City of Ruins

TWENTY-FOUR



Coop sat in the conference room with Lynda Rooney. Lynda was a big-^^ boned woman, raised planetside like Yash, but with more experience on a bridge than Coop had. A screw-up early in Lynda’s career had derailed her climb upward for nearly ten years, but she was back on track, and now, more than ever, he was glad she was on the Ivoire, glad she was going to take command.

Much as he respected Dix, much as Dix deserved first officer status, when it came to running the bridge in his absence, Coop secretly preferred Lynda.

She sat across from him. The huge table, designed to handle twenty or more, seemed even larger than usual. He opened the wall screens here, too, so that he could monitor the exterior.

So far, the outsiders had not returned. That relieved him somewhat. He knew now that they didn’t have extra teams, at least not extra teams on the ready. He suspected—he hoped—he would have time to work whenever the outsiders were not around.

He had briefed Lynda on everything that had happened since the Ivoire landed. Dix was briefing her bridge crew. Normally Coop would have briefed everyone together, but he needed to talk to someone who was fresh, someone rested, someone who was thinking clearly.

“I’m sending my team to get eight hours of sleep,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be effective if we stay on the bridge much longer, at least in this situation.”

In a fight, in something harrowing, with the adrenaline flowing, he had no trouble keeping the bridge crew on for thirty-six hours straight as he staggered the sleep schedules. But he felt that inappropriate here.

Lynda did not say anything, but he hadn’t asked her to. Not yet. She watched him, her face impassive, as she waited to find out what he really needed.

“I’m hesitant to do anything that might alert the outsiders to our presence,” he said. He’d already explained to her that he believed the outsiders did not know whether or not the ship was manned. “I want to study them more. I also want to know what those particles are. We have a lot of data to sift through.”

“Not to mention the ongoing repairs,” she said softly.

He rubbed a hand over his face. He was tired. He was not as sharp as usual. “We definitely need the repairs,” he said. “We might need to get out of here quickly.”

“So I’m to keep my crew sifting through the information, facilitating repairs, and monitoring the sector base.”

“Yes,” he said, glad that his implied instructions were clear. “I also want you to continue trying to hail someone on the surface. See if you can contact the Fleet as well. Maybe someone is closer than we think.”

Her expression wavered just a little. She didn’t believe anyone was nearby. But she was a good officer. She said simply, “Yes, sir.”

“Finally,” he said, “the minute the outsiders return, you summon me.”

“Even if it’s only twenty minutes from now?” she asked. “Because we can monitor them just fine.”

“I know that,” he said. “That’s why I don’t want you to alert my team. But I want to know what these outsiders are up to, and until I have them figured out, I want to be on the bridge when they’re in the room.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He was silent for a minute, gathering his own thoughts. He had called her in here to discuss possible scenarios, but now that she sat across from him, her hand resting lightly on the table, he worried that he would sound overly dramatic.

He sighed.

“I’m not sure what’s going on here,” he said. “But between us, I think something terrible happened to Venice City.”

“I’m inclined to agree, sir.” She sounded almost relieved that he had said that.

“We might have to leave immediately,” he said. “So repairs are the top priority, especially to the anacapa drive.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Secondarily, I need you to get a team making sure our weapons system is fully functional.”

“Sir?” She looked surprised at that. “We can’t use most of our weapons down here.”

“I know that,” he said a little more sharply than he needed to. “But we might not want to be cautious, if you understand my meaning.”

“You think we might have to blast our way out?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I want to be prepared for all contingencies. We need to figure out which weapons would be best to carve a hole to the surface if that’s what we need.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“I don’t want the bridge crew to overhear that instruction,” he said. “Just like I don’t want them focusing on the anacapa drive. We have engineers. Let them work.”

“On that and the particles?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Plus we need the best assessment your team can put together as to what has happened here. We need to do whatever we can from inside the ship. I don’t want anyone leaving the ship unless I order it. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“When I leave here, I’m going to make a shipwide announcement, saying we’ve clearly arrived at an abandoned sector base, and no one should expect to leave the ship until it’s cleared with me. If there are any problems, the crew should report them to the bridge immediately.”

“Are you going to elaborate on what you mean by problems’?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Because I’m not sure what I mean by ‘problems.’ We’re in a new situation, Lynda, something that’s not in the guidelines. I told the bridge crew we’re going to proceed as if this is a first-contact situation, but that’s not entirely accurate. This situation is fluid and unsettling, and might be a lot worse than a hostile first contact.”

“Worse how, sir?” She asked that with no trepidation. In fact she leaned forward slightly as if this was the piece of information she’d been waiting for.

“There is the possibility that we’re not at Sector Base V,” he said. “Just some place that resembles it. Our navigation equipment might be very far off. We could be in an ancient base. The anacapa was damaged worse than I initially thought. It could have sent us through a different kind of fold. We’ve heard speculation about the problems with foldspace all our lives. We might be in one of those situations.”

She nodded, then swallowed visibly. “I’ve been thinking that since we got stuck, sir.”

“We’re going to take this one shift at a time, one problem at a time,” he said. “It’s our job to make sure the crew remains upbeat and working toward our future. But it’s also our job to keep the promises to a minimum. I don’t want us to reassure them that we’ll rejoin the Fleet. I don’t want to hear discussion of friends and family on other ships. If someone tries to talk about that, I want the conversation redirected or truncated as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

“Won’t that make people suspicious, sir?” Lynda asked.

He shook his head. “They’re already suspicious, just like you were. They know something is very wrong here. We’re going to prepare them by degrees for the worst-case scenario. If by some chance we get reunited with the Fleet and not much time has passed, then the crew will appreciate our caution. If we don’t, then they’ll have acclimatized more or less to the new reality.”

Her finger tapped the table, for the first time revealing her nervousness.

“What do you think that worst-case scenario is, sir?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I honestly don’t know.”

* * * *