When I reach him six minutes later, he’s pulling himself along the guideline, hand over hand, so slowly that he barely seems human. A red light flashes at the base of his helmet—the out-of-oxygen light, dammit. He did use all of his extra for his son.
I grab one small container, hook it to the side of his suit, and press the “on” only hallway, knowing too much is as bad as too little.
His look isn’t grateful: it’s startled. He’s so far gone, he hasn’t even realized that I’m here.
I brought a grappler as well, a technology I always said was more dangerous than helpful, and here’s the first test of my theory. I wrap Jypé against me, tell him to relax, I got him, and we’ll be just fine.
He doesn’t. Even though I pry him from the line, his hands still move, one over the other, trying to pull himself forward.
Instead, I yank us toward the skip, moving as fast as I’ve ever moved. According to my suit, I’m burning oxygen at three times my usual rate and I don’t really care. I want him inside, I want him safe, I want him alive, goddammit.
I pull open the door to the skip. I unhook him in the airlock, and he falls to the floor like an empty suit. I make sure the back door is sealed, open the main door, and drag Jypé inside.
His skin is a grayish blue. Capillaries have burst in his eyes. I wonder what else has burst, what else has gone wrong.
There’s blood around his mouth.
I yank off the helmet, his suit protesting my every move.
“I gotta tell you,” he says. “I gotta tell you.”
I nod. I’m doing triage, just like I’ve been taught, just like I’ve done half a dozen times before.
“Set up something,” he says. “Record.”
So I do, mostly to shut him up. I don’t want him wasting more energy. I’m wasting enough for both of us, trying to save him, and cursing Squishy for not getting here, cursing everyone for leaving me on the skip, alone, with a man who can’t live, and somehow has to.
“He’s in the cockpit,” Jypé says.
I nod. He’s talking about Junior, but I really don’t want to hear it. Junior is the least of my worries.
“Wedged under some cabinet. Looks like—battlefield in there.”
That catches me. Battlefield how? Because there are bodies? Or because it’s a mess?
I don’t ask. I want him to wait, to save his strength, to survive.
“You gotta get him out. He’s only got an hour’s worth, maybe less. Get him out.”
Wedged beneath something, stuck against a wall, trapped in the belly of the wreck. Yeah, like I’ll get him out. Like it’s worth it.
All those sharp edges.
If his suit’s not punctured now, it will be by the time I’m done getting the stuff off him. Things have to be piled pretty high to get them stuck in zero-g.
I’ll wager the Business that Junior’s not stuck, not in the literal, gravitational sense. His suit’s hung up on an edge. He’s losing—he’s lost— environment and oxygen, and he’s probably been dead longer than his father’s been on the skip.
“Get him out.” Jypé’s voice is so hoarse it sounds like a whisper.
I look at his face. More blood.
“I’ll get him,” I say just to calm him.
Jypé smiles. Or tries to. And then he closes his eyes, and I fight the urge to slam my fist against his chest.
“I’ll get him,” I say again, and this time, it’s a promise, not a lie.
A promise to a man who can no longer hear me.
A man who is already dead.
~ * ~
TEN
Squishy declared him dead the moment she arrived on the skip. Not ^^ that it was hard. He’d already sunken in on himself, and the blood— it isn’t something I want to think about.
She flew us back. Turtle was in the other skip, and she never came in, just flew back on her own.
I stayed on the floor, expecting Jypé to rise up and curse me for not going back to the wreck, for not trying, even though we all knew—even he probably had known—that Junior was dead.
When we got back to the Business, Squishy took Jypé’s body to her little medical suite. She’s going to make sure he died from suit failure or lack of oxygen or something that keeps the regulators away from us.
Who knows what the hell he actually died of. Panic? Fear? Stupidity? Maybe that’s what I’m doomed for. Hell, I let a man dive with his son, even though I’d ordered all of my teams to abandon a downed man.
Who can abandon his own kid anyway?
And who listens to me?
Not even me.
My quarters seem too small, the Business seems too big, and I don’t want to go anywhere because everyone’ll look at me with an I-told-you-so followed by a let’s-hang-it-up.
And I don’t really blame them. Death’s the hardest part. It’s what we flirt with in deep dives.
We claim that flirting is partly love.
I close my eyes and lean back on my bunk, but all I see are digital readouts. Seconds moving so slowly they seem like days. The spaces between time. If only we can capture that—the space between moments.
If only.
I shake my head, wondering how I can pretend I have no regrets.
When I come out of my quarters, Turtle and Karl are already watching the vids from Jypé’s suit. They’re sitting in the lounge, their faces serious.
As I step inside, Turtle says, “They found the heart.”
It takes me a minute to understand her, then I remember what Jypé said. They were in the cockpit, the heart, the place we might find the stealth tech.
He was stuck there. Like the probe?
I shudder in spite of myself.
“Is the event on the vid?” I ask.
“Haven’t got that far.” Turtle shuts off the screens. “Squishy’s gone.”
“Gone?” I shake my head just a little. Words aren’t processing well. I’m having a reaction. I recognize it: I’ve had it before when I’ve lost crew.
“She took the second skip, and left. We didn’t even notice until I went to find her.” Turtle sighs. “She’s gone.”
“Jypé too?” I ask.
She nods.
I close my eyes. The mission ends, then. Squishy’ll go to the authorities and report us. She’s going to tell them about the wreck and the accident and Junior’s death. She’s going to show them Jypé, whom I haven’t reported yet because I didn’t want anyone to find our position, and the authorities’ll come here—whatever authorities have jurisdiction over this area—and confiscate the wreck.
At best, we’ll get a slap, and I’ll have a citation on my record.
At worst, I—maybe we—will face charges for some form of reckless homicide.
“We can leave,” Karl says.
I shake my head. “She’ll report the Business. They’ll know who to look for.”
“If you sell the ship—”
“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 stealt
h 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? N
othing 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.
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