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rebuilds do not have any such weaponry. But I feel odd, standing here in these ruins, discussing the weapons capability of ships I own, capability I didn't realize those ships have.
    Coop stands up. He's not going to tell me if the ships have the capability or not. At least, he's not going to tell me in front of the others, and clearly, he hasn't told me since we've known each other. Apparently nothing is going to change right now.
    “Here's what we know,” he says, wiping his injured hands on his suit, then slapping them together as if he needs to get the dust off them. “We know that whatever happened here happened quickly.”
    “That still means there could have been a groundquake or something,” Stone says stubbornly.
    “We don't build sector bases near areas that have an active volcano or a recent volcanic history, meaning nothing has gone off in a thousand years or more. We also have the capability of finding fault lines.” Yash is speaking both in present tense about the Fleet and with an undercurrent of anger. She's telling Stone that the Fleet—whatever Stone thinks—wasn't stupid when it came to the bases.
    “So all of the evidence that we have at the moment argues for an external cause,” Mikk says.
    “Not outside necessarily,” I say.
    “No,” he says. “I mean something man-made as opposed to natural forces.”
    Coop nods. He's rubbing his fingers. They must be sore.
    “Whatever happened,” Coop says, “it happened quickly. That lift argues for an attack of some kind.”
    “Why are you so set on believing that?” Stone asks.
    He looks at her. “I'm not set on anything, Professor. I wanted this base to be intact, like Sector Base V. I wanted to be able to gain information from it and figure out roughly when my people left this place. The more I learn, the quicker I can track the Fleet's trajectory.”
    “Why does that matter?” Stone asks.
    “Because if he can plot the trajectory,” I say, “he can reunite with the Fleet.”
    “Not me, necessarily,” he says. “But my ship, probably a few generations from now, can hook up with the Fleet.”
    I've told Stone this before. She thinks it's fantasy. But—again, making a lot of assumptions— if the Fleet still exists, if its mission hasn't changed, if it has followed the prescribed trajectory for another five thousand years, then the Ivoire can eventually find the Fleet. The anacapa cuts both time and distance of the search. Going through foldspace will put the Ivoire within range, provided all those other things (and probably a dozen more I don't know) actually line up.
    Personally, I think this is as impossible as using the anacapa to send the Ivoire back to its own time, but I haven't said anything to Coop. He needs his own dream to follow, and I think that dream has kept him alive until now. I spoke to his first officer, Dix Pompiono, before Dix's suicide. Dix was quite clear on his belief that it was impossible for the Ivoire to hook up with the Fleet.
    That didn't kill Dix, though. The loss of his world killed him. The loss of his friends and family and lover was something he expected, given his job. But the loss of everything familiar, and of the possibility of hooking up with the Fleet he had known—that upset him the most.
    Coop seems to believe that the Fleet is the Fleet is the Fleet.
    I keep thinking about the differences that five thousand years have brought to an existing language. I can't imagine the differences five thousand years would bring to a still-existing community of ships.
    But I have learned that some arguments are futile. And if Coop believes he can get his grandchildren back to the Fleet and if that belief keeps him going, who am I to question it?
    Stone, however, has none of those qualms.
    “You do realize you're being ridiculous,” she says to him.
    “I also realize that your people thought my anacapa drive was a simple cloak,” he says.
    Her cheeks color. Unlike a lot of people on the receiving end of