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her head down, and scowled at him.
    “I don’t like this mission. Can’t we find something else for you to do?”
    “We’re not children,” Coop said. “We don’t need to be entertained.”
    “That’s not my point,” she said. “My point is—”
    “That’s exactly your point. I need my crew on a real mission, one any ship in the Fleet would take. The trip to Starbase Kappa is such a mission. We know that our tech is malfunctioning and killing people. We have to stop that. It’s a real mission with a real objective, and it won’t take a lot of time. It’ll shore up some rusty skills and it’ll get my team working together again. It benefits all of us.”
    “The Empire—”
    “I don’t care about your empire,” he said. “If a ship shows up and threatens us, we’ll destroy it. But if the starbase is as isolated as you say, that probably won’t happen.”
    “The Empire can’t know that stealth tech works,” she said. “And I used the term deliberately. Because that’s what they call your device.”
    “They won’t know,” Coop said. “How could they? Even if they see us appear, they won’t know that the drive did it.”
    “And then they’ll send the information to their headquarters and it won’t matter if you destroy their ship. They will have seen a Dignity Vessel appear out of nowhere, and they’ll see the so-called stealth tech in action.”
    “The ship will appear near a place of superstition, a place that some of your people believe is haunted. Surely the sighting will be discounted.”
    He sounded a bit desperate even to himself. He didn’t want to, but he wasn’t giving up this mission.
    She ran a hand over her forehead. Then she sighed again. “Lord knows, I’ve taken a lot of risks in my time.”
    He knew, with that sentence, that he had convinced her. But he wasn’t going to interrupt her.
    “And you’ll go whether I approve your mission or not.”
    “It’s not your job to approve—”
    “I know, Coop.” She sounded tired. “I’m not the boss of you.”
    She echoed their arguments about her name. He smiled.
    “No, you’re not,” he said gently. “But I would like your help on this. Your maps, your experience, anything you can tell me.”
    She nodded. The anger seemed to be gone, but she was clearly disappointed.
    “Promise me that if the Empire shows up—”
    “I’ll make sure they never inform anyone about us or the starbase or the anacapa drive.”
    “Thank you,” she said softly.
    But he knew she didn’t believe he could keep that promise—and he wasn’t entirely sure he understood why.

 
     
     
     
    SIX
     
     
    COOP AND YASH went down two levels to what had once been the heart of Starbase Kappa. A year ago, in his personal timeline, he’d come to this starbase with one of his closest friends and occasional lover, Victoria Sabin. They’d stayed in a fancy suite, had fantastic meals, and seen old friends.
    Now he returned to a place abandoned and malfunctioning, filled with the ghosts of people who had died here recently because something had gone wrong with Starbase Kappa’s anacapa .
    At least, that was what he could tell from Boss’s stories.
    The Fleet always placed the anacapa controls in the most protected area, whether the anacapa was on a starbase or on a spaceship. According to the map that Boss had made four years ago, the anacapa section of the base was now near the edge of the base, levels below what Boss’s people called The Room of Lost Souls.
    The Room of Lost Souls was an actual room, on what looked, to the uninitiated, like the entry level of Starbase Kappa. If a ship docked, its crew would find the room relatively quickly. People had died there.
    The anacapa was in a protected space that butted up against the floor of the Room of Lost Souls. What the actual room had been in the base’s prime was one of many recreation areas that could be shut down or expanded if the operational facilities inside the starbase needed