I need to lead my team.
I need to be the boss.
My two team members are staring at the Dignity Vessel. Hurst isn’t even looking at the controls, getting the latest readouts from the sensors. His mouth is open slightly. Odette is chewing on her lower lip, something I haven’t seen her do since our earliest days diving together.
“It’s so big,” Hurst says.
I don’t like his tone. There’s too much awe in it.
“You saw the specs,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “They just didn’t translate into this kind of size in my mind. I’ve never dived a wreck this big.”
I make myself take a deep breath. Clearly, I’m not the only one who’s nervous.
“Odette?” I say. “Is your device powerful enough for this ship?”
She nods. Then she turns. Of the three of us, she seems the most calm— even with the lip biting. “I have dived something this big before,” she says.
“A Dignity Vessel?” I ask.
“Old freighters,” she says. “They’re larger than this. They’re like miniature planets.”
I’ve seen them, and they are large, although not as large as she says. Certainly as large as the Dignity Vessel, though.
I grab my environmental suit. I strip, then slip it on. It clings to my skin. I haven’t worn it since I pulled Karl out of the Room, but it feels like an old friend.
“Hurst,” I say, “you’re staying here. I need you to monitor the area.”
“I thought we were all three going in,” he says.
Both Odette and I look at him. “Then who will keep an eye on the skip?” she asks.
I’m glad she asks him, because my tone certainly wouldn’t have been as polite.
“We’re going to be tethered,” she continues. “If one of those ships comes back and severs the tether, we die. They won’t even be responsible. They’ll plead ignorance, thinking someone was in the skip and had tied to it to rob it.”
She sounds so positive about this that I wonder if this scenario played out when she was working with the scavengers. And then I remember: What she describes is an old pirating trick. It’s a way to steal a diving vessel when all the members of the team go into a wreck.
I tilt my head slightly. Odette might be more of an asset on this trip than I realized.
“You have your device?” I ask.
She nods.
“Finish suiting up.” I pick up the laser pistol I brought for personal use. I have never dived with any laser weapons, even though I know how to shoot one. But I’m not the best shot, and for that, Hurst might be a better choice. His military experience gave him a lot of weapons training.
But there aren’t any ships around. We’ve bought some time. With luck, we’ll go in and out without using the laser pistols at all.
I also strap a knife to my belt. It’s the same model knife as the one Karl always carried, although it isn’t his. His is still attached to his body, floating somewhere near the Room.
My knife is in a thick sheath, since I have dived with a knife before, and I know that the greatest danger is cutting into my own suit. I stopped carrying knives early in my career when I watched one of my dive partners slice open the seam on her thigh. We managed to seal it up, but the entire dive was compromised.
Still, I’m carrying the knife for two reasons: It’s the weapon I’m most familiar with, and I want to honor Karl on this dive.
Since I have nothing of his own to carry with me, I need to carry something that reminds me of him. Divers are superstitious, after all.
Although on the outside, my knife looks nothing like his. The sheath makes it look like another breather. I’m already carrying one weapon that someone can take away from me and use against me.
I don’t need two.
I pick up my helmet. Then I nod to Odette. She’s finishing with her suit. She has four breathers on her hips, as well as her own laser pistol, and something extra on her front.
That extra thing is the bomb itself.
My heart pounds so hard I think that the others can probably hear it.
“I’ve left Squishy’s bomb on the skip,” I say to Hurst. “If something happens to us, you bring it back to her and tell her to find a way to use it.”
His eyes are big. He nods.
“I’ve watched those vids from your previous dives here,” he says. “I won’t be able to communicate with you.”
“Not when we’re inside the wreck,” I say.
“But what if the ships come back?”
I shrug. There isn’t much he can do. But if I don’t give him something, he’ll panic now. He was expecting to go in, and now that I’ve deprived him of the adventure, his imagination has kicked into overdrive.
“There’s not much you can do,” Odette says before I have a chance to speak. “The skip has no weapons.”
“We’re going to be on a strict timetable,” I say. “Twenty to get to the cockpit, thirty in the cockpit, and twenty to get out. If we’re close to those numbers, stay here. We might make it back before they get here.”
“If not?” he asks.
I look at Odette. She looks at me.
“After an hour ten,” I say, “you have to get out.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he says.
Odette shakes her head. “You can’t. You might die. You have to get clear of the Dignity Vessel.”
His mouth opens again, and then closes tightly in disgust. While he’s been thinking of the dive, he’s clearly forgotten the point of the mission.
“If you can,” I say, “you warn those military ships away. I don’t want collateral damage.”
“They’ll go in,” he says. “They’ll try to remove that bomb.”
“They won’t be able to,” I say. “Not in the time they have.”
And suddenly my mouth is dry. The potential for collateral damage is great. I don’t want to cost lives—any more than I already have.
“If they show up, hold them off as long as possible,” I say, trying to make myself feel better.
“By doing what?” he asks. “Leaning out the airlock and shooting at them with my laser pistol?”
I grin in spite of myself. “If you actually think that’ll work.”
Then I look at Odette. She has her gear on, her helmet under her arm.
“You ready?” I ask.
“As I’ll ever be,” she says.
“You can back out now,” I say. “I can do this alone.”
“No, you can’t,” she says, and puts on her helmet. It makes her head look twice as large as it is, which makes the package attached to her front look small.
I hope that thing won’t trigger as we maneuver our way into the ship. She says it’s easy to operate and not something to fear, but I do worry.
I worry about everything.
“Keep an eye out,” I say to Hurst, and then I put my helmet on.
We head to the airlock as he extends the tether between the skip and the Dignity Vessel.
Here we go, I think, but do not say. Here we go.
~ * ~
THIRTY-EIGHT
We reach the wreck in less than five minutes. I stop us as we touch the hull. I want to make certain we haven’t moved too quickly.
“Check your monitors,” I say to Odette.
She tilts her head. The clear part of her helmet reflects the lights from the skip. “Heart rate normal,” she says. “Breathing normal. I’m fine.”
My breathing is up and so is my heart rate, but I don’t tell her that. Because my elevated heart rate is also normal for me every single time I return to diving after a layoff.
Of course, I also don’t mention that the elevation is the highest I’ve seen on a return dive. I chalk that up to the fact we’re about to do something illegal.
Something illegal and something that would normally go against every principle that I have.
“Good,” I say. “Because now we’re at the tough part.”
I l
ead her to the hatch and am surprised to find that it’s open. I have no idea if Karl and I left it that way, not that it matters. I’m sure military divers have been inside.
For the first time, I cringe, realizing we might find other bodies—newer bodies—in that cockpit.
I make myself take a deep breath. I’m glad I’ve brought along extra breathers, because I’m using a lot of oxygen at the moment. Hurst, bless him, has said nothing.
This is the last time he could speak to us before we go into the wreck, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t remark on my elevated heart rate or my breathing. Maybe he’s not monitoring them.
Given how nervous he was when we left, he might only be monitoring the surrounding space.
Which is probably good enough—considering. If something goes wrong, he can’t come and rescue us anyway.
I turn on the lights under my boots. I know better than to light up like a tourist on her first dive—I remember how blinding that was in the small space that leads into the ship—but I’m tempted. I’m very tempted.
I slide into the hatch first. I’m going to lead the way to the cockpit.
I’ve reviewed the directions. I’ve also put them on a small map that can run in front of my faceplate if I press the right button. The map will overlay on the plate, leaving my field of vision clear, but helping me maneuver.
I hope I don’t have to use it. I will have part of it on when we go inside, however. If I get turned around, I want the navigation system to beep at me so that we don’t waste time being lost.
The hatch is wider than I remember, but the ladder seems even more fragile. I grip it with my gloved hands, and it seems like the rungs are loose.
As I go down, I check the bolts. They don’t seem to be screwed in as tightly as they had before.
Or maybe that’s my memory again.
I thought my memory of this place was clear, but maybe it’s not. Maybe the overlay of trauma has heightened the wrong things. I’m glad I decided to use the special map and the guidance system. I’m beginning to worry that I’m wrong about a lot of things.
Some things are different. The particles that floated around us like snow are gone. Maybe that’s because the hatch has been open to space for a long time. Or maybe enough military divers have gone in and have knocked things loose.
“I thought you said this thing was narrow,” Odette says. Her voice sounds a bit hollow through her suit system and into mine.
“It is,” I say.
“You haven’t seen narrow,” she says, and she’s right. By some dive standards, this is wide open. I have been in situations so tight that I was afraid I would get stuck.
But I don’t call those places narrow. I call them dangerous.
Still, I can understand her initial worry and her relief. She’s got an extra half meter of material attached to her front.
“This is as narrow as it gets outside the cockpit,” I say.
“Good.”
We make it to the bottom. The corridors open away from the entry, just like I remember.
Just like I dream.
The nightmares of Jypé and Junior joined the nightmare of my mother’s death shortly after they died. Only the Jypé-and-Junior nightmare is less a distortion of what happened than a memory of it.
My stomach clenches. It almost feels like I’m back in the dream. I make myself move forward.
I’m surprised I remember where the handholds are and where we pushed off from. But my navigation system never beeps at me, and we move quickly down the corridor.
As we do, I hear voices. Faint voices. They’re whispering. I make myself focus on them, reminding myself that these aren’t voices at all, but something to do with stealth tech.
The focus enables me to separate out the sounds. Not whispering, but a soft thrum. Several soft thrums on different levels.
I get an idea.
“Do you hear anything unusual?” I ask Odette.
“Just my own breathing,” she says. “That’s the only part of diving I hate. Why? Do you think someone’s here?”
There’s an edge to that final question, as if she’s afraid we’re going to get attacked while we’re inside the vessel. If we do, we’ll never get out.
Surprisingly, that thought calms my own breathing. My heart rate has slowed now that we’re inside.
“No,” I say. “It’s just that there’s a sound I associate with stealth tech. I thought maybe if you heard it too, you have the marker.”
“Oh.” She’s following me, careful to put her hands where mine have been. “That doesn’t sound very scientific.”
“It’s not,” I say.
The corridors seem cleaner. Except “clean” isn’t quite the right word. They’re not as dismal. They’re just as dark, but it almost looks like someone has scraped off a layer of dirt—or something—that accumulated over time.
Although I have no idea how dirt could have formed way out here in the middle of nowhere. Just like rust couldn’t form without oxygen.
Yet everything seems just a little shinier, just a little newer. The words and numbers running along the doorways are clearer.
I’m becoming more and more certain, as we move, that this isn’t a fault of my memory. The Dignity Vessel is different.
People have been here.
A lot of people, during the time I was gone.
We reach the final corridor. I check with Odette.
“Everything still okay?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says, but she doesn’t add anything. I don’t know what she thinks of the ship.
I’m not sure I should know what she thinks of the ship, given what we’re about to do.
So I don’t ask for her opinion.
However, I do check the time.
Less than five minutes to the hatch. Less than eight minutes to get here. We should make it to the cockpit with five minutes to spare.
I slow us through that corridor. I want to make certain we’re both calm. Because this is the tricky part.
Odette has walked me through it before, but I’m still nervous. I’ve never set an explosive device.
She’s offered to do it—it doesn’t have to be near the stealth tech, given the power of the explosive—but I want it to be there. If anything gets obliterated, I want it to be those stealth tech controls.
I want to shut the whole thing off.
Or, at least, send it to oblivion.
I swallow against a dry throat. The corridor widens a little.
We’re here.
And now I have confirmation that the military has spent a lot of time in this Dignity Vessel. Modern signs litter this part of the corridor.
Danger.
Do Not Pass without Authorization.
Warning: To Unapproved Personnel, the Field Inside These Doors Can Be Lethal.
The signs begin about six meters from the entrance, and grow more and more insistent the closer we get. But there is no barrier, nothing the military has constructed to prevent illegal entry.
I wonder if they couldn’t get anything to work here.
Just like our communications devices don’t work here.
For the first time, I worry that I’ve made a mistake bringing Odette’s device.
Maybe it won’t work here either.
I make myself take a deep slow breath. It’ll work. If I keep it outside the stealth field. It’ll have to work.
Odette has slowed down. I look at her. She’s doing something to the packet on the front of her suit.
“I think I’m going to stay out here,” she says.
“You’re going to have to come closer than that,” I say. “You have to talk me through setting the device.”
She takes such a deep breath that I can hear it. “I’ll do it through the door,” she says.
That’s fine with me. As long as she can see what I’m doing, then we’ll be all right.
Provided we can get through the door. The signs make me worry that someone has locked it - the old-fashioned w
ay, with some kind of padlock.
The thrumming is stronger. If I don’t pay attention, it sounds like a chorus of hums. If I concentrate, I can hear the different sounds at the different levels.
The sound isn’t giving me a headache like it normally does. Instead, it’s lifting my spirits. I was worried that I’d back out once I saw the interior again, that my preservationist instincts would collide with my desire for revenge and I would back away from destroying the ship.
But the thrumming keeps me on edge, reminds me why I’m actually here. If anything, my feelings about destroying the stealth tech have grown stronger.
“Here,” Odette says to me.
She hands me the packet. It seems smaller now that it’s not attached to her suit.
I don’t attach it to mine. Instead, I clutch it in one hand. My heart rate is increasing again, and I make myself breathe evenly so that I stay calm.
“Come with me,” I say. “It’s not far.”
And indeed, it isn’t. It only takes us a minute to get there.
My worries about the padlock weren’t justified. The door is propped open. Someone has braced it open by attaching it to the wall.
Apparently, whoever did this was afraid of being trapped inside.
“If it’s so dangerous, why would they do that?” Odette asks.
“So you can get out quickly,” I say. I add the “quickly” mostly for her sake. Because the real answer is that they just want to make sure they can get out.
We peer in. The cockpit looks very different. All the debris is gone. What remains is broken edges and hints of places where the furniture had once been. Lights, activated by our movement, have come on around the controls.
But no lights come on near the stealth tech field. I automatically look in that direction.
I was afraid I would see Junior, still horizontal in the debris field.
He’s no longer there. Someone—the military probably—removed his body. I knew they would
But I was afraid just the same.
I let out a small sigh.
“It doesn’t look threatening,” Odette says.
In fact, it’s even more dangerous now. Because the debris field marked where the stealth tech was. It’s harder to determine now where the stealth tech begins and the regular part of the cockpit ends.
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