City of Ruins - By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page 0,117

go, and don’t assume you have more than the two hours he gave us.”

“I’m staying, too,” Al-Nasir says. “She needs a translator.”

I shake my head but don’t argue.

Kersting frowns. “What about you and Fahd? Will we ever see you again?”

“The captain assures us he can get us to the Business. Pull out of orbit and wait for us at the rendezvous spot. If we haven’t arrived in three days, head home.”

Rea is shaking his head. “But—”

“The captain’s got a powerful ship, and he assures me they’ve fixed it. So I’m going to trust him. Think of it this way: I get to ride in a working Dignity Vessel.”

They all smile at that.

“Now get the hell out of here,” I say.

I actually give DeVries a little shove. Rea doesn’t have to be told twice. He pulls open the door and hurries through it. Quinte and Seager take off at a run. Kersting gives me a haunted look, then jogs out.

“Go,” I say to Al-Nasir.

“No,” he says.

We stand at the door and watch them run until we can’t see them anymore. I wish the captain had given us five hours. I wish he wasn’t going to the surface at all.

I hope to hell the Vaycehnese government doesn’t notice that we’re leaving like scared rabbits.

I hope to hell no one says a word to the Empire.

But I have a hunch my hopes are just that: hopes, and nothing more.

* * * *

SIXTY-THREE

C

oop’s land team was gathering near the doors, but Coop was still on the bridge, making final plans. He wished he hadn’t given the woman two hours. He should have stuck with one hour, but he hadn’t.

Still, she’d been incredibly panicked when she heard they only had two hours. She’d fairly flown off the ship, and her people had vanished instantly. She’d stayed, however. She didn’t come back inside the ship, choosing to wait and watch one of the teams fix the anacapa inside the base itself.

Al-Nasir had stayed with her. Coop was a bit surprised at that. He had worried that all of her people would leave. The fact that they didn’t led credence to her story—credence he wasn’t sure he wanted.

Dix was already below, preparing. Lynda was in the captain’s chair.

Coop signaled Yash. She had been monitoring the anacapa repairs from her station. She left it reluctantly.

“If this woman is right,” he said without preamble, “we might have to leave here quickly. We’re not going to be able to use the regular drive.”

The regular drive worked like any other ship’s drive. The Ivoire had left the sector base using the regular drive a little over a month before. The technicians inside the base had opened the base’s roof, and the Ivoire had floated out.

Even if the roof opening was working—and there was no guarantee that it was—Coop didn’t have a good map of Vaycehn. For all he knew, opening the roof would destroy entire neighborhoods and kill countless people.

“Given the problems with the base’s anacapa,” he said to Yash, “can we safely use ours?”

Yash frowned. “How soon?”

“Maybe later this afternoon,” he said.

“If we manage to finish the repairs to the base’s anacapa,” she said. “If the problem is as simple as we both think—and so far, my team has no reason to doubt that—then we should be able to activate our anacapa without any risk to anyone.”

“Not even us?” Coop asked softly. “We’re not going to be sent through the wrong fold in space again?”

“I’m not sure we went through the wrong fold in space this time,” Yash said. “But whatever malfunction brought us here shouldn’t repeat. We fixed our anacapa. I think it was both anacapa drives, malfunctioning in tandem, that caused the bulk of the problem.”

“You think or you hope?” Coop asked.

“I think,” she said, but she sounded doubtful. “I can go out there and help with the repairs.”

“Will it speed them along?” Coop asked.

She grinned like a kid who had gotten caught. Like everyone else, she wanted off the ship, even for a short time. “Probably not.”

He smiled. “Then you know what I’m going to say. We need you here.”

“We need you here, too,” she said. “It’s foolish for you to go to the surface. Dix and Rossetti can do just fine.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But I have to see this. I can’t work off supposition any longer.”

“You don’t trust your team?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “But if this woman is right . . .”

He let his voice trail off. He didn’t want to give