“It’s a fine risk to take every day,” Yash said, “until it bites you in the ass.”
Like it had bitten them. Like it had bitten that woman in the runabout.
He wondered if he would trade it, though. He had always been conscious of the risk. Maybe not the risk as he had experienced it—the risk of losing everything familiar in a leap to a different part of space—but he had known he could lose time. Or friends. Or loved ones.
And, if he was being honest with himself, he liked the challenge of it. He wouldn’t have gone on the captain track if he hadn’t. And, after he had become captain, he would have resigned if he felt he couldn’t handle the duties.
“Makes you not want to enter foldspace ever again, doesn’t it?” Yash asked.
He blinked at her, startled by the question. Not enter foldspace? Not have the opportunity to travel great distances in short periods of time? Piloting a starship through entire galaxies, star system by star system? Never leaving one or two sectors of space? Never experiencing all the different cultures? All the different lives? All the different ways humans conducted themselves in all their infinite variety?
Never enter foldspace again? Never move forward? Never live life to the fullest ever again? He couldn’t comprehend it.
And yet he had been on the verge of it.
“I think we’ve been too timid about foldspace these last six years,” he said.
“What?” It was clearly Yash’s turn to be surprised. “You’re joking, right? We finally understand how dangerous it is.”
He shook his head. “We’ve always known. We just thought we were immune.”
“We’re not immune,” she said. “No one is.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Kinda mirrors life, doesn’t it? We never know what’s around the next corner. We can be afraid of it, or we can keep going.”
Yash stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“You know there are other options, right?” she asked. “Investigate. See what we can learn before we go around that corner.”
“And no matter how much we prepare,” Coop said, “we never prepare enough. We’re always surprised by something.”
“I think I’d rather go through life with fewer surprises, thank you,” she said.
“That’s not true and you know it,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t have been excited about that.”
He pointed at the image of what Yash was calling the entry into foldspace. The image, with all its blurred mystery.
She glanced at it, her cheeks growing red. Then she sighed.
“I guess I don’t want to go through something like this ever again,” she said.
He assumed that what she meant by like this was the entire adventure they found themselves on, living in a future they hadn’t even been able to imagine ten years before. Back in their own timeline, back before the Quurzod had fired on the Ivoire.
“You won’t go through anything like this ever again,” he said.
“You can’t promise that,” Yash said.
He smiled at her. “Oh, but I can. Each event is different, Yash. And even if we end up traveling long distances through time again, it’ll never be the same as this.”
She studied him for a moment, the red in her cheeks fading.
“That doesn’t bother you?” she asked. “Losing everything all over again?”
“What do we have to lose from here?” he asked.
“We’re building a life,” she said. “You’re building a life. You have Boss.”
He nodded. “And Lost Souls and some plans that might or might not work out. We’re building a life, Yash, and if we lose it, we’ll build another one. We’re not like Dix. We don’t give up.”
She pursed her lips, frowned, then shrugged.
“You want to travel a long distance through foldspace again, don’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. “I want to go to Sector Base E-2.”
“It’s gone, Coop. It’s been gone for centuries.”
“And they closed it fast,” he said. “We might learn something.”
“I thought you don’t want to find the modern Fleet,” she said.
“I don’t think I do,” he said. “But I want answers. I want to know what happened. I want to know where they went.”
“To join them?” Yash asked.
To avoid them, he almost said, but didn’t. He was surprised at the thought. Then he half smiled. Two Fleets—his and theirs.
And an entire universe to explore.
He felt a flutter of excitement, something he hadn’t felt in years.
Six years, maybe more.
“What are you thinking?” Yash asked, clearly seeing the moods change on his face.
“About the future,” he said, letting that half smile become a full smile. “I’m thinking about the future.”
And it felt really, really good.
Part Five
Advanced Anacapa Theory
Over Five Thousand Years Ago or Thirty-Five Years Ago (depending on who you ask)
Twenty-Two
The small lab was cold. Yash had not worn a heavy enough shirt to comfortably make it through the day-long class. She didn’t even have a sweater or a jacket or anything else to layer over her clothes.
Just her work pants and her normal work shirt, along with the lunch that Professor Helga Bellier had told the students to bring. The lunches in their little prep containers were stored on the large runabout that had brought the class to this weird lab, built on the side of a crater deep in an unpopulated moon halfway across the sector from the main part of the Fleet.
Just the day before, one of Bellier’s teaching assistants had made some snide comment about the dangerous part of the class would begin now. Bellier hadn’t simply shushed the TA; she had removed the TA from any duties to do with this class.
Yash had been too busy with homework to check to see if the TA had been demoted permanently. It wouldn’t surprise Yash. Bellier was known for her no-nonsense, no-mistakes policies.
Mistakes get people killed, Professor Bellier had said that first day on the Brazza. The Advanced Anacapa Theory class had met on the Brazza only once, in a borrowed classroom, since Professor Bellier preferred to conduct class on ancient security vessels, science vessels, runabouts, and orbiters. Sometimes she took the class to starbases and sector bases.
Mostly, though, she drilled the students, tested them over and over again, lectured them damn near to death, gave them homework that seemed utterly impossible, and worked harder than any professor Yash had ever had at trying to get all of the students—every single one of them—to drop out of class.
When Yash had signed up for this course, her advisor had warned her that there were semesters in which no one made it past week six of Bellier’s course, semesters in which Bellier had flunked everyone, and semesters in which no one even signed up.
But Yash also knew that anyone who survived Bellier’s Advanced Anacapa Theory course got accepted into the Dignity Vessel Engineering program, and often was fast-tracked for service on a DV-Class ship. Apparently, anyone who could handle whatever Bellier dished out could also handle what the universe dished out.
Yash just hadn’t been expecting the cold.
Bellier had told them that from this day forward, the class would be hands-on. Bellier had informed them yesterday that the title of the class was a lie.
I don’t believe in theories, Bellier had said. I believe in engineers. If you’re going to be an expert in something, then you need to be an expert in all aspects of it. From what makes it work to what makes it desirable to what makes it flawed.
And then she had said something that made two people drop out that very day. She had scanned the class, made eye contact with each and every student, then said,
We will be working with anacapa drives. The drives are dangerous. They will be live. One mistake could obliterate all of us. I know some of you took this class because it was labeled theory, and so you bel
ieved you could gain an understanding of these complex drives without getting your hands dirty.
Then she paused, tilted her head, and laser-focused her gaze on one student in particular.
You can’t understand these drives without touching them and working with them. There is no theory of the anacapa drive. There is only the practicality of them. If that scares you, drop this class, and any idea you have of being an engineer, ship designer, or a scientist on board any kind of vessel that carries an anacapa drive.
The speech had excited Yash, which was probably the opposite reaction she should have had, given the way the rest of the class had responded. A few got together over beers to discuss what they wanted to do. The two whom Professor Bellier had laser-eyed had left the class and immediately found their way back to the Brazza to drop out of the program entirely.
Yash hadn’t expected to work on anacapa drives for another year or two. The very idea had excited her. These drives were the heart and soul of the Fleet. But they were also, as one of her professors had put it years ago, as unknowable as the human heart and soul. The mechanics of the heart seemed obvious, but to this day, no one knew why every culture the Fleet had come into contact with believed the heart to be the center of love, and why most believed that human beings were more than a collection of physical parts.
Unknowable, mysterious, and more important than anything else.
Yash shivered, but resisted the urge to put her arms around her torso to keep warm. A few of the other students had done that, and Professor Bellier had given them the same sort of laser-eyed stare she had given the two dropouts the day before.
Professor Bellier was not dressed any warmer than they were. She was a tiny woman, with fierce black eyes, nut-brown skin decorated with very fine age lines, and gray hair cut so close to her scalp that from a distance it looked like she was wearing a gray skullcap.
She was small, but her entire body radiated a kind of power that Yash had never seen in a human being before. Every movement suggested confidence. Every action seemed deliberate.
Professor Helga Bellier was the most in-control human being that Yash had ever met, bar none.
And part of Yash wanted to grow up to be just like her.
The runabout had docked on top of the lab. The moon had no atmosphere, which made Yash a bit nervous. Professor Bellier hadn’t told them to bring their personal environmental suits.
Unless there was one on the skip, Professor Bellier hadn’t brought one either.
But the pilot and the cockpit crew all wore theirs as if they anticipated going out onto the moon.
Yash had noted all of that as the runabout had traveled the short distance to this moon and settled in one of its larger craters. Half of her fellow students had taken the trip lightly, talking about the future of the class or what they had to drink the night before.
A handful of others had sat in their seats, tensely watching the scenery change outside the portals. Only three—Yash included—had taken the name of the moon, looked up its specs, and then investigated the small lab itself.
The lab had been built into the crater’s side to protect the moon’s surface from any possible damage should there be a massive explosion. Apparently other labs on other moons and asteroids had exploded over the years that Bellier had taught this course. Some of those labs had been in different sectors. Some of them had exploded decades ago.
Yet Bellier had never been disciplined, nor had she been written up. In fact, the Fleet considered her classes primary requirements for anyone who wanted a permanent engineering assignment on a DV-Class vessel.
Yash wanted that permanent assignment. She wanted to travel with the Fleet whenever the Fleet moved forward. Her parents lagged behind the Fleet. Their specialty was closing sector bases and starbases, examining closed bases to make certain that protocols were followed, and doing all kinds of maintenance on planetside support systems for the Fleet itself.
Yash had lived on three different planets in her childhood, always envying the kids who were raised on ships. She had traveled a lot on ships, often on DV-Class ships, and she wanted to stay on them. But her father in particular had a great dislike for enclosed environments. He loved to go outside in atmosphere. He adored weather and seasons and the ways that planets went through their own personal cycles. He loved learning those cycles.
He always felt that he had been born into the wrong culture, hating the constant moving. If he hadn’t married Yash’s mother, he probably would have remained behind after closing some sector base, figuring that he could live inside half the day and outside for the other half.
Yash’s mother had loved her work, though, and couldn’t do any of it if the Fleet left whatever sector she was working in. Yash’s mother was a research scientist of a kind that Yash never really bothered to understand. Her mother could work anywhere that there was a Fleet lab, and hadn’t cared one way or another if she traveled with the Fleet or remained at a sector base.
She had raised four children with Yash’s father and claimed to love him as much as she loved her work. She hadn’t been willing to sacrifice either, so he had to give up his idea of a permanent home to have a family.
He hadn’t seemed to mind.
But Yash had. As soon as she qualified, she applied to boarding school on the Fleet’s squadron of school ships. She had been thirteen when she left home for good, traveling back only three times a year for vacations.
Then she skipped several levels, her scientific and engineering skills considered exceptional, and she no longer had time to travel. The engineering school was the most competitive school in the Fleet. Everyone wanted a DV-Class assignment, and there were very few to go around.
Yash apologized to her parents, told them that they could visit her if they needed to see her, and then set to work.
That work—and her stellar grades—had brought her here. She couldn’t imagine walking away like those two students had done, just because the anacapa work would be hands-on earlier than they expected.
Yash figured if the Fleet had managed to live with the drives for tens of thousands of years, she could live with the drives as well.
Besides, she was deeply curious about them.
The lab had the same structure as the previous labs that the Fleet had built for Professor Bellier. Six rooms, one of which was exceptionally large. The others were smaller, with an eating area, a bunk room with enough sleeping capacity for sixteen, one bathroom, and some research labs. There was also a maintenance room which, if the specs were to be believed, contained not only redundant environmental controls, but some controls that would seal off the top of the crater so that nothing could get in—and nothing could get out.
Yash hadn’t mentioned that to any of her fellow students. She hadn’t discussed any of this. She liked several of them, but she didn’t feel close to them.
She kept expecting them to drop out at any moment.
Professor Bellier stood in front of a wide door. They had initially gone into one of the side labs, where Yash had expected class to begin. But it hadn’t. Instead, Professor Bellier had insisted that they all prepare themselves for a long class with no breaks. That meant using the bathroom and making certain they divested themselves of everything except one multipurpose tool—if they owned one (Yash did)—and the clothes on their backs.
A couple of the other students had grumbled about this, which also caught the professor’s attention. Yash had simply followed instructions, wondering what was in the lab beyond.
She had waited as patiently as she could, expecting that this too was a test.
And sure enough. Once Professor Bellier opened the door, she paused in front of it.
“I can only take nine students with me inside this room,” she said.
Yash’s stomach lurched. Suddenly all of the self-confidence she had felt earlier vanished.
“Six of you will remain out here. And those six are…” She named names, much too slowly for Yash’s taste. Eventually, thou
gh, Bellier got through the names.
She did not say Yash’s name. Yash wasn’t certain if she should be tense or not. So she waited.
Then Bellier looked at the students excluded from this part of the trip. They included some of the gossips and complainers, but not all of them, which surprised Yash. If she were weeding out the group, she would have weeded out everyone who fit in those two categories.
Also, one of the men designated to stay out of the lab had been one of the three researchers. So doing due diligence wasn’t the key to accompanying the professor either.
“What would you like us to work on while you’re gone, Professor?” he asked.
Her dark eyes snapped with, it seemed to Yash, annoyance.
“Initiative,” she said to him. Then she looked at the nine students she had chosen. “Come with me.”
Yash followed the other students inside.
This room was five times larger than the room they had just left. It was as cold as that room though, so frosty that she could almost see her breath.
The air had a charge to it as well, an aliveness. Her father would have said it felt like a storm was on the horizon, but to Yash it felt like the air right after a powerful (and nearby) lightning strike.
There was some kind of energy in here, energy she recognized only in comparing it to something else.
The room was long and wide. One other door stood on the same wall as the door Yash had just come through. That door surprised her. She couldn’t quite square it with the map of the lab she had seen.
In front of her were gigantic reinforced windows that overlooked the crater. An ambient blue light rose out of the crater, illuminating some of the rocks.
Yash didn’t know if the light came from some human-developed source below, or if the light arose from something in the rocks themselves.
She wouldn’t be able to find out, at least not right now.
The room itself was lit the way the labs back on the Brazza were lit—lighting at every available angle, including lighting pods along the floor. There was no other equipment, though. No consoles attached to any walls, no chairs for the group to sit on, just a wide-open space filled with black boxes and large rocks.
Searching for the Fleet Page 20
