Boneyards (24 page)

“Y
ou want to tell me what you mean by trouble?” I ask.

Coop isn't answering. Instead, he leans against Yash, and they confer. Rossetti joins them. I can hear a few words—
big, significant, impossible
—but I'm not sure of the context.

“You want to share with the rest of us?” Roderick snaps.

I wave a hand at him for silence. “We have enough to do.”

A fifth ship has joined the others.

I know that the bar patrons could have lied to me. I know that there might be nothing here, and I had actually been afraid of that. Until just now, when Coop had his reaction. Something is here. But what, I have no idea.

Then it shows up on my screen, but it shows up oddly. It's as if there are no readings at all. I see everything that's in this little part of space, except for one large swath. It reads as nothing.

Literally nothing. Like there's nothing there. Not even space itself. It is as if someone has ripped a hole out of the universe and left a blank spot.

“What the hell?” I ask.

Coop looks over. I tap the screen. “Is this what you're seeing?”

“No,” he says. “I'd tell you to come look, but you have to pilot.”

Screw piloting. I want to see what's going on.

“Six ships,” Mikk says tightly.

One is arriving underneath us.

“Are any of these ships some kind of law enforcement or military vessels?” I ask him.

“Not that I can tell,” he says.

“Do they have their weapons systems engaged?” I ask.

“How the hell should I know?” he asks. And I realize then where his panic is coming from. None of my team are trained for this. They're trained to run when things get bad. And instead, we're flying right into it.

“Let me,” Rossetti says.

She moves over to the space beside Mikk and taps a few things. Then she moves back to her post.

“They're all armed,” she says, “and none of them have any kind of military or law enforcement insignia that this ship recognizes.”

Which we all know means nothing. We're not used to this sector of space.

“Make that no insignia of any kind,” she says.

“Pirates,” Mikk mutters.

“Probably,” she says. “Given our circumstances.”

She doesn't sound concerned, and her lack of concern seems to calm Mikk. A little anyway.

“We need some kind of plan,” Mikk says to me.

“Don't worry,” Coop answers. “We have one.”

I want to raise my eyebrows and say in an incredulous tone,
We do?
but I know better. He probably does have a plan, and his assurance just calmed my crew.

“I'm piloting,” Coop says to me, then bumps me as if he wants me out of the chair.

My face flushes and I'm about to argue, when I realize that if what the bar patrons say is true and if those ships really want our
anacapa
drive, arguing with Coop right now is incredibly stupid.

“You want me to copilot?” I ask in as humble a tone as I can manage. “Or is Rossetti better at the moment?”

“Joanna's good where she is,” he says, tapping my screen as if he invented it. “Take a look at what Yash has.”

Everyone on my team is watching us gape-mouthed. Apparently they've never seen me acquiesce to orders before.

I look up at them before I turn to Yash's screen. “I'm not the interesting thing here. Those ships are.”

They return to their jobs, chastened.

I lean over and look at Yash's screen. It shows a series of numbers and codes, something that fizzles and reappears like Yash can't hold the signal. I've never seen anything like it.

“What the heck is that?” I ask.

“The thing you want us to fly to,” she says.

“Good Lord,” I say. “It shows up blank on my screen.”

“Yes, I know,” she says. “This one is modified to monitor the
anacapa
.”

I knew that but hadn't given it any thought. Still, something is odd here. “The
anacapa
doesn't read like that.”

“This is a small ship and we installed a low-level drive,” she says. “Whatever this thing is, it's overwhelming our equipment.”

“Is it an
anacapa
signature?”

“No,” she says. “It's too big for that.”

“Meaning what?” Roderick asks.

“Is it something you'd find on one of your vessels?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “It's too big for that too. You want to tell us where the hell we're going?”

“It's a ship graveyard,” I say. “I've been truthful about that.”

“But?” Yash snaps.

“But the bar patrons say it's protected by some kind of shield,” I say. “They recognized the shield's signature and say it's on our ship as well.”

Coop curses in his own language. Then he says several more things, and Yash answers him, too fast for me to follow, not that I've ever become good with Old Earth Standard.

“You want to share with the rest of us?” Roderick asks again.

“Nine ships,” Mikk says, as if he expects us to die at any minute.

“Look,” Rossetti says, and taps something in front of her.

The wall screens inside the
Two
fill with an image I'm the only one even slightly prepared for, and I can't believe what I'm seeing.

Dignity Vessels, as far as the eye can see. They're clearly unmanned, clearly dead, with holes in their sides, or blown centers, missing wings or missing entire back halves. They're scattered haphazardly, as if they were left just the way they had fallen in battle.

Although if that were the case, they'd be spread out farther.

“How big is this thing?” I ask.

“I think it goes the entire length of that area those maps avoid,” Rossetti says.

“That's not possible,” I say.

“It's possible,” Coop says tightly, “if someone attacked the Fleet.”

Y
ash's hands are shaking. Rossetti's back is perfectly straight. Coop's face seems to be made of stone.

“It's been five thousand years,” DeVries starts.

“God,” Coop says in a withering tone.

But DeVries doesn't stop. “Couldn't someone be storing the ships here?”

“I don't like how all of these ships are gathering,” Roderick says to me.

I nod. I don't like it either.

“I think we should get out of here,” he says.

“We will when we're done gathering data,” Coop says.

“Maybe someone collected these ships like we're doing at Lost Souls,” DeVries says, as if the other conversation isn't happening.

“Then you want to explain how the field around these ships is one of ours?” Yash asks.

“It is?” DeVries says.

“It is,” Yash says. “We've used fields like that in space for countless things.”

“Damaged ship storage?” DeVries asks.

“Sometimes,” Yash says, “but not that big. This isn't the entire Fleet, not even close, but it's the largest damn ship graveyard I've seen. To make this work, there would have to be some kind of station in the middle of it.”

“Does that make it modern?” DeVries asks. “Because it would seem to me that a field like that—”

“Enough,” I say. “We
don't
know anything. We don't even know how long an
anacapa
drive keeps functioning.”

“Yes, we do,” Coop says. “We discovered that on Vaycehn. At least five fucking thousand years.”

It's his tone that shuts us all up. I look at the images in front of me, then down at my control panel. We're getting closer to this area, and it does seem to go on forever.

This Boneyard is huge.

“Can we get in there?” Coop asks Yash.

“With this little ship?” she asks. “I'm not sure—”

The images flicker for just a moment.

“Shit!” Mikk says. “There's a tenth ship, and it's shooting at us!”

“Stations,” Coop says, although it doesn't mean a lot here because most everyone is in their stations. But I think he's used to giving that command.

His fingers are moving quickly, and I'm monitoring everything, and we're still heading toward the Boneyard. We have shields up and they're working for now, but if all ten ships fire at us, we're in deep shit.

“This is important,” Coop says, and with a shock I realize he's talking to me. “Did you get any indication that those bar friends of yours got into this Boneyard?”

Suddenly I realize what he's asking. He's asking if their weapons are even stronger than they seem. These people might have stolen something from the Boneyard.

“No, they didn't,” I say. “Unless they were lying to me. But honestly—”

The images flicker again. I snap them off and bring up the images of the ships. I count eleven now, none of them the same, all of them surrounding us.

“—if they had gotten into that Boneyard, I don't think they'd be coming after us.”

“That's an assumption,” DeVries says.

“But it sounds like a good one to me,” Coop says. “They don't want us. They want the
anacapa
drive to see if they can use it to break that field around the Boneyard.”

“Can we?” Mikk asks.

“How the hell should I know?” Yash says.

Another shot hits the shields.

“Target the ship that's firing on us,” Coop says. “Get rid of it.”

“Yes, sir,” Rossetti says, and suddenly weapons' fire leaves the
Two
. It hits the ship in a spot just to the left side, a spot I never would have fired on, and blasts a hole through the middle. The ship lists, then tries to right itself. Some kind of reaction is going on in the center of it, and the damn thing is probably going to explode unless they contain it.

Another ship moves forward. Its weapons appear along the side—something older, that have to jut out of the ship itself.

“They're not going to quit!” Mikk says.

As if to prove his point, another shot, this one stronger, hits our port side.

“Yeah,” Coop says, “but they're not trying to destroy us. They have enough firepower to do it, given enough time. Boss is right. They want our
anacapa
drive.”

Another shot hits us, ringing the shields and doing something to them that I've never seen before.

“Crap,” Roderick says. “They're trying to alter our shields.”

“They do that, we're in serious trouble,” Yash says.

“As I see it,” Mikk says, “we only have two choices. We try to get into that Boneyard—”

“This is not a debate,” Coop says. “Yash, activate the
anacapa
.”

“If they fire on us, it'll be like Ukhanda all over again,” she says.

And suddenly I realize that Yash is as terrified of the effects of the
anacapa
as the rest of us.

“Then do it between shots,” Coop says.

“Where are we going?” Yash asks.

“We're going home,” Coop says.

T
he order makes no sense. Home? Does Coop think he can replicate that shot that will take him and his crew back five thousand years? And why would he want to do so?

“The math alone, Coop, is impossible,” Yash says, clearly misunderstanding in just the same way that I have. “Especially in the amount of time we have.”

“
To Lost Souls
,” he says so harshly that the words feel like weapons.

“Done,” she says, and slaps her hand on the console.

Then the ship does its little foldspace dance. Everything skitters, including my vision—including my heart—and I find I'm holding my breath.

Suddenly the weird foldspace star map appears before me.

“Well,” Coop says with more relief in his voice than I like. “That's how the damn thing is supposed to work.”

Someone laughs nervously—I think it's DeVries—and then I make myself take a deep breath.

“You know,” I say, “we don't have to go back to Lost Souls. We can just show up on the other side of that Boneyard. Then you can investigate further.”

“No, we can't,” Coop says. He's not looking at me. He's looking at the same foldspace star map that I am.

I'm holding my breath again. Did something go wrong that I didn't see?

“Why?” Mikk asks, and in his voice is the same worry that I'm feeling.

“Because we need the
Ivoire
,” Coop says. “If anything will get us into that Boneyard, she will.”