Diving into the Wreck - [Diving Universe 01]

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  I turn. Both guards are pressed into the hatches of their escape pods. They look reluctant to go in deeper. The fit will be tight for them.

  “Good luck,” I say, then walk over and close the hatches myself.

  The escape pods can be released from the inside or the outside. I hit the release buttons before the guards can even find the interior controls. The first pod slides down its tube. The tube seals off the skip from the pod, then sends the pod into space.

  The pod floats away from us. The second pod follows only a minute later.

  I stare at them through the nearest portal. I’d rather be out of the ship in my environmental suit, clinging to a tether, than inside one of those things.

  But if their companions come back within two days, they’ll be fine. Testy, but fine.

  And I can’t imagine why the military wouldn’t be back. After all, they have to catch us.

  “Let’s get to the Business” I say to Hurst.

  Then I close the portals and close my eyes.

  I did it. I destroyed the stealth tech. And I may have killed my father in the bargain.

  I expected success to feel better.

  I expected it to make a difference.

  ~ * ~

  FORTY-THREE

  W

  e meet the Business at the designated coordinates. Squishy, Roderick, and Tamaz are full of questions, which we answer in quick sentences, promising more when everyone returns.

  Mikk and Jennifer returned shortly before we did. The Seeker is permanently barred from this area of space, and both Mikk and Jennifer are on some kind of governmental watch list.

  Jennifer laughs as she sits in the galley. “It worked. They thought I was really drunk and ready to party.”

  “For a while, I thought they were too,” Mikk says. “But at the last minute, they remembered they had a job to do and shooed us away from there.”

  Neither Mikk nor Jennifer seems too concerned about the watch list. I’m not either. We’re all going to have to stay in the far reaches of this Empire’s space.

  But we knew that going in.

  It takes another day before the Space King joins us. It actually has some weapons scarring. Turtle, Davida, and Bria look frazzled, but they too managed to escape. However, they’re pretty certain that the military vessel got all the specs from their ship.

  “They know it’s a rental,” Turtle says. “They’ll be waiting for us to return it.”

  I hadn’t planned for this, but I know what to do. We have to abandon both The Seeker and the Space King. Then we’ll declare them destroyed and send in a fee to the rental agency from the next station we stop at.

  I explain all of this before I ever get to the details of our mission.

  “What are we going to do now?” Turtle asks.

  I sigh. “I guess we find somewhere to hole up.”

  Davida, who is relieved to be back on the Business, offers to cook us a special dinner. She wants us to tell our stories over food.

  I figure that’s fine.

  She cooks—all sorts of things with stored food that I didn’t know could be done (but she has just become the designated chef on any trip we’re on)— and we all tell our adventures.

  Of course, they pay the closest attention to mine. The destruction of both bits of stealth tech, and the possible death of my father.

  Squishy is pleased that the bomb worked.

  But as we continue to talk, her smile slowly fades.

  I’m almost afraid to ask her what’s bothering her. I really don’t want the mood—which isn’t quite victorious and isn’t quite sad—to change.

  But I do ask her.

  “Your father figured out how to make stealth tech,” she says. “Ancient stealth tech.”

  I frown at her. She’s sitting to my left. Mikk is across from her. He has a guarded expression on his face.

  “And he was gone when you first arrived, dropping off his scientists and getting new ones for something else,” she says.

  I nod.

  “His stealth tech clearly worked.”

  I shrug. “I could hear it, faintly. But I didn’t test it.”

  “My device worked with it,” Squishy says. “My device wouldn’t have worked on just anything. It needed the stealth tech to power it.”

  I have no idea how she built it, and I don’t want to know, even now.

  “So that’s confirmation, then,” I say.

  “And that’s bad news,” she says.

  Mikk groans. He starts to get up, but I grab his wrist.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because,” Squishy says, “you say your father wasn’t a scientist.”

  I nod.

  “So someone else put that together.”

  “It sounded like a group of someone elses put that together,” I say.

  “Even so,” she says. “Enough of the technology has been revived. The military has it.”

  “Provided,” I say, “that they can find some more ancient stealth tech to cannibalize. My father said they can’t use the Room.”

  “And you believe him?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “They used the control panel from the Dignity Vessel. We’ve been all over the station around the Room. No one ever found a control panel.”

  I look at the others for confirmation. They nod. They’re interested now.

  “The Room, your Dignity Vessel.” Squishy sighs. “There’s a lot of ancient stealth tech around here. All the Empire needs is another wrecked Dignity Vessel.”

  “It was a fluke that we found that one,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “There’ve been others,” she says. “But there’s never been any working stealth tech in any of them. That’s how the military got the idea to rebuild ancient stealth tech in the first place.”

  I stare at her, feeling cold. “You’re telling me that if they find another Dignity Vessel, they’ll be able to re-create my father’s work?”

  “Most likely,” she says. “Now they know about people with markers and they know how to make something that approximates stealth tech. They have the know-how. They just need the right tools.”

  She sounds like my father. He seemed so certain that destroying the Dignity Vessel and his little bottle wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Then he contradicted himself by fighting to save that little experiment.

  My stomach twists. I stand up. The Empire cannot get stealth tech. I’ve set them back, but I haven’t destroyed their efforts.

  I should have realized how hard it is to obliterate anything. After all, I dive wrecks from the distant past. Wrecks filled with time and history and lost dreams.

  I leave the group, distraught. I pace my cabin until exhaustion finally takes me.

  I sleep—only to wake up in the middle of the night.

  With an idea.

  ~ * ~

  FORTY-FOUR

  I

  f we can’t destroy stealth tech, we can share it.

  We have the know-how. We have the money.

  Thanks to Riya Trekov and to Squishy’s finder’s fee from long ago, we can continue for years without making a dime.

  We’re pariahs now anyway: Mikk and Jennifer on a watch list; Turtle’s, Bria’s, and Davida’s images broadcast as possible thieves or pirates; and me— I’m a full-fledged criminal who has at the very least destroyed valuable imperial property.

  At the most, I’ve committed murder to do so.

  We want to stop the Empire from getting ancient stealth tech, and there’s only one surefire way to do it.

  We have to find the stealth tech first. We have to find the Dignity Vessels; we have to track down other legends like the Room of Lost Souls. Once we find it, we work with it. We now know we can use bits of ancient stealth tech to create stealth tech of our own.

  We also know that some people, with the right markers, can work in a stealth tech field. No one has to die.

  Giving the Empire stealth tech will change the balance of power in the se
ctor. But if all of the former rebel governments get stealth tech as well, then the balance remains.

  It’s a big undertaking, and we wouldn’t be able to do it alone. But I have a hunch the Nine Planets Alliance will give us shelter and maybe, just maybe, some funds as well—especially when they hear how quickly the Empire can conquer them if the Empire is the only one in the sector with stealth tech.

  I work up a presentation for the group. It takes me two days. By then, they’ve been wondering what they’re going to do with their lives.

  I sit them down and give them my ideas. A few—Squishy, of course, and Mikk—modify them. We have a plan.

  Then I give them a few more days to think about whether or not they’ll join.

  Not all of them will. And that doesn’t matter, because our base will not be anywhere permanent—at least not at first.

  At least, that’s what I’m thinking right now.

  The only person who has a reason to leave us is Squishy, and it’s all right with me if she does. No one likes her (except me and possibly Turtle), and I know where to find her. If I need more explosive devices, I can ask her to build them and get them to me.

  The team likes my plan. They understand it, and agree with it.

  We have a new mission, a complicated mission. We have to find old Dignity Vessels and other forms of ancient stealth tech. We have to create a new version of that stealth tech in the lab.

  And we have to keep our efforts secret from the Empire.

  I’ll handle the search. Someone else can handle the science.

  But I have to stay in charge.

  I find it ironic, honestly, that I’ll be doing this—the woman who never much paid attention to the Empire. The woman who loves to be alone.

  Now I have to put together another team. A bigger team.

  One that builds on the smarts, determination, and talent of this crew.

  One that will get everything right.