City of Ruins - By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page 0,56
more redundant systems than any other group of ships Coop had encountered. Because the ships of the Fleet were designed to operate on their own for years without going to a sector base, having redundant systems made sense. One part of the system might go down, but other parts would still function.
Every system on the ship had that kind of backup except, of course, the anacapa.
He stood in the doorway and watched the team of five work on the array. Mae didn’t realize he was there. She seemed focused on the flat screen in her hand.
She was a beautiful woman, even with her red hair pulled severely back away from her face, a face that actually had some frown lines now. The lines gave her character, although he would never tell her that.
“Mae?” he said softly.
She jumped. She had been on Ukhanda for several months before the disaster. Her team had died at the hands of the Quurzod, and she had barely survived. It had taken her some time to heal once she returned to the Ivoire. Coop had pushed her into the repair work quicker than her doctors wanted, but he knew she had to keep busy.
And she couldn’t be busy with language. She felt that she had screwed up linguistically with the Quurzod, and she had lost her confidence. He wanted to ease her back to work. He figured fixing the array would do it.
“Hey, Captain,” she said with a bit of a smile, the smile she always used when she called him by his title and not his name. “I thought you’d be on the bridge, worrying about this strange place we find ourselves in.”
Two of her team members peeked out from behind the array. She waved them back to work. The other two didn’t even look up at Coop. They knew their priority was getting the array in top condition.
“So you’ve looked outside,” he said to Mae.
“I think everyone on the ship has,” she said. “We’re relieved to be out of foldspace. Some people don’t care that things are strange here. They’re just happy to be somewhere.”
He didn’t correct her. They had been somewhere when they were in foldspace. He just didn’t know exactly where.
“Repairs are slow, but happening,” she said, anticipating his question.
But of course, you know that from the daily reports.”
He nodded. She knew that he wasn’t here for the update.
“When we came here,” he said, “we came because they received our distress signal, right?”
She looked at him sideways. One of the benefits of closeness was that he understood the look without words. She wasn’t going to talk in front of her team.
He pivoted and went into the corridor. She followed. They moved away from the door.
“We sent distress signals on all channels the entire time we were in fold-space,” she said. “The base did receive our signal, but that’s where the information gets fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy?” he asked. She chose that word deliberately. Mae spoke twenty-five languages fluently, but her best language was Standard. She believed in precision on all things. So when she said “fuzzy,” she meant “fuzzy.”
“It blurs together,” she said, “and the condition of our array does not allow me to figure out exactly what happened.”
“What’s your best guess?” he asked.
Her lips thinned. Mae did not like guessing.
“I need a theory,” he said.
“From what I can tell, this sector base was offline for a long time.” She held up her hand. “And before you quiz me, I can’t tell how long.”
He nodded. He didn’t expect her to know when his bridge team hadn’t been able to figure it out, either.
“The strangers in the base probably touched the consoles, activating them.”
He nodded. His team had already figured that out.
“The activation,” she said, “includes a scan of outlying systems, looking for missed communications.”
“That’s when the base heard our distress signal?”
“Probably,” she said. “Then the automatic retrieval system activated, using their anacapa to power ours. At least, that’s what engineering tells me.”
“That’s the theory at the moment,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
She took a deep breath, as if she were uncertain. He was still not used to an uncertain Mae. He kept forgetting how fragile she was.
“I’m not sure they received our distress signal at all,” she said. “I can’t find notice of an acknowledgment, a receipt, or even that mingling within our systems.”
“Then how did they find us?” he asked.
She bit her lower lip. “I think this place sent out a signal when it activated, but it wasn’t a communications signal. It was their