Boneyards Read Free Page A

most people I know—something that has come in handy in more than one crisis situation.
    “I don't need any damn light,” Coop says from not too far away, but he doesn't ask Mikk to turn them off. Coop is still surly from the power struggle with Stone, and is probably regretting his impulsive decision to go in there without inspecting the area first.
    He's usually a lot more cautious than this. His uncharacteristic impatience is a testament to how long he's waited to come here, how much he has given up these last few years.
    “Do you need a damn tiny person?” Rossetti asks in a tone that would have bordered on insubordination if she had been on the Ivoire.
    To my relief, a chuckle floats out of that opening.
    “Probably,” he says, sounding a lot more like himself. “But there's no sense in risking you. I'm almost there.”
    I move a little closer and look inside that pile of rock. I can see Coop, outlined in the light from Mikk's suit. Coop is crouching as he makes his way through, turning from side to side to avoid outcroppings of rock.
    He really is too big to be inside that opening, but he's going to go through with this now—not out of stubbornness, but because there's something he needs to know for himself, and it's not enough to have someone else tell him. He needs to see it in person.
    I've only seen Coop act this way one other time before, and that was the day we joined forces. The Ivoire had been trapped for weeks, first in foldspace and then in Sector Base V, and Coop couldn't quite believe what all the evidence was telling him. I think he hoped, deep down, that I was lying to him, that the evidence was lying to him, that he had ended up at the wrong base in the right time period rather than the right base in the wrong time period.
    Whatever his motivation, he nearly got everyone on my team arrested for treason by the Enterran Empire. Only some quick thinking and even quicker action on his part and mine saved all of our hides.
    I hope his impulsiveness now doesn't cause another emergency. I've been inside rock fall only once before, and I hated it. I'd rather die in the vacuum of space than be crushed underground by a pile of rock.
    He slips around a corner, and I can no longer see his entire frame. Now I only catch glimpses of him as he moves along.
    At least he's moving carefully, and so far we haven't heard much from within, not even the tinkle of a falling pebble.
    Yash holds the pad out as if staring at the schematics will help. Rossetti has moved even closer. Mikk still stands with his arms raised. Stone has her arms crossed, and she glares at the interior of that opening.
    She doesn't understand why I let Coop go, why I didn't rebuke him. We all know he would have listened to me, however reluctantly.
    But I understand, maybe better than anyone else on my team, what he's going through. He's been remarkably patient so far.
    He has waited years for this moment.
    I don't know if I could have waited that long.
    Coop spent his first year upon arrival at Lost Souls learning. He learned our language; he learned a broad general history of the sector; he learned our customs. He also spent the rest of his time dealing with his own crew.
    The shock of moving so far forward in time devastated everyone. Some coped by resigning their commissions and leaving the Fleet altogether, claiming they never wanted to experience travel under an anacapa drive again. Others worked even harder on maintaining the Ivoire , shoring up discipline and acting like the ship would rejoin the Fleet. Still others offered to work for the Lost Souls Corporation, helping us with scientific research.
    And a few, a hopeless despondent few, found ways to take their own lives.
    Those people, including Coop's first officer, Dix Pompiono, challenged everything the crew of the Ivoire knew and believed about themselves. The members of the Fleet don't give up, Coop kept saying to me, even though their own history, by his own account, belied