Crowe was working Engineering, going through energy readings, looking for the slightest shift in anacapa energy. Every time the entire ship used the anacapa drive, the ship got flooded with anacapa energy, so Crowe was looking for something slightly different—a reading that would show what the little communications anacapa was doing.
And now, Crowe had a summons from Preemas. Crowe didn’t have a lot to tell Preemas—not yet, anyway. Just some hunches, backed up by incomplete data.
When Crowe had received the summons, he had actually told Preemas that Preemas should wait a day or two, so that Crowe could compile all of the information he needed.
But Preemas wanted him now.
If that was the case, Preemas was going to hear something he wouldn’t like.
Preemas was in his ready room. He had told Crowe not to knock, to just enter.
As Crowe crossed the bridge, a few of the crew glanced sideways at him. It felt strange to be on the bridge. Except for a few journeys late at night to check information from one of the navigation stations—information that the console itself stored—he hadn’t been here since before the Renegat went into foldspace the fourth time.
The screens were off, as usual, so he could see a reflection of himself moving across the bridge. Tindo Ibori had a small hologram of the entire sector floating above his console. The information that created that hologram had come from scans the Renegat was doing now.
Crowe glanced at the floating cube of information—the slice out of the vast array of everything that filled this part of space—and didn’t recognize any of it, not that he would. He wanted to stop and study it, even though the Renegat wouldn’t be here long.
Ibori gave Crowe a weak smile. Crowe nodded, then put his head down. He needed to concentrate on the meeting. He was going to try to convince Preemas of something that Preemas would instinctively say no to.
Crowe had to get past Preemas’s prejudices. If only Preemas had waited a day or two, then Crowe would have had—might have had—more data to use to convince Preemas. But Preemas hadn’t waited, and Crowe had a hunch he knew why.
The door to the ready room slid open before Crowe had a chance to activate it. He stepped inside, nearly walking into Preemas.
Preemas wasn’t behind that massive desk. He was pacing, somehow finding space to walk among all the chairs, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Took you long enough,” he snapped, then waved his hand.
The door slid shut, nearly catching Crowe’s back in the process. Crowe felt the breeze that the door created, sending a little chill through him.
Crowe didn’t respond to Preemas’s irritated comment. Crowe knew saying that—saying anything defensively—would be a bad way to start this discussion.
“Sit,” Preemas said, waving a hand at one of the chairs.
“I prefer to stand,” Crowe said, like he said every single time he had a meeting with Preemas.
Preemas shook his head and sighed. “Then don’t move. I need to be able to walk, and I don’t want to run into you again.”
“Perhaps we should walk the corridors,” Crowe said. “No one would be able to hear the entire—”
“No.” Preemas stopped walking, then turned and leaned on the desk. “This won’t take long. I need to know if you’ve resolved the problem with the communications lag.”
“No, sir,” Crowe said. “We’re still working on it.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Preemas said. “We need it resolved.”
“I know, sir,” Crowe said. “But I think we have a larger problem than simply communications.”
“You think?” Preemas seemed off, angry, as if something else had gone wrong.
Crowe wished he could gage the man’s moods better. “I take it you spoke to Vice Admiral Gāo.”
Crowe worked hard to make sure that sentence wasn’t accusatory. He had asked that Preemas wait until Crowe had finished his tests before speaking to Gāo.
“Of course I did,” Preemas said. “We have to get across this sector faster than we traveled through the last one. If you had been on the bridge when we arrived, you would have realized that the part of the sector we arrived in was being patrolled by warships of some kind or another.”
Stephanos had mentioned that, but she said that the ships didn’t seem to be aware of the Renegat, and that the Renegat had moved out of that part of the sector pretty quickly. She hadn’t seen those ships as a major threat, but apparently Preemas had.
“We don’t have a lot of time here, and Gāo wants me to speak to her from each sector we travel to.” Preemas ran a hand over his short cropped hair. “So, I couldn’t wait for you any longer.”
Crowe nodded, but didn’t apologize.
“The lag makes a discussion damn near impossible,” Preemas said. “Eleven minutes this time. The lags aren’t even following a pattern. They’re not doubling up on the time. They seem random.”
“I don’t think they are, sir,” Crowe said.
“That damn word again. Think. Think,” Preemas snapped. “I don’t care what you think. What do you know?”
This was not how Crowe wanted to have this discussion, at all. But he didn’t see a way out of it.
“I know that we have a serious problem with our communications anacapa drive,” Crowe said, deliberately leaning on the word “know.” “Whenever we go through foldspace with the Renegat, the communications anacapa opens an entrance into foldspace all on its own.”
Preemas rocked back, as if the news touched him physically. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Crowe said.
“Well, fix it,” Preemas snapped.
“I’m worried that if I try to fix it without the right information,” Crowe said, “I could make things worse.”
Preemas cursed, then pushed himself off the desk, as if he were launching himself into a standing position. He started to pace again, hands clasped behind him, ostentatiously walking between Crowe and the desk.
“So,” Preemas said after a moment, “this just affects the communications array.”
“No,” Crowe said. “That’s not what I’m telling you. The data suggests that ships which have a time lag in their communications eventually get out of phase with the entire Fleet. That could be where time differentials come from.”
“Could be?” Preemas asked. “Could be?”
“We just don’t know at this moment,” Crowe said, hating how Preemas was trying to provoke him. “I have Atwater searching for more data, but the data he has already found is disturbing. Over a third of ships with this problem end up getting lost in foldspace or coming out of foldspace with a different perception of time than the Fleet itself.”
Preemas shook his head. “Not possible,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Esizayo didn’t have one of those communications anacapas.”
That was the ship Preemas had served on, the one in which he had lost a year of his life.
“Forgive me, sir,” Crowe said, “but you weren’t a high-ranking officer on that ship, were you?”
Preemas shot Crowe an angry glare.
“And it was a DV-Class vessel, right?” Crowe asked.
“Make your damn point, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said.
“My point, sir,” Crowe said gently, “is that I can guarantee you that the Esizayo had a communications anacapa. The Fleet has had them as long as we can trace back.”
“You’re saying I’m wrong about a ship I served on?” Preemas asked.
“I’m saying, sir, that you didn’t have the clearance to know what was in the communications array. Only a handful of us know about it on this ship. I’m not even sure Newark was briefed before she became first officer.” Crowe swallowed hard, realizing there was another gap. “I suspect that Tindo Ibori doesn’t know either, and he probably should, given that the extra foldspace bubble might have an impact on navigation.”
“Might have,” Preemas said. “I need firm information.”<
br />
“We don’t have firm information, sir. We’re dealing with anacapa drives.” Crowe lifted his chin slightly. “If you want firm information, take that up with the Fleet. They’re the ones who saddled us with these drives.”
Preemas’s eyes narrowed. He clearly felt the rebuke. Which, apparently, was making him angrier.
“So,” he said, “you’re telling me that a third of all ships with those tiny little anacapa drives disappear into foldspace? Give me a break, First Officer Crowe. If that were the case, then we’d lose most of the Fleet every year.”
“No, sir,” Crowe said, wishing Preemas was calmer. “I said a third of the ships that experience time lag in communications after going through foldspace end up experiencing time lag with the entire ship. Or disappearing into foldspace altogether.”
“Great,” Preemas said, almost to himself. He stopped walking. His back was to Crowe.
“What I do not know,” Crowe said, “is if the communications anacapa is tied to this problem or if it is a separate problem or if it is completely normal.”
Preemas shook his head, then leaned it backwards and then exhaled, clearly showing his irritation.
Crowe did not want to take that irritation personally, but somehow Preemas’s emotions stirred up his. Crowe had never experienced that before. He was beginning to think that something about Preemas drew people to him, and then made them feel the way Preemas wanted them to feel.
This was probably some kind of charisma, which wasn’t all that common in the leadership of the Fleet. In fact, the Fleet often discouraged charismatic leaders, because they could go rogue and disturb the way the Fleet functioned, particularly if the leader decided to take action against the Fleet.
Preemas hadn’t moved. It almost seemed like he was studying something infinitely more interesting on the ceiling of the ready room.
He clearly wanted some kind of reaction from Crowe. And Crowe wasn’t going to give him the reaction Preemas expected.
“I take it your conversation with Vice Admiral Gāo did not go well,” Crowe said as flatly as he could.
Preemas whirled. His face was mottled, his eyes flashing with not-quite-suppressed fury.
“‘Did not go well’ is an understatement,” he said. “She does not like this problem. I’m pretty sure she’s going to ask us to abort the mission the next time I talk to her. I don’t want to do that, First Officer Crowe. That means we have failed.”
Preemas had opened the conversational door to the very thing that Crowe had wanted to talk with him about.
“I think we are now faced with an opportunity,” Crowe said.
Preemas’s eyes narrowed. He seemed automatically suspicious of whatever Crowe was going to say.
“There’s a distinct possibility,” Crowe said slowly, “that the problem with the communications anacapa is not isolated to the Renegat.”
Preemas’s lips thinned. “Possibility,” he repeated. He always seemed to hear Crowe’s hedges, and give them too much weight.
“I don’t think anyone,” Crowe said in that same deliberate tone, “has ever observed a communications anacapa while the regular anacapa is going through foldspace. I could find no reference to it. Neither Natalia nor I were ever trained to look for it, nor was anything mentioned in our schooling or in our internships as young engineers.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Preemas said.
Crowe could feel just how quickly Preemas wanted to dismiss all of this.
“It does, actually,” Crowe said. “We don’t know a lot about anacapa drives.”
“You and Stephanos?” Preemas asked.
“The Fleet,” Crowe said.
“That’s what you were alluding to earlier? That the Fleet ‘saddled us’ with drives we don’t understand?” Preemas made a dismissive sound. “No wonder they put you on this ship Chief Engineer Crowe. You’re prone to exaggerating to prove your point.”
His captain had just called him a liar. Crowe’s face heated. He was many things, but he didn’t lie.
And Preemas knew that.
Which meant that Preemas had jabbed at him deliberately, and was probably quite proud of the hit he had just made.
“I am not,” Crowe said, making sure his face did not register his fury. He kept speaking slowly. “Everyone who trains on anacapa drives learns this. As you know, the Fleet did not invent the drives. There is much we don’t know about them.”
“What do you mean, we didn’t invent the drives?” Preemas asked.
Crowe let out a slow breath. He tilted his head slightly. “You didn’t get this part of the training?”
“I didn’t have to work with anacapa drives,” Preemas said. “We got one class in basic drive mechanics as part of the officer track. I assume that’s what you got in your officer track courses as well.”
“I never took officer track courses,” Crowe said drily. “My education is purely engineering.”
Preemas made a face. He was clearly getting impatient. He didn’t understand that Crowe was laying the groundwork to make an important point.
“Why wouldn’t officers learn the history of the anacapa drive?” Preemas asked.
Crowe shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps because the word ‘history’ does not go well with anything the Fleet does.”
“But you got that history,” Preemas said.
“Years into the anacapa training. After I had been cleared to work on the drives. The entire system is designed to weed out most candidates. Working with anacapa drives is part knowledge, part finesse, and part educated imagination. But they don’t tell you that up front, perhaps because so many people wash out of the program.”
Crowe had thought everyone knew how difficult anacapa training was, but as he considered it, he realized there was no reason anyone outside of the engineering school would have any idea about the way that anacapa training worked.
Those who had failed wouldn’t broadcast the fact that they had failed, and those that rose through the ranks were cautioned the farther up they went not to talk at all about the drives or anything they had learned.
“I got some training in the history,” Crowe said. “Mostly, it was connected to the drive itself. We build the drives based on specs that the Fleet has had for millennia. We do not change anything about the drives. We build them the way we’ve always built them, never changing any aspect of the drive itself in any way.”
“Including the communications anacapa?” That question had a different tone to it, and in that moment, Crowe knew he finally had Preemas’s full attention.
“Yes,” Crowe said. “I don’t think we ever would have come up with that on our own.”
Preemas frowned. “If we didn’t come up with the drives, who did?”
“That I don’t know,” Crowe said. “I do know that everyone who is an expert on the drive knows that there’s more about the drives that we don’t understand than things about the drives that we do understand.”
“That’s just ridiculous.” Preemas walked to his desk, pulled back the chair, and sat down heavily. “Why would we use something we don’t understand?”
“Because it’s the only thing we’ve discovered that allows us to travel vast distances,” Crowe said.
“But we didn’t discover it,” Preemas said.
“No,” Crowe said. “We use it, though. Every day. In a wide variety of contexts.”
Preemas shook his head. Crowe recognized the twist of Preemas’s mouth. The sentence Preemas was holding back probably had something to do with how stupid the Fleet actually was.
“Everyone who works on the drive,” Crowe said carefully, “knows that there’s a lot we don’t understand about the drives. That’s why you see a lot of concern and caution from the informed engineers when they approach an anacapa drive. I don’t know if you’ve noticed how the engineers who specialize in anacapa drives are a lot more conservative about their use than those who have never had full anacapa training, but the reason is we’ve learned to re
spect and fear those drives.”
Preemas crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. He looked furious, as if it was Crowe’s fault that the anacapa drives were one part mystery.
“I assume you have a reason for telling me this now, as opposed to weeks ago, when we planned this fiasco? Twelve trips one way through foldspace, using a drive we don’t understand?”
Crowe slowly breathed in, and willed himself not to answer in kind.
“We all knew the risks when we planned this trip, sir,” Crowe said.
“Not all the risks,” Preemas snapped. “I didn’t expect the time lag in communications.”
Really? Crowe wanted to ask. We’re covering a distance the Fleet has never done in one large lump, and you expected to have instant communication across all of those sectors?
He had to actively fight himself to prevent himself from saying that.
“The time lag led us to an important discovery, sir,” Crowe said.
“That tiny foldspace opening in communications is an important discovery?” Preemas asked. “For us, maybe, First Officer Crowe, but only if we solve it.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” Crowe said, reverting to formal language to get Preemas’s attention, “but that is incorrect. I believe no one in the Fleet knows about that little foldspace opening in communications.”
“You believe,” Preemas said.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Crowe said. “We would have learned about it in training. We would have been told the purpose of that opening or how to avoid it or how to use it properly.”
Preemas leaned forward, uncrossed his arms, placed his right elbow on the desk and braced his head against his open hand, running his fingers across his forehead as if he had a terrible headache.
“So what do you think we should do?” he asked, without looking up at Crowe.
Crowe wasn’t sure how to present this, not in the middle of this discussion. He had initially imagined himself saying, We can return as heroes, but that wasn’t going to work, not now, maybe not ever.
Preemas might be the kind of man who could manipulate others with grandiose talk, but it was tough to manipulate Preemas. And Crowe wasn’t good at grandiose talk anyway, not like this.
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