Skirmishes (19 page)

Coop looked at the screens before him. He had them overlaid one on top of the other, some using heat signatures to identify the ships, some showing the ship outlines without the cloak, some showing the darkness of space as it appeared to the naked eye.

He still counted five warships, five battleships, and five support ships that might also double as battleships. The number had bothered him enough that he looked up standard imperial military practices. The standard armada had twenty-four ships.

Three of each type were missing. Or this was a non-standard formation.

Or something else was going on.

The Empire was a regulated, regimented society. He doubted that this was something else. He suspected that with a quick search of their systems, he would have found some of the non-standard formations.

He hadn’t found any formation with fifteen vessels, especially when the Empire was trying for a show of strength.

What truly intrigued him was that this show of strength was, at the moment, happening while the ships were cloaked.

He kept feeling like there was a message here just for him.

“Captain?” Second Engineer Zaria Diaz spoke up. “I have that information you requested.”

He frowned, thinking he had requested a lot of information in the last hour or so.

As he was about to ask her to clarify, however, she said, “That woman? You know, the voice we’d encountered before? Her name is Elissa Trekov. She’s a Group Commander, which puts her in charge of this entire armada. I can’t find the entire record of her command, because a lot of it is so classified that it would take a more sophisticated hack than I can do from here to discover what’s happened to her, but there’s some interesting stuff.”

As Diaz spoke, Coop tapped one of the screens before him looking at the ranks in the Imperial Space Forces. A Group Commander was an extremely high rank. Only two ranked above her—the Flag Commander, and the person in charge of the entire Space Force, the Supreme Commander.

The name, Trekov, also set off something in his memory. He remembered Boss speaking the name, something about her first mission to Starbase Kappa being run by a Trekov. Only that Trekov had been the daughter of a major commander, but she wasn’t military.

She had hooked Boss into a scheme to find her father in the Room, and that hadn’t worked. Something had gone very wrong. Coop couldn’t remember the details, though. He’d only heard the story once, and that was a long time ago.

“This woman,” Diaz was saying, “got promoted almost right after the incident at Starbase Kappa, but the reason for her promotion isn’t listed.”

That caught Coop’s attention. “Is Starbase Kappa listed? It would be called The Room of Lost Souls.”

“No, sir,” Diaz said. “It’s as if nothing happened there.”

He raised his gaze to the actual windows and stared as if he could see through them to the border beyond.

He was right: Trekov had been at Starbase Kappa. She was the woman with whom he had spoken, and somehow she had managed to survive the
anacapa
explosion. She’d been close to it too. Every system on her ship should have shut down. Her environmental suits should have stopped working, and any ships in a large radius should have suffered the same fate.

Somehow she had managed to survive for hours in that situation, which took some ingenuity.

It would also have given her a strong motivation to find him.

And it would have given her enough information to know that the attack on the research station a month ago wasn’t an anomaly.

Coop leaned back in his chair. Yes, that knowledge had enabled her to find him, probably more easily than anyone else could have, but it also gave him an edge.

Because she knew what he was capable of. He didn’t have to demonstrate.

She knew he could destroy her armada with the
Ivoire
alone.

But she was career military. He had no idea if that made her cautious or reckless. If she was reckless, she was looking for payback.

If she was cautious, she would negotiate with him.

He stood.

She wasn’t that cautious. She had been cautious before, and it had gotten her in trouble.

She had also been working with scientists.

She understood the value of that thing the Empire called stealth tech.

His ships had appeared and disappeared, seemingly traveling through a sensor blanket as if it didn’t exist. She also knew that his team had gotten into a room on Starbase Kappa that her people hadn’t been able to open despite trying, that they had taken something from that room, and that they had left quickly, destroying everything.

A very similar attack to the one on the science station, only that time, they had taken a person—Squishy. All of this was concerned with stealth tech.

And he hadn’t identified himself in any of these encounters. For all she knew, he was flying a ship that Boss had rebuilt—a Fleet ship, yes, but something the Empire called a Dignity Vessel. Lynda was in a rebuild. It would stand to reason to this Trekov woman that Coop’s ship was a rebuild as well.

“Oh my God,” he said softly.

“What is it, Captain?” Anita asked.

He looked at her. Diaz was watching as well.

“They’re not going to invade the Nine Planets Alliance—not here, anyway,” he said. “They’re going to raid the Lost Souls Corporation. They’re going after Boss.”

THE DIVE

NOW

TWENTY-NINE

IT SPEAKS TO the depth of my fear that only two people make the next attempt to enter the Boneyard—and those two people are me and Yash.

Any thought of actual diving is gone for the moment. We just want to get in and get out.

If we can’t get out quickly—if it appears that we’re stuck or lost in time or have become part of the Boneyard—Mikk has instructions to take the
Two
back to the Lost Souls Corporation. He also has instructions to tell everyone there that we are dead.

If we get stuck, I don’t want anyone to get stuck coming after us.

Of course, I don’t really want to get stuck with Yash either. The idea of spending a month with her in this skip, waiting to die, gives me shudders. I’ve brought all of my diving equipment, though, as well as extra food and water.

I have diving equipment for her as well. If we get stuck here, we’re going to dive the nearby ships and see what we find. If we get stuck here, maybe Yash can find that place where the force field originates, and shut the damn thing off.

If we get stuck here.

Which I hope to God won’t happen.

This skip is my favorite, but I never use it. I imagine using it. I
remember
using it. It’s not our second skip. It’s the third skip on the
Two
, the skip we never use.

I’m excessively cautious. Because the
Two
has a larger ship bay than
Nobody’s Business
, I bring an extra skip, just in case something goes horribly, terribly wrong, and we need the skips plus the life pods.

Generally, if something went wrong on a dive, we would use the second skip. But Yash has installed an
anacapa
on that skip as well, because we need two functioning skips for diving emergencies. The medic has to be able to get to the diving crew quickly—and if the crew went into an area using an
anacapa
, then the rescue team needs an
anacapa
to get the crew out.

The third skip, the one we’re using, is one I used way back when. Back when I didn’t own the Lost Souls Corporation, back when all I had was my diving business. Back when putting a dive team together made my stomach twist and my heart pound, just because of the money involved.

I scrimped and saved to get this skip, and it was, when I bought it, the no-frills, bottom-of-the-line model. It doesn’t even have an area to cook in. Whoever designed the thing believed that if the people using the skip wanted a meal, they had to make do with something cold that they had brought aboard themselves.

The interior is small, even by skip standards. The console is built off to one side, and the chairs, where any travelers can strap in, are on the other side. The rest of the interior is empty, except for the basics—water, bathroom facilities, some storage. This skip is designed for short trips, a small crew on a specific mission, and enough space to store whatever was retrieved (if anything).

Nothing fancy.

And I’ve made it even less fancy by not upgrading the equipment, cleaning it only after a trip (and not before) and keeping the original chairs, which are not only old, but filled with small tears. The straps are new—new
ish
, anyway—and solid enough to hold someone down should gravity fail and someone need to be held in place, but the chairs might not survive the strain.

The things I have kept up, though, are the controls, the engine, and the environmental systems.

The things that keep you alive.

Not that you can tell I’ve done any work by looking around.

Yash has to duck to enter, and she stops once she’s inside. I can actually read her thoughts:
You’ve got to be kidding, right?
But to her credit, she doesn’t say anything.

She just hauls her equipment inside, shoves it into the storage locker, and stops.

“One person console,” she says, looking at the controls.

I nod. I have always liked to have only one pilot. If someone needs to save the day, they can unstrap themselves, move the dead, dying, or incapacitated pilot out of the way, and then get on with the business of flying the skip.

“I’m going to need access to those controls while we travel,” she says, “and I haven’t piloted anything this small in twenty years.”

I shrug, and can’t resist playing to her expectations. “Then we better hope the gravity continues to work, because we’ll be standing side by side.”

The one cool thing about this skip is that the pilot’s chair becomes part of the floor. This is how the skip’s console becomes a two-person console. The chair goes away, and we can both stand in front of that console.

I touch the button and the chair creaks and complains as it folds in on itself. Then it flattens into the floor, the colors blending so you can’t even see that something is there.

I was told, when I bought this thing, that the color blending was a safety feature, although for the life of me I still can’t figure out why it’s important that no one knows the chair exists when it’s flattened.

Yash gets that
You’re kidding, right?
expression again. She sighs, moves to the console, and stares at it.

Simple, to the point, with nothing extra. Suddenly, I find myself worrying that it’s too simple for what we’re about to attempt.

“Can you do what you need to do?” I ask.

She activates the console, then runs her fingers above it, as if she’s afraid that she’ll activate the controls by touching them. Even this console is sophisticated enough to have a secondary activation before the controls work.

But I don’t tell her that. I’d rather have her investigate her way.

She nods.

“It’s going to be an adventure in flying,” she says. “But I can do it.”

“Okay then,” I say. “Let’s go.”

THIRTY

PILOTING STANDING UP, on this skip, makes me feel decades younger. I haven’t done this for a long time, but it feels like I left the skip just moments ago. I can still pilot this skip with my eyes closed, and have done so dozens of times a year because—I realize now—this skip features in some of my recurring dreams.

Not nightmares, just dreams of exploration. And in those dreams, I’m never piloting the
Two
or
Nobody’s Business
or standing in the background on the
Ivoire
. I’m always on this skip, going somewhere, with two of my old teammates, Squishy and Karl, beside me.

It feels odd not to have them beside me now.

Right now, the woman beside me is tense and nervous.

“What exactly are you worried about?” I ask, my hands on the controls. Time to know now, rather than as we’re heading to the Boneyard.

“I’m not real fond of your ancient relic here,” Yash says.

“It’s a good old ship,” I say.

“Ironically, it’s not that old,” she says. “Not compared to the
Ivoire
.”

Normally, I would smile at that, particularly if the comment came from Coop. He was starting to get to the point where he could joke.

But I don’t know if Yash is serious or not, so I ignore her comment.

“It’s either this or remove the
anacapa
from one of the other skips,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “And I’m ready.”

Even though she’s not. I decide not to challenge her. I have my doubts as to whether we’ll get through that force field anyway, and if we don’t, then we’ll just turn around and go back.

We’ve already sent a probe to the force field—and the probe hadn’t been destroyed or damaged when it wasn’t able to go through. I expect the same thing to happen to the skip. Yash and I might be in for a few unpleasant moments, but we’ll be able to handle them.

I power up the skip, activate the secondary controls on the console, then inform the
Two
that we’re ready to go. I have cleared all of the windows, which on this skip is really impressive. Truth be told, that’s one of the reasons I bought it.

The walls of the skip become clear. We can see outside as if we’re standing on a platform in the middle of space. Or rather, at the moment, standing in the middle of the ship bay on the
Two.

The other two skips rest on either side of this one, and ahead of us is the bay door. It’s slowly rising, revealing darkness beyond.

My fingers are twitching. I want to get this skip out of here. I’m ready to leave, right now.

If I were wearing my suit, someone would be yelling into my comm about the gids. I grin at myself.