Searching for the Fleet

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Yash had no idea whether or not that weather would help or hinder someone else from finding them. Or if they were walking into an ambush inside.

  Coop stopped just outside that open door. Inside looked very dark. Yash shot a glance at the control panel and was startled to see that, in addition to being in Standard, it was also set up the way that she had been trained to set up a control panel.

  She had seen some of the later control panels built in the years after she left her timeline, and those panels had a different layout. A few of them didn’t even label the controls on the panel, assuming that whoever was using it had already been trained in whatever they needed to make the panel work.

  This panel did not look old enough to have been assembled when she was still with the Fleet. This panel looked relatively new—as in the-last-few-years kind of new.

  Then Chen caught up to Coop and Yash. Chen kept her back to the group as she examined the area around them. Then she peered into the darkness, clearly doing her job whether Coop wanted her to or not.

  “That brown path continues inside,” Coop said to them all. Yash noted that he was using a channel that only went to Ivoire crew. He wasn’t including Stone or Bridge. “It lines the side of the wall, but there’s only one area where it goes directly into the back. I’m of two minds about that. Either that leads to whoever is running this place, or it leads to the only working part of the base.”

  “Or both,” Yash said.

  “Or both,” Coop said. “I was thinking we split up and investigate one section that doesn’t have the brown path, and the one that does.”

  Yash didn’t like splitting up. She was beginning to dislike this entire enterprise, primarily because she didn’t understand it. Something was going on here, something that wasn’t immediately evident.

  “I don’t think we should split up,” Chen said. “I think we should investigate one first and then the other.”

  For the first time, Coop seemed to hesitate. He had clearly only thought of splitting up. He seemed uncertain as to which path to choose.

  “I think we need to find out what we’re up against,” Yash said.

  “I agree,” Perkins said. “For all we know, this elaborate setup was established centuries ago and no longer communicates with anyone.”

  Yash shot her a glance but couldn’t see Perkins’ face in the dimness. The light from her hood and around her neck pointed downward, keeping her face in shadow.

  Yash wanted to send her a message without saying anything, but couldn’t—not when she couldn’t see Perkins’s eyes.

  “From small hints that I’m getting,” Yash said, “I suspect this addition is newer than we thought.”

  She didn’t want to elaborate any more than that.

  “Maybe.” Nothing in Coop’s tone gave away what, exactly, he thought of all this. “But let’s find out, shall we? Because if no one has been here in a very long time, then we can explore this sector base to our heart’s content.”

  Yash hoped “exploring to our heart’s content” meant bringing in proper teams, filled with historians and archeologists and techs who specialized in older technology. She also hoped that “exploring to our heart’s content” meant bringing in more than one DV-Class vessel.

  Coop met her gaze. She could see his face, and he looked defiant. He was determined to find out what had happened here. Normally she would prevent him from going forward, but not this time.

  Maybe they all had a bit of the crazy that had taken Dix down a dark hole. Maybe, no matter how much the crew of the Ivoire pretended, the loss of their original time period and all they knew had a greater impact on them than they could ever imagine.

  Or maybe that loss gave them a recklessness they wouldn’t have otherwise had. After all, they really did have nothing to lose.

  Coop stepped inside the door. Yash followed, as did Perkins and Chen.

  The space they entered was wider and bigger than Yash expected. After looking (quickly) at those specs, she realized that once upon a time, this was the main aboveground entrance to the sector base.

  That the base even had an easily accessible aboveground entrance surprised her. The bases she had grown up around had kept their aboveground accesses hidden. The workers at those bases had had to slip through designated doors carved into the local landscape before ever entering the base proper.

  A lot had changed between Sector Base V and Sector Base E-2. But then, centuries had passed, and change was inevitable.

  Yash let her light sweep over the area between the wall and the doors. This was some kind of grand entrance, the kind most often found in a big complex or some kind of venue open to the public.

  She had never seen anything like it in a Fleet building, particularly a sector base. But if this were a major sector base, and the city around it only catered to the base, then maybe this design would work.

  In the past, this entrance must have seemed imposing. A large frame ran the entire length, and inside that frame were sets of double doors. The pattern was deliberate: two doors surrounded by a fairly thick frame. The frame would butt against the next frame for the next set of doors, so between the sets, there was something that looked like a wall with a line through it.

  She could almost imagine this entrance in its heyday, with lights behind those doors inviting people inside—or signs warning people away. Right now, though, the entire entrance looked sad, tired, and lost, as if it had once had glory and now only knew defeat.

  “See how strange this all is?” Coop asked, echoing Yash’s thoughts. He pointed toward his left with his knuckle lights, revealing even more doorways, curving away from them.

  The lights lingered on the walls between the doorway.

  “Nanobits,” he said.

  Then he aimed his knuckle lights upward, revealing the darkness of the ceiling above them.

  “See?” he said. “More nanobits.”

  He swept the knuckle lights downward, nearer to the doors’ entrances. The ground in front of the far doors also absorbed the light.

  “And even more nanobits,” he said.

  His tone told her that he was feeling as odd about this design as she was. They had found the sector base, and it was designed in a way that the Fleet they had known wouldn’t have designed it.

  Yash shivered, beginning to feel the chasm of years in a completely different way than she had ever felt it before.

  Coop swung his hand to the right, revealing door, door, black wall, door, door, black wall, door…and that strange brown material around the door, and maybe—they were too far away to see—but maybe, a bit of brown just beyond the door.

  Nothing had come out of that door since Coop had activated whatever he had activated. From Yash’s vantage—which she had to admit wasn’t the best—she didn’t see anything moving beyond that door either.

  There were no lights flashing, no sirens blaring.

  Nothing except the reflection of the direct pale light from Coop’s knuckle lights, and a more watery reflection of the four of them, standing near the wall.

  Yash pulled out Stone’s tablet and tapped it, trying to see if she could get information as to what was beyond that door. But nothing registered.

  The doors showed up.

  But nothing beyond that door to their right.

  Perkins had pulled out her usual tablet, repeating the same actions that Yash had done. Trying to see what kind of readings she could get on the Fleet equipment.

  “I’m not getting anything beyond those doors,” Yash said. “Nothing real, anyway.”

  “I’m not getting any readings in here at all,” Perkins said, clutching her tablet.

  “They’re blocking Fleet signals,” Coop said to Perkins. “Just put your tablet away.”

  “But not our comm links,” Perkins said.

  “I suspect they’re monitoring those,” Coop said.

  Then Yash heard a faint rustle and clunk as the comm channel between her and Coop opened. At least, that was what she assu
med she heard.

  “We’re doing this,” Coop said. “I still think we should split up.”

  She glanced at the doors. “If you think we’re only going to get one shot at this, then I agree.”

  She wasn’t sure she should have said that at all. He might take that as an invitation to do something rash.

  “I don’t think we’re only going to get one shot,” she added. “I think—”

  “We have to proceed as if this is our only chance,” Coop said.

  Then he walked to that far door. Yash followed, slowly, not sure what she should do here.

  Although if he was going to make them separate, then she needed a team and he needed a team.

  Or maybe the two of them took the risk, and Perkins and Chen waited here.

  Yash held up her tablet and inspected the wall between the far door and the double doors near them. That wall was made of both nanobits and the brown stuff. The brown stuff coated the door side, and not the side near the other door.

  Coop peeled off his glove, which startled Yash. Then she realized what he was doing. He had managed to open the door they had come through with his bare hand. He was going to try the same thing here.

  “Wait,” she said through their private channel.

  He paused, then turned toward her, revealing to the rest of the team that the two of them were talking without communicating with anyone else.

  She continued, “If you’re going to insist on splitting up, here’s how I want to do it. Perkins and Chen wait out here, ready to go in if one of us gets into trouble. Neither of us goes very far, just far enough to see what’s beyond the doors. If that works, and we get out of here unscathed, then we plan a more coordinated exploration of what we’re seeing, based on what we find.”

  Yash said all of that in a great rush, as if Coop would stop listening if she spoke slower.

  “Yeah,” he said, almost dismissively. (Or was he actually being dismissive? She couldn’t quite tell.) “All right. That’s what we’ll do.”

  He stopped in front of that brown part of the wall, then added, “Logically, there should be similar controls for all of these doors.”

  He was right. Yash walked to the nearest full nanobit wall and stopped in front of it. She left her gloves on.

  “What are we doing?” Perkins’ voice was soft in Yash’s ear. Yet another private communication. They were so far off-book now that everything felt clandestine.

  “Let me check something,” Yash said, turning on the lights on her fingertips.

  Sure enough, there was a small, rectangular cutout in the nanobit wall in front of her. She activated her most general Fleet identification onto the palm of the glove and then pressed that palm against the cutout.

  Coop was watching her, as was Perkins. Chen had her back to them, looking at the pavement behind them.

  Yash’s heart started pounding. This too could be some kind of notification to whoever—whatever—had put that brown stuff along these walls.

  If that had happened somewhat recently.

  Assumptions. Everything was an assumption.

  Just like the fact that she had assumed an old identification would activate a Fleet doorway—

  The door slid open, and a thin light rose inside another wide and long room. Yash let out a small breath of surprise.

  “What are we doing?” Perkins asked again.

  “You’re staying here,” Yash said. “I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

  Thirty-Two

  The air was frigid. Coop’s hand got cold immediately. He clutched his glove in the other hand, then glanced at Yash. She had opened a panel and was working on the door.

  Perkins was standing just a bit too close to her, and, he realized, they were talking as well. Perkins was probably wondering what he was thinking, and asking Yash to explain it.

  So he would instead.

  He flexed his fingers, feeling the muscles tighten from the cold.

  “Perkins, Chen,” he said on the channel to everyone, “I need you to stay out here. Chen, I’d like you to keep an eye open to see if anything changes on that wall or the brown whatever or behind these doors.”

  Chen nodded. She appeared unfazed, although he really couldn’t tell since she was suited up.

  “Perkins,” he said, “see what you can monitor with that tablet. I’d like you to go back and forth between the doors that we’ll open here in a minute, and keep an eye on us as best you can.”

  “On you?” Perkins asked.

  He couldn’t tell if she was being disingenuous, if Yash had already told her the plan.

  “I’m going in this door; Yash is going in the other.” He flexed his fingers again. The cold was getting to them.

  Yash had opened her control panel. It would only be a moment before she opened the door—if she could open the door.

  “Three things, Yash,” Coop said. “First, if there’s equipment that might have files or information on it, download as much as you can. Second, record everything.”

  He could almost imagine the look she was giving him now. He deliberately avoided her eyes. Of course, she would record everything. But he needed the command on record, just in case something bad happened to one or the other of them.

  He wanted to make sure the team knew to pull all the data from their suits and any devices they might be carrying.

  “And finally,” he said, “we’re going to time this, just like Boss would want.”

  Yash let out a small laugh, which surprised him. Apparently he had pleased her.

  “Thirty minutes,” he said.

  “That’s not enough time,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. He had given it a lot of thought, and figured thirty minutes would get them in and out quickly enough, and not allow either of them to wander down corridors or access lower levels.

  Even though he had a hunch this was their one shot at exploring E-2, he wanted to make sure they got out with any information they found.

  “Thirty minutes,” he said. “I’m activating timers. I doubt we’ll be able to work comms inside. So fifteen minutes in and fifteen minutes out.”

  “You’re no fun,” Yash said, but there was a smile in her voice. “Don’t activate those timers until your door is open.”

  Hers already was. A pale light had activated inside the area just behind the door. If he had been standing there as long as she had, he would have been antsy.

  But she seemed calmer than he would have expected.

  He flexed his cold fingers one last time. Then he pushed on the rectangle carved into the brown whatever it was. The panel door opened, just like the one outside had, and it revealed the same kind of controls that he had seen in the previous panel.

  Only this time, the controls were lit from behind.

  His breath caught. He hadn’t expected that.

  The labels were exactly the same. The position of the controls was exactly the same.

  The words were exactly the same. Standard. His version of Standard, not the version that Boss used, and not some kind of hybrid.

  The lights made him nervous. The version of Standard that he had grown up with made him curious. The language should have been subtlety different, considering how much the language had changed to become the language Boss spoke.

  Or, perhaps, the language had only changed in her sector of space. Maybe here, it remained the same.

  He pressed the right spot to open the door.

  This time it slid back easily, as if it had opened just a few hours before.

  For all he knew, it had.

  “Activate your timer,” he said to Yash. “We’re a go.”

  He activated his timer, setting it to count at the bottom of his hood, as well as in his ear. He hoped that the timer would continue working as he went inside.

  He would do his best to monitor the time without the timer, just in case it shut down or time got elongated the way it sometimes did around a malfunctioning anacapa field.

 
; His heart was pounding. He slipped his glove back on, grateful for the warmth, turned on the knuckle lights, and then aimed them inside.

  No light had come on immediately behind his door, although as he got closer, he saw some dim lighting way in the back.

  He had no idea if that lighting had been on before the door opened or not.

  He examined the interior before stepping inside. A brown wall to his left divided this space from the larger space. The right wall curved along the mountainside and was made of nanobits. The blackness gleamed.

  Piles of equipment were pushed against each wall. Whoever had piled that equipment had left a narrow space between the piles, a trail that went as far as he could see, heading toward the dim lights in the back.

  He stepped inside, then looked down.

  The floor was white, but it was clean. It also gleamed. It was clearly made of nanobits, not the brown stuff.

  He frowned. Someone had deliberately cut this part of the base off from the part that Yash was in. Even if he pulled off his hood and shouted, she wouldn’t be able to hear him. That brown wall looked thick. Whether or not it was, he couldn’t quite tell.

  He kept the door open and all of his lights on, even though he wanted to be a bit more stealthy. He felt like he was being watched—and not by his team.

  He couldn’t tell if that feeling was his own paranoia or not.

  He paused right between the first two piles of equipment. They weren’t attached to anything. They looked like junk piles. Consoles and chairs and recyclers tossed one on top of the other. Each piece of equipment looked old, and most of them were not intact.

  If he had time, he would toss some of the consoles out of this room before he left. But right now, he needed to move forward to see what was here.

  The jumble of piles was almost as tall as he was, and they went back nearly ten paces. The room itself was long, and it curved to his right.

  He suspected that along the wall, behind the piles, were doors that accessed the rest of the base.

  Either those doors had been deliberately blocked off, or whoever had piled this junk here hadn’t known that the doors existed.