City of Ruins

TWENTY-TWO



An hour passed. The outsiders did not return to the room.

Coop paced the bridge, checking on his team’s work. Dix bent over his console running multiple scans of everything he could think of. He was comparing the readings he had taken of Sector Base V a month before and the readings he was getting now. Occasionally he’d run a hand over his narrow face, a nervous habit he didn’t realize he had.

Coop didn’t like Dix’s nervous tic any more than he liked the images he kept staring at through the open screens. The particles had settled, but enough of them still remained in the air to remind him of dark snow.

Yash ran the data she had received from the outsider woman’s glove. Time and time again, Yash got the same result: the glove was not as developed as anything on the Ivoire. The technology of the outsiders was, she said, not as sophisticated as the technology of the Fleet.

Which didn’t make sense to Coop. The Fleet had colonized Venice City. If the Ivoire had gone backward in time, the sector base wouldn’t even have been here. There would have been no signal to respond to.

Going forward in time would have resulted in a more advanced technology. So far as he knew, cultures grew in technological prowess. They didn’t revert.

The only conclusion he could make, and it was a just hypothesis at the moment, was that something had happened to Venice City. It had gotten conquered, maybe destroyed, maybe abandoned. Then, years later, an outside culture discovered it, one unconnected to the Fleet.

Which explained the backward technology and the clear lack of knowledge the outsiders had about the sector base.

They had seemed terrified by the ship, which no descendants of the Fleet would have been. Of course, any descendants of the Fleet would have understood that the base was designed to keep the ships running, and would have expected an occasional ship to drop in, seemingly out of nowhere.

Anita was sitting on the raised seat in front of her console. She rested her chin on one closed fist as she went through the navigational data, making sure they had arrived at the same place they had left from.

Her eyes looked sunken into her face.

Coop had already sent one member of the bridge crew away because of exhaustion. He needed to send this group away as well. They’d been working for twenty-four hours straight.

They were his best team, but that meant they were the best of the best. The other teams were equally good, just not as experienced.

He needed clear thinking—not just from them, but from himself as well.

He sank into his own chair and contacted his second officer, Lynda Rooney. “Bring your team to the bridge for a briefing,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” She sounded crisp and formal through the communications system.

Of course she did. He never gave orders like that. Usually he told her what time her crew needed to relieve his. This time, he had put her off, telling her to keep her crew rested.

Secretly, he had hoped they would come on once he solved everything, and have their usual day.

But, he suspected, usual days were a thing of the past.

“We haven’t finished digesting all of this information,” Dix said as soon as Lynda signed off.

“I know,” Coop said. “But staying here won’t help.”

“I’d like to stay until we know what’s going on,” Yash said.

Even Anita was sitting up. “I’m glad they’re coming,” she said. “We’re going to need fresh eyes on this. It’ll help us figure out what’s going on.”

“We’re going to stand down for a few hours,” Coop said.

“Forgive me, sir,” Dix said, “but I’d like to stay. We have a mystery here—”

“And we’re not going to solve it immediately,” Coop said.

“What happens when the outsiders return?” Yash asked.

“We’ll observe them,” Coop said.

“Or the second team will,” Anita said, and she didn’t sound worried about that, not the way Yash and Dix did.

“Or the second team will,” Coop agreed. “We are going to treat this place as if we don’t know it and it’s potentially hostile. We’re going to follow first-contact procedures.”

“But we do know this place,” Yash said.

“Do we?” Coop asked. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

“Our people built it,” Dix said.

“They did,” Coop said. “But where are they? What’s happened to them? We don’t know any of that, and we can’t make assumptions, no matter how tempting it is.”

Assumptions had gotten the entire Fleet in trouble on Ukhanda. He suppressed a sigh. The Fleet’s diplomats had completely misunderstood the situation between the Xenth and the Quurzod. He had only just figured it out, but he figured it out in foldspace.

He couldn’t go back to Ukhanda and let the Fleet know about their mistake.

At least not yet.

Not that he could do anything about it here. The best thing he could do here was proceed with caution, finish the repairs of the Ivoire, and head back to the Fleet, letting them know exactly what had gone wrong when his linguistic and diplomatic team embedded with the Quurzod.

“You think this is a long-term mission, don’t you?” Anita asked him.

He looked at her. She sat up straight, one hand on her console as if she were bracing herself for his news.

“I think we have to operate as if it is,” he said. “Unless you people think there’s a reason for haste . . . ?”

Dix glanced at his console as if the information were written there. Yash sighed.

“We’re stuck here until repairs are done,” she said. “So whether we handle this like a first-contact situation or not, it won’t make any difference as to timing. I don’t think we’ll have repairs done in less than two weeks with help. And since the base seems devoid of crew, I don’t think we’re going to get that help. So double the time.”

“In other words,” Coop said. “We can go on regular rotations, and get the proper amount of sleep.”

None of the crew looked relieved by this. But Dix nodded, as if he understood.

Coop wished he did. But he had a hunch understanding would be a long time coming.

And he had to accept that.

* * * *