Read Skirmishes for Free Online Page A

was our starbase, remember. It hasn’t moved.”
    “You don’t know that,” she said. “It doesn’t behave the way we expect it to.”
    “We can find it,” he said.
    He was shaking. The mission meant more to him than he wanted to say. He needed something to do. He had to feel useful, instead of like a charity case. Look at that man. He used to be the captain in a legendary fleet. Now he doesn’t understand anything. He just lives off the goodwill of others, and dreams of a home he’ll never find.
    He shook the thought away.
    “That’s not what I’m worried about,” she said. “The Room of Lost Souls is deep in Enterran space.”
    “I’m not at war with your empire,” he snapped.
    “I know.” She was using a tone he’d never heard her use before. It was the tone that people used with a child or a sick person or someone incapable of understanding a certain concept. “But we don’t want the Empire to know that Dignity Vessels actually work.”
    He hated that term, Dignity Vessel. She promised not to use it, but she lapsed all the time. The Fleet hadn’t used the term Dignity Vessel in generations (well, thousands of years if he started counting from now). The term grated, showed her ignorance, and made him feel even more out of place.
    “The Empire won’t know. We’re not flying in and flying out,” Coop said. “We’re using our anacapa . We’ll arrive near Starbase Kappa and then we’ll shut off the starbase’s anacapa and return. We’ll be gone a day at most.”
    “And if an Empire ship is there?” she asked.
    “You said that the place is uninhabited,” Coop said.
    “I said that regular ships don’t stop. They heed the warning. But the Empire has been running experiments in stealth tech, and knew years ago about the Room of Lost Souls. I’m sure they’re still running experiments there.”
    Coop shook his head. “The technology at Starbase Kappa is ours. It has killed how many of your people?”
    “I don’t know,” Boss said tightly. Her arms were crossed again, and she was leaning back on that couch.
    “You’ve lost some people there,” he said.
    She took a deep breath. “My mother and one of my closest friends died in that Room. They didn’t have the genetic marker that allows people to work inside your stealth technology.”
    “It’s not—”
    “I know,” she said. “It’s not stealth technology, and you don’t fly a Dignity Vessel. Old habits die hard, Coop. And you know what I mean. You’re picking nits so that we don’t deal with what’s really going on.”
    Now he crossed his arms. “What, in your opinion, is really going on?”
    “You need something to do. You have a ship and no mission. It’s not natural for you.”
    She saw him more clearly than anyone else ever had. Maybe that was why he was attracted to her.
    Or maybe he just showed his emotions more these days, and anyone could have made that deduction.
    “This is not a fruitless mission,” he said with a bit more passion than he planned.
    “No, it’s not,” she said. “Eventually, we’ll have to deal with the anacapa on your starbase. But right now, everyone in the sector knows that the Room of Lost Souls is dangerous. It’s an approach-at-your-own-risk site. Most ships don’t land there. So there’s nothing pressing about going.”
    “Yes, there is,” he said.
    She sighed. “Coop—”
    “You’re right. My ship is in need of a mission. But it’s not just me. It’s my crew. They’re going crazy here. They’re getting trapped in all of their losses and feeling as if they have no future. We need—I need—to remind them who they are and what they can do. I need them to become a crew again, Boss, not just some people who ended up five thousand years in the future.”
    She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She was thinking about his point, clearly. Then she shook her head slightly, as if she had been arguing with herself, and finally she sighed.
    She opened her eyes, brought