Free Skirmishes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

and gave him a look too. Funny how it bothered him that she couldn’t see him, but it didn’t bother him when others couldn’t see his expression.
    “Yes,” he said in his captain’s voice. “We’re evacuating.”
    He knew the others in his crew heard this, but he added something for Anita, just to be clear, “Anita, I want you to handle this. We need all non-essential personnel off this base as quickly as possible.”
    “I’m not sure what’s essential,” she said.
    “Leave the team that’s with me, and everyone else can go,” Coop said. “Yash, did you hear that? Get Dix out of there.”
    “Not possible, Captain,” Yash said.
    Coop’s stomach clenched. What had Dix done?
    “Take him out physically if you have to,” Coop said.
    “We’ll be taking the anacapa too, then,” she said. “He won’t let it go.”
    “We can’t leave it,” Coop said, hoping that Dix was listening in.
    “Coop!” Dix had been listening. He sounded drunk, even though Coop knew he wasn’t. “We can recreate the scenario now. Get those Enterran people to hit this thing with one of their weapons as we activate it. That should work.”
    “It won’t work, Dix,” Coop said, feeling tired. “A combination of two anacapas and a shot from a weapon that no longer exists sent us here. There’s no guarantee that any of that will work on the way back.”
    “I think it will,” Dix said.
    “You’re evacuating the starbase, Dix,” Coop said. “Whether you want to or not.”
    “Fine,” Dix said. “Just make sure someone hits this anacapa at the right time.”
    Coop put his gloved hand against the wall for a brief moment, and then closed his eyes.
    “You all right, Captain?” Rossetti asked.
    No, he wasn’t all right. He had made the wrong choice to come here, it had had the wrong effect on him, and now he was going to have to do things he didn’t want to do.
    “I’m just fine,” he lied, and climbed the rest of the way up the stairs.

 
     
     
     
    TEN
     
     
    THE FIRST THING Coop saw as he stepped onto the anacapa control level were the doors his team had propped open. The civilian saw them too. He ran forward, arms extended, as if he had found a holy shrine.
    He would have disappeared through the first set of doors if Coop hadn’t hurried to keep up with him.
    “Oh, my God,” the civilian said. “Oh, my God.”
    His exclamations got louder as he stopped in front of the second door. The anacapa control room spread before him.
    Coop tried to see it through the civilian’s eyes, and realized he couldn’t. To Coop, this broad expanse of room, with its warship landing area and its intact equipment, was the most familiar part of Starbase Kappa. It looked like part of a starbase in flux, not like a place that had been abandoned for five millennia.
    But to this civilian, the anacapa control room had to seem completely strange. The civilian had only known Starbase Kappa as the ghostly Room of Lost Souls, empty rooms, with nothing more than a still-active piece of equipment that mysteriously killed people.
    Now the civilian saw the working heart of the starbase, technology beyond his imaginings, and it had to be overwhelming.
    He went around and around in circles, head up, then down, like a child spinning for joy. Although he wasn’t spinning for joy so much as trying to take it all in.
    “What is this place?” the civilian asked. “There’s equipment in here.”
    The two soldiers who were supposed to guard him hung back. The room clearly scared them. But they didn’t say anything. They just watched, overwhelmed and on alert.
    Coop ignored them, and focused on his people. The team he had taken to the landing area had followed him up here, and joined Yash, Lalliki, and six others who still hadn’t evacuated. Those eight formed a half-circle around Dix, who was still arm-deep into the anacapa drive.
    He grinned when he saw Coop.
    “We can do this,” Dix said on the private channel. “I know we can.”
    Coop