City of Ruins du-2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “But a groundquake, a volcanic eruption, an explosion on the surface might hurt the integrity underground and cause something like Sector Base S encountered,” Yash said.

  “Wouldn’t methane show up in the readings?” Anita asked.

  “I’m not trusting anything we’re getting right now,” Yash said. “Some of the damage the Ivoire suffered is pretty subtle. We’ve only been focused on the major stuff. Once we look at everything, we might discover that some of the things we think are minor are more serious than we initially thought.”

  Coop had a hunch all of the damage on the Ivoire was major. But he had been operating from that principle from the beginning. He had been relieved when the trip through foldspace to here hadn’t completely destroyed the Ivoire.

  “Any way to hail that woman?” Dix asked.

  Coop had just let his linguist go. He wasn’t going to try to contact strangers without a linguist on deck.

  “See what readings you can get off the base’s equipment,” he said to Yash.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said. “A lot of the equipment is still inactive.”

  “Inactive?” Coop said, startled. “Shouldn’t it be dormant?”

  That was the customary thing to do in leaving a base. If the area was safe enough to leave the anacapa drive functional, then the equipment around it needed to function as well. It had to remain dormant so that the touch of a human being could bring the equipment up on a moment’s notice.

  “Yes, it should be dormant,” Yash said. “But these things were shut off.”

  “And the anacapa remained functional?”

  She opened her hands in a how-should-I-know gesture. “Right now, nothing’s working like it should.”

  “Is that because of a malfunction in the Ivoire?”

  “Honestly, Coop,” she said, dispensing with the “sir” now that Perkins was gone, “I have no idea. I won’t know until I get out there and investigate.”

  He looked at the wall screen. “None of us is going out there until we know who these people are and what the hell’s going on.”

  “How do you propose we find that out, then?” Dix asked.

  “We be patient,” Coop said.

  “There could be an immediate threat,” Dix said.

  “There could be,” Coop said. “But right now, we’re getting no indication of that.”

  “Except an empty base, a stranger in the repair room, and malfunctioning equipment,” Dix said.

  “We waited fifteen days to get here,” Coop said, “with a crippled ship and no answers to our distress calls. We were patient. We got here.”

  “Where things aren’t good,” Dix said.

  “They’re better than they were,” Coop said. “We’re not in an unidentified part of space. In that room, there are things that will help us repair this ship. If we’re patient, we’ll be able to fix the Ivoire and catch the Fleet.”

  “If that woman doesn’t attack us,” Anita said.

  Coop gave her a sideways look. She wasn’t speaking out of panic. She was just throwing out a possibility.

  “One woman? Who happens to be carrying a knife? What do you think she’ll do, Anita, stab the Ivoire to death?”

  He hadn’t meant to be that sarcastic. He was tired, too. And a bit worried about what he was seeing here. But no longer worried that the five hundred people in his charge would die on the ship in foldspace.

  But whether or not they would die under Venice City was another matter. He was going to take this slowly, no matter what his crew wanted.

  “How are our weapons systems?” he asked Yash. He hadn’t had cause to ask since they activated the anacapa to get away from the Quurzod. Nothing had approached them for fifteen days.

  “We’ve repaired some of them,” Yash said, “but nothing we can fire down here.”

  “Why not?” Coop asked.

  “Because the walls are made of nanobits just like the hull of the Ivoire,” she said. The Fleet’s technology was nanobased, with the help of the anacapa drive. The drive powered the technological change on a planet, essentially powering the nanobits that sculpted the interiors of mountains into the best bases he’d ever found in the known universe. “The shots will bounce off. They’ll ricochet until the energy is spent.”

  “Damaging nothing,” Coop said.

  “Except the equipment,” Yash said, “and anyone who happens to be in the repair room.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “But these weapons weren’t meant to be fired in atmosphere,” she said. “If there’s a methane leak, for example, then we might have another kind of explosion.”

  “Or an anacapa malfunction,” Dix said.

  “The weapons won’t cause an anacapa malfunction,” Yash said.

  “I know,” Dix said. “I meant if their anacapa has malfunctioned…”

  “It hasn’t,” Coop said. “It got us here.”

  Yash gave him a sideways look. He knew that look. It was one that cautioned him to silence. The two of them had served together since they were cadets, and they had bolstered each other from the beginning.

  “You disagree,” he said to her.

  “Even a malfunctioning anacapa could have had enough energy to get us here,” she said.

  “Great,” he said. “So we’re back to square one. We won’t know anything until we get out there and take some readings. And we’re not going to do that as long as those outsiders are here.”

  He walked over to that part of the wall screen and peered at the woman. She was still touching the Ivoire’s exterior, as if she could gather information about the ship through the palm of her glove.

  For all he knew, she could.

  Her face was barely visible inside the helmet. He couldn’t really make out her features, but he thought she looked intrigued. Like she hadn’t expected the Ivoire. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she knew the Fleet was long gone.

  She tilted her head. It felt like she could see him.

  But he knew that wasn’t true. She couldn’t see him at all. She probably didn’t even know he was there.

  “What’s she doing?” Anita asked.

  Coop shook his head. He had a theory—he always had theories, and he’d learned it was never wise to share them, at least not when he led a mission. Always better to gather information.

  Behind her, he saw movement. Four others, huddled near the exterior door, nearly lost in the gloom.

  Only it wasn’t really gloom. The woman was teaching him that. Particles floated in the air around her. They were coating the exterior of the ship, which was probably why the base looked so damn dark.

  Apparently he was finally able to see the stuff that Anita had been referring to.

  “There’s some kind of substance on the exterior of the ship,” he said. “Look at her hand. It’s clearer than everything else.”

  Her gloved hand. She had placed her palm flat against the ship. The glove was white, so tight that he could see the ridges in her palm, the bend of her fingers.

  She knew nothing about the vessel. None of the outsiders did. From the way they huddled, they seemed frightened by it.

  Of course, he was guessing. But they were human, and their body language wasn’t aggressive. It was protective.

  “Do you have a visual of our arrival?” he asked Dix.

  “I’m sure we do,” Dix said.

  “Let’s see it. Center screen.”

  Dix floated his fingers over his console. It took a moment, but the screen in the center of the bridge went dark, replaced by the shimmer created by the anacapa whenever a ship was about to arrive at its destination.

  The shimmer looked silver, then slowly resolved into an image of the repair area’s interior. The equipment, looking just as odd, the screens over the command consoles, showing what the ship was seeing just like they’d been programmed to do. Redundant imagery at the moment, but useful most of the time. The repair crew could look and see what a ship saw as it traveled to the base.

&n
bsp; Sometimes they could even figure out where the damage was because of something coming through the feed.

  So the screens were working, which he hadn’t noticed after they arrived. Then he looked at the floor itself. It had yellow lines, outlining the landing area, and DANGER! written all across the face, so that no one would accidentally step on the pad.

  Sometimes the repair crew didn’t know when a ship was going to arrive. A vessel’s anacapa drive could shut off and the vessel would appear on the landing platform, not realizing that the ship had just appeared where a human being had been standing.

  Someone had been standing there in the feed. Someone wearing an environmental suit similar to the woman’s.

  Similar, but not the same.

  So this wasn’t a military team, then. Private? They didn’t have matching suits.

  The person—a man, Coop guessed just from his general shape—whirled as if in response to someone calling his name. The man hesitated for just a moment—and then he sprinted off the platform, diving toward the main door just as the ship settled.

  Coop could barely make out the five people huddled against the door. All of their helmeted faces were turned toward the ship, but none of the people moved.

  While Coop had been relieved, while he was trying to figure out where he was and what had happened, they had been trying to figure out what they were seeing.

  Eventually, they determined that it was safe enough to approach the ship.

  “Thanks,” Coop said to Dix. “That answered a lot of questions.”

  And created a whole hell of a lot more.

  ~ * ~

  SIXTEEN

  “Boss?”

  I’m standing beside the Dignity Vessel, my glove still pressed against it, staring at the hull before me as if I can see through it.

  “Boss?” Kersting sounds nervous. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

  I don’t move. I want to explore every centimeter of this vessel. “What are you afraid of, Rollo?”

  “What if there are, you know, creatures in there?” He offers that last as if he believes it and is afraid we won’t.

  “Creatures?” DeVries’s voice has a smile in it. “Creatures?”

  “You know.” Kersting sounds terrified now. Terrified and embarrassed.

  “There’s probably a better chance that we’ll find bodies rather than creatures,” I say. Or worse. An entire contingent of legendary heroes from the famous Fleet.

  I shiver, just a little. Not from fear, but from anticipation.

  “Bodies? How would they get here?” Kersting asks.

  “We triggered something,” Rea says.

  “So?” Kersting asks.

  I glance over my shoulder. The four of them are huddled near the door, as if the ship terrifies all of them, even DeVries, who sounded so mocking a moment ago.

  “So the ship could be automatic,” Rea says. “This place is.”

  “You’re not going to go in there, are you, Boss?” asks Kersting. I can’t tell if he wants me to stay out so we can leave quicker, or if he’s afraid of what I’ll unleash.

  “Not yet,” I say. “We need to figure out what this is, when it is, and what is inside.”

  “We only have ninety minutes left on this dive,” Seager says.

  Ah, ever practical. I start to say So? then stop myself just before the word emerges.

  So… the rules are mine, and if I’m going to maintain any authority over this crew, I need to follow my own damn rules.

  “Yes, we do,” I say reluctantly. “We’re not going in today.”

  “What if it’s not here tomorrow?” Rea asks.

  I nearly take a step backward. I hadn’t thought of that, either. I’m so used to historical wrecks that something just as intriguing, but new, challenges my assumptions. This ship arrived, which means it can leave any time it wants to.

  “Then we need to get as many readings off of it now as we can,” I say.

  “Are we staying longer?” Rea asks. He wants to as well. I can hear it in his voice.

  Stay, and explore, and get tired, and then confront danger. It’s a recipe for disaster, and I’ve had enough disasters in my career, disasters focused on the unknown.

  “No,” I say. “We leave in less than ninety minutes. But we’ll come back after ten hours. If the ship isn’t here, we’ll leave again, but if it is, then we’ll start our explorations.”

  “Explorations?” Seager asks.

  She sounds even more nervous than Kersting. The real thing—a real ship, something dangerous, more dangerous than a tunnel under a mountain in an old city.

  Finally they are being faced with the realities of their unique abilities. And at least two of them don’t like it.

  I can replace them with the other two, who are still standing in the corridor, unaware of what’s happening behind this door. Maybe they’ll do better.

  “We’re going to run this like a regular dive,” I say. “We’ll map before we go any farther.”

  “Map?” Kersting says. “Have you looked at how big that thing is?”

  “It’s no bigger than the Dignity Vessels we have back home,” DeVries says with even more impatience.

  “It seems bigger,” Seager mutters.

  “It does,” I say. “I think that’s the effect of the closed space, but let’s make sure. The Room of Lost Souls changed sizes. The Dignity Vessels may have come in different models. After all, the exterior on this one looks different from any we’ve discovered.”

  I look at them. They haven’t moved away from that door. It’s as if the door is a lifeline to them, a lifeline to a world of theory and supposition, a world they’re used to.

  This is the future, and it terrifies them.

  It thrills me.

  I beckon them. “We need readings, and we’re running out of time.”

  DeVries sighs audibly, but comes toward me, followed by Rea. Kersting hesitates for a moment, then comes as well. Seager brings up the rear, looking not at the ship, but at the space above it.

  “How did that ship get in here?” she asks.

  “Good question,” I say. “I have a hunch we’ll have a lot more questions than answers, at least for a while.”

  “You’re comfortable with that?” she asks.

  “Boss thrives on it,” DeVries says, as if we’re old friends. Or maybe he just understands me.

  I do thrive on questions. I have enjoyed being on Vaycehn more than I thought simply because there are questions here, historical questions as well as scientific ones. This cavernous room excited me, and I was willing to spend weeks exploring it.

  But this ship excites me more.

  A living Dignity Vessel. An active Dignity Vessel.

  Think of all we can learn.

  ~ * ~

  SEVENTEEN

  I hate working in atmosphere. I want to float around the ship, investigate all four sides of it, all at the same time.

  The shape is the same as all the other Dignity Vessels we’ve found. It’s rather birdlike, with a narrow front and a wide middle, but from where we stand, that wide middle is massive. Beyond it, the ship tapers a bit, but I know that from experience, not from investigating this ship.

  The height impresses me the most. Maybe that’s why I want to float to the top, so that I can feel as if I’ve conquered this thing. Right now, it looms over me.

  We’re not even going to be able to walk around it. We only have sixty minutes left. I’ve barely made it a few meters. I take readings, I record, I look.

  The hull has damage. A lot of damage, in fact. Something has scored the side right near the place where, on the first Dignity Vessel I’d ever found, a hole punched its way toward the bridge.

  I remember because that hole was my first warning about stealth tech. My team sent a probe into that hole—following procedure, just like I’m insisting here—and the probe got stuck.

  If my team had tried to enter the Dignity Vessel through that hole, they would have gotten stuck in
malfunctioning stealth tech. As it was, one of them did get caught in a stealth-tech field inside that bridge, and he died.

  He mummified in a matter of hours. I used to think that was the first time I’d seen anything like it, but of course it wasn’t.

  The first time I had seen it, I had been four years old, trapped in the Room of Lost Souls with my mother.

  My mother, who didn’t have the genetic marker.

  My mother, who died, just like any other unprotected person in stealth tech. She aged rapidly, entering a time field that sped up her future, but left mine alone.

  Left me alone.

  My father pulled me out. My father, whom I later realized had sent my mother into that field to test her. To test me.

  The man was, even then, working to figure out stealth tech.

  He became the lead imperial expert on stealth tech. He had managed to use me at the Room of Lost Souls to get his position with the Empire, and in doing so, he killed a friend of mine, just like he killed my mother.

  My team—everyone in the company, really—believes that I’m funding stealth-tech research as a vendetta against my father. It doesn’t matter that he probably died in an explosion. They think I’m always going to act on some kind of revenge cycle, determined to destroy anything that old man might have created.

  I don’t think my stealth-tech research is a vendetta. I think it’s the only way to maintain the balance of power in the sector.

  I have tried, over the years, not to think about what would happen once we understood stealth tech.

  Now I’m faced with a working Dignity Vessel, which has arrived inside a cavern with a stealth-tech field, and I know I’m near a breakthrough. I may actually be looking at working stealth tech.

  I have to keep this quiet, and I have to understand it.

  I might even have to control it.

  Somehow.

  The scoring near that part of the ship disturbs me. Does that mean the stealth tech in this ship has gone awry as well?

  I wish I could climb to the top of this part of the ship. Up there is a hatch—or there should be one—a hatch that will lead me through a shaft that will take me down to a maze of corridors. At the end of those corridors will be the bridge, and inside the bridge, I might actually find functioning stealth-tech controls.