Crowe leaned into the open panel, and looked at all of the pieces one by one. He found nothing strange. Then he ran every diagnostic he could think of, one for each system. He ran the simple diagnostics, the diagnostics he usually cycled through monthly, and the most extensive diagnostics he could think of.
He found nothing.
Then he leaned back on his heels, closed his eyes, and thought about the array, the way he had seen it from the beginning of his journey here. Some of his subordinates had thought the eye-closing and the silence he required when he did this was weird and showy. But it wasn’t. It allowed him to listen to the little voice within, the one that sometimes told him when something had gone wrong, something he had seen, but which hadn’t registered deep down.
He listened to the quiet within himself, heard his own heartbeat, and felt the movement of the air around the array. He took a mental step back and listened, trying to see if he could hear anything in Engineering besides the standard low-pitched hum.
He couldn’t. Nor did his little interior voice have anything to say about the array.
It all looked normal to him.
He opened his eyes. They focused, not on the array itself, but on a panel to the left of the white-flecked chips. That panel had a series of complex locks. Inside that panel was an anacapa container that was the size of his hand. The container was much larger than it needed to be, but unlike the container on the bridge, this container had walls so thick around it that nothing could get through without special equipment.
The tiny anacapa drive inside was encased in yet another container, that one set to a frequency that allowed the drive to interact with the communications array when the correct signal hit it, but prevented the drive from interacting with the anacapa drive that took the ship into foldspace.
In theory, of course. Everything the Fleet did with anacapa drives had to be chalked up to theory.
The size of the drive made diagnosing it difficult. Crowe would have to do so by sight. If the tiny drive was malfunctioning, he had one other under lock and key. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to have a backup at all. The Fleet only issued these drives on request.
But once he discovered that he would be going on this long journey, he had requested an additional communications anacapa from an old friend in the Fleet, someone who owed him a favor, someone who not only couldn’t say no, but wouldn’t tell Vice Admiral Gāo or Preemas.
Crowe sighed. He wanted to check on one more thing. He wanted to see if there was residual anacapa energy in the sector the Renegat had just left.
Preemas had been the one to suggest this. He had pointed out—rightly—that there was evidence of a major cataclysm or a major war in that sector. There might have been anacapa energy near the area where Preemas had tried to contact Gāo.
Crowe never believed the old chestnut that only the Fleet used anacapa drives. The Fleet hadn’t encountered any other culture that used the drives—not in modern memory. But the Fleet hadn’t developed the drives itself, so someone had developed the technology.
And the Fleet could be sloppy about rounding up old drives. Since the Fleet had reverse-engineered the tech, some other culture could have done the same thing.
He moved to a different part of Engineering, around two more alcoves and into one of the scanning alcoves. He set up a search throughout the records of that sector they had traveled through, looking at energy readings that were out of whack and other red flags.
He hadn’t searched for any of that while the Renegat was in the sector because Preemas wanted to get out as quickly as he could. Crowe was more determined to get the ship out, and monitor the equipment, than trying to figure out what exactly was going on in the sector itself.
The fact that the Fleet’s starbase was gone, with no record of it having been there, really bothered him. The starbases were established, difficult to disassemble, especially for non-Fleet personnel, and hard to destroy.
If some group had taken parts of the starbase, the nanobits that made up the starbase should have compensated, regrowing the sections over time or, if the nanobits were running low (which they eventually would), blocking off a section and showing a new, shiny part of the older base.
The Fleet had been gone for a very long time, but that shouldn’t have made a difference. The starbases were built to last. Besides, there was no wear and tear in space. Sector bases changed, damn near annually, particularly when they weren’t being kept up any longer.
But starbases were the closest thing to a permanent structure that the Fleet built.
And there was a lot of anacapa equipment in a starbase. Not just the anacapas that were stored in an active starbase to help damaged ships, but the anacapa drive that enabled the base’s ability to pull damaged ships out of foldspace or across long distances also was one of the largest the Fleet built.
Those drives should have been removed from any decommissioned starbase, but they weren’t always removed or removed properly. Sometimes they were stored tightly in their own container, and left behind.
Starbases also had the tiny communications anacapas, and those remained, because starbases were supposed to be long-distance communications hubs, even after the bases were decommissioned.
Since almost no one knew about those tiny anacapas, there was no threat of theft. The drives were almost impossible to find, and when someone did find one, they couldn’t use it to power a ship. The drive was too small.
So the Fleet left those.
Which meant that if the Fleet’s starbase had been blown up or obliterated, it should have left some kind of anacapa energy signal in its wake. A small one, but one that might have had an impact on the Renegat.
Crowe searched for that too, and found nothing. Not even the anacapa signature near the spot where the Renegat had come out of foldspace.
He shut down the search and felt dread build up inside him for the first time since the Renegat left Starbase Rho. If he couldn’t find what was causing the time differential, and Vice Admiral Gāo’s people couldn’t find it either, then that raised the possibility that the trips through foldspace were having some kind of temporal impact on the Renegat.
Not the kind that had lost Preemas his year. Or the kind that made ships disappear forever (seemingly forever, anyway). But something else entirely.
Crowe ran a hand over his face and sighed so hard that he felt his breath against his wrist.
He would have to bring in Stephanos.
Because the last thing Crowe needed—the last the Preemas needed—hell, the last thing the Renegat needed—was panic over the trips into foldspace. Everyone was on edge enough.
This might make tip them all over.
And he had no idea what that would do.
The Renegat
They found nothing.
Crowe sat with Stephanos in his cabin. He had made her dinner—a stir-fry with the last of the flash-dried vegetables he had picked up in Z-City—and they were sipping chicory coffee, a luxury he had discovered on one of the ships he had served on almost a decade ago.
The coffee added to his nerves, which were jangling, despite the calm he had tried to restore by going through the simple act of cooking. He had learned long ago that cooking focused his energies in ways other forms of hands-on work did not.
But the time lag problem bedeviled him, and worried him more than he could say. He had given Stephanos the same assignment Preemas had given Crowe—figure out what (if anything) was causing the lag.
Stephanos wasn’t as intuitive an engineer as Crowe was. She was more deliberative, more traditional. She worked through problems in the kind of order that would make professors of engineering proud.
But she turned that method into a way of doing things that could end up being as creative, if not more creative, than Crowe’s. Crowe trusted her, more than he trusted anyone else on this crew. If there was a physical problem that caused the time lag in Preemas’s conversations, Stephanos would find it.
She hadn’t f
ound anything.
Crowe had called her into engineering without explaining any bit of the problem. He had simply said that he believed the communications’ anacapa was malfunctioning. Together they opened the panel, pulled out the container, and examined the tiny anacapa.
That drive was smaller than he remembered, more the size of the fingernail on his pinkie than on his thumb. But the little anacapa was golden and warm, just like it was supposed to be.
Stephanos even ran a standard anacapa diagnostic on it, and the drive had passed with some of the best readings she had ever seen.
They reassembled the container, sealed the panel, and that was when Crowe gave her the assignment to find the time lag.
She was the one who had suggested sending out a small ship, and seeing if the entire array had failed somehow.
He had done so, sending a runabout with her on board. They used standard communications techniques and found nothing. Then she shut off the runabout’s array entirely, using only emergency channels that didn’t access most of the Fleet’s equipment, and that worked beautifully as well.
Finally, when she returned, he had her work on her own to see what she could find.
He had scheduled dinner so that she could debrief him. She had contacted him half an hour before to say she had nothing to report.
He still had her over to dinner, so that he could talk to her.
He also wanted her present when Milton Atwater arrived.
Crowe had given Atwater a different assignment. Atwater was to scan the Fleet records and see if there was any history of time lags becoming an actual problem in Fleet communications. Crowe wanted to know if growing time lags translated into something like actual lost time or if they were just a mere nuisance.
“You know we might not ever be able to find anything,” Stephanos said. She had her long fingers wrapped around a black mug that Crowe had picked up in Z-City. He had picked up a lot of tchotchkes on that trip, maybe because he felt he needed something to remember the sector by, bringing with him just a little bit of home.
“I know,” he said.
That thought bothered him a lot. He was worried that the lag might translate into some kind of superstition—the Renegat was losing time because it was traveling into the Fleet’s past.
“It’s probably some kind of weird little ghost in some machine part we wouldn’t think of looking at,” she said.
Crowe shook his head. He sank into the chair opposite her, which put him just a little too close. The cabin was small, but cozy. He liked it here, but he wasn’t used to having other people inside his personal space.
“You don’t think that’s what it is?” she asked.
He was still shaking his head. He wasn’t sure how to break the next piece of news to her.
“While you were working, I got some more information,” he said. “It—”
The door announced Atwater’s presence in the corridor. Crowe had set the door to tell him when Atwater was getting close, just in case Crowe and Stephanos had to conclude one of their more sensitive conversations.
But because Stephanos hadn’t found anything, they hadn’t had to wrap anything up.
Crowe got up and unlocked the door, instructing it to open when Atwater arrived.
“More information?” Stephanos asked, as they waited for Atwater.
Crowe held up a single finger. “I’ll loop him in.”
“He doesn’t have clearance for this,” she said.
“He doesn’t even have a rank,” Crowe said. “I’m not sure what counts and what doesn’t anymore. And I’m not going to worry about it today.”
The door swung open, revealing Atwater in his pasty-faced glory. His cheeks were red, probably from uncertainty. With one hand, he knocked on the door. With the other, he held a covered plate that smelled like freshly baked chocolate brownies, a specialty of Danika Newark, which was saying something, since she turned out to be quite a chef.
“Come all the way in,” Crowe said.
Atwater slipped in as the door closed. He extended the plate. Crowe took it from him, removed the cover, and set the plate on the table. Then Crowe grabbed three smaller plates and set them on the table as well, along with forks and napkins. He went into the small kitchen, held up the coffee pot as a question.
“Sure,” Atwater said.
He walked into the cabin, and looked around, seemingly startled at the space.
Crowe couldn’t remember where Atwater was bunked, but he probably had one of the smallest crew quarters available. They all had private rooms on the Renegat, but those rooms at the lowest crew level were barely as wide as the bed.
“This is nice,” Atwater said as he sat down. His voice had just a hint of envy.
He smiled at Stephanos, who didn’t smile back. She didn’t like the new crew members and hated the fact that they had been land-based. She felt that the rest of the crew now spent too much time trying to train land babies who had no idea how to behave on board a ship.
Stephanos leaned back, not even looking at the perfectly cut brownies.
Crowe had no idea how she could avoid them. He couldn’t.
He took one.
“What I was about to tell you,” Crowe said to Stephanos, “was that the captain spoke to Vice Admiral Gāo earlier today. It was difficult. The lag was eight minutes, instead of the five he had reported in the previous sector.”
Stephanos shook her head. “I’m not seeing anything in our systems that would cause a lag, and even if something did, it would be a consistent lag.”
Crowe nodded. He thought the same thing. He turned slightly in his chair and faced Atwater.
“Which brings us to you,” Crowe said. “Is this something other ships reported? Is it a feature of foldspace?”
Atwater took a sip of the coffee, and winced. He looked at the cup. “What is this?”
“Chicory,” Crowe said. “A delicacy.”
Atwater tried to smile, but still managed to look somewhat tormented. He set the cup down.
“Foldspace,” he said, as if orienting himself. “This is our third trip through it in less than three weeks. That in and of itself is unusual—”
“We know,” Stephanos said drily.
“So,” Atwater said, as if she hadn’t spoken at all, “there isn’t a lot of data. There are the dramatic time shifts in foldspace—the ones where ships lose months or years inside foldspace, but outside of foldspace it seems like they’ve been gone an hour or two.”
“Or vice versa,” Crowe said.
“Yes,” Atwater said. “We have lots of information about all of those events, although most of the information is useless. What the Fleet collected was coordinates of journeys across foldspace and, for the most part, urged ships not to make the journeys in the same way.”
Crowe bit one of the brownies. It was soft and moist, chocolate with a hint of caramel. Better than he expected.
“Were any of the coordinates near us when we experienced the lag?” Stephanos asked, as if she had personally been talking to Vice Admiral Gāo when the lags occurred.
“Not that I could find,” Atwater said, “but the historical record is thin, and it gets thinner the farther back we go. The Fleet jettisoned a lot of this information, even from school ships and research facilities, because we never expected to return to these sectors of space.”
Stephanos sighed softly, then eyed the brownies. She glanced at Crowe, who took another bite of his. He almost groaned with pleasure.
“So I drilled down to see what I could find about time lags in general.” Atwater swirled his mug. He hadn’t taken another sip from it, nor had he taken a brownie. “I didn’t like what I found.”
Stephanos froze. Only her eyes moved. She looked like she had gone on full alert.
Crowe continued to eat the brownie. He wasn’t going to get upset by the opinions of a new crew member. Atwater didn’t have the experience to put some of the information he was finding into context.
“What did yo
u find?” Crowe asked, wiping the chocolate off his fingers with his napkin.
“That some ships went through foldspace and experienced communications lags. Those lags accumulated with each trip the ship took into foldspace, no matter when those trips took place.” Atwater finally took a brownie of his own.
Stephanos sat up straight. “And?”
“From what I could tell,” Atwater said, “and realize it was a small sample source, about twenty-six percent of the ships that had the time lag got lost in foldspace and were never recovered.”
“Twenty-six percent?” Crowe asked. “That’s very specific.”
“Yes.” Atwater picked up his fork and held it over the brownie, before setting the fork back down again. “And there’s more.”
“Okay,” Stephanos said, her irritation clear. She hated anyone who presented information slowly. She wanted them to get to the point so she could move on and do whatever needed to be done with that information.
“Another ten percent,” Atwater said, “not part of the twenty-six, but a completely different subset, were among the ships that lost years in foldspace. They’d travel into foldspace and wouldn’t come out again at the expected time.”
Crowe frowned. Something about that nagged at him, as if there was an important piece of information buried in Atwater’s numbers. But Crowe couldn’t grasp it. Not yet, anyway.
“So, to be clear,” Stephanos said, “thirty-six percent of the ships that had this lag problem had disasters with foldspace.”
“Maybe more,” Atwater said, moving the fork away from his plate. “Because what I didn’t have time to look for was the ships that only lost a day or two in foldspace or ended up emerging from the wrong coordinates. I saw a few ships with those issues as well, but they weren’t in my complete analysis. No time.”
Crowe’s frown deepened. He let Atwater’s words seep into him. There was definitely something else here, something lost in Atwater’s near-panic about the facts.
“A number of the ships were older,” Atwater said, “and got retired shortly after the troubles began, so that had an impact on our samples as well. I have no idea if they might have had problems had they stayed in active duty.”
The Renegat Page 36