently exploded. The Fleet had not studied what happened to that star—if the destruction was a natural event or caused by one of the nearby cultures. All the Fleet had done was mark that sector off its exploration grid and moved in a different direction.

  Which they had apparently done with Sector Base E-2.

  He would never have found those coordinates on his own without this information from the runabout.

  He clenched one fist, forcing himself to keep his emotions in check. He had not yet found the base or the Fleet. He just had another piece of the puzzle.

  And maybe, he would be able to find out about Sector Bases F-2, G-2, and H-2 if he dug deep enough in this data stream.

  “Coop, I have a question for you.”

  He started, knocking his mug off the table. He caught the mug, not even letting it spill a drop, and looked up to see Yash grinning at him.

  The old Yash, the one who did not look as tired as she had just that morning.