Skirmishes Read Free Page A

pause in foldspace. We stop there for a minute or two. Each time I’ve done this—which is more than I’ve wanted to—I’ve seen a different star map inside foldspace itself, leading me to believe that foldspace isn’t so much a fold or a shortcut or points on a damn blanket as it is a different place altogether, one with its own stars—and maybe, its own people.
    I have not discussed this with Yash. She’s a fantastic engineer who understands more about the anacapa drive than anyone else I know. She’s also very no-nonsense, and refuses to talk in hypotheticals unless she believes it will get us somewhere.
    I’ve heard her discuss foldspace—mostly to dismiss the nerves that the Ivoire crew members still feel. The Ivoire got stuck in foldspace for two weeks, and then appeared in our universe, in what had been a familiar place to them.
    Only they were five thousand years in their own future.
    It’s taken a lot of adjustment for the more than five hundred members of the Ivoire ’s crew to realize they’re stuck here, in a universe that only seems familiar. Some crew members have killed themselves. Others have left the service altogether.
    The remaining ones divide into two rather loose groups: the ones who believe they can return to the Fleet and the past (which most of them still think of as the present) and the ones who have accepted that they now live in what they once considered an unimaginable future.
    Yash is one of the realists. She believes that she’s stuck here, in this time period, for the rest of her life. That doesn’t stop her from seeking information about what happened to the Fleet, but it does make her much more willing to take risks here and now. She has also settled in. She looks at the rest of us as colleagues instead of people she will only know briefly.
    It’s been more than five years since the Ivoire arrived. I think Yash’s perspective is the correct one. But who am I to say? I’ve dealt with the Ivoire crew, but I can’t begin to understand the extreme dislocation that they’ve suffered.
    Right now, Yash is as nervous as I am. Normally, she would sit at her newly built station as we traveled here from the Lost Souls Corporation deep in the Nine Planets Alliance. But she stood through the foldspace transition just like I did.
    But I’m the only one who knows that her nerves came not from being in foldspace like almost everyone else’s on board, but because she wasn’t entirely sure where we’d end up when we emerged from it. And she wasn’t worried that we were going to the past or some unknowable future. She was afraid we’d end up inside the Boneyard itself, maybe on top of, or inside of, a ship.
    Even though I had recorded the coordinates the last time we were here—the only time we were here—she didn’t believe that I had done so accurately. She spent a lot of time running diagnostics on the Two’s entire system, making sure we were being accurate.
    She’s a worrier, although everyone says that part of her personality is new. There’s a lot of new to deal with in my team. This is the first time I’ve mixed members of the Ivoire with members of my own diving team, and done so without Coop on board. In the past, Coop has always kept his own people in line, and I’ve taken care of mine.
    We’ve run joint missions before, usually to great success. I’ve just never done so on a diving mission, which is nothing like anything the crew from the Ivoire has ever done.
    “Let’s open windows all over the ship,” I say.
    Yash looks at me sideways. I don’t give commands in the proper language, at least for the military-trained Ivoire team members. Even now, even after knowing me for five years, they still are uncertain when I’m telling them to do something or simply making a suggestion.
    I can rephrase, I suppose, but before I do, Yash nods. Joanna Rossetti, another of the Ivoire ’s best people, nods back. Rossetti is at the helm, partly because she can handle the