Diving into the Wreck - [Diving Universe 01]

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Mikk smiles, but no one else does. Instead, we go to the table. I sit at the head, as I’m expected to do.

  I look around the table. No one is missing. Roderick sits between Bria and Jennifer. Hurst looks tiny next to Davida and Tamaz. Turtle actually looks like she belongs.

  Only Squishy seems out of place.

  There is also one empty chair, and I’m not sure if that’s accidental or by design. The chair is even kicked out a little and turned at an angle, just like Karl would have done if he were actually sitting there.

  My heart twists. To cover that sudden surge of emotion, I wave at Odette, who, at the other side of the table, seems impossibly far away. She actually smiles at me, and waves back.

  I make the introductions. I tell my most recent team that Turtle and Squishy dived the Dignity Vessel with me, and they’re familiar with it. I also tell them that Squishy won’t be diving it this time.

  “She’s our medic,” I say. “She’s also in charge of destroying the damn thing.”

  “How can she destroy it if she doesn’t dive?” Mikk asks.

  I glance at Squishy. I don’t know how much of her past she wants me to tell them.

  She tilts her chair slightly. “I’m former military,” she says. “I worked in the stealth tech program. Boss thinks I can blow the ship up.”

  “Do you think so?” Hurst asks.

  “Boss won’t let me test my equipment,” Squishy says as if this were a democracy, as if she can convince the others to vote for her way of doing things.

  “You would want to test an explosion?” Davida asks. I can hear the horror in her voice. “Where would you do that?”

  “On one of the skips,” Squishy says. “It would be controlled—”

  “If it were going to happen,” I say. “Which it’s not. Squishy is going to figure out exactly what components we need and how much we need. Then I’m going to take it into the wreck.”

  “That wreck is big,” Mikk says. “You can’t dive it alone.”

  “I’m going to,” I say.

  He shakes his head. Apparently he thinks this is a democracy too. “It’s too dangerous. I think a team can safely go in there with you—”

  “You haven’t been inside,” I say. “It’s better if I go by myself.”

  “I’ve been inside,” Turtle says softly. “I never went into the cockpit, though, where we lost Junior. That’s where the stealth tech is. I think if you stay away from that part of the ship, you’ll be fine. I mean, I’m okay, and so is Squishy. Nothing harmed us while we were there.”

  Everyone is watching her, looking more than a little confused.

  She gives a small shrug. “I’m just trying to say that I think Mikk’s right. It’s better if a team goes in, just in case there’s a problem.”

  I feel a thin band of anger start in my stomach. “I know what I want to do here,” I say, “and it doesn’t involve any other divers.”

  “Maybe you should hear us out first,” Mikk says. “You don’t know what you’re facing.”

  “I know what’s inside that ship,” I say, and realize I sound as stubborn as Squishy did when I was talking to her on Vallevu. “You haven’t been inside. Have you?”

  I ask that last with an edge in my voice. He was under strict instructions not to dive the wreck. If he didn’t follow those instructions, I will not bring him along on the new trip.

  “No, I haven’t been inside,” he says, “but you haven’t asked what we’ve found.”

  I lean back slightly. I’m not used to Mikk talking back to me. Give him control of his own mission and he believes he’s in charge.

  But he’s also right. I need to know what happened when he went to the Dignity Vessel, and I need to know before we make actual plans. Everything could change depending on what he saw.

  “You’re right,” I say. “We shouldn’t be arguing procedure until we have all of the information.”

  Squishy and Turtle both look at me, with matching stunned expressions on their faces. Apparently they’ve never heard me utter that sentence before.

  Mikk doesn’t notice their response, although Odette does. She grins, apparently understanding what they’re thinking.

  “We left just after you did,” Mikk says. “I rented a ship—I figured it would give us more verisimilitude—and I took Jennifer and Hurst with me.”

  He took the younger-looking members of the crew. They were good choices if Mikk didn’t plan on diving. It would seem to a stranger boarding the ship that everyone on board was naive and new to diving.

  “We brought rented equipment and stashed ours in the cargo hold, figuring no one would ever look for it, not with the rented stuff sitting out. Then we charted half a dozen courses, and began each one of them, veering off course every time. Hurst got us ‘lost’ so that it really looked like we had no idea where we were going.”

  “I was beginning to think we didn’t,” Jennifer says.

  Everyone laughs, but I don’t think she meant it as a joke. I think she had gotten nervous.

  “The Dignity Vessel is a long way from nowhere,” I say.

  Mikk nods. “I think that’s why they’re not too worried about it.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  He holds up his hand. “Let me explain,” he says.

  They drifted in, like a group that’s tired and not sure where it’s supposed to be. They let the rented ship—called The Seeker—drift once they got close.

  The one thing The Seeker did have was an excellent scanning system. Hurst used it to see what was in the vicinity. They located three military-class vessels, none of them warships. Two were quick maneuvering skips, and one was a command vessel. They formed a loose circle around one point in space.

  The active vessels made it impossible for Mikk or Hurst to lock in on the Dignity Vessel’s signal, the thing that drew me to it so long ago, but they surmised it was there, just by the way the other ships surrounded it.

  “There were only three ships,” Squishy says, interrupting the narrative. “And one of them was a command vessel?”

  Mikk nods. He doesn’t seem irritated by the interruption.

  I would have been.

  “That’s not a lot of firepower,” Squishy says. “A determined someone could come into that area with the right equipment and drag that Dignity Vessel out of there.”

  “It doesn’t sound possible to me,” I say.

  “It is.” Odette speaks from the other side of the table. “There’s an easy maneuver to make the odds in your favor. But I want to hear what else Mikk found.”

  She sounds a little annoyed. I’m getting a sense she’s not fond of Squishy. They’ve both been around diving a long time, so it’s possible they’ve met before and have a history.

  It can also be that Squishy’s abrasive nature has already rubbed Odette the wrong way.

  “We had to get a lot closer to see if the Dignity Vessel was actually there,” Mikk continues. “We drifted The Seeker in, as if we weren’t paying attention.”

  Hurst knew how to do a casual mask of the scans, so it wouldn’t seem like they were looking for something. If they did get caught, he planned to say that the ships made him nervous and he wanted to know if they were a threat.

  The three vessels didn’t seem to notice The Seeker. They didn’t come after it and they didn’t say anything to it.

  Finally, the small team got a reading on the Dignity Vessel. They were even able to get a holographic image of it. They compared that image to the images I gave them before I left, and figured that not much has changed in the intervening years.

  They even saw the probe.

  Hurst wanted to go in closer. Jennifer agreed. It was Mikk who wanted to come back.

  “I figured we were too exposed,” Mikk says, “but Hurst reminded me that Boss wanted a recon, and if we had to send another ship, then the people surrounding the Dignity Vessel might get suspicious.”

  “I’m confused,” I say. “Those ships surrounded the Dig
nity Vessel? I thought they were small.”

  “They were small,” Jennifer says. “But they were constantly moving around it.”

  “The two skips were, anyway,” Hurst says. “The command vessel stayed in place.”

  “You’re sure that was a command vessel?” Squishy asks.

  Hurst nods. “I don’t think it could’ve been anything else.”

  Neither of us tell Squishy that Hurst used to pilot ships in combat zones. He’s as familiar with military procedure as she is.

  She shrugs skeptically, looking away. I’m not skeptical at all, and it’s my opinion that counts.

  “I knew they were watching us,” Hurst says. “And I figured we should continue our ruse. We’re just a lost band of wannabe divers. Then we see the Dignity Vessel and we want to know more about it. We figured we would go in closer.”

  “Did you?” Turtle asks.

  Hurst nods. “I wanted to get into a better scanning range. I didn’t believe what we were seeing.”

  “I thought there had to be more ships,” Squishy mutters.

  “It’s not the ships,” Mikk says. “There were only three. But the readings we were getting of the Dignity Vessel were odd.”

  “Odd?” I ask.

  “I think they were feeding us scans off their own ship’s systems,” Hurst says. “They added some stuff.”

  I hold up a hand. “What did they add?”

  “Radiation,” he says. “The ship was giving off the strongest radiation signature I’ve ever seen.”

  “Every ship gives off radiation,” Squishy says, “especially if it’s spent some time in space.”

  “We know,” Mikk says gently.

  I give him a sharp look. He gets softer and more gentle when he’s irritated. He doesn’t meet my gaze. He knows I’m sensing his mood.

  “The readings we were getting off the Dignity Vessel were off the charts,” Hurst says. “The kind of readings you’d get if the ship had been in some kind of firefight. You know, with ancient radioactive weapons or something.”

  “The implication,” Jennifer says, “is that the ship is so contaminated no one dare go on board, even in an environmental suit.”

  “We didn’t get readings like that ever,” Turtle says in surprise.

  I fold my hands together. “But it’s a great way to keep passersby away from the ship, and it also explains why the military is there. They’re trying to clean up some kind of toxic mess, which they generally only do when they’re the ones who cause the mess.”

  “Well,” Mikk says to me, “you never said anything about radiation, but we knew about stealth tech, and we thought maybe it went haywire or something and caused the readings.”

  “We reviewed your information again,” Hurst says. “From what we can tell, you got no radiation readings from the stealth tech at all.”

  “We weren’t in the cockpit very long,” I say. We weren’t thinking of taking radiation readings. When Karl and I were in the cockpit, we were trying (hoping) to save Junior.

  “Not just the cockpit, Boss,” Turtle says. “Karl and I never noticed anything on our first dive, and believe me, I would have monitored for it. I’m terrified of radiation.”

  “She is,” Squishy says, and they look at each other from across the table. For a moment, the old attraction between them becomes obvious to everyone.

  Then Squishy looks away.

  Turtle makes herself look at the others. Her cheeks are flushed.

  “The readings had to be false,” Mikk says. “We argued about that a little. Hurst wanted to get closer, and I have to say, I was the one arguing for caution.”

  “But Boss wanted to know what we were facing,” Hurst repeats. I’m beginning to sense that was his mantra on this trip with Mikk and Jennifer. It must have annoyed them after a while, but I’m relieved that Hurst listened.

  I did—I do—want to know what we are facing.

  Mikk nods. “We got really close and took our own scans. That’s when it got dicey.”

  One of the smaller military ships broke away from the Dignity Vessel and headed straight for The Seeker. As the military ship came, it demanded that everyone on The Seeker identify themselves and why they were in the vicinity.

  “We thought about lying,” Mikk says.

  “Be honest,” Hurst says. “I thought about lying. I didn’t want them to know I was a vet.”

  Squishy looks at him in surprise. She has underestimated him, and she finally realizes it. She gives me a glance, as if I should have protected her from herself.

  I say nothing. I let them continue with the story.

  “But I decided it was better that I tell the truth,” Hurst says.

  “Or as much of the truth as we could,” Jennifer says. “We agreed to answer questions directly, but not to embellish.”

  “I wanted to do most of the talking,” Mikk says.

  “And so he did,” Hurst says with a small smile.

  The military ship took their identification and then demanded to board them. The entire crew had expected that. So they agreed to the boarding and crowded near the airlock to wait.

  It didn’t take long. The military ship grappled onto theirs, holding it in place. Then four soldiers boarded, coming through the airlock with weapons drawn.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Jennifer says. “It scared me worse than any dive.”

  “Except the Room,” Hurst says softly.

  She gives him a sad look. Then she nods. “Except the Room.”

  The four soldiers crowded into The Seeker’s cockpit. Their weapons—laser rifles—were long and looked more powerful than anything Mikk had ever seen. Hurst believed they were newer models than the ones he’d trained with, powerful guns that could kill from a great distance—and if the settings were right, wouldn’t do any damage to a ship’s hull.

  “Scary,” Turtle mutters.

  Half the people around the table nod.

  Squishy just crosses her arms, as if she already knew about this sort of thing.

  “They asked us to identify ourselves all over again,” Jennifer says. “So I introduced us.”

  “It was a nice effect,” Mikk says, “because her voice was shaking.”

  “It wasn’t an effect,” she says. “I was scared.”

  The soldiers muscled their way in. They searched the ship, found the rented diving equipment, and asked a lot of questions about where the team planned to go and what they planned to do.

  Jennifer told them that the team had been looking for a specific wreck, but couldn’t find it. They’d gotten turned around several times.

  “All four soldiers were men,” Mikk says, “and Jen’s doing this little lost girl thing with them. They believed it.”

  “I believed it,” Hurst says, “and I knew she was lying.”

  “They checked our logs and our trips report, and they offered to help with plotting the correct course,” Jennifer says. “Then Hurst got all defensive with them, and I got worried. I thought he was going to ruin it.”

  “But it turns out that was the thing that turned the tide,” Mikk says. “They might have thought it was a setup if it weren’t for Hurst saying he knew better. They pushed him aside and proved to him he was wrong.”

  “I pretended like that hurt my feelings.” Hurst laughs. “Instead, I used the time they were searching through my equipment to do a quiet scan on them.”

  “Did you learn anything?” I ask.

  “Nothing I didn’t expect. These were real soldiers, fighters, career military. Their work was classified, but they were strong and battle-ready.” Hurst looks at me. We both know that’s significant.

  When we go to the Dignity Vessel, we have to be ready to fight.

  Squishy squirms beside me. She has realized that we must fight as well, and she clearly doesn’t like the idea.

  I turn my chair slightly so that I don’t have to see her. She’s distracting me.

  “It took a while,” Mikk says, “but they acce
pted our story. Then they told us to leave immediately.”

  “I did ask them about the ship,” Jennifer says.

  “But she was smart about it,” Hurst says. “She did that lost little girl thing again, talking to the big bad soldiers.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as all that,” Jennifer says.