Searching for the Fleet

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Bridge stood next, looking a little stunned at the speed with which everyone was leaving the skip. He glanced around as if he was trying to figure out what he needed to bring with him.

  Stone grabbed her own jacket, tucked one of the tablets inside one side and another tablet in the other. Then she grabbed the bag she had used on every single planet Coop had worked with her on. She had a lot of gear, much of it for finding underground materials and measuring them. She also had some tools that could read chemical composition.

  Yash had something simpler—a small wand she had designed to recognize nanobits in all stages of their existence. Coop had mentioned making wands for the entire group before they left, but Yash had shaken her head.

  I don’t share prototypes, she had said.

  But Coop knew it was more than that: Yash suspected this group wouldn’t understand all of the readings—and she was probably right. She wanted to see all of the nuances herself, and she wanted to see them in real time.

  He didn’t wait for Bridge or Stone to gather all of their possessions. He joined Perkins behind the security team. She gave him a tight smile. There were fine lines near her eyes now that hadn’t been there when he promoted her long before they had come to this time period. Back then, she had been one of the young members of the bridge crew.

  He was a bit startled to realize she wasn’t that young anymore.

  He smiled, feeling more relaxed than he probably should have. She nodded at him. She shoved her hands in the lower pockets of her jacket, and waited as the security team entered the airlock.

  The most annoying part of this skip was that it had a narrow airlock that fit at most two people.

  The airlock slid open on the interior. The security team was already outside of the skip. He glanced at Perkins. She smiled at him again, and this time, it was a true smile.

  He let the excitement he felt at this mission show in his eyes. He had a hunch they twinkled as he stepped into the airlock.

  The door closed behind him. He leaned against the far wall, uncomfortably close to Perkins. She stared straight ahead. He did as well.

  They had a minute to wait, even though the atmosphere on this planet was just fine. The skip hadn’t been modified to allow the crew to exit quickly, something he probably should have thought of.

  He’d been thinking about too many other things—too many hypotheticals. And he’d also been avoiding one.

  Had he only brought mostly Ivoire crew (and a requisite few others) because there was an ever so slight chance he could send his entire ship back to its own time period?

  Would he do that?

  He was surprised to feel himself wavering. Six years ago, he would have immediately acknowledged his willingness to return to his time. Now, he was less certain, and it wasn’t, as Yash would say, because of Boss.

  He was beginning to like the new future spreading before him. He was trained to move ever forward and he had probably moved as far forward as any captain of the Fleet ever had.

  He just couldn’t report back to the Fleet he knew—and that was the only part of his mission right now that felt really wrong.

  The exterior door swished open. Chen and Lankstadt were already several paces away from the skip. They had not drawn any weapons, but one hand rested near their sides so that they could grab something easily. They were facing opposite directions, their backs only about a yard from each other.

  The air smelled of brine and fish. Saltwater oceans had similar scents no matter what planet Coop visited. And the smell was stronger at first; it would recede as he got used to it.

  A wind played with his hair like a distracted lover. The air was damp with a bit of mist. That same mist gave everything a slightly soft edge and made him feel as if he was viewing the world through sleep-filled eyes.

  The breeze was cold. Gooseflesh ran up his arms, leaving him slightly chilled. He stepped away from the doors, walking—as per regulation—to the security team.

  “Nothing, sir,” Chen said, her voice soft. “We seem to be alone here at the moment.”

  He nodded his answer, but scanned the area himself. It wasn’t as wild as he had expected. He’d seen several former sector base areas, and in each case, nature had reclaimed the area.

  This part of Nindowne or Sandoveil or wherever they were hadn’t really been reclaimed.

  The old maps were correct so far, because the team was standing on an old road.

  The ground was brown, the road dirt-covered, but not overgrown. Long grass or weeds or some kind of green plants grew on the far side of the road, but he couldn’t tell if that was by design or if they truly had grown wild.

  If he looked toward the mountain where Yash’s readings had found the cave, he saw cracked pavement, but it wasn’t broken by lack of use. If anything, the cracks looked fairly recent, as if they had happened during the normal ebb and flow of the weather.

  Sunlight filtered through the mist, reflecting off it and making his eyes ache. He shielded his eyes with his hand, and turned slowly, taking everything in.

  Mature trees grew to his right—the direction that led away from the ocean and toward the second area of mudflats. The mountains on all three sides were extremely imposing. It wouldn’t take long for the light to disappear behind them, leaving this part of the valley in shadow.

  He hadn’t paid any attention to the time of day when he had brought the skip down here. He hadn’t realized that they had arrived toward the end of daylight for this part of the planet.

  That wasn’t like him at all. He used to be meticulous about when a landing party would arrive on a planet. But he hadn’t done any planet-bound work in years, and when he had gone to planets, he hadn’t been in charge of the mission.

  Boss had been.

  He heard the door to the skip swish open again—or was it closed? He didn’t look, choosing instead to continue his scan of the area.

  The flat pavement continued all the way toward that overhang that Yash had found on her readouts. It looked like a Fleet-designed protective roof, the kind that kept locals from seeing an aboveground entrance to a sector base, just like he had expected.

  But usually, the Fleet destroyed features like that when it closed the bases, leaving behind rubble or creating something else in its place—a façade of some kind that would discourage locals from exploring here.

  He wanted to explore that pavement and the overhang, but he didn’t let himself do that, not yet. He wanted to see what was around him.

  So he turned toward his left, and started as he got a faceful of mist. The wind plastered his hair back. The mist felt like soft tiny cold pellets caressing his skin. Water dripped off his nose onto his lip, off his cheeks onto his chin, off his chin onto his clothing.

  And that was when he realized his clothing was already drenched. He wasn’t wearing the right gear. None of them were.

  Yash stepped up beside him. He hadn’t heard the skip’s door swish open and closed, announcing her presence. He doubted that was because it hadn’t been loud enough.

  He had been very focused on what he was doing.

  “I didn’t expect rain,” he said to Yash by way of apology.

  She wiped a hand over her face. “If this place is anything like one of the seasides I grew up near, this will pass soon.”

  “The wind guarantees that,” Stone said. She had joined them as well. She pointed up. “See the clouds? They’re moving fast.”

  Flat gray clouds, separated by slashes of light, floated past so quickly that Coop couldn’t really keep track of them all.

  “You going back to get the right gear?” Yash asked.

  Coop shook his head. “I’m already wet. Besides, I’m interested in that.”

  He pointed toward the overhang.

  “The settlement is to our left,” Stone said. “Some of the buildings there appear to have been repaired.”

  “We got readings that suggested people lived on this continent,” Perkins said.

  “Yes, but not
hing that showed people in this area,” Stone said. “I’m a little disconcerted by it. None of the buildings showed up on the Ivoire’s sensors.”

  Coop looked at her. Water dripped off his eyelashes. He wiped his face again, only to have the mist coat him one more time.

  He didn’t like what Stone said. It set off a warning bell in his head.

  “Perkins,” he said, “see if you can get readings on those buildings right now.”

  She pulled one of the tablets from the inside of her jacket, pressed the screen, and scanned the area. Then she shook her head.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just flat ground, ruins, and emptiness.”

  “How are you seeing this?” Coop asked Stone.

  “I’m using Lost Souls equipment,” she said. “Modified, of course, to our needs.”

  Of course, he thought but didn’t say.

  “Yash,” he said, “see what you get.”

  She gave him an irritated glance. Apparently she hadn’t wanted the others to know that she had the wand.

  “My equipment won’t work at great distances,” she said, not pulling out the wand at all.

  “Those buildings are intriguing, Captain,” Bridge said. “I propose we split up, each group taking one person from the security team, and seeing what we can find.”

  And that was why Bridge didn’t command anything.

  “We’re not separating,” Coop said. “We’ll investigate the buildings later. Worst case, they’re cloaked somehow, and we’d be alerting someone to our presence.”

  “You don’t think they already know?” Stone asked.

  Coop had become used to the civilians asking questions like that over the years.

  “No,” he said. “We didn’t encounter anything that suggested the air space around here was being monitored. We set off no alarms and didn’t trigger any kind of energy spikes.”

  “That we know of,” Bridge said, nodding toward Perkins’ tablet as if it contained proof of his point of view.

  “That’s one thing we do look for in depth,” Coop said. “We don’t want to initiate an attack, especially when a ship is on its own the way we are.”

  He glanced at the overhang.

  “We’re sticking together, and we’re going to look at that formation over there,” he said.

  He trudged forward without waiting for a single response. The wind continued but the mist suddenly stopped. He wiped the water off his face for the third time.

  It took longer than he expected to traverse the pavement. The road was much farther from the overhang than it had initially appeared.

  He walked alone for several minutes, moving faster than the rest of the team. They were probably measuring things and doing everything that Boss asked of them during a dive.

  This wasn’t a dive. This was an investigatory mission.

  Ah, hell. Who was he kidding? This was a mission of discovery; he felt closer to the Fleet than he had for some time.

  The air wasn’t as clear as it had been on the road, even with the mist. The sun was setting over the mountains, and he had stepped into the growing shadow. But he could still see underneath that overhang. As he suspected, it covered more pavement, and this pavement wasn’t broken up at all. He couldn’t see any cracks.

  Lankstadt caught up to him, then passed him, with Chen only a yard or so behind.

  “Slow down,” Coop said. “I’d prefer it if you don’t get there first.”

  “But sir,” Chen said, “procedure—”

  “Screw procedure,” he said, then realized how harsh that sounded. But he was suddenly feeling very harsh. If anyone else said the word procedure to him again on this part of the mission, he would send them back to the skip.

  “Yes, sir, all right, sir.” Her agitated tone told him it wasn’t all right at all. But he didn’t care. He was going to see what was here, and see it with his own eyes.

  Because he had heard the caution in both Stone’s and Bridge’s voices when it came to those buildings. They weren’t normal.

  He wouldn’t put it past the Fleet that had built the Boneyard to set up some kind of external monitoring system, something that allowed them to know when strangers came to the site of the former sector base.

  Why they would do that, he had no idea, because the Fleet never used to care about its past. But he had to keep that option as a consideration.

  Yash caught up to him and snapped on her gloves, silently rebuking him for not wearing his. He pulled his out of his back pocket and slid them over his hands.

  The material caught on his damp skin, pulling it. He had to yank to get them on firmly. Then he turned on the knuckle lights so that he could see what was ahead.

  By the time he and Yash reached the edge of the open pavement, the sun had completely disappeared. A ribbon of sunlight still illuminated the skip because it was in the center of this narrow valley, but Coop knew that last bit of light would disappear soon.

  It was darker under the overhang than it was nearby. He actually couldn’t see in the inky blackness, even with his glove lights trying to penetrate the gloom.

  Yash had stopped walking. She caught his arm, holding him back. Then, with her other hand, she signaled the rest of the team to stop behind them.

  They did.

  Yash slipped the wand out of her jacket and shoved the edge forward. Coop doubted anyone behind them could see what, exactly, she was doing.

  She ran her thumb up and down the wand’s edge. Pale gray lights appeared, blinking like running lights. Then they vanished, and a small green light glowed at them.

  “Nanobits,” she said softly so that no one else could hear. “The overhang, and whatever’s in front of us.”

  “Can you figure out age with that thing?” he asked, just as softly.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Not without touching some of them, which I’m loathe to do at the moment.”

  He was too. He didn’t want to touch anything until he knew whether or not it would alert someone.

  “But I can tell you,” she said, “that these nanobits are still bonded. And they’re replicating and repairing, just like they’re supposed to. The ones on the top are either older or subject to a lot more stress than whatever is underneath.”

  “When we were on the Ivoire,” Coop said, “you said there was a cave here.”

  She nodded. “I don’t have the equipment out that will do the same kind of reading. But I doubt we have a natural cave in front of us. And if you look at what’s beneath that overhang, what does it make you think of?”

  He peered, trying to imagine this as if he were a hiker just stumbling upon it.

  “The opening to a really large cave,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Wouldn’t that attract explorers?” he asked.

  “It might,” she said. “I’m not a land-based explorer kind of person.”

  “It would certainly attract Boss,” he said with a wry smile. The woman might have been cautious when it came to arriving somewhere, but she loved venturing into the unknown.

  “Speaking of,” Yash said to him, “she would tell us to don environmental suits.”

  “Yes, she would,” he said. “I don’t plan to enter this just yet, especially in the dark with the occasional rain. But I would like to know what we’re seeing.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. The security team was flanking him, but they were back just far enough so that they couldn’t hear the conversation. They had also kept Perkins, Bridge, and Stone back, following protocol. Following procedure.

  Coop smiled. All right, he conceded to himself. Sometimes procedure still has its place.

  Especially when the two senior officers were making a decision they didn’t want the others to know much about.

  “Perkins, Stone,” he said. “Use your different equipment and scan what’s ahead of us. See what kind of readings you get.”

  They both acknowledged him and glanced at their tablets.

  “I’m getting a cave openin
g,” Perkins said, “and something in Standard, our version of Standard, that claims this is one of the most dangerous places on Nindowne and we shouldn’t approach without a registered guide. That warning is now scrolling through two other languages I recognize. I’m seeing other languages as well, and I’m assuming they say the same thing.”

  “Fascinating,” Yash muttered.

  For a half second, Coop thought she was being sarcastic. He glanced at her. She was still staring at that opening. He doubted she even knew she had spoken aloud.

  “I’m not getting that at all,” Stone said. “My readings show a thin curtain, and then a wall of doors. There seem to be doors beyond that—or a room—or something. I can’t tell.”

  Coop frowned, thinking about that for a moment. “We’re using Fleet technology older than this sector base,” he said. “Could that be the problem?”

  “I don’t think so,” Yash said. “The languages say otherwise.”

  “What does that mean?” Bridge asked.

  “This barrier is designed to keep Fleet personnel away, and all the locals,” Yash said. “This might have been put here when the base closed down.”

  “It’s in good shape for something that lasted centuries,” Coop said.

  “Yes, but good tech is designed for that.” Yash took one step forward, a frown on her face as well.

  “Lost Soul’s tech isn’t more sophisticated…” Perkins said, then stopped, probably not wanting to offend Stone or Bridge.

  “Depends on how you define sophisticated,” Yash said.

  Coop knew how they all defined it. They meant sophisticated in comparison to Fleet technology. But that lack of sophistication might be a benefit here.

  “The differences in the tech might be enough to let the Lost Souls tech ‘see’ what’s here clearer,” Bridge said. He did not sound defensive at all. Just matter of fact.

  “Or we all might be getting false readings,” Yash said. “We’ll have to go forward to find out.”