The Diamond Deep

by Brenda Cooper

  Ix did not respond to statements.

  Colin shifted his attention from the journal to Onor. “What do they want us to do?”

  “Deploy fighters. There will be a ship-wide announcement in two hours. Joel asked that you keep the people in the cargo bars and the working cargo bays all in line and calm.”

  “At least Joel plans to tell people,” Allen said. “Garth would have kept it secret.”

  Haric added, “Ruby made him. She says it will make everyone pull together to have an outside force.”

  Colin laughed. “I doubt Ruby actually made Joel do anything he truly didn’t want to do. But trust her to see hope everywhere.”

  Onor remembered the way her face had been screwed up in anger when she fired on Sylva. “Hope can be good, even in a fight.”

  “Especially then,” Colin said. He looked at Allen. “Call up your fighters. Split them between two shifts. Tell them there will be news, but not yet what the news is.”

  “Will do.” Allen rose and left.

  Colin addressed Ix again. “Tell your new captain that if he will give you permission to tell me anything I ask, I’ll do what he wants.”

  “He is everyone’s captain.”

  “Really?” Colin looked lost in thought for a moment, and then he said, “Let me reword my command to you. Tell Joel that if he will give you permission to tell me everything that you tell him, I will do what he asks and we will guard the cargo. Remind him that this is the outer part of the Fire, and thus the most vulnerable.” He hesitated a moment. “In fact, you might suggest that he send extra troops.” Colin flicked his journal off, which effectively ended the conversation.

  Onor remembered the other threats. “Colin? What do you know about the attack on the train?”

  “Sylva and Ellis have enough logistics people with them to hack the train’s central command system.”

  “What happened? After the train got underway again?”

  Colin looked disgusted. “We caught three of them. Everyone who matters got away. Sylva and Ellis both, and most of the people they had with them.”

  “I thought you had them. The doors looked like they were blocked off.”

  Colin narrowed his eyes, and Onor realized he’d just challenged him. Colin’s voice was clipped. “They went through the train tunnel.”

  “Wow.” Gutsy. The tunnel was so thin in spots Onor liked to close his eyes when they passed through it in a train.

  “At least you all got away before Ruby or Joel got themselves killed. Stupid girl, I saw her standing right in front screaming.” Colin sounded proud of her.

  “She’s brave.”

  “I know.” Colin said. “We were lucky it didn’t take Ix long to notice they’d hacked in. It closed the holes and kicked them out. That’s why you had a ten-minute fight and not a longer one.”

  Haric looked confused. “I didn’t think Ix took sides.”

  “Ix is on the side of stability. Always. Don’t ever make the mistake of assuming the machine has an ounce of loyalty.”

  Onor wasn’t sure about that. In Onor’s experience, Ix understood a lot that it wasn’t willing to share. It might be Ruby’s most aggravating supporter, but as far as Onor could tell, it was a supporter.

  Colin got up and held the door open for them. “There’s food at the bar if you want some before you go back.”

  “We’ve been assigned to you for now,” Onor said.

  Colin smiled. “So Joel understands me more than Ix does.”

  “What do you mean?” Haric asked.

  “Joel knew I would need you more than he does. And Haric, you’ll be a runner back if I need one. After all, that’s what you left me to do, isn’t it? Run for Ruby?”

  Haric stood up a little straighter. “Yes.”

  Colin smiled at them both, although he looked deep in thought and determined. “Take time to rest and eat. I presume you’ll want to be on the shift that greets the strangers?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Haric proclaimed.

  “Of course you are,” Onor said. “You’re just excited. Come on and eat. We won’t have to work for a few hours and we haven’t rested all day.”

  “I won’t sleep.”

  “Of course you won’t.”

  As Ruby closed the hab door behind Joel it felt like she was closing a thousand worries inside with them and a thousand more outside. “How is your arm?”

  “It’s fine. It was just a brush from the edge of a beam.”

  “It knocked you down.”

  “I get back up well enough.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He laughed. “You’d bounce.”

  She collapsed on the couch, unable to keep up any pretense of strength. Ben’s funeral, the festival, the attack, and dwarfing it all, the news of the strange ship. She felt stripped clean and beset with change and danger.

  They’d spent hours in the map room, staring and asking questions, going round on the new ship and on Adiamo and on the reds’ attack. At the end they’d been asking the same questions over and over with no new answers.

  Their living room was big, the wall opposite them dominated by a vid system which was blessedly off at the moment. Joel stood in the middle of the room, awkward, as if unsure how to rest in the middle of a slow-motion encounter with a strange spaceship.

  Ruby reached up and stroked his cheek. “Turn around, I’ll work on your back.”

  “Can we lie down for that?”

  He wasn’t teasing, he was exhausted. “Maybe you should eat something before you pass out?”

  He shook his head. “We only have a few hours.”

  She wasn’t hungry either.

  In the weeks he’d been in charge, his hair had grayed even more. But then, he almost never slept. In spite of that he often had time to think of her, to touch her and appreciate her and walk through her thinking.

  If anyone ever hurt him, she would kill them.

  If whoever was on this ship killed him, she would kill them.

  The ugly ship scared her. She couldn’t have told anyone why, but something felt deeply wrong.

  In the bedroom, Joel pulled off his shirt but left his pants and socks on. He stretched out over the bed diagonally so Ruby had room to work.

  She rubbed his head, her fingers moving in slow circles across his scalp. “What do you think they want?”

  His reply sounded muffled by the bedclothes. “Maybe they want to make us all slaves.”

  She leaned down and kissed him, then went back to her ministrations. “No, really?”

  “I didn’t expect our first contact to be with a ship that looks like a child’s put-together robot toy.”

  “It does look like that.”

  He shifted under her hands. “Lower, right in the middle of my back.”

  She found the place he wanted. He moaned softly as she worked knots out of the long muscles beside his spine.

  “Maybe it’s more like a home than a ship. Like a space station?” There was a space station in the game of Adiamo. Players had no access to it until they got one of the last two levels, and then they didn’t get to spend much time there. But she’d won the game over and over, and she remembered. It had looked much neater than this, though, and bigger.

  “Maybe.”

  “If they’re friendly, I want to plan the welcoming party. I’ve always imagined we’d sail into Adiamo and be escorted home by friendly ships that would tell us what to do. That we’d be like lost children coming home or something.”

  He pushed up onto his elbows. “Maybe it will be just like that.”

  She let out a long sigh. “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe Ix will learn something soon.”

  “If it does, you should sleep through it for now. We put SueAnne and Laird in charge so we can rest.”

  He pulled her down beside him. “You could rest, too.”

  A brief heat flared in her at his closeness, but she forced herself to ignore it and keep work
ing on his muscles. In no more than a few breaths, he was sound asleep, the wrinkles in his face relaxing as he fell away from the world.

  Ruby kept her fingers moving lightly over his skin. The Fire sounded quiet all around her as if it, too, waited.

  The metal of the corridor felt cold against Onor’s back. They’d done nothing but wait for hours. Haric’s dark eyes stood out against pale skin turned paler by the bright white light in the corridor. “When’s the ship going to do something?” Haric asked.

  Onor spoke as soothingly as he could. “You know as much as me.”

  “Which is nothing.”

  “That’s right.” Onor shifted to find a more comfortable spot.

  “Will they look the same as us?”

  “Of course they will. Ix says the ship’s from Adiamo, and we came from here.” Onor’s head turned at the sound of familiar footsteps. Claire, from the cargo bar. She handed them each a wrapped-up snack that smelled fabulous. Fresh orbfuit and peppery flat crackers and a dollop of protein cake for each of them.

  “Thank you,” Onor said.

  Claire had never much liked him, since he came from gray. Right now, she looked both nervous and like maybe he was her best friend.

  “I needed something to do,” Claire muttered, as if the confession embarrassed her.

  He understood. “Thanks.” He smiled at her. “Food helps.”

  “I hope so.” She continued down the corridor.

  “I’m glad we’re close to the bar,” Haric said as he spread his protein cake over his crackers with a dirty finger.

  “Me, too.” Onor figured the easy assignment was because Colin had a soft spot for Haric and wanted him safe. Or maybe because Colin knew the kind of trouble Haric could get into and wanted to be able to see him.

  Ix’s voice came crackling from just above them, a modulated, calm, and factual recounting Onor had grown used to after hours sitting under the speaker. “The unidentified ship has now almost completely matched our trajectory and speed. It is not likely that it can come any closer to us without risk of disturbance between the drives. It has not hailed us in any way we understand.”

  The speaker went silent again.

  Great. More non-information. Onor and Haric continued eating until all of the food was gone.

  A maintenance bot whirred past them, followed by a stocky older woman with a limp. Penny. She stopped in front of them, a hand-signal stopping the bot as well. Onor leapt up, folding her in his arms, breathing in the smells of robot grease and cleaner.

  She stiffened. She always stiffened when he held her. Damned old woman, independent as hell. “You look great,” he told her.

  She stepped back, rubbing a spot on her head. “Got a few new scars.”

  “A lot of people do.”

  “You went up in the world,” she said. She stood still, looking awkward. “I knew you would.”

  He had missed her. He should have visited her, but he hadn’t. He took her hand. “This isn’t your territory. Is everything all right?”

  “I came to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “There’s an attack being planned. Other people want to be in charge when the ship contacts us. They think they’re running out of time.”

  “Ellis and Sylva?”

  “And more. I hear there’s even some grays, although I never can tell. Hardly knew anyone before anyway, me living down low like I do. Now they’re all wearing whatever.”

  He laughed. She had that right. “You’re wearing a few colors yourself.” In fact, she had on everything but gray, and even a bit of green wrapped around one of her arms like a bandage.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what they’re planning?”

  “I overheard a conversation about getting right into command. Like now, while we’re standing here talking. But I don’t know how they plan to do that. They sounded tense and angry.”

  He couldn’t leave his post. “Is there anything else I should know? Or that I can do for you?”

  “Well, one thing. Can you tell me how scared I should be? About the ship?”

  As if responding to Penny’s question, Ix’s voice began its calm recounting from the speaker again. “Three ships have detached from the Adiamo system ship. They are approaching The Creative Fire. It appears that they will arrive in less than two hours.”

  Penny’s eyes widened, and Haric stood straighter. Onor fought back the lump of fear trying to creep up his throat. “It could be okay. One theory is they want to talk to us.”

  “Do you believe that?” Penny’s voice shook. “Really?”

  “I don’t,” Haric said unhelpfully.

  “I hope so,” Onor leaned down close to Penny. “Remember the first day I met you. The day you led me to get my beating?”

  “Hazing,” she said, a short smile playing around the edges of her lips, and then gone back to worry.

  “You didn’t tell me what was going to happen then, but you did tell me this time. I’m grateful for that.”

  “You’re my friend,” she said.

  “And you’re mine.” He pointed at the now-silent speaker. “Are you getting the same news we are?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.”

  Colin and some of his fighters were coming their way from the cargo bar. They looked determined, and they were moving fast. Onor only recognized one, Colin’s second in command, Par. Two were women. “Look Penny, go back under. See if you can figure out how to turn the robots into weapons. We might need everything we’ve got.”

  She reached in and gave him a little swat on the arm. “I’ll do my best.”

  “And stay safe.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Do it,” Onor told her.

  Colin’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Come on. Both of you. There’s nothing landing here.”

  They snaked past Penny, leaving her and her bot pressed against the wall to make room. She’d be okay. She was tough.

  They started into a slow, sustainable jog. The sound of maybe twenty pairs of feet reminded Onor of training below the park, running and running for hours just to get in shape to run when it mattered. Like now.

  Onor spoke to Colin. “Where are they landing?”

  “Outside of C.”

  Onor laughed. “Something breaks our way?”

  “Is that good?” Colin asked. “I’m not sure. There’s no one to greet them there.”

  “But at least no one lives there,” Onor said.

  “So are we going to greet them?” Haric asked.

  “We’re heading that way. We might just suit up.” Colin looked at Haric. “You need to go back.”

  “Back where?”

  “To the cargo bar. You can help watch over it. I need Onor—he helped with the salvage operation on C-pod.”

  “I want to stay with you.” Haric’s breathing was more labored than Onor’s or Colin’s, almost ragged.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “I’ll be safer with you.”

  Colin snapped at the boy this time. “It’s not safe anywhere. Go.”

  “Can I stay,” pause, “until there’s some kind of information,” Haric breathed hard, “to take back?”

  The desperation in Haric’s voice tugged at Onor, but there was another job to do. He matched his pace to Haric’s, the run clipping his sentences, too. “Colin’s right. Go back now. Stop in the cargo bar. Tell Ix what Penny told us. That there’s going to be fighting inside. Then go home. To Ruby and Colin.”

  Haric looked betrayed, but he turned and ran back the way they’d come. His footsteps echoed, loud and angry.

  Colin didn’t slow down, but he said, “Thanks. What did Penny tell you?”

  “That there’s people mad at Ruby and Joel.”

  “That’s news?”

  “Are we taking a train?” Onor asked.

  “They’ve all been shut off until the fight’s over.”

  It was a long way to C-pod. Onor settled in for the
run.

  They stopped about halfway, ducking out of the maintenance corridors into a row of habs. The first one they found was miraculously unlocked. Or maybe a gift from Ix. They liberated some water and relieved themselves.

  “Ix?” Colin spoke. “Any news?”

  “The ships are closer now. They haven’t contacted anyone. Joel wants Onor and Colin to suit up outside of C pod and wait to see if anything develops. More will join them. I received Haric’s warning, and it is a threat.”

  “What warning?” Colin asked.

  “Reds, moving in on command,” Onor said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did. Sort of. We can’t do anything about it anyway.”

  Colin frowned at him.

  “Besides, it’s hard to talk when you’re running.”

  “Later. Ready to run again now?”

  “You bet.”

  Then they were off again. Onor started thinking details through. “How are we going to get into C without the train?”

  “We’ll take a maintenance cart.”

  He’d done that. A long time ago, He’d even learned to drive one. “Should work.”

  “Tell me about C,” Colin commanded.

  “It’s mostly intact. Life support is off. Water’s all been moved, everything else worth keeping. I grew up there, but it’s like a ghost town now.”

  “Ship fell apart there? Was it really that simple? That’s what I heard.”

  “It was scary. Not sure it was that simple. Rumors said sabotage.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Onor agreed. “Me either. I think the Fire’s wearing out. Marcelle thinks it knows it’s going home.”

  “Is Marcelle your girlfriend?”

  “No.” It came out more forceful than Onor intended.

  “Someday you’ll outgrow your crush on Ruby.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  Colin laughed as he led them to the carts.

  Colin and Onor climbed onto a cart with two of the other fighters Colin had brought. It barely lurched forward. One of the people climbed off, and the cart moved much better. There was only one more cart. Colin appointed two more people to come with them, and sent the rest to do random patrols.