Skirmishes (10 page)

“Coop, you can’t!” Dix said. “You can’t!”

The transport reached the very edge of the range. Coop slammed both hands onto the controls. One palm hit the speed setting while the other sent every weapon the transport had at the landing deck of Starbase Kappa.

“Coop, nooooo!” Dix screamed.

The transport went from a cruising speed to its maximum in less than a second. Everyone got knocked back, even Coop. He had plugged in coordinates near the
Ivoire’s
last position.

At that moment, the weapons’ fire hit the landing deck. It exploded. Starbase Kappa pinwheeled away, mostly intact, but bits scattered. Coop wasn’t close enough to see, but he knew what it was: pieces of the starbase, pieces of Yash’s case, pieces of the civilian and his two guards.

The wave from the
anacapa
wasn’t visible, but it hit them all the same, loud and screeching and heart-pounding. Coop had been hit with a destroyed
anacapa
wave in an unprotected environment in the past and it had felt awful. The scientists didn’t know why, and until this moment, he hadn’t cared.

He gripped the seat.

He couldn’t see the wave move outward from the explosion, but he knew it had, and he knew that the Empire ship wasn’t out of range. It bobbled, then rolled, and then floated, as all of its systems died.

The Fleet’s transport ships had been built to survive an outside
anacapa
explosion. No ship in Boss’s universe had been built that way. The wave would continue outward and would probably hit all of the Empire ships guarding this part of space. It wouldn’t take out any other ships, since the Empire ships were keeping interlopers out of here.

Coop stared at the Enterran ship for a moment. Its commander had had the right idea; she had just been too late. He felt for her. She had been in the wrong place at the wrong moment. He had known that the second he saw her, and he had known he couldn’t warn her.

He found a stable orbit near a moon not far from the site where the
Ivoire
would return. He kept the cloak on.

His crew said nothing. Even Dix had grown silent.

Coop ran a hand through his hair and turned around.

Dix looked like he had died along with the
anacapa
drive. His eyes were sunken, his lips bleeding where he’d clearly bitten them.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Yes,” Coop said. He sounded firm and confident, and like the captain he had once been.

The cockpit crew stared at him with the same expression Dix had. Apparently they had all held on to a bit of hope. Maybe they had thought that the insane scheme that Dix had come up with would reverse the circumstances of their journey into the future, and send them back to the proper place in the past.

Even Coop had felt that hope, not as a real thing, but as a pressure.

He had destroyed the pressure.

But unlike the crew, he wasn’t feeling sad. He was feeling alive, for the first time since he got here.

He hadn’t resurrected Captain Jonathon Cooper of the Fleet. That man was gone. But he had found a new man, Coop Cooper, who captained the
Ivoire
.

He had done what he set out to do. He had destroyed the malfunctioning
anacapa
. No one would die in this area of space ever again because of his people.

And he had kept his promise to Boss. The Empire didn’t know about the
Ivoire
or his working
anacapa
drive.

His first mission in this new place had been a success after all. Just not the kind of success he had expected it to be.

Dix’s lower lip was trembling. His eyes were filled with tears. He was shaking his head.

“We’re never going to go home again, Coop. Never. The circumstances will never, ever be right again.”

They hadn’t been right this time either. Coop had argued that and argued that. So had his engineers and scientists. But apparently no one had believed them.

“I know,” Coop said. “This is our home now. This place. Our training taught us how to move forward. It’s time we do that.”

“I can’t,” Dix said.

“You will,” Coop said.

They needed time to mourn their lost lives. But first, they had to accept that their past lives were lost. He had helped them with that this day. That was the greatest success of the mission, the fact that it had exploded the false hope along with the damaged
anacapa
.

It had helped him. And now that he was back on firm footing, footing he understood, he would be able to help them too.

The
Ivoire
had been missing its leader. He was back now, and he would make the best choices he could.

The first thing he was going to do was return to the Nine Planets
.
Now the fight against the Empire was his as well as theirs. His actions against the Empire would be seen as an attack. He would take the blame for that, just like he would take the blame for destroying his crew’s hope.

He had broad shoulders.

And it was time he finally used them.

THE STANDOFF

NOW

TWELVE

COOP PACED on the bridge. He had his hands clasped behind him, and he walked. Fortunately, the
Ivoire’s
bridge had a lot of room. He would peer at the consoles his bridge crew worked, absorbing the work little bit by little bit.

It didn’t help him.

Boss and her team hadn’t yet sent word of what they were doing.

Even though Coop had talked to her about the importance of quick action, he worried she hadn’t heard him. She talked with him about the necessity of doing the correct dive, of making certain her people made it through everything, of the caution diving required.

He remembered how she had explored the sector base nearly six years ago, back when he had met her, and he knew she was doing the same thing in the Boneyard. A few hours in, most of a day out, acquiring information through a slow drip.

He wanted her to act quicker.

He wanted her to show up here, now, with a dozen working Fleet ships.

Not that it would be possible for her to do that. Even if she found a dozen working Fleet ships, he didn’t have the crews to work them. His crew had trained hundreds of people at Lost Souls in the mechanics of the
Ivoire
and the
Shadow
, but understanding how things worked and actually making them work were two different things.

And then there was the question of a lifetime of military training. Almost no one outside the
Ivoire’s
crew had it at Lost Souls, and he didn’t know how to impart it.

He knew that he was having a rescue fantasy. He’d had it before—suddenly the Fleet would find the
Ivoire
and bring them back to their time—and he knew it for the impossibility it was.

Every few minutes, he would stop at his command chair and look at the sensor screen he had up.

The Enterran Empire ships remained along the border. Five warships, five battle cruisers, and five support ships that could probably double as battle ships, if need be. The ships also remained cloaked, but he had a hunch they knew that
he
knew they were there.

He had a hunch they were waiting for him to do something. Back off? Attack them? Confront them?

He had no idea.

He also had no idea what to do about them. He had no battle plan, no future plan, no way of knowing what was best.

Just his rescue fantasy, which was absolutely worthless.

“Captain,” said Second Engineer Zaria Diaz, “I have something. I have no idea if it means anything.”

Something was better than nothing, but he didn’t say that. He walked over to her station, hands still clasped behind him. He towered over her, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

Of course, most people towered over her, so she was probably used to that.

“What do you have?” he asked, wishing, hoping, praying it was something he could use.

“We have a voice print match.”

Whatever he had expected, it hadn’t been that.

“A what?” he asked.

“We’ve encountered one of these commanders before,” Diaz said.

“
We
have?” Coop asked.

She nodded.

He was trying to remember talking with any commanders when they had destroyed the ships near the research facility. He hadn’t. His people had had contact with others on the facility, but he couldn’t imagine his team having time to take voice prints.

“Where?” he asked.

“Starbase Kappa,” she said. “Remember that? You spoke to a woman there. She seemed to be in charge.”

He straightened. The soldier with short hair. Young, thin mouth. She’d tried to prevent her stupid scientist from messing up the first contact, but he had pushed.

In fact, that stupid scientist had gotten a lot of people killed.

Or so Coop thought. He hadn’t seen anything about it—he’d even had some of his people check—years later of course. The Empire didn’t report a lost ship or a lot of deaths, but that didn’t mean anything. Often big governments tried to keep their losses quiet.

He had also seen nothing about the so-called Room of Lost Souls. He probably should have asked Boss’s friend Turtle about it. Turtle seemed to know all sorts of things she shouldn’t have known, like how to find Boss in an emergency. That made him leery of Turtle, but it also made her useful.

“You’re certain this is the woman?” he asked Diaz.

“We have her voice from before,” Diaz said. “We have a lot of her voice then, and a lot now. I’ve checked and double-checked.”

“Do we know who she is?” Coop asked.

“I’m guessing,” Diaz said, “but from the content of her conversation, I think she might be in charge of this whole mission.”

Coop frowned at the array of ships before him. Still cloaked, still waiting.

If indeed that woman was in charge of this mission, then she had more information than he was comfortable with. He had kept his promise to Boss; no one had seen the
Ivoire
. But that woman had known that Coop’s people were able to get around on Starbase Kappa, that they attacked for no reason, and that they used a weapon the woman didn’t understand.

Coop had deliberately killed her scientist, probably destroyed or seriously damaged Starbase Kappa, and harmed several ships.

He was, in fact, amazed she had survived. “What kind of information do we have about Starbase Kappa after we left?”

“I’ll look,” Diaz said.

“I want you to continue monitoring everything here,” Coop said. “Get someone else to look. And have that person double-check the voice prints. Also, see if we have a name for this woman, and if so, figure out just who she is. Not just her position now, but how she got here, what her past actually is.”

“Are we looking for something special, Captain?” Diaz asked.

He frowned at those ships, displayed on his screen. He wasn’t sure how to answer her. He had a feeling, a worry.

“I want to know if she tracked us here.”

“That’s not possible, sir,” Diaz said.

He wasn’t quite sure what Diaz was thinking of. An exact tracking wouldn’t be possible. But putting together clues might be.

“Get me that history,” he said.

He needed to know if she was here to attack the Nine Planets or if she was here to confiscate his ship.

An hour ago, he would have thought she was the first wave of an invasion force against the Nine Planets.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

THE FIRST SKIRMISH

ABOUT FOUR YEARS EARLIER

THIRTEEN

OPERATIONS COMMANDER Elissa Trekov saw the weapons’ fire first. It came from what to her eyes looked like a blank spot on the screens in front of her. Fortunately, the
Discovery
’s sensors saw through the cloak that created that blank spot to the transport vessel that had left just moments ago.

She bent over the controls on the bridge of the
Discovery,
not because she was flying the large science ship, but because she was arguing with the three people she had just left on the Room of Lost Souls. She still wore her environmental suit, even though she had removed the bubble helmet. It rested on the seat behind her.

She hadn’t had time to remove the suit because that damn Vilhauser, on the station, wasn’t listening to her.

But if she hadn’t been bent over, essentially hogging two stations while the bridge crew tried to work around her, she wouldn’t have seen the weapons’ fire from the transport vessel. Those flashes of light had given her just a few precious seconds to make a decision.

She hoped it was enough time.

Thank God she had ordered the
Discovery
to detach from the lower landing area on the Room of Lost Souls. She had planned to leave Vilhauser behind, along with two very good soldiers, because the idiot scientist wasn’t listening to her, and his actions threatened her crew.

Now there was a second threat—the weapons’ fire, cool and white across the dark starscape.

The betraying bastard who commanded that transport vessel had waited until his ship was as close to the edge of his firing range as possible. Those shots would take only seconds to arrive, but those seconds were enough.

“Calthorpe, activate the stardrive!” she said, as her gloved hand slapped the emergency beacon. They were going to need help, and she wanted to make sure they got it—even before she got the
Discovery
out of here.

Her first fucking solo command, and she wasn’t sure the ship would survive it. She could’ve handled one threat, but not two. There was Vilhauser and the damn device, and now that betraying bastard on the transport had decided to get involved.

She had no idea what would happen if the transport’s weapons’ fire missed the
Discovery
and hit the Room of Lost Souls.