“And what?” I ask. “Not buy another? That’ll keep us ahead of them for a while, but not long enough. And when we get caught, we get nailed for the full count, whatever it is, because we acted guilty and ran.”
“So maybe she won’t say anything,” Karl says, but he doesn’t sound hopeful.
“If she was going do that, she would have left Jypé,” I say.
Turtle closes her eyes and rests her head on the seat back. “I don’t know her anymore.”
“I think maybe we never did,” I say.
“I never used to think she got scared,” Turtle says. “I yelled at her—I told her to get over it, that diving’s the thing. And she said it’s not the thing. Surviving’s the thing. She never used to be like that.”
I think of the woman sitting on her bunk staring at her opaque wall—a wall you think you can see through, but you really can’t—and wonder. Maybe she always used to be like that. Maybe surviving was always her thing. Maybe diving was how she proved she was alive, until the past caught up with her all over again.
The stealth tech.
She thinks it killed Junior.
I nod toward the screen. “Let’s see it,” I say to Karl.
He gives me a tight glance, almost—but not quite—expressionless. He’s trying to rein himself in, but his fears are getting the best of him.
I’m amazed mine haven’t gotten the best of me.
He starts it up. The voices of men so recently dead, just passing information—”Push off here.” “Watch the edge there.”—makes Turtle open her eyes.
I lean against the wall, arms crossed. The conversation is familiar to me. I heard it just a few hours ago, and I’d been too preoccupied to give it much attention, thinking of my own problems, thinking of the future of this mission, which I thought was going to go on for months.
Amazing how much your perspective changes in the space of a few minutes.
The corridors look the same. It takes a lot so that I don’t lose focus—I’ve been in that wreck, watched similar vids, and in those I haven’t learned much. But I resist the urge to tell Karl to speed it up—there can be something, some wrong movement, some piece of the wreck that attaches to one of my guys—my former guys—before they even get to the heart.
But I don’t see anything like that, and since Turtle and Karl are quiet, I assume they don’t see anything like that either.
Then J&J find the heart. They say something, real casual—which I’d missed the first time—a simple “shit, man” in a tone of such awe that if I’d been paying attention, I would’ve known.
I bite back the emotion. If I took responsibility for each lost life, I would never dive again. Of course, I might not after this anyway. One of the many options the authorities have is to take my pilot’s license away.
The vids don’t show the cockpit ahead. They show the same old grainy walls, the same old dark and shadowed corridor. It’s not until Jypé turns his suit vid toward the front that the pit’s even visible, and then it’s a black mass filled with lighter squares, covering the screen.
“What the hell’s that?” Karl asks. I’m not even sure he knows he’s spoken.
Turtle leans forward and shakes her head. “Never seen anything like it.”
Me either. As Jypé gets closer, the images become clearer. It looks like every piece of furniture in the place has become dislodged, and has shifted to one part of the cockpit.
Were the designers so confident of their artificial gravity that they didn’t bolt down the permanent pieces? Could any ship’s designers be that stupid?
Jypé’s vid doesn’t show me the floor, so I can’t see if these pieces have been ripped free. If they have, then that place is a minefield for a diver, more sharp edges than smooth ones.
My arms tighten in their cross, my fingers forming fists. I feel a tension I don’t want—as if I can save both men by speaking out now.
“You got this before Squishy took off, right?” I ask Turtle.
She understands what I’m asking. She gives me a disapproving sideways look. “I took the vids before she even had the suit off.”
Technically, that’s what I want to hear, and yet it’s not what I want to hear. I want something to be tampered with, something to be slightly off, because then, maybe then, Jypé might still be alive.
“Look,” Karl says, nodding toward the screen.
I have to force myself to see it. The eyes don’t want to focus. I know what happens next—or at least, how it ends up. I don’t need the visual confirmation.
Yet I do. The vid can save us, if the authorities come back. Turtle, Karl, even Squishy can testify to my rules. And my rules state that an obviously dangerous site should be avoided. Probes get to map places like this first.
Only I know J&J didn’t send in a probe. They might not have because we lost the other probe so easily, but most likely, it was that greed, the same one that has been affecting me. The tantalizing idea that somehow, this wreck, with its ancient secrets, is the dive of a lifetime.
And the hell of it is, beneath the fear and the panic and the anger—more at myself than at Squishy for breaking our pact—this wreck is the discovery of a lifetime.
I’m thinking, if we can just get the stealth tech before the authorities arrive, it’ll all be worth it. We’ll have a chip, something to bargain with.
Something to sell to save our own skins.
Junior goes in. His father doesn’t tell him not to. Junior’s blurry on the vid—a human form in an environmental suit, darker than the pile of things in the center of the room, but grayer than the black around them.
And it’s Junior who says, “It’s open,” and Junior who mutters, “Wow,” and Junior who says, “Jackpot, huh?” when I thought all of that had been a dialogue between them.
He points at a hole in the pile, then heads toward it, but his father moves forward quickly, grabbing his arm. They don’t talk—apparently that was the way they worked, such an understanding they didn’t need to say much, which makes my heart twist—and together they head around the pile.
The cockpit shifts. It has large screens that appear to be unretractable. They’re off, big blank canvases against dark walls. No windows in the cockpit at all, which is another one of those technologically arrogant things—what happens if the screen technology fails?
The pile is truly in the middle of the room, a big lump of things. Why Jypé called it a battlefield, I don’t know. Because of the pile? Because everything is ripped up and moved around?
My arms get even tighter, my fists clenched so hard my knuckles hurt.
On the vid, Junior breaks away from his father and moves toward the front (if you can call it that) of the pile. He’s looking at what the pile’s attached to.
He mimes removing pieces, and the cameras shake. Apparently Jypé is shaking his head.
Yet Junior reaches in there anyway. He examines each piece before he touches it, then pushes at it, which seems to move the entire pile. He moves in closer, the pile beside him, something I can’t see on his other side. He’s floating, headfirst, exactly like we’re not supposed to go into one of these spaces—he’d have trouble backing out if there’s a problem—
And of course there is.
Was.
“Ah, hell,” I whisper.
Karl nods. Turtle puts her head in her hands.
On screen nothing moves.
Nothing at all.
Seconds go by, maybe a minute—I forgot to look at the digital readout from earlier, so I don’t exactly know—and then, finally, Jypé moves forward.
He reaches Junior’s side, but doesn’t touch him. Instead the cameras peer in, so I’m thinking maybe Jypé does too.
And then the dialogue begins.
I’ve only heard it once, but I have it memorized.
Almost time.
Dad, you’ve gotta see this.
Jypé’s suit shows us something—a wave? a blackness? a table?—something barely visible just beyond Junior. Junior reaches
for it, and then
Fuck!
The word sounds distorted here. I don’t remember it being distorted, but I do remember being unable to understand the emotion behind it. Was that from the distortion? Or my lack of attention?
Jypé has forgotten to use his cameras. He’s moved so close to the objects in the pile that all we can see now are rounded corners and broken metal (apparently these did break off then) and sharp, sharp edges.
Move your arm.
But I see no corresponding movement. The visuals remain the same, just like they did when I was watching from the skip.
Just a little to the left.
And then:
We’re five minutes past departure.
That was panic. I had missed it the first time, but the panic began right there. Right at that moment.
Karl covers his mouth.
On screen, Jypé turns slightly. His hands grasp boots, and I’m assuming he’s tugging.
Great. But I see nothing to feel great about. Nothing has moved. Keep going.
Going where? Nothing is changing. Jypé can see that, can’t he?
The hands seem to tighten their grip on the boots, or maybe I’m imagining that because that’s what my hands would do.
We got it.
Is that a slight movement? I step away from the wall, move closer to the vid, as if I can actually help.
Now careful.
This is almost worse because I know what’s coming, I know Junior doesn’t get out, Jypé doesn’t survive. I know—
Careful—son of a bitch!
The hands slid off the boot, only to grasp back on. And there’s desperation in that movement, and lack of caution, no checking for edges nearby, no standard rescue procedures.
Move, move, move—ah, hell.
This time, the hands stay. And tug—clearly tug—sliding off.
C’mon.
Sliding again.
C’mon, Son.
Again.
Just one more.
And again.
C’mon, help me, c’mon.
Until, finally, in despair, the hands fall off. The feet are motionless, and, to my untrained eye, appear to be in the same position they were in before.
Now Jypé’s breathing dominates the sound—which I don’t remember at all—maybe that kind of hiss doesn’t make it through our patchwork system—and then vid whirls. He’s reaching, grabbing, trying to pull things off the pile, and there’s no pulling, everything goes back like it’s magnetized.
He staggers backward—all except his hand, which seems attached— sharp edges? No, his suit wasn’t compromised—and then, at the last moment, eases away.
Away, backing away, the visuals are still of those boots sticking out of that pile, and I squint, and I wonder—am I seeing other boots? Ones that are less familiar?—and finally he’s bumping against walls, losing track of himself.
He turns, moves away, coming for help even though he has to know I won’t help (although I did) and panicked—so clearly panicked. He gets to the end of the corridor, and I wave my hand.
“Turn it off.” I know how this plays out. I don’t need any more.
None of us do. Besides, I’m the only one watching. Turtle still has her face in her hands, and Karl’s eyes are squinched shut, as if he can keep out the horrible experience just by blocking the images.
I grab the controls and shut the damn thing off myself.
Then I slide onto the floor and bow my head. Squishy was right, dammit. She was so right. This ship has stealth tech. It’s the only thing still working, that one faint energy signature that attracted me in the first place, and it has killed Junior.
And Jypé.
And if I’d gone in, it would’ve killed me.
No wonder she left. No wonder she ran. This is some kind of flashback for her, something she feels we can never ever win.
And I’m beginning to think she’s right, when a thought flits across my brain.
I frown, flick the screen back on, and search for Jypé’s map. He had the system on automatic, so the map goes clear to the cockpit.
I superimpose that map on the exterior, accounting for movement, accounting for change—
And there it is, clear as anything.
The probe, our stuck probe, is pressing against whatever’s near Junior’s faceplate.
I’m worried about what’ll happen if the stealth tech is open to space, and it always has been—at least since I stumbled on the wreck.
Open to space and open for the taking.
Karl’s watching me. “What’re you gonna do?”
Only that doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s the greed. It’s the greed talking, that emotion I so blithely assumed I didn’t have.
Everyone can be snared, just in different ways.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I have no idea at all.”
I go back to my room, sit on the bed, stare at the portal, which mercifully doesn’t show the distant wreck.
I’m out of ideas, out of energy, and out of time.
Squishy and the calvary’ll be here soon to take the wreck from me, confiscate it, and send it into governmental oblivion.
And then my career is over. No more dives, no more space travel.
No more nothing.
I think I doze once because suddenly I’m staring at Junior’s face inside his helmet. His eyes move, ever so slowly, and I realize—in the space of a heartbeat—that he’s alive in there: his body’s in our dimension, his head on the way to another.
And I know, as plainly as I know that he’s alive, that he’ll suffer a long and hideous death if I don’t help him, so I grab one of the sharp edges—with my bare hands (such an obvious dream)—and slice the side of his suit.
Saving him.
Damning him.
Condemning him to an even uglier slow death than the one he would otherwise experience.
I jerk awake, nearly hitting my head on the wall. My breath is coming in short gasps. What if the dream is true? What if he is still alive? No one understands interdimensional travel, so he could be, but even if he is, I can do nothing.
Absolutely nothing, without condemning myself.
If I go in and try to free him, I will get caught as surely as he is. So will anyone else.
I close my eyes, but don’t lean back to my pillow. I don’t want to fall asleep again. I don’t want to dream again, not with these thoughts on my mind. The nightmares I’d have, all because stealth tech exists, are terrifying, worse than any I’d had—
And then my breath catches. I open my eyes, rub the sleep from them, think:
This is a Dignity Vessel. Dignity Vessels have stealth tech, unless they’ve been stripped of them. Squishy described stealth tech to me—and this vessel, this wreck, has an original version.
Stealth tech has value.
Real value, unlike any wreck I’ve found before.
I can stake a claim. The time to worry about pirates and privacy is long gone, now.
I get out of bed, pace around the small room. Staking a claim is so foreign to wreck divers. We keep our favorite wrecks hidden, our best dives secret from pirates and wreck divers and the Empire.
But I’m not going to dive this wreck. I’m not going in again—none of my people are—and so it doesn’t matter that the entire universe knows what I have here.
Except that other divers will come, gold diggers will try to rob me of my claim—and I can collect fees from anyone willing to mine this, anyone willing to risk losing their life in a long and hideous way.
Or I can salvage the wreck and sell it. The Empire buys salvage.
If I file a claim, I’m not vulnerable to citations, not even to reckless homicide charges, because everyone knows that mining exacts a price. It doesn’t matter what kind of claim you mine, you could still lose some, or all, of your crew.
But best of all, if I stake a claim on that wreck, I can quarantine it—and prosecute anyone who violates the quarantine. I can stop
people from getting near the stealth tech if I so choose.
Or I can demand that whoever tries to retrieve it, retrieve Junior’s body.
His face rises, unbidden, not the boy I’d known, but the boy I’d dreamed of, half alive, waiting to die.
I know there are horrible deaths in space. I know that wreck divers suffer some of the worst.
Diving into the Wreck - [Diving Universe 01] Page 8