Searching for the Fleet

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “I do,” Xilvii said as Bridge said, “I do.”

  “One of the things that backs this up, I think,” Bridge continued, “is that there is neither rhyme nor reason to that space junk. The material seems to be of different ages and different types.”

  “And some of it,” Xilvii said, “is really garbage, like food waste and human waste and other stuff. It’s disgusting.”

  Coop grimaced. He couldn’t help himself.

  “I’m not seeing much evidence that they’re particularly advanced, either,” said Anita. “It’s not that they’re backwards. It’s just that they don’t seem to have modified any Fleet technology into their own. No matter what culture I’m looking at.”

  “And what I’m finding on that tenth continent,” Xilvii said, “shows some kind of regression. The people who live there don’t live in large communities. I’m finding clusters of ten and twenty, a small village of maybe a hundred people, and not much more.”

  “I thought the planet’s climate was hospitable,” Rooney said.

  “It is. It’s a bit warmer than we usually like, but it’s not out of the norm for a place that would house a Fleet’s sector base,” said Xilvii.

  Coop wasn’t that interested in the speculation. He wanted to send a ship to Nindowne and get the task of exploring that sector base—or the remains of it—underway.

  If there was one at all.

  “If I’m understanding you correctly,” he said, “you’re telling me that the space junk is a hazard only if we enter orbit or try to land on Nindowne.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Xilvii said. “The junk is not warships, it’s not anything that could hurt us, except if we hit it. And there’s a lot to hit.”

  “There’s more stuff per square inch than we find in even the most dense asteroid belts,” said Anita.

  Great. If Coop did want to go down there, he would have to send the right ship. All the small ships had shields, but some were stronger and more effective than others.

  “Any sign of the base?” he asked Stone.

  “Not from this distance, no,” she said. “But there are the remnants of an old settlement exactly where we’d expect to find the City of Sandoveil.”

  According to the records, Sandoveil was where the base had been located.

  “All right,” Coop said. “That’s good enough for me.”

  Everyone looked at him. There must have been something in his tone…hell, of course there was something in his tone. He was excited about a mission for the first time in years.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “The Ivoire will remain here, far enough away that it won’t appear on the most sophisticated sensors we’ve found in this time period. I’m going to take one of our skips with a small crew, and we’re going to see what we can find. Until I return, Rooney, you’ll be in charge.”

  Her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed. He recognized the look. He was sure he’d had it on his own face a few times. She was used to being in command now, so taking orders was hard.

  Especially orders she clearly disagreed with.

  “Captain, if I may…?” Rooney’s question was barely one. It had the full force of her command voice.

  He could ignore it, or he could listen and see if she could change his mind.

  He knew what a good commander would do. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to be a good commander anymore.

  At least, not of the Fleet.

  He gave her one curt nod, because he didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t want to sound sarcastic or judgmental before she even had a chance to make her case.

  “I think we should send several ships closer, including a small fighter, just in case we’re not reading that junk correctly,” Rooney said. “The Ivoire isn’t close enough to immediately come to the defense of the skip that you send, should you need defending.”

  And they all knew—except maybe Bridge and Stone—that skips of the Ivoire’s era did not have anacapa drives to help them escape quickly, nor did they have weaponry so that they could fight back against any kind of attack.

  “Also,” Rooney said, sounding just a bit more hesitant, “I think we should do some more reconnaissance before sending anyone to the planet, especially someone as valuable as you, sir.”

  Coop smiled. He had expected that objection right from the start.

  “Finished, Rooney?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I think it would be prudent to have the linguists capture transmissions from this Nindowne, if that’s what the locals call it, to see what languages are spoken there. It would be nice to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the most common language before we send anyone down. That will only take a day or so.”

  He knew how long it would take. He had been married to a linguist once. But he didn’t say that. He realized at that moment that Rooney wasn’t over-explaining for him; she was doing it for the newbies on the crew.

  She stopped, her gaze meeting his—not quite defiantly. She didn’t need to be defiant. She had nothing she had to prove, to him or to anyone else.

  “You’re right, Rooney,” he said.

  Her eyes widened ever so slightly. He had surprised her. She clearly had expected him to disagree with her on every point.

  “We do need a few fighters positioned around Nindowne,” he said, “just in case we’re misreading what we’re seeing or in case there’s some kind of system in one of those cities that has long-range weapons capabilities and perceives us as a threat.”

  A slight frown creased her forehead. Had he been so unreasonable lately that being reasonable was unusual? Or did she simply understand the depth of his interest in finding the base? (Or, if he were being honest with himself, the depth of his obsession, not his interest.)

  He continued, “I think we should send two smaller vessels, whichever ones we have that are best equipped for a scientific mission, to orbit—if we can do that easily—or at least get close enough to probe two things: that area on the tenth continent where a city used to be, and also the main cities on Nindowne.”

  Everyone was staring at him. Did they really expect him to be so unreasonable that he wouldn’t be able to see the wisdom in what she had been saying? Or was he just unused to being the center of attention, after all this time?

  “I think we should also figure out the languages,” he said. “We’ll bring a linguist with us, as well as the best equipment we have in case we run into some locals.”

  Rooney’s expression fell for only a moment. She clearly had hoped he would abandon his part of the mission.

  “You’ll remain in touch with us, in case we find out we need anything else, some kind of translation program or something,” he said. “And I promise you, we’ll leave if it looks like we’re going to get into serious troubles with the locals.”

  The bridge was quiet for a moment.

  “For the landing team,” he said, “I want Yash, Perkins, Stone, Bridge, and two security officers. Rooney, make sure I have the folks who are the most up-to-date on weaponry.”

  “That would be me, sir,” Xilvii said.

  “You’re not a security officer, Xilvii,” Coop said.

  “But I’ve been handling the weapons since we got to Lost Souls,” Xilvii said.

  “I want you on the Ivoire,” Coop said. “We need people on the weapons systems here as well. I want security officers who are good with handheld weapons in case we come across something we don’t like.”

  “I would suggest a second pilot,” Rooney said.

  “We have two,” Coop said. “Me and Yash. That’s enough.”

  Rooney opened her mouth as if she were going to argue with him, and then she didn’t.

  “One last thing, Rooney,” he said. “The most valuable person going on this mission is Yash. Her skills are impossible to replace.”

  He knew that sounded brutal, particularly in front of Stone and Bridge, but he didn’t care. He needed to be clear.

  “Now that we’re separate from
the Fleet, I am not the most valuable person on the mission. Nor am I the most valuable person in the Ivoire. If something happens to me, she’s your ship, Rooney. You have the skills and the talent for it. There are others who will captain just as well. They can take the other ships. I want you on the Ivoire.”

  She shook her head, disagreeing with him, as he knew she would.

  “We’re not you, sir,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “In this case, Rooney,” he said, “that’s a very good thing.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Coop decided to land the skip on what should have been—according to the old maps—the City of Sandoveil. He had to fly between two mountain ranges to get there.

  The maneuver was trickier than he expected. There were harsh wind currents in between the mountains, unpredictable wind currents, and they buffeted the skip. Not that it bothered any of the others on board.

  The skip was one of the largest that Lost Souls built. Yash had overseen the design and had used Fleet tech, including nanobits, to create the hull. Unlike the skips Boss usually used, this one could easily handle a crew of ten or more—although half would have to sleep in their reclining chairs if the trip extended to an overnight.

  Seven fit comfortably here. They were all in the large main area—not really a cockpit, more a ferry for tourists, with controls up front and passenger seats farther back.

  The skip had no weapons, but Coop doubted he would need them. According to the readings they had gotten on the Ivoire, no one was in the general vicinity of what they all believed to be the old sector base.

  He sat in the pilot’s chair, Yash beside him. She was directing him nonverbally, pointing at the small holographic three-dimensional map that floated just above the console. Neither Coop nor Yash wanted to discuss their expectations of this part of the large planet; they didn’t want to influence the other members of the landing team any more than they already had.

  Those other members were engrossed in their own work. The two security team members, Monique Chen and Igashu Lankstadt, were completing a mostly silent double check of the gear that they wore. Perkins was monitoring local chatter from nearby areas, trying to get a sense of the language—any language—that might be spoken nearby.

  Stone was using one of her many annoying tablets, holding it up to another tablet, comparing something that Coop couldn’t and wasn’t sure he wanted to see.

  So far, the geography fit the descriptions he and Yash had found in the files. Sandoveil had been built in a long, narrow valley between two extremely tall mountain ranges, filled with dozens of natural wonders, including the largest waterfall on the entire planet.

  A large waterfall was on the edge of this narrow valley. As he piloted downward, he saw so much spray rise off the waterfall that it looked like the entire area was covered in mist.

  The edges of what had been a city were the best place to land. The valley wasn’t quite a box valley because it opened onto a wide flat area that lead to one of Nindowne’s oceans. It had become clear, as the skip got closer, that the wide flat area wasn’t a good place to land.

  He had partly ruled it out already because he had thought it was a sand-covered beach. But it wasn’t. It was a mudflat that seemed to have some underground activity connected to it. The mud burbled and burped, making large bubbles.

  There was another mudflat on the other side of the valley, which had led Stone to speculate that there would be no base here. She had only seen specs for sector bases that were built underneath cities.

  Coop hadn’t answered her speculation, nor had anyone else connected to the Fleet. He wasn’t looking at the flat area where the city had been as a possible location for the sector base.

  He was looking at the large mountain ranges.

  Yash had been too. She had directed him to land near what appeared to be a large cave underneath a gigantic overhang on one of the mountains. She hadn’t said anything about it, and neither had he. She had simply pointed to the reading on one of the current scans, and he had nodded.

  If the old maps were correct and there was a base here, then the skip was landing on what had been a road heading toward the base’s entrance. This base had been built with a large parking area out front because the main entry wasn’t in the very center of the city.

  He suspected that the overhang was manufactured to hide the number of vehicles from the non-Fleet citizens of Sandoveil.

  But he was guessing. He had no idea if the Fleet still followed its old procedures by the time it had built a base here. For all he knew, everyone in the city had known about the base, and the reason the city was gone now was because the Fleet had closed the base.

  Because he wasn’t certain of Fleet procedures and what had happened since the base closed, he had deliberately chosen to land far from that overhang. His team would have to walk to it.

  He had a hunch they would be able to see more on the ground. If something currently existed in that overhang, they wouldn’t be able to see the ship as well as closely from this distance.

  He hoped.

  “Humph,” Stone said, “there are a lot more buildings standing than I would have expected, given the climate. If you want to see them, Captain, I suggest you move the landing site to one of the ones I recommended before we left the Ivoire.”

  Coop ignored that comment. But Bridge didn’t. Out of the corner of his eye, Coop saw Bridge lean toward Stone, peering at the work she was doing.

  “When do you think this place was abandoned?” he asked.

  “I’m assuming it was abandoned when the base got moved,” Stone said. “I’m using the calculations we came up with on the Ivoire, which would make the move about two thousand years ago.”

  “We don’t know that, though, do we?” Bridge said in one of those tones that would have annoyed Coop if it was directed at him. The aggressive use of the word “we” when in reality Bridge meant “you.” It was a criticism couched as a group mistake.

  Yash had her back to them. She rolled her eyes. Coop smiled just a little, which was something only Yash could see.

  “You’re right, of course,” Stone said. She wasn’t upset by Bridge’s tone at all. “We’re almost to the site. We’ll let it tell us what we need to know.”

  Coop had to manually correct the navigation to compensate for the winds. They were still swirling halfway down the mountainside. He had expected them to drop off before he got close.

  But he had no real idea what the norm was here. Yash had looked at the history of the planet, as recorded by the Fleet, and was startled to learn there were twelve seasons in this region. The skip was arriving in one of the crossover seasons—Late Fall to Early Winter. Yash said in some places she had lived, weather could become extreme in times of seasonal crossovers.

  Although he wasn’t sure that was what was causing the strong winds. He thought perhaps the problem was the fact that this was not a box canyon, like he usually landed in near a sector base. This canyon opened on one end to a large ocean.

  His controls told him that the wind, whatever the reason for its strength, was coming off the water, hitting the valley with a lot of force, and then creating eddies at the very back of the valley, where the mountains closed in and formed a single range.

  It had been years since he landed somewhere this tricky. He enjoyed the challenge of it.

  “You want me to stabilize?” Yash asked quietly, her finger over some of the controls on her side of the console.

  He shook his head, but didn’t explain. He didn’t have to, at least to Yash. This mission wasn’t regulation from the start, and he saw no reason to make it regulation now.

  Finally, in the last third of the descent, the winds abated—not because they were less strong at ground level, but because of those buildings that Stone had noticed. They were blocking the worst of it.

  Coop used a controlled descent. The runners touched so gently that only the rocking motion of the skip made it clear that they had landed. He secured the skip, and th
en shut down.

  He unhooked himself from the pilot’s chair, stood, and faced his tiny crew.

  “Welcome,” he said, “to wherever the hell we are. Let’s grab our gear and go.”

  “Captain,” Bridge said, sounding a bit surprised. “No environmental suits? No briefing on conditions?”

  Bridge was used to being on missions with Boss, who was inordinately cautious about new environments. She always made sure her people were ready for anything that was coming their way.

  “You can suit up if you want,” Coop said. “I think that’s a waste of time. The conditions are not quite optimal, but they’re the best we’ve encountered on a planet in a long time. The temperature differential between this skip and the outdoors is about fifteen degrees. The wind will be annoying. It’ll gust strong enough to make you stagger, but for the most part, you should be all right. Expect some dust and debris in the air, but the oxygen mix is better here than anywhere else on Nindowne. That’s mighty fresh air blowing in off the ocean, which is only a few miles from where we are. All right?”

  It was all he could do to keep from adding a somewhat snide, There. You’ve been briefed.

  He didn’t believe in coddling teams. They should have looked up the conditions on their own. Clearly, Perkins and the security team had both done so. Perkins had slipped on a light blue regulation jacket, not for the temperature, but to carry whatever gear she was going to bring.

  Coop wasn’t going to bring gear, not on this first outing from the skip. He wanted to walk around, look at everything, and make some decisions first. All he had done—and he had done it before leaving the Ivoire—was make certain he wore heavy boots and had a pair of gloves tucked into the back pocket of his pants.

  Yash stood beside him, grabbed her favorite utility belt—which he hadn’t seen in years—and fastened it around her hips. Lots of tools there as well, but no tablets. She had a pair of gloves in one hand. She wore sturdy boots as well.

  The security team headed to the exit. Even though Coop would have liked to go first, he knew that some regulations were worth following. The security team was in full uniform, with utility belts and light jackets filled with everything from small tools to weapons. The jackets also hid some of the weaponry that they carried mostly under their arms for easy access.