The woman nodded. “The energy field. It kills. I know of hundreds of deaths attached to it. I’ve personally witnessed three caused by the field.”
“Such as the field you detected down here,” Coop said.
“Yes,” she said.
“And you came here anyway,” he said.
“That’s my job,” she said.
“What’s your job, exactly?” he asked.
“To find this technology. To figure out how it works. To shut it off. And if I can’t do that, to destroy it.”
Perkins’ eyes widened in shock. She was prone to panic. Or maybe she was already feeling her reaction to the five thousand years news.
Coop had to trust her to translate as best she could, but he couldn’t look at her. Not any longer.
“Were you going to destroy this base?” Coop asked the woman.
“As I said,” the woman said, “we had just found it. I was excited by the equipment, and the fact that it worked. I hoped we might learn more about your technology.”
“Technology.” Coop frowned. “All of our technology is killing people throughout the sector?”
“No,” the woman said. “Just the energy that radiates from this place. We call it your stealth drive. I gather that’s not correct.”
So she saw the look Coop had given Perkins when the term was first used.
“We do use the technology to hide the ships, yes,” Coop said, not willing to lie to this woman, but not wanting to tell her everything.
“Why would you need to hide them down here?” Bridge asked.
This time, his question was clear. Or maybe Coop was just getting used to his terrible accent.
But Coop chose to ignore him. If the woman was in charge, then Coop would talk to the woman.
“I don’t understand,” Coop said. “How does the technology kill people?”
She sighed, then looked at her hands. She turned to Perkins and said something. Perkins nodded and said to Coop, “She wants to tell a story. I’m not going to translate word for word, but I’m going to wait until she’s done and then tell you as best I can.”
Coop nodded.
The woman spoke for about five minutes, her voice rising and falling. As emotions crossed her face, she looked down or turned away. Bridge watched her, clearly as fascinated as Coop. Perkins’ attention was divided between the woman and the translation coming through the computer. Her intense concentration seemed to cause her to miss the emotions flowing through the woman’s body.
But Coop saw them all. He saw fear and deep sorrow. He saw loss and loneliness. He saw anger, anger so intense that the woman’s entire body tensed as she spoke of it.
By the end of her tale, she had calmed herself again.
But Coop knew now what drove her. Rage, fueled by a catastrophic loss. He didn’t know what kind of loss and he didn’t know what, exactly, had made her angry, but he did know that those emotions were what moved her forward, what got her through the day.
Finally, the woman stopped. She nodded at Perkins.
Perkins took a deep breath.
“Let’s hope I get this right,” she said.
“Do your best,” Coop said.
“There is a place in this sector called something like the Room of the Missing Spirits. Or the Place of the Lost Ghosts. I’m not certain of the exact translation.” Perkins glanced at Bridge. He didn’t help her. Maybe he didn’t know those words in Coop’s language. Maybe it was one of those concepts that didn’t translate well.
“She thinks it’s an abandoned space station,” Perkins said. “It’s been there from the beginning of recorded history in this sector.”
Coop’s cheeks warmed. Starbase Kappa was in this sector, and it was older than Venice City.
“This place has a low grade version of the energy signature that is here on Wyr. She went there as a child with her family. Her mother died there, becoming one of the ghosts.”
Coop looked at the woman. She was studying him, as if gauging his reaction. He wondered if she understood more of the language than she could speak.
Probably. That was his experience with other languages. He could understand some of them and couldn’t speak them at all.
Perkins continued with the woman’s story.
“She was very young when her mother died. Decades later, she encountered the same kind of energy in an abandoned Dignity Vessel that she was exploring. Only she didn’t realize that the energy was the same until after one of her crew died. She lost another friend when he went exploring the Room of the Missing Spirits. Now she has made it her mission to find this energy and prevent it from killing anyone else.”
That was a much shorter version of what the woman said.
“You’re sure that’s all?” Coop said.
“She used names and dates,” Perkins said. “I felt they weren’t as necessary.”
Coop nodded. He hoped he would be able to hear the woman’s unadulterated version some day.
“How come the energy has killed her mother and her friend but not her?” he asked. “Did they go to the wrong spot?”
Perkins translated the question.
The woman glanced at Bridge, who looked upset. He said something that sounded negative, but the woman shrugged and turned back to Perkins, speaking slowly again.
“Apparently, most people who enter the energy field die,” Perkins said. “But some people are immune. It would take some hefty translation work for me to understand why. She’s using some pretty specialized terms here.”
“She’s one of the people who can survive in the field,” Coop said.
“I guess so,” Perkins said.
“Ask her,” Coop snapped.
“Yes,” the woman said before Perkins could ask. Then the woman pointed to herself and then to Bridge. She swept her hands out, then held up five fingers, probably indicating the others in her group.
Explorers. Scientists. People with an ability to survive which others didn’t have.
That was the dynamic of the group. They weren’t military. They were thrown together for a common purpose. Which explained Bridge’s behavior. He was in charge of things elsewhere and not used to taking orders, although he was trying.
Coop looked at the woman, this Boss. He said, “We’re going to figure out what’s gone wrong with the equipment. We’ll stop it from killing your friends.”
She frowned, then glanced at Perkins, who translated.
The woman spoke. Coop didn’t understand a single word.
“What about your problem?” Perkins translated.
Meaning, what about you being stranded five thousand years in the future?
“We have some study to do,” Coop said. “Then we will talk further.”
He stood. He wanted the meeting to end. He needed to think about all of these things.
He needed to figure out what to do next.
***
Perkins took them back to the airlock. Coop told her and the guards that they couldn’t reveal any aspect of the conversation. Coop stressed that he wasn’t sure the others were telling the truth.
The guards looked relieved at that, but Perkins clearly didn’t believe him.
He didn’t believe it either.
After everyone left, Coop sat alone in the briefing room. He shut off the wall screens, opaqued the door, and put his head in his hands.
Stranded. Five thousand years from family, friends, the Fleet, his mission, his very life.
Stranded.
Not drifting, like he had done for fifteen days, but stuck in a new place, a place that didn’t remember much about his people, a place that didn’t even speak the same language.
He had the training to deal with parts of this. He had been taught to go into a new culture, to understand it, and to use that understanding for the betterment of the Fleet and the culture itself.
But the Fleet was gone.
It was now the ship. The Ivoire and its crew of five hundred.
Five hundred people,
who would feel exactly what he was feeling.
Lost. Abandoned. Trapped.
Helpless.
It took him nearly an hour to realize he had accepted the woman’s version.
He stood, ran his hand through his hair, and went to the bridge.
He finally knew what he had to do.
***
He sent the scientists to confirm what the woman had said. They had to test the equipment, test the anacapa drive, figure out the age of the repair room itself, as if it were an alien place.
He sent a small team through the corridors in environmental suits, figuring if most of the others couldn’t come in here, his people couldn’t go out there. But that was wrong.
They could and did go through the corridors, most of them unfamiliar and unmapped. They used handhelds to figure out where the city was—Coop didn’t want them interacting with the locals, not yet—and how long it had been there.
He sent Yash to investigate the base’s anacapa drive.
It was malfunctioning and it had been blowing holes in the surface for a very long time. Energy would back up in the system and come out sideways, making the holes unpredictable.
It took very little to repair that problem.
But, Yash said, the problems with the anacapa drive meant that it could have brought them to the right place at the wrong time.
They were stranded, and there was absolutely nothing Coop could do about it.
***
After nearly a week, he asked the woman to meet him in the repair room. He asked her to come alone. He carried a handheld with Perkins’ language program downloaded, so that he could get at least a partial translation of the woman’s words.
He had been studying her language as well. He had a hunch it would be his language in the future.
He waited for her just outside the ship.
This was his first time out of the Ivoire since it returned to Sector Base V. The air was chilly and it smelled metallic, like always. The particles brushed his skin as they fell around him, gentle and soft.
He wore a pair of black pants and a short-sleeved black shirt, with black boots. He had decided against a uniform.
He wanted her to take him to the surface.
She came alone. She didn’t ask how he was. She could tell. She would have guessed that he had done his research, and had confirmed much of what she told him.
He knew now that she had told him the truth.
Perkins had already asked her to take him to the surface. She had warned him that no one knew that the ship existed. He would have to pass himself off as part of her crew.
He didn’t mind.
He needed to know what he was facing.
The woman came up to him and stopped. She gave him a rueful smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said in his language.
He wanted to say that he was fine, that it didn’t matter. He was the commander of the Ivoire, one of the best ships in the Fleet, and as such, he could help her with her problem, shutting down the energy leaks all over the sector.
But he didn’t say that. He would tell her that eventually, but he wasn’t that strong.
He wasn’t fine.
“Thank you,” he said in her language.
She slipped a hand through his arm, a gesture he had never seen from her, not in all the time he had observed her.
He put his hand over hers. She looked up at him.
“What do I call you?” he asked in her language.
She paused for a moment. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder just briefly before answering.
“Friend,” she said in his language. “I am your friend.”
Friend. It was a beginning.
“Friend,” he said to her. “I like that very much.”
Then they walked through the repair room doors, into the corridor, heading to the surface, to a place Coop had never seen before, a place he had been as a child, as a young man.
A place he had once known and a place he had to learn anew.
They walked, and with each step, Coop felt his mission changing. He would represent the Fleet here, in this place.
Once he understood it.
Once he knew exactly how he and his new friends fit in.
“Becoming One With The Ghosts” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in Asimov’s SF Magazine, October/November 2010
STEALTH
NOW
“GO, GO, GO, GO!” Squishy waved her arms, shouting as she did.
She stood in the mouth of the corridor and watched as scientist after scientist fled the research station, running directly toward the ships.
The corridors were narrow, the lights on bright, the environmental system on full. It would have been cold in the corridors if it weren’t for the panicked bodies hurrying past her. The sharp tang of fear rose off them, and she heard more than one person grunt.
“Go, go, go!” She continued shouting and waving her arms, but she had to struggle to be heard over the emergency sirens.
An automated voice, androgynous and much too calm, repeated the same instructions every thirty seconds: Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area. If that evac area is sealed off, proceed to your secondary evac area. Do not finish your work. Do not bring your work. Once life tags move out of an area, that area will seal off. If sealed inside, no one will rescue you. Do not double back. Go directly to your designated evac area. The station will shut down entirely in…fifteen…minutes.
Only the remaining time changed. Squishy’s heart was pounding. Her palms were damp, and she kept running her fingers over them.
“Hurry!” she said, pushing one of the scientists forward, almost causing him to trip. “Get the hell out of here!”
Another ran by her, clutching a jar. She stopped him, took the jar, and set it down.
He reached for it. “My life’s work—”
“Had better be backed up off site,” she said, even though she knew it wasn’t. The off-site backups were the first thing destroyed, nearly three hours before. “Get out of here. Now!”
He gave the jar one last look, then scurried away. She glanced at the jar too, saw it pulsating, hating it, and wanting to kick it over. But she didn’t.
She stood against the wall, moving the teams forward, getting them out. No one was going to die this day.
A woman clutched at her. “My family—”
“Will find you. They’ve been notified of the evac,” Squishy said, even though she had no idea if that were true.
“Are they far enough away?” the woman asked, clutching at Squishy.
What made these people so damn clingy? She didn’t remember scientists being clingy before.
“They are,” Squishy said, “but you’re not.”
She pushed at the woman, and the woman stumbled, then started to run, letting her panic take over. They’d had drills here: Squishy made sure of that when she arrived, but apparently no one thought about what the drills actually implied.
And this was no drill.
Her ears ached from the sirens. Then the stupid automated voice started up again.
Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area….
She tuned it out, counting the scientists as they passed. There was no way she could count a thousand people, not that all of them would run past her anyway. But she was keeping track. Numbers always helped her keep track.
Her heart raced, as if it were running along with everyone else.
Quint stumbled out of the side corridor, his face bloody, his shirt torn. He reached her and she flinched.
“We have to evacuate,” he said, grabbing her.
“I’m going to go,” she said. “I want to make sure everyone’s out.”
“They’re out,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She shook her head. “You go. I’ll catch up.”
“Rosealma, we’re not doing this again,” he said.
“Yes, we are,” she said. “Get out now.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
This was not the moment for him to develop balls. “Get out, Quint. I can take care of myself.”
I always have, she thought, but bit back the words.
“Rosealma,” he said. “I’m sorry—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Get out.”
And she shoved him. He lost his balance, his feet hitting the jar. It skittered across the floor, and she looked at it, wondering what would happen if the damn thing shattered.
He saw her. “Do we need that?”
“Aren’t you listening?” she said. “You’re supposed to leave everything behind.”
“You didn’t make the rules,” he snapped.
She pointed up, even though she wasn’t sure if the automated voice came from “up” or if it came from some other direction. It did rather feel like the Voice of God.
“Those aren’t my rules,” she said. “They’re the station’s. Now, hurry. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, Rosealma,” he said.
“When have I done anything stupid?” she asked, sounding calmer than she felt. Sometimes she thought that everything she had done was stupid. Hell, she knew that everything she had ever done was stupid. That was why she was here, to make up for the stupid, and it wasn’t coming out so well.
“Rosealma—”
“Go,” she said.
He gave her an odd look and then hurried, half-running, half-walking down the corridor. Twice he glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected her to follow.
She didn’t.
The corridor was emptying out. No one had run past in at least a minute. The damn sirens sounded even louder in the emptiness.
Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area….
“Shut up,” she whispered, wishing she could shut the stupid voice down. But she didn’t dare. She needed everyone off this station.
She needed everyone to live.
NINETEEN YEARS EARLIER
THE MOOD ON THE SKIP was tense. The light was terrible. The tourist was lying next to the door, unconscious, blood covering his face. The three women running the dive stood near the control panel, looking down at him.
The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas Page 30