Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (21 page)

Boss understood that very, very well, and supported it.

So six months into his life in the future, when he finally decided on his first mission in this new place with his crew, he told Boss his plans to go to Starbase Kappa. He didn't tell her to get her approval. He told her as a matter of courtesy.

He just didn't expect her reaction.

He hadn't expected it at all.

The Fleet always placed the
anacapa
controls in the most protected area, whether the
anacapa
was on a starbase or on a spaceship. The protection hadn't helped the
Ivoire's anacapa,
which had malfunctioned when weapons fire hit it seven months ago. The
anacapa
sent things into something called foldspace. The experts, like Yash and Lalliki, argued as to whether foldspace was a different region of space, another dimension, or an alternate universe.

The entire Fleet agreed on only a few things: time ran differently in foldspace, and foldspace wasn't in the same part of the universe as the ship had been in moments before.

The
Ivoire
had gotten trapped in foldspace for two weeks, and then had hooked up to the malfunctioning
anacapa
on Sector Base V. Boss's team of explorers had activated that
anacapa
accidentally, and the
anacapa
did what it was supposed to: It used its emergency powers to link the
Ivoire's anacapa
with the base's
anacapa,
and pulled the
Ivoire
out of foldspace and into Sector Base V.

But not the Sector Base that the
Ivoire
had left. The Sector Base five thousand years in the future.

Five thousand years.

His brain still couldn't wrap around that. This part of space was littered with remnants of his past, from ruined Fleet vessels to Sector Base V to Starbase Kappa.

A year ago, in his personal timeline, he'd been here with one of his closest friends and occasional lover, Victoria Sabin. They'd stayed in a fancy suite, had fantastic meals, and saw old friends.

Now he returned to a place abandoned and malfunctioning, filled with the ghosts of people who had died here recently because something had gone wrong with Starbase Kappa's
anacapa
as well.

At least, that was what he could tell from Boss's stories.

Coop and Yash went down two levels to what had been the heart of Starbase Kappa. Now, according to the map that Boss had made four years ago, the
anacapa
section of the base was near the edge of the base, levels below what Boss's people called the Room of Lost Souls.

The Room of Lost Souls was an actual room, on what looked like the entry level of Starbase Kappa. If a ship docked, its crew would find the room relatively quickly. People had died there.

The
anacapa
was in a protected space that butted up against the floor of the Room of Lost Souls, as it was called now. What the room had been in the base's prime was one of many recreation areas that could be shut down or expanded if the operational facilities inside the starbase needed expansion.

The
anacapa
control room had been locked and guarded with some of the standard shutdown procedures that the Fleet used. Generally, when the Fleet decommissioned a starbase, it used the starbase's
anacapa
to move the base to a different sector of space. Then the Fleet engineers disassembled the starbase, and used the parts that were still good or viable for a new starbase or a sector base.

The Fleet never wasted anything, which was one of the things that made Starbase Kappa so very odd.

It shouldn't have been here.

And it certainly shouldn't have been here after five thousand years.

The
anacapa
room had a double door system. The outer doors stood open only because Dix and his crew had left them that way for a rapid escape. The inner door remained closed because there was no way to prop it open. Regulations didn't allow it.

Some of the materials inside any
anacapa
area were different from the rest of the starbase. They were stronger, and provided protection against
anacapa
malfunctions.

Until this past year, Coop had had limited experience with
anacapa
malfunctions. Now they seemed to be the story of his life.

Although the fact that the
anacapa
functioned at all after five thousand years had given him hope, a misplaced hope, or so Lalliki and Yash told him, but hope all the same. He knew that the
Ivoire's
arrival in this time and place had a lot to do with the vagaries of two different
anacapa
s
,
malfunctioning in two different ways (or maybe several different ways), but part of him hoped that the malfunctions could be recreated in a lab.

His public policy was to act as if he would never leave this time period, but his personal hope was that someday, he and his crew would find a way back to their own time, a way that would enable them to rejoin their friends and family and the familiarity of the Fleet.

Because right now, he felt like he was haunting his own life.

Dix's team had disabled the identification panels to enter the inner door. They had reported to Coop on that.

So he just had to push open the door and step inside.

He did, Yash on his heels.

The interior of the
anacapa
room was brightly lit and still filled with equipment, which surprised him, even though Dix had mentioned that when the team arrived.

Still, Coop did not expect to see viewing stations, a landing platform large enough for a warship in trouble, and all sorts of engineering equipment still intact.

He also didn't expect to see the
anacapa,
extending from its housing in the floor, and Dix reaching into the casing, his arms inside all the way to his shoulders.

Layla Lalliki turned toward Coop. She was tall and thin, and even though he could barely see her face through the environmental suit hood that protected her pasty skin, he got the sense that she felt out of her element.

Lalliki flapped her arms helplessly, a movement that no one comfortable in zero-g would ever use. But Coop understood it: she didn't outrank Dix, and what he was doing disturbed her. She wanted him to stop.

The three
anacapa
experts stood around Dix, clutching the repair tools. Coop didn't know these members of his crew very well, and he certainly didn't know them by what he could identify now, which was height and build. There was a short roundish one, another short but thin one, and a taller one with shoulders so broad that Coop would guess that he was male.

Lalliki walked quickly toward Coop, but he signaled her to stop. He knew what was wrong—or enough of it, anyway.

Dix knew a lot about a lot of things, but he was no
anacapa
expert. Still, he had spent most of the last six months studying the drive, trying to figure out what had gone wrong and what could be recreated.

He had come to Coop's cabin late one night and helped himself, uninvited, to some whiskey that Coop had been saving.

We don't understand these damn drives,
Dix had said.
We can work them, we can repair them—more or less—but we're playing with things we only partially get.

I'm sure the specialists would disagree with you,
Coop had said, deciding not to mention the whiskey. Instead, he had poured a glass for himself.

If they disagreed, they would know what foldspace is,
Dix said, then sighed
. I think we're screwed, Coop. We need some kind of access to our own past, something still functioning. We shut down the sector base, and it was a mistake. We can't make that mistake again.

Coop had forgotten that conversation until now. It had been months ago, and he and Dix had had countless conversations after that. Many of them had been about Dix's family, his love for the Fleet, and the woman he had left behind on the
Geneva.
Dix had been in love, the kind of love Coop had never experienced, and losing her was tearing him apart in ways Coop didn't completely understand.

Coop walked over to the
anacapa
drive. He could hear it thrumming softly. The
anacapa
seemed invisible to those who worked with it regularly, but it wasn't. It made small noises, and caused small motions like that slip he'd felt earlier.

Coop had never learned exactly how to work on an
anacapa
—it wasn't required for command—but he did know enough about it to recognize that the drive was still intact. Dix had just gone into the center of it to adjust it, somehow.

And Coop had an idea as to how.

Dix didn't look up as Coop approached. Dix's environmental-suited arms were deep inside the drive, his hands—probably still gloved—tinkering with the interiors. The light from the
anacapa
illuminated Dix's face, adding shadows where there generally were none, and making him look thinner than he usually did.

Or maybe that wasn't the light at all. Maybe Dix had grown even more gaunt than usual. Maybe he had been wasting away, and Coop hadn't even noticed.

"Dix," Coop said. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting us back," Dix said.

"The mission is to shut the drive down, remove it, and take it back to Lost Souls," Coop said.

"It's a stupid mission," Dix said, and at that moment, Coop knew his friend had gone over an edge. His first officer would never talk to him that way. Dix had expressed that kind of opinion in his darkest moods months ago, but had returned to the exceedingly competent man Coop had known.

Everyone around them shifted, as if they expected Coop to lose his temper. He wouldn't lose his temper—not here—unless it was appropriate. And right now, nothing was appropriate except getting Dix away from the
anacapa.

"I
told
you," Dix said. "I
told
you
repeatedly
that we needed a functioning
anacapa
that was as old as the one on Sector Base V to get us back. This is it, Coop. You
know
that."

"We fixed our
anacapa,"
Lalliki said before Coop could stop her. "It's not in the same condition that it was in six months ago. Even if we found a way to link the two devices—"

Coop held up a hand, silencing her.

"I had forgotten, Dix," Coop said softly. "You should have reminded me before we left on this mission."

He crouched so that he was closer to Dix and so that he could see Dix's hands inside the device. He was working on the controls, but Coop didn't know which ones. Most of the
anacapa
access happened on a control panel, not inside the device itself.

"You wouldn't have listened if I had said anything. You would have left me behind," Dix said.

Coop would have, too. He would have had to leave Dix behind because the very idea of tampering with an
anacapa
without training meant that Dix was unstable.

"You want to get back," Coop said, careful not to frame that as a question. "We all do."

Dix raised his head. His eyes had deep shadows beneath them.

"You all believe it's impossible," Dix said. "You wouldn't even try. We're stuck here, Coop.
Stuck.
And Starbase Kappa is our last chance."

Coop swallowed hard, trying not to show the nerves that had suddenly infected his stomach. Sometimes ideas on the far side of crazy were the right ones. Some times those ideas were the difference between succeeding at something and complete failure.

But he also knew he wanted to get back as badly as Dix did. So did the entire team. Their training, though, their training included acceptance of things they couldn't change. They weren't supposed to reach for a scenario that had a 5 percent success rate.

Although, if Coop thought about it, this one scenario—hooking up the old Starbase Kappa
anacapa
to the
Ivoire's
(repaired)
anacapa
—probably had a less than 1 percent success rate.

"You're right," Coop said, hoping he didn't sound patronizing. "Dammit, Dix, I hadn't thought of any of this and I should have."

Dix's eyes narrowed. Had Coop overplayed his hand? Dix knew him extremely well, better than almost everyone else on the crew except Yash. Dix and Coop had served together for more than fifteen years.

"Yes, you should have, and you didn't, and now I'm working. Let me finish," Dix snapped at him, and Coop realized that the Dix he expected, the Dix who would have seen through his playacting, was submerged in a mixture of hope, confusion, and some kind of mental break.

"One second, Dix," Coop said.

"I
knew
you'd try to stop me," Dix said. "Get the hell away or I'll break the damn drive."

Which would be better for everyone at the moment, but Coop didn't say that. He didn't want Dix to know what he was thinking.

"I'm not trying to stop you," Coop said in his calmest voice. "I'm trying to help you."

Dix made a dismissive sound and turned his attention to the drive again.

Coop could have phrased that better. A lot better, in fact.

"What I'm saying here is that you're not an
anacapa
expert," Coop started, "and we have four people who know the drive better than anyone else on the
Ivoire.
Let's get them involved—"

"Why?" Dix said, raising his head so quickly that it looked like it hurt. "So they can screw this up? They didn't come up with this idea. They say it's impossible. They say the conditions are
wrong
for the
anacapas
to mix. I say how can you know without trying? They say we'll get stuck somewhere worse, maybe foldspace again, maybe a hostile alternate universe, maybe our past instead of our future. I say what can it hurt? They say we're pretty well set-up here in this future, with the help of that woman you're screwing and the little band of so-called scientists around her. I say—"