Warrior Women

by Paula Guran

  Then the screens reappeared, the navigation controls clicked back full force, and that reverberation disappeared, replaced by the thrum of the anacapa.

  Sabin had jumped into foldspace so many times, she usually didn’t notice the details. In fact, she could only remember noticing a few times in her past: on her first trip doing a grid search, on her first jump as chief engineer, and then the first time she piloted a vessel, as a lieutenant on the path to full command.

  So, Sabin watched herself react here as if she were standing outside herself. Paying attention to those tiny details, common details, meant three things. She was worried about this grid search. She was worried about her ship.

  And she was worried about Coop.

  The images on the screen were a star map she didn’t recognize. Even though that happened with every jump into foldspace, it was still something she noticed. She liked knowing exactly where she was, and in foldspace, she never did.

  “Rapid grid search,” she ordered, even though Wilmot, Phan, and Ebedat were already bent over their consoles. Sabin wanted to be in and out of foldspace as fast as she could.

  “We have it, sir,” Wilmot said.

  “Good,” Sabin said. “Let’s go back.”

  Alvarez activated the anacapa.

  As the screens blanked for the second time in less than a minute, Sabin said, “Graham, the millisecond we return, you need to send that information to the Pueblo. Even before we analyze.”

  “Yes, sir,” Graham said.

  By the time he finished speaking, the Geneva had returned to real space.

  “Done, sir,” Graham said and as he spoke, the Pueblo vanished.

  Sabin let out a small breath.

  “Any ships?” she asked Wilmot.

  “Not obviously in this first grid,” he said. “How deep a search do you want?”

  “It’s all we’ve got at the moment, so keep some part of the system probing as deep as possible,” she said. “The better the search, the better our luck will be.”

  And as she said that, the Pueblo returned in the same place it had been a few minutes before.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s go again.”

  And they did.

  16.

  Twenty-five searches later, Wilmot said, “Sir, the Pueblo may have found something.”

  Sabin’s heart rose, but she made herself take a deep breath and tamp down the emotion. “May” was not definitive enough, and Foucheux was the kind of woman who would be accurate in her descriptions.

  “Tell the Pueblo that we’ll delay our search to see what’s on the grid. Let’s compare notes.”

  Sabin knew that speed was of the essence. The true investigative team wouldn’t be here for a while, so the Geneva and the Pueblo needed to act. But they had to act together, and as accurately as they could.

  Sabin had the five former members of foldspace investigation and rescue evaluate the information. She did the same.

  And she discovered that Foucheux was right: there was something at the edge of the Pueblo’s last grid search that looked like one of the Fleet’s ships. Oddly, it didn’t have an active signature, but that could mean many things.

  It could mean that the Ivoire was dead, with no power at all.

  It could also mean that what they were looking at was a ship, but not one of the Fleet’s.

  “Is the computer finding anything else on its deep searches?” Sabin asked Wilmot. “Are we getting other strange readings?”

  “No, sir,” he said. “This is the only thing that could be a ship, according to the data we’ve analyzed so far.”

  No analysis could be complete in such a short period of time. There could be other things in the grid that they’d missed because of their focus on the Ivoire.

  But all of that—if there was anything at all—would have to wait for the foldspace investigation and rescue team.

  She needed to make a decision now.

  “Tell the Pueblo we’re going to focus our search on that part of the grid, and we’re going to take a maximum of three minutes per search inside foldspace instead of one minute.”

  “Sir?” Wilmot asked. “The time—”

  “I am aware of the time,” Sabin said. “We don’t have enough ships to double up, so we have continue doing this as best we can.”

  Her heart was pounding. Three minutes in foldspace would seem like forever to the ship outside of foldspace. But it would also give her time—and Foucheux time—to figure out what, if anything, that reading on the sensors was.

  “Take us into the last place the Pueblo was,” Sabin said to Alvarez. “Then prepare to move quickly toward that blip. If we read it as anything but one of our ships, we move back into position, and return to real space. Got that?”

  She wanted everyone clear on the mission before they went in.

  “Let the Pueblo know we’re heading in,” she said, and gave the order.

  17.

  When they were inside foldspace, the blip on the Pueblo’s search grid did not seem like a blip at all. It looked solid.

  Sabin’s bridge crew worked quietly and quickly, shouting out information only when necessary.

  The ship wasn’t that far away from their position, and as they approached, it became clear they were looking at a ship.

  One of the Fleet’s ships.

  But not the Ivoire. The Ivoire’s design was sleeker, with some of the design tweaks that Sabin herself had helped engineer.

  Her heart continued to pound as they approached the ship.

  It had no power; that was evident. And its anacapa wasn’t working at all. No matter what system the Geneva used to see if the ship had an energy signature, they could find nothing.

  It took less than a minute to get close enough to get a full visual on the ship.

  Its center was gone; only the outer edges remained, giving it a ship-like shape, but no real heart.

  No wonder she saw no evidence of the anacapa. There was no anacapa at all. The bridge was gone, engineering was gone, the heart of the ship was gone.

  And it looked, from a cursory glance, as if the entire ship had somehow been ripped open. At some point, probably when the ship arrived in foldspace, it had hit something, done the thing everyone feared, and landed on top of, in the middle of, something else—an asteroid, space debris, or another ship.

  No one survived.

  Even if they had survived in the outer edges of the ship, they would not be alive now. Without that center core of the ship, the crew would have had only a few weeks to live. And judging by the design—what she could see of the design—those few weeks had expired years ago.

  “Captain.” Wilmot’s voice was tight. “Look.”

  He zoomed on a section of the damaged ship, showing that section only to her. The name of the ship registered on her screen:

  The Sikkerhet.

  Sabin had finally found her father.

  18.

  Somehow, Sabin remained calm. That detached feeling she’d had earlier when the anacapa first activated had returned. She knew that she had to captain the Geneva, and she had to continue on her mission.

  Only the mission had changed.

  They did have a ship to recover as well as one to find.

  But their time had run out. They also had to return to real space.

  Sabin got the Geneva back. Then she contacted Foucheux. Sabin almost asked for a private conference, but knew that was for her. It wasn’t necessary and it would take to much time.

  Foucheux appeared on one screen to the left of Sabin. Foucheux was tall and thin, and seemed more so on a two-dimensional screen. Her mocha-colored skin looked a bit gray, but that might be the lighting or the imagery.

  Or she might be tired from the interruption of the respite period, just like everyone else had been.

  She stood with her hands clasped behind her back. That posture, and the way that she had pulled back her black hair, made her seem more severe than usual.

  “It’s not the Ivo
ire,” Sabin said, even though she suspected Foucheux had already seen the data. “It’s the Sikkerhet, and it was destroyed long ago. I have no idea how it got to this part of foldspace or what that even means. The Sikkerhet has been missing for decades, and it was nowhere near this section of real space when it disappeared.”

  Her voice remained calm, normal, in control. She felt like three people—the captain of the Geneva, a little girl who had just realized her father was really and truly dead, and the woman who watched them both.

  “Regulations require us to continue the search for the Ivoire and let recovery teams handle the Sikkerhet,” Sabin said. Wilmot was watching her. She had a feeling that Charlie expected her to countermand regulations. “And in this instance, regulations absolutely apply. The Sikkerhet is beyond help, and any crew that survived either took lifepods elsewhere long ago, or expired when the ship got destroyed.”

  Her voice still remained calm. She felt calm. Or at least the captain part of her did, as did the observer part. The little girl had a metaphorical fist against her mouth to prevent an outburst, and wanted nothing more than to flee to her cabin right now.

  There was no right now, not for grieving. Technically, Sabin should have done that a long, long time ago.

  “So,” Sabin said, “let’s maintain our initial plan for the grid search and our initial timeline. I’ll send the location of the Sikkerhet to the foldspace investigation and rescue team.”

  Foucheux nodded. Her posture didn’t change, but her expression had softened. “I was going to suggest the same thing. But, let me be the first to say to you that I’m sorry.”

  Sabin had nearly interrupted. She didn’t want her crew to know the meaning of the Sikkerhet. Nor did she want any more sympathy.

  “Thank you,” she said, and this time she had just a bit of wobble in her voice. “Now, let’s get back to the search.”

  “We’re on it,” Foucheux said and signed off.

  After a moment, the Pueblo disappeared into foldspace.

  Sabin took a deep breath and sat down.

  “Captain, did I miss something?” Ebedat asked. “Did something—”

  “Nothing’s amiss,” Sabin said, trying to forestall the questions. “We continue the search. Please make sure that both Captain Cho, the Alta, and foldspace rescue know about the Sikkerhet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ebedat said. “Already done, sir.”

  “Good,” Sabin said, and forced herself to focus, as she waited for the Pueblo to return.

  19.

  “If I could discourage you from this path, I would,” Major Zeller said, on the day he became her advisor.

  They were sitting in his office on the Brazza, a blue-and-white planet visible through the gigantic window on the left side of the room. The Brazza was in orbit, while the Fleet tried to decide if the planet would become the next sector base location. A series of postdoctoral students were taking part in the studies, so someone in command believed it easier to have the Brazza in orbit than in its usual place near the bulk of the Fleet.

  “You should go back to engineering, designing, and numbers,” Zeller said. “You have a gift for them, and we need someone like you there.”

  Sabin hadn’t expected his negativity, particularly since he was to be her advisor for the next few years.

  “I tested well,” she said. “In fact, I tested higher than anyone else this year.”

  “You did,” he said. “Tests aren’t everything.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But I come from a long line of commanders. My father was a captain. My grandfather made general. My great-grandmother—”

  “I’m aware of your family’s history,” Zeller said. “That’s why we’re talking. It’s your family’s history that makes me think you’re not captain material.”

  She felt the shock all the way through her. No one had spoken to her like this before. Until this moment, everyone she had encountered, all of the administrators, instructors, and so many others believed she belonged in command.

  “Excuse me?” she said, because she didn’t know how else to respond.

  “Ever since your father disappeared, you’ve been on a single-minded mission to find him,” Zeller said. “Along the way, you have helped the Fleet. Your design for searches in foldspace is genius. The tweaks you’ve made to the anacapa systems and use are valuable. The designs you’ve added to the ships are both luxurious and comfortable. But none of that will make you a good leader. In fact, I think you’ll be a terrible one.”

  Her face warmed. If she got angry now, though—or, at least, let him see how angry she already was—she would prove him right.

  “My father has been gone a long time,” she said.

  “Yes, he has,” Zeller said. “But I know how this goes. I’ve lost people too. I was on the first team sent—using your methods—to try to find the Sikkerhet. I volunteered because I had family on that ship.”

  His expression changed just a little, saddened, then hardened again. This was not a man with whom she could speak of shared sympathy.

  “The hardest part of being a leader, Victoria,” Zeller said, using her real first name, which no one ever did. It made her feel even smaller, “is not decisions, but the attrition. You will lose people. They will fall away like parts off a damaged ship. They will get angry and move planetside, they will transfer, or they will die in battle.”

  She knew that. She had already lived through it. Even children lost friends when ships went down. The losses had been part of her life, like they were part of everyone’s life here in the Fleet.

  “But some of them, Victoria, will disappear. Literally disappear. You won’t know what happened to them ever. They will be like ghosts who haunt you through your entire career.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  He gave her a contemptuous smile. “No, you don’t. You think you do because we all lose people, we lose things, we lose ships. But you don’t, because you’ve never been responsible for the loss. You’ve never ordered a ship to go into a dangerous maneuver or into foldspace or into a battle where no one emerges alive. The responsibility is what’s different, Victoria. And the responsibility makes you second-guess everything.”

  She willed herself not to move. She suspected this conversation was more about him than it was about her. He was probably moved off the career track into academic administration because he couldn’t handle the results of his own orders.

  “When you start second-guessing,” he said, “everything you do, everything you are, is about that ghost. Every captain has one. Generals have dozens. But they acquire them during their commands. They lose people. And not every leader mentally survives those losses.”

  She was convinced now: this was about him, not her. But she listened.

  She had no other choice.

  “You already have a ghost,” he said. “One that you can’t let go of. Your entire life has been about finding your father, and he can’t be found. He is gone, Victoria, and nothing you do, no search patterns you develop, no tweaks you make to the anacapa drive, no command you give when your ship needs to go to foldspace, will ever change that.”

  She wasn’t sure if she should respond. But he had paused for several seconds now, so she said, “I know that, sir.”

  “Intellectually, yes, you know that. Emotionally, you do not. And someday, you will risk your entire crew because of your father. You will make a decision that has nothing to do with now, and everything to do with that loss. It might not seem obvious. It might seem totally unrelated. But it won’t be. And more people will die.”

  She wanted to say sarcastically, Thank you for your belief in me, sir, but she didn’t.

  Instead, she silently vowed she would prove him wrong.

  “I’m not leaving the officer training program,” she said. “If I wash out, fine. But I want to do this. I think I’ll be good at it. I think I’ll be better at it than anything else I’ve ever done.”

  He shook his head slightly, as if he c
ouldn’t believe her arrogance. Well, she couldn’t believe his. Who was he to tell her who she was and who she would be?

  “I’m going to be watching you,” he said. “The moment I see that ghost making decisions for you, I’m pulling you out. Is that clear?”

  She wondered how he would know. Would he fudge results? Would he see a “ghost” where there was none?

  But she knew better than to ask. She remained as still as she possibly could, so he wouldn’t see her steeling herself for battle with him.

  “Yes, sir,” she said calmly. “That’s clear.”

  Technically, she should have thanked him. Technically, she should have told him that he was doing the entire Fleet a favor by keeping an eye on her.

  But that was admitting weakness.

  She wasn’t going to admit weakness. Especially not now.

  She wanted to command—and she would.

  And she would be so much better than Zeller ever was, than Zeller ever could be.

  But she didn’t tell him that either.

  Instead, she would show him. Every single day, for the rest of her life.

  20.

  The Geneva and the Pueblo continued the grid search, but Sabin knew after the fiftieth iteration they would find nothing. No trace of the Ivoire.

  She tried not to feel dispirited, and when the emotion threatened to overwhelm her, she privately blamed it all on the confirmation of her father’s death.

  She didn’t let any emotion show. She did her job, coldly and efficiently, knowing she could tend to her emotions later.

  Even after the foldspace investigation and rescue team arrived, even after they failed to find the Ivoire with a thorough by-the-books search, she held her emotions back.

  They did her no good. They certainly didn’t help her, or anyone, find Coop.

  The Geneva took part in a lot of the background investigation, providing support, ferrying teams to various parts of the Ukhandan sector.

  And all the while, the foldspace investigation and rescue team searched, doing the math over and over again, trying to find a hole in the logic, replaying the telemetry sent by the Ivoire, the coordinates, the estimates—and finding nothing.