Diving into the Wreck du-1

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  I don’t answer him. Instead, I follow him to a room across the corridor. He presses the side of the door and it slides open. We step into a platform that seems to jut into space. The walls, floor, and ceiling are clear.

  In the distance, I can barely make out the Dignity Vessel. We’re moving away from it rapidly.

  “By my watch,” he says, “it should explode any minute now.”

  I glance at mine. One minute and forty-nine seconds, to be exact.

  “Magnify,” he says, and he’s clearly not speaking to me. The image in front of us becomes larger. The Dignity Vessel is now the size of my hand.

  “Again,” he says,

  The Dignity Vessel now fills the main window. It looks like it’s only a few meters away from us, even though I know it’s much farther.

  I have turned my arm so I can glance at the time without moving my head. I look down.

  One minute exactly.

  My father clasps his hands behind his back in a military pose.

  “What kind of ship is this?” I ask.

  “It’s an imperial vehicle,” he says.

  “Clearly,” I say. “But what type?”

  “Military science vessel,” he says.

  Science vessel. Fascinating. It probably doesn’t have elaborate weapons systems. If it has weapons at all.

  My mouth is dry. I’m still staring at the Dignity Vessel, and I realize I have no idea if that explosive will work.

  Then the Dignity Vessel turns white. It freezes for a moment, as if it’s suspended in time, and then the whiteness gets so bright that both my father and I have to shield our eyes.

  Still I can see the shape of the vessel against my eyelids, this time done in golds. I finally open my eyes again, and it’s gone.

  There’s only a pinpoint of light, tiny and white, where the vessel was.

  “You took it off magnify,” I say, because I can’t think of any other way to respond. I’m lightheaded and nauseous. I wanted to destroy the stealth tech, which meant destroying the vessel, but ruining the damn thing still shocks me.

  I’ve never done anything like this before.

  “No,” he says. He sounds as shocked as I feel. “No, it’s still on magnify.”

  “Then what’s that light?”

  “You tell me,” he says.

  “I’m not the one with a science vessel,” I say.

  The light fades, slower than I expect.

  Finally, it winks out.

  We stand in silence for the longest moment. Maybe moments. I don’t know. I no longer look at my watch.

  I have no need to.

  “I can’t believe you blew it up,” he says. “Why the hell did you blow it up?”

  “Stealth tech is dangerous,” I say, sounding like Squishy. “It kills people.”

  “Hell,” he says, his voice shaking. “The laser pistol you were carrying kills people.”

  “At least they know what hit them,” I say.

  He turns. The view from the window—that point in space where the Dignity Vessel had been—seems black and vast.

  “That was working stealth tech,” he says. “Such low grade that we could actually make progress with it. It was the best find in a generation, maybe two. You had no right to destroy it.”

  “You had no right to kill Karl,” I snap.

  “I didn’t,” he says. “You did. You were supposed to go in there. You would have survived.”

  “You only know that because I survived the first time,” I say. “Maybe I shouldn’t yell at you about Karl. Maybe I should yell at you about Mother. Did you send her in there to see if she had the marker? Or did you know she would die in there?”

  He grows pale. “That’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it?” I ask. “You risk dozens of lives for your little experiment and you tell me I’m not being fair?”

  He grabs me by the left arm and yanks me forward. “Let me show you something,” he says.

  If I move to the right and hook my foot around his ankle, I can drop him without much movement at all. Of course, if I let go of Squishy’s bomb, I can grab my knife and stab him to death in a matter of seconds.

  I do neither.

  Instead, I let him drag me out of the room.

  I let him control me, one last time.

  ~ * ~

  FORTY

  I hear it before I see it: a tiny thrumming, so faint it sets my teeth on edge.

  Maybe I felt it from the moment I got on this ship.

  My heart starts pounding hard again.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he says, “except hire the right people. They’re figuring this out.”

  A headache builds between my eyes. I stumble forward into the corridor. He’s still holding my arm tightly. I can feel his fingers pinch my flesh through my suit.

  “Why do you want this so badly?” I ask. “Is it the money?”

  “If it were the money, I could have quit a long time ago,” he says.

  We follow an incline, which takes us up a level. I note an elevator to our side, but he doesn’t take it, preferring to stay in the corridor instead.

  The thrumming becomes a tiny chorus, as if a group of singers were far away, their song just beginning to filter toward us.

  “Then what is it?” I ask.

  “You were wrong about your mother,” he says. “I loved her.”

  “So you say.” I make myself walk fast enough to keep up with him. I don’t want to be dragged any farther.

  I also stare at the walls, mentally making note of landmarks, as if I were diving this ship instead of walking through it. There’s a map of the ship at the beginning of the incline. It has a lot of decks and levels.

  I nod toward the image. “How many people are on this ship?”

  “It can hold one hundred,” he says.

  “That’s not what I asked,” I say.

  “I usually run with a crew of fifty,” he says.

  “But you’ve been gone. Where were you?”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment.

  “You’re running this with a skeleton crew, aren’t you? That woman who caught Hurst in the skip, she doesn’t know anything about stealth tech, does she?”

  The questions she asked made that clear.

  “Where’s your team?” I ask.

  “I don’t use the same people all the time,” he says. “It’s my project.”

  “You’re keeping them in the dark,” I say. “You want to be the one to claim this discovery as your own.”

  “Then you destroyed it,” he says, but his words hold no conviction.

  “You didn’t discover the Dignity Vessel,” I say. “You have stealth tech on this ship. Ancient stealth tech. I can hear it.”

  He stops and turns to me. “Hear it?”

  I bite my lower lip. Am I the only person who can hear the thrumming of stealth tech? I thought everyone with a marker could hear that faint singing sound.

  “You hear the chorus?” he asks.

  I nod, reluctantly, but I do nod.

  “Not everyone can hear it,” he says. “Not even everyone with the marker. I wonder what that means?”

  “I don’t really care,” I say. “Why don’t you understand how dangerous this stuff is?”

  “And why don’t you understand that if it’s dangerous, it’s better off with the Empire?”

  “Who’s trying to re-create it,” I snap, “so it can kill again.”

  “If they understand it,” he says, “they can shut off the Room.”

  “If they understand it,” I say, “they can build Rooms of their own.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but he continues to pull me along. We finally get to a flatter part of the corridor. We go past another map. This one has little red symbols scattered in various places on the ship. Five are in the cockpit. Then I remember. This is a science vessel. I’m in the lab.

  The front part of the ship can leave us behind if it wants to.
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  If it deems the lab dangerous.

  I see four more red dots some distance from us, and then two in the middle.

  Those dots must represent life signs. The two in the middle have to be us.

  Eight crew members on a ship that fits one hundred? What are they doing here? Why so few?

  My father stops in front of two shielded doors. The chorus has grown. He presses his thumb against the center of the door, then leans forward for the retinal scan. He breathes onto the edge, probably as proof that he’s alive. That last precaution is the key. So many of these systems have no indicator for living thumbs or retinnas.

  The doors open. This room is as closed as the one below was open. There are no portals, no openings to the rest of the ship or to space—just workstations along the side, a long table in the middle, and a giant computer screen on the far wall from where I’m standing. Numbers run along that screen as well as in a three-dimensional graph. It takes me a moment to recognize the graph. It’s an energy indicator. It’s registering the power of… something, although I’m not sure what.

  In the very center of the room, on top of the table, surrounded by three different clear shields, is a bottle the size of my forearm.

  The bottle appears to be throbbing, but it’s not. I know it’s not, because it’s the source of the sound. And the sound, packed into that little space, makes it seem like it’s moving.

  Maybe it is. With some kind of vibration.

  “There it is,” my father says with no small amount of pride. “The first working stealth field in five thousand years. This one was created in our lab.”

  My mouth is dry. “You didn’t,” I say.

  “I did.” He steps toward it.

  I stay back.

  “How do you know it works?” I ask.

  He points to the graph.

  “Have you had anyone stick their arm in there?” I ask, and I can hear the maliciousness in my voice. “Have you uncorked that bottle near someone who doesn’t have the marker?”

  “Of course not.” He sounds shocked.

  “Then you don’t know if it works,” I say.

  He gives me a withering look. “Of course I do,” he says. “And you do too. You can hear it, just like I can.”

  “How many people know about your little experiment in stealth tech?” I ask.

  He smiles at me. “The Empire already has my specs.”

  “So they can build it?” I hear the panic in my own voice. I’ve destroyed the Dignity Vessel for nothing.

  “Not yet,” he says. “But soon. We had to take bits of your Dignity Vessel’s technology to build our own.”

  “You didn’t build this from scratch?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “Right now, we need a bit of a kick start. You’ve just made that a lot harder. The Dignity Vessel was perfect because the stealth tech’s power had diminished over the years. We could work in it safely.”

  “Those of you with a marker,” I say.

  He nods.

  “But you can’t work in the Room of Lost Souls?” I ask.

  “There’s no control panel in the Room,” he says. “There’s no control panel anywhere on that station, at least that we can find.”

  In spite of myself, I shiver. How hard has he looked?

  And, more to the point, how many lives has he sacrificed?

  “So,” he says with great bitterness, “if you wanted to set us back, you’ve managed it. If you wanted to destroy the program, you haven’t.”

  I nod. Not yet, I haven’t. I try hard not to close my hand too tightly around Squishy’s bomb. “Because you have other working stealth tech?”

  He grins at me. “Even you should know that Dignity Vessels are hard to come by.”

  “So you don’t.”

  “Not yet,” he says. “We’ll find more.”

  My heart is pounding. I don’t want them to find more. I don’t want them to have this technology at all.

  His words do reassure me a little; they don’t have any other functioning stealth tech. It might take generations to find another ship. The setback I’ve just caused might be as effective as destroying the program.

  “What about the rest of your team?” I ask. “Where are they? Shouldn’t they be sharing in this glory?”

  “I told you,” he says, “I don’t work with the same people. We weren’t here when you arrived because we were dropping off the last group of scientists. The next group is due in a few days.”

  “But you stay the whole time,” I say. “Why is that?”

  “My work,” he says. “My project.”

  Then he sighs and looks at the bottle, as if it has all the answers.

  “And I thought, somehow, that it was my Dignity Vessel.”

  “Because I found it?” I ask.

  He shrugs and doesn’t look at me. Yet I know his answer. His answer is yes. Because of me.

  “So,” I say in a softer tone. “Explain this thing to me.”

  He gives me a sideways look, as if he can’t believe me.

  “Look,” I say, “I’m going to lose anyway. The military is farther along on stealth tech than I thought because of you. I may as well know what’s going on.”

  “It’s classified,” he says.

  “Yeah?” I say. “Then you shouldn’t have shown me that bottle.”

  His smile softens. The smile of my father—my childhood father, the one I remember vaguely from the days before Mother died. My heart twists.

  His grip on my arm loosens. He doesn’t pull me to the containers around the bottle. He guides me there.

  “In the bottom of the bottle,” he says, pointing toward it, “you see that bit of color? That’s from the Dignity Vessel. It carries a charge… .”

  I stop listening. I don’t know enough science to understand this anyway. Instead, I concentrate on the voices rising and falling in my head. The chorus isn’t as powerful as it was on the Dignity Vessel, and it certainly is nowhere near as overwhelming as it was in the Room.

  It’s an accompaniment, something ever so faint, just within hearing range. If the stealth tech on the Dignity Vessel was weak, this is almost nonexistent.

  But not quite.

  It’s there enough that I can hear it, that my father’s computer system can measure its output.

  I know my team isn’t in danger on that skip. They could get one room away from the stealth tech on the Dignity Vessel with no ill effects. They’re okay here.

  But if my father boosts this somehow, then people will get hurt.

  Again.

  “It’s lovely,” I say. I touch the edge of the containment field with my left hand. My father lets me. He releases my arm, leans forward, and continues explaining whatever it is that he’s talking about.

  I do note that he knows more about stealth tech than a nonscientist should. He has been studying.

  I lean forward, just like he is. I keep my left forefinger on the containment field. In my right hand, I run my gloved thumb along the edge of Squishy’s device.

  She made it very easy. A simple on-off switch that has to be flicked, then squeezed. The timer is built in. There’s nothing to set up. Once the device comes in proximity of a stealth field and is turned on, it will weld itself to the stealth field, like a magnet against metal. Only no one will be able to pry it loose.

  It then taps the stealth tech’s power to fuel its own reaction.

  And it will blow within an hour.

  Or so she told me. She seemed to believe it would work. But, she kept reminding me (a little bitterly), she never had a chance to test it.

  So it’s all theory.

  A theory that I want badly to work.

  I flick the switch, or what feels like the switch through the thickness of my glove. Then I squeeze the damn device, hoping I turn it on.

  Another voice joins the chorus.

  My father looks at me, alarmed. He hears it too.

  I slam the device against the containment screen. The entire screen turn
s red.

  “What the hell is that?” he asks.

  “The end to your experiments,” I say, and I hope I’m right.

  ~ * ~

  FORTY-ONE

  I grab my father’s arm.

  “And now,” I say, “we’re getting out of here.”

  My father yanks his arm away. He reaches for the device.

  “What is that thing?” he asks.

  “Another bomb,” I say. “This one designed by a former stealth tech engineer. Don’t try to remove it. It taps into the stealth tech.”

  “That’s not possible,” he says. He wraps his fingers around it and tugs. The containment field ripples like water, but it holds. The device does not come off.

  “You can’t do this,” he says.

  “I already have,” I say. “Now we have to leave. Just like we had to leave when the Dignity Vessel blew.”

  “No,” he says. He’s put his face close to the device, trying to figure out how to pull it off.

  I don’t like seeing his face so close to a bomb. I don’t want to kill him— I know that now. No matter what he’s done, I can’t kill him.

  And I can’t leave him here.

  I pull the knife. It gleams redly in the light from the containment field.

  He stands up and looks at me, mouth agape. “You’re not serious.”

  “You have to leave with me,” I say.

  “Or what?” he asks. “You’ll kill me?”

  I don’t answer that. I figured the knife would be enough of a threat. Obviously it’s not.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “If you’re right and this is a bomb, I’m dead anyway. You’re just hastening my death by a few minutes.”

  I don’t correct him. He has more than a few minutes, but I don’t want him to know that.

  “You have to leave with me.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds strangled and young.

  And at the same time, it sounds like his outside the Room, when he pulled me toward his ship. Then, it was his voice filled with panic, his voice that sounded strangled.

  Because of me? Or because of my marker?

  I’ll never know.

  “Come on,” I say. “When this blows, it could open a dimensional rift, just like the stealth field on the Dignity Vessel.”