The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

Any other spacer would’ve scanned the thing, but other spacers didn’t have my priorities. I was happy my equipment wasn’t storing information. I needed to keep this wreck and its whereabouts my secret, at least until I could explore it.

  I made careful private notes to myself as to location and speed of the wreck, then went home, thinking of nothing but what I had found the entire trip.

  In the silence of my free-floating apartment, eighteen stories up on the scattered space-station wheel that orbited Hector One Prime, I compared my eyeball scan to my extensive back-up files.

  And got a jolt: The ship was not only Old Earth based, its type had a name:

  It was a Dignity Vessel, designed as a stealth warship.

  But no Dignity Vessel had made it out of the fifty light-year radius of Earth—they weren’t designed to travel huge distances, at least by current standards, and they weren’t manufactured outside of Earth’s solar system. Even drifting at the speed it was moving, it couldn’t have made it to its location in five thousand years, or even fifty thousand.

  A Dignity Vessel.

  Impossible, right?

  And yet . . .

  There it was. Drifting. Filled with mystery.

  Filled with time.

  Waiting for someone like me to figure it out.

  The team hates my secrecy, but they understand it. They know one person’s space debris is another’s treasure. And they know treasures vanish in deep space. The wrong word to the wrong person and my little discovery would disappear as if it hadn’t existed at all.

  Which was why I did the second and third scans myself, all on the way to other missions, all without a word to a soul. Granted, I was taking a chance that someone would notice my drops out of FTL and wonder what I was doing, but I doubted even I was being watched that closely.

  When I put this team together, I told them only I had a mystery vessel, one that would tax their knowledge, their beliefs, and their wreck-recovery skills.

  Not a soul knows it’s a Dignity Vessel. I don’t want to prejudice them, don’t want to force them along one line of thinking.

  Don’t want to be wrong.

  The whats, hows and whys I’ll worry about later. The ship’s here.

  That’s the only fact I need.

  After I was sure I had lost every chance of being tracked, I let the Business slide into a position out of normal scanner and visual range. I matched the speed of the wreck. If my ship’s energy signals were caught on someone else’s scans, they automatically wouldn’t pick up the faint energy signal of the wreck. I had a half dozen cover stories ready, depending on who might spot us. I hoped no one did.

  But taking this precaution meant we needed transport to and from the wreck. That was the only drawback of this kind of secrecy.

  First mission out, I’m ferry captain—a role I hate, but one I have to play. We’re using the skip instead of the Business. The skip is designed for short trips, no more than four bodies on board at one time.

  This trip, there’s only three of us—me, Turtle and Karl. Usually we team-dive wrecks, but this deep and so early, I need two different kinds of players. Turtle can dive anything, and Karl can kill anything. I can fly anything.

  We’re set.

  I’m flying the skip with the portals unshielded. It looks like we’re inside a piece of black glass moving through open space. Turtle paces most of the way, walking back to front to back again, peering through the portals, hoping to be the first to see the wreck.

  Karl monitors the instruments as if he’s flying the thing instead of me. If I hadn’t worked with him before, I’d be freaked. I’m not; I know he’s watching for unusuals, whatever comes our way.

  The wreck looms ahead of us—a megaship, from the days when size equaled power. Still, it seems small in the vastness, barely a blip on the front of my sensors.

  Turtle bounces in. She’s fighting the grav that I left on for me—that landlocked thing again—and she’s so nervous, someone who doesn’t know her would think she’s on something. She’s too thin, like most divers, but muscular. Strong. I like that. Almost as much as I like her brain.

  “What the hell is it?” she asks. “Old Empire?”

  “Older.” Karl is bent at the waist, looking courtly as he studies the instruments. He prefers readouts to eyeballing things; he trusts equipment more than he trusts himself.

  “There can’t be anything older out here,” Turtle says.

  “Can’t is relative,” Karl says.

  I let them tough it out. I’m not telling them what I know. The skip slows, shuts down, and bobs with its own momentum. I’m easing in, leaving no trail.

  “It’s gonna take more than six of us to dive that puppy,” Turtle says. “Either that, or we’ll spend the rest of our lives here.”

  “As old as that thing is,” Karl says, “it’s probably been plundered and replundered.”

  “We’re not here for the loot.” I speak softly, reminding them it’s an historical mission.

  Karl turns his angular face toward me. In the dim light of the instrument panel, his gray eyes look silver, his skin unnaturally pale. “You know what this is?”

  I don’t answer. I’m not going to lie about something as important as this, so I can’t make a denial. But I’m not going to confirm either. Confirming will only lead to more questions, which is something I don’t want just yet. I need them to make their own minds up about this find.

  “Huge, old.” Turtle shakes her head. “Dangerous. You know what’s inside?”

  “Nothing, for all I know.”

  “Didn’t check it out first?”

  Some dive team leaders head into a wreck the moment they find one. Anyone working salvage knows it’s not worth your time to come back to a place that’s been plundered before.

  “No.” I pick a spot not far from the main doors, and set the skip to hold position with the monster wreck. With no trail, I hoped no one was gonna notice the tiny energy emanation the skip gives off.

  “Too dangerous?” Turtle asks. “That why you didn’t go in?”

  “I have no idea,” I say.

  “There’s a reason you brought us here.” She sounds annoyed. “You gonna share it?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. I just want to see what you find.”

  She glares, but the look has no teeth. She knows my methods and even approves of them sometimes. And she should know that I’m not good enough to dive alone.

  She peels off her clothes—no modesty in this woman—and slides on her suit. The suit adheres to her like it’s a part of her. She wraps five extra breathers around her hips—just-in-case emergency stuff, barely enough to get her out if her suit’s internal oxygen system fails. Her suit is minimal—it has no back-up for environmental protection. If her primary and secondary units fail, she’s a little block of ice in a matter of seconds.

  She likes the risk; Karl doesn’t. His suit is bulkier, not as form-fitting, but it has external environmental back-ups. He’s had environmental failures and barely survived them. I’ve heard that lecture half a dozen times. So has Turtle, even though she always ignores it.

  He doesn’t go starkers under the suit either, leaving some clothes in case he has to peel quickly. Different divers, different situations. He only carries two extra breathers, both so small that they fit on his hips without expanding his width. He uses the extra loops for weapons, mostly lasers, although he’s got a knife stashed somewhere in all that preparedness.

  The knife has saved his life twice that I know of—once against a claim-jumper, and once as a pick that opened a hole big enough to squeeze his arm through.

  They don’t put on the headpieces until I give them the plan. One hour only: twenty minutes to get in, twenty minutes to explore, twenty minutes to return. Work the buddy system. We just want an idea of what’s in there.

  One hour gives them enough time on their breathers for some margin of error. One hour also prevents them from getting too involved in the dive and forgetting the ti
me. They have to stay on schedule.

  They get the drill. They’ve done it before, with me anyway. I have no idea how other team leaders run their ships. I have strict rules about everything, and expect my teams to follow.

  Headpieces on—Turtle’s is as thin as her face, tight enough to make her look like some kind of cybernetic human. Karl goes for the full protection— seven layers, each with a different function; double night vision, extra cameras on all sides; computerized monitors layered throughout the external cover. He gives me the handheld, which records everything he “sees.” It’s not as good as the camera eyeview they’ll bring back, but at least it’ll let me know my team is still alive.

  Not that I can do anything if they’re in trouble. My job is to stay in the skip. Theirs is to come back to it in one piece.

  They move through the airlock—Turtle bouncing around like she always does, Karl moving with caution—and then wait the required two minutes. The suits adjust, then Turtle presses the hatch, and Karl sends the lead to the other ship.

  We don’t tether, exactly, but we run a line from one point of entry to the other. It’s cautionary. A lot of divers get wreck blindness—hit the wrong button, expose themselves to too much light, look directly into a laser, or the suit malfunctions in ways I don’t even want to discuss—and they need the tactical hold to get back to safety.

  I don’t deal with wreck blindness either, but Squishy does. She knows eyes, and can replace a lens in less than fifteen minutes. She’s saved more than one of my crew in the intervening years. And after overseeing the first repair—the one in which she got her nickname—, I don’t watch.

  Turtle heads out first, followed by Karl. They look fragile out there, small shapes against the blackness. They follow the guideline, one hand resting lightly on it as they propel themselves toward the wreck.

  This is the easy part: should they let go or miss by a few meters, they use tiny air chips in the hands and feet of their suits to push them in the right direction. The suits have even more chips than that. Should the diver get too far away from the wreck, they can use little propellants installed throughout their suits.

  I haven’t lost a diver going or coming from a wreck.

  It’s inside that matters.

  My hands are slick with sweat. I nearly drop the handheld. It’s not providing much at the moment—just the echo of Karl’s breathing, punctuated by an occasional “fuck” as he bumps something or moves slightly off-line.

  I don’t look at the images he’s sending back either. I know what they are—the gloved hand on the lead, the vastness beyond, the bits of the wreck in the distance.

  Instead, I walk back to the cockpit, sink into my chair, and turn all monitors on full. I have cameras on both of them and read-outs running on another monitor watching their heart and breathing patterns. I plug the handheld into one small screen, but don’t watch it until Karl approaches the wreck.

  The main door is scored and dented. Actual rivets still remain on one side. I haven’t worked a ship old enough for rivets; I’ve only seen them in museums and histories. I stare at the bad image Karl’s sending back, entranced. How have those tiny metal pieces remained after centuries? For the first time, I wish I’m out there myself. I want to run the thin edge of my glove against the metal surface.

  Karl does just that, but he doesn’t seem interested in the rivets. His fingers search for a door release, something that will open the thing easily.

  After centuries, I doubt there is any easy here. Finally, Turtle pings him.

  “Got something over here,” she says.

  She’s on the far side of the wreck from me, working a section I hadn’t examined that closely in my three trips out. Karl keeps his hands on the wreck itself, sidewalking toward her.

  My breath catches. This is the part I hate: the beginning of the actual dive, the place where the trouble starts.

  Most wrecks are filled with space, inside and out, but a few still maintain their original environments, and then it gets really dicey—extreme heat or a gaseous atmosphere that interacts badly with the suits.

  Sometimes the hazards are even simpler: a jagged metal edge that punctures even the strongest suits; a tiny corridor that seems big enough until it narrows, trapping the diver inside.

  Every wreck has its surprises, and surprise is the thing that leads to the most damage—a diver shoving backwards to avoid a floating object, a diver slamming his head into a wall jarring the suit’s delicate internal mechanisms, and a host of other problems, all of them documented by survivors, and none of them the same.

  The handheld shows a rip in the exterior of the wreck, not like any other caused by debris. Turtle puts a fisted hand in the center, then activates her knuckle lights. From my vantage, the hole looks large enough for two humans to go through side-by-side.

  “Send a probe before you even think of going in there,” I say into her headset.

  “Think it’s deep enough?” Turtle asks, her voice tinny as it comes through the speakers.

  “Let’s try the door first,” Karl says. “I don’t want surprises if we can at all avoid them.”

  Good man. His small form appears like a spider attached to the ship’s side. He returns to the exit hatch, still scanning it.

  I look at the timer, running at the bottom of my main screen.

  17:32

  Not a lot of time to get in.

  I know Karl’s headpiece has a digital readout at the base. He’s conscious of the time, too, and as cautious about that as he is about following procedure.

  Turtle scuttles across the ship’s side to reach him, slips a hand under a metal awning, and grunts.

  “How come I didn’t see that?” Karl asks.

  “Looking in the wrong place,” she says. “This is real old. I’ll wager the metal’s so brittle we could punch through the thing.”

  “We’re not here to destroy it.” There’s disapproval in Karl’s voice.

  “I know.”

  19:01. I’ll come on the line and demand they return if they go much over twenty minutes.

  Turtle grabs something that I can’t see, braces her feet on the side of the ship, and tugs. I wince. If she loses her grip, she propels, spinning, far and fast into space.

  “Crap,” she says. “Stuck.”

  “I could’ve told you that. These things are designed to remain closed.”

  “We have to go in the hole.”

  “Not without a probe,” Karl says.

  “We’re running out of time.”

  21:22

  They are out of time.

  I’m about to come on and remind them, when Karl says, “We have a choice. We either try to blast this door open or we probe that hole.”

  Turtle doesn’t answer him. She tugs. Her frame looks small on my main screen, all bunched up as she uses her muscles to pry open something that may have been closed for centuries.

  On the handheld screen, enlarged versions of her hands disappear under that awning, but the exquisite detail of her suit shows the ripple of her flesh as she struggles.

  “Let go, Turtle,” Karl says.

  “I don’t want to damage it,” Turtle says. “God knows what’s just inside there.”

  “Let go.”

  She does. The hands reappear, one still braced on the ship’s side.

  “We’re probing,” he says. “Then we’re leaving.”

  “Who put you in charge?” she grumbles, but she follows him to that hidden side of the ship. I see only their limbs as they move along the exterior—the human limbs against the pits and the dents and the small holes punched by space debris. Shards of protruding metal near rounded gashes beside pristine swatches that still shine in the thin light from Turtle’s headgear.

  I want to be with them, clinging to the wreck, looking at each mark, trying to figure out when it came, how it happened, what it means.

  But all I can do is watch.

  The probe makes it through sixteen meters of stuff before it does
n’t move any farther. Karl tries to tug it out, but the probe is stuck, just like my team would’ve been if they’d gone in without it.

  They return, forty-two minutes into the mission, feeling defeated.

  I’m elated. They’ve gotten farther than I ever expected.

  We take the probe readouts back to the Business, over the protests of the team. They want to recharge and clean out the breathers and dive again, but I won’t let them. That’s another rule I have to remind them of—only one dive per twenty-four hour period. There are too many unknowns in our work; it’s essential that we have time to rest.

  All of us get too enthusiastic about our dives—we take chances we shouldn’t. Sleep, relaxation, downtime all prevent the kind of haste that gets divers killed.

  Once we’re in the Business, I download the probe readouts, along with the readings from the suits, the gloves, and the handheld. Everyone gathers in the lounge. I have three-D holotech in there, which’ll allow us all to get a sense of the wreck.

  As I’m sorting through the material, thinking of how to present it (handheld first? Overview? A short lecture?), the entire group arrives. Turtle’s taken a shower. Her hair’s wet, and she looks tired. She’d sworn to me she hadn’t been stressed out there, but her eyes tell me otherwise. She’s exhausted.

  Squishy follows, looking somber. Jypé and Junior are already there, in the best seats. They’ve been watching me set up. Only Karl is late. When he arrives—also looking tired—Squishy stops him at the door.

  “Turtle says it’s old.”

  Turtle shoots Squishy an angry look.

  “She won’t say anything else.” Squishy glances at me as if it’s my fault. Only I didn’t swear the first team to secrecy about the run. That was their choice.

  “It’s old,” Karl says, and squeezes by her.

  “She’s says it’s weird-old.”

  Karl looks at me now. His angular face seems even bonier. He seems to be asking me silently if he can talk.

  I continue setting up.

  Karl sighs, then says, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  No one else asks a question. They wait for me. I start with the images the skip’s computer downloaded, then add the handheld material. I’ve finally decided to save the suit readouts for last. I might be the only one who cares about the metal composition, the exterior hull temperature, and the number of rivets lining the hatch.