The Runabout

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “The closest is half a kilometer away,” Mikk says. “And that’s measuring on the diagonal.”

  What he’s telling me is that the sound should be even fainter with that direct measure.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “What’s going on?” Yash asks. “Are you coming back to the ship?”

  “No,” I say. “We’re going to assess something.”

  I shut off contact with the Sove again, and say to both Orlando and Elaine, “See if you see part of a Dignity Vessel nearby. Maybe there’s a loose anacapa.”

  They both acknowledge me. Then I hook my comm back to the Sove. I keep Yash and Mikk out of the loop because I don’t want them to focus on the wrong things. I want those of us diving to figure out what we can from here. Then we’ll turn to the map we made of the Boneyard months ago.

  That map isn’t complete. Nor does it show small bits and pieces of other ships. I don’t want to make assumptions about what’s around us based on partial data.

  So, I’m looking at everything. Above me hover two single-seater fighters of a design that Yash tells me got abandoned years before she started as an engineer (so well over 5,000 years ago). Even with repairs, those fighters will never fly on their own again.

  Five planet hoppers cluster below me, and they seem to be in good shape, although I can’t really tell from above.

  Directly in front of me, of course, is the Dignity Vessel that we’re planning to dive, and to my right, a runabout that is pockmarked with age. I’ve never seen that model before. It looks old.

  Pieces of other ships gather around us, but I don’t see any loose engineering sections or bits of tech. I see nothing that should have an anacapa drive except the Dignity Vessel.

  Yash has told me over and over again that anacapa drives do not belong in small ships. That’s a tenet of the Fleet. That tenet prevents the small ships from accidentally traveling elsewhere too rapidly with no backup.

  Anacapa drives enable Fleet vessels to travel through a fold in space. The vessels can actually stop in foldspace, and spend time there, time that is different than time in the part of space they left.

  The Fleet has argued throughout its existence about the nature of foldspace and what, exactly, an anacapa drive does. It always bothers me that the Fleet relies so heavily on technology it doesn’t understand.

  Of course, I now rely on it as well.

  Ships can travel through entire sectors of space using the anacapa drive—ending up almost unimaginable distances from here. The Fleet occasionally uses the anacapa drive to get out of a bad situation: a ship in the middle of a firefight will hop into foldspace for an hour or so, and return to the area where the fight had occurred half a day or a week later.

  The risk for small ships is that they get out too far from the Fleet, and have no way to return to the Fleet in a timely manner. Most small ship pilots aren’t as experienced as the crew that runs the Dignity Vessels, and therefore are prone to making serious mistakes.

  Yash also believes that anacapa drives are too powerful for small ships. She thinks that anacapa drives could damage a smaller ship, although she has yet to explain the science of that to me.

  She and I had a heck of an argument almost a year ago now, when I made her put an anacapa drive into a skip so that we could dive the Boneyard.

  She did as I asked, even though, it turned out, we didn’t need that drive to get into the Boneyard. The drive actually kept us out of the Boneyard, since the Boneyard’s shield technology actively blocks unfamiliar anacapa drives from entering—something my brain has still been assessing ever since we got that piece of information on our first dive here.

  “Is that sound coming from the Dignity Vessel?” I ask Elaine and Orlando.

  “I don’t think so,” Elaine says. She’s the closest to the Dignity Vessel. “It’s fainter here than it was near the Sove.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. It means that something we’re not seeing might actually be threatening the Sove.

  I let out a small sigh. This isn’t something we can solve from the line. We need to do some more investigative work, and we need to do it quickly.

  We don’t want to lose the Sove in here.

  “I’m aborting this mission,” I say.

  Elaine and Orlando both turn toward me, and I don’t have to see their faces through their hoods to know they’re registering shock.

  I almost never abort dives, and if I do, I don’t do it this early. I never do it when there’s no obvious threat or no injury.

  But something feels off about this entire dive.

  They don’t question me, though. They immediately turn around, and start pulling themselves back to the Sove.

  I travel with them, listening to that choral music running up and down a diatonic scale. I know that this isn’t music. I know it’s something else entirely. But it sounds like voices raised in song.

  And, more ominously, I find it beautiful.

  Four

  I lever myself through the small bay door right after Orlando, feeling a little chilled. We’re diving out of this side of the Sove instead of one of the main entrances because it’s easier. The equipment we need is strapped against the walls to prevent it from floating away.

  The environmental systems are off in here, and we’ve kept the door open to the Boneyard, a risk that Yash believes we can take, since the doors to the interior of the Sove are sealed shut.

  There’s no airlock in the bay because it’s designed to launch the kind of small ships that now litter this part of the Boneyard. However, this part of the bay is one of the most solidly built sections of a Dignity Vessel. Dignity Vessels are amazingly well built. But, when we decided to use the Sove as our main diving ship, we reinforced it with a layer of brand-new nanobits, strengthening the standard design.

  We also reinforced the interior of this bay, for an added layer of protection.

  It’s probably overkill. The Sove is more ship than we need. The Fleet’s large-sized ships, the ones people of my era call Dignity Vessels, but the Fleet just calls “ships,” are built for five hundred to a thousand people. Most of those people are not crew. A single Dignity Vessel can be a small city, with doctors and psychiatrists and chefs and artists and teachers as well as engineers and military personnel. Or the Dignity Vessel has a particular purpose, like some of the school ships that the captain of the Ivoire, Jonathan “Coop” Cooper, has told me about.

  Most of the people on a DV don’t touch the equipment that make the ship run. As a result, the ship can run well with a skeleton crew of less than twenty. But it can also function with a crew of four, if need be.

  I’ve only flown on a Dignity Vessel with a full complement of crew a few times, back in the early days of the Ivoire’s arrival in this time period. Since then, many people in the Ivoire’s crew have gone on to other lives or different careers. It’s been years since the Ivoire was fully staffed.

  Now, at Lost Souls, we’re training new Dignity Vessel crew members, because we have other Dignity Vessels. We never fully staff the ships. We don’t have enough people yet.

  On this trip, we have a crew of forty, many of them divers, which means that the Sove is much more ship than we need.

  However, Yash argued for Dignity Vessels to dive the Boneyard. After our second trip here, I finally saw the wisdom in her argument.

  She likes the power of a Dignity Vessel—the weaponry, the ability to jump into foldspace and get away quickly—combined with the space of the bays. In the future, she wants us to fill the Sove’s six cargo bays with small ships, so that we won’t just have Dignity Vessels at Lost Souls, we will have all the backup ships as well.

  Her plans are all wise. I’m happier in the larger vessel, even though I hadn’t thought I would be.

  And I love the idea of taking the smaller ships back to Lost Souls. We can revive some of the ships, and cobble the others for parts. Best of all, we can learn from their tech.

  Diving with a purpose other tha
n exploration. Salvage, in a way that I never thought I would do.

  I also like having the Dignity Vessel at my disposal, especially here in the Boneyard. Since our run-ins with the Empire, we’ve been using Dignity Vessels to patrol the border between the Nine Planets Alliance and the Empire. The Nine Planets have been using other ships as well, but none of those ships compare to a Dignity Vessel.

  I had initially thought we would use all but two of our Dignity Vessels to patrol that border. I figured that, as we got more and more Dignity Vessels, our patrols would increase.

  But I lack a military mind. I also had no idea what it took to fly these things.

  Both Yash and Coop convinced me to use the Sove as a training ship. Twenty of our forty-member crew are in training, learning how to run all of the equipment on board in an actual mission, rather than in some kind of simulation.

  In addition to Yash, who focuses on the mission itself, there’s always someone from the Ivoire’s original crew on the Sove, running the trainees. This time, we’re focusing mostly on engineering, so Zaria Diaz is in charge of them on this trip. Zaria was second engineer when the Ivoire arrived in our timeline.

  I have no idea what Zaria’s rank is now. Coop’s been trying to keep up with the Fleet protocols, which I find rather ridiculous. But I don’t tell him that either.

  Elaine enters the bay doors last. She pushes away from the doors. I retract the line, then close the doors. They close slowly, a design feature that I usually appreciate, but I dislike greatly in this circumstance.

  The sound of the Boneyard haunts me until the doors finally press closed. I let out a small sigh, as if I’ve been under pressure myself, then I reach over to the wall, and reestablish environmental controls.

  As the artificial gravity slowly reasserts itself, we float to the bay’s floor. We wait until our suits register a full environment before pulling off our hoods.

  The bay’s normal internal silence feels like an emptiness, and that thought horrifies me as well. Not just on a conscious level, but on a subconscious one: the hair on the back of my neck is literally standing on end.

  I resist the urge to swipe at it. It’ll settle down when I do.

  I wonder if Mikk is still monitoring my vitals. I wonder how they read when I’m deeply horrified.

  “What’s wrong?” Orlando asks.

  I’m not sure I can explain it all to him. I’m not even going to try, at least not in here.

  “Let’s meet with Yash and the other divers,” I say, as a deliberate dodge.

  The time it’ll take to assemble everyone will give me a few moments to myself.

  It’ll give me a moment to shake off my past.

  Five

  My mother’s final words were Beautiful. Oh, so beautiful.

  I know this, because I was the only one who heard them.

  My mother and I got trapped inside part of the Room of Lost Souls. She died horribly in there, aging at a rapid rate. By the time my father pulled her out, she was little more than a skeleton.

  I was fine. Terrified, but fine.

  I have the genetic marker that protects someone exposed to malfunctioning anacapa drives. My mother did not.

  And the Room of Lost Souls wasn’t really a room. It was a large starbase built thousands of years ago by the Fleet. Coop had visited it many times when it was active. Then, it was known as Starbase Kappa. In his memory, it was a living, breathing space station. Once he arrived here, he heard what it had become.

  He had actually led a mission there to deactivate the malfunctioning anacapa in the station, so that more people would not die.

  The station’s malfunctioning drive shut down too late for my mother and hundreds, maybe thousands, of others.

  But after I learned about anacapa drives and the way that the genetic marker interacted with them, I thought the temptations at the Room of Lost Souls only beckoned the unwary.

  Today, on this dive, was the first time I’ve had to reassess that assumption. I’ve loved the Boneyard since my first dive here—a passionate, rather unreasonable, love.

  But I always assumed that love was based in my own history. I am a historian. I love old things. I love wrecks, and I love mysteries—ancient mysteries—wrapped in technology.

  The Boneyard is almost tailor-made for me.

  Today, though…today, I felt something different. I felt an attraction to something so strong that I could have lost myself in it. I could have walked into that sound forever, the way that my mother’s hands reached for the lights she saw that accompanied the sounds she heard.

  I’m still not sure if she was aware of the fact she’d been dying that day—those days (at least for her). I’m not sure if she would have changed anything had she been aware of it.

  She had been completely captivated by the energy around her.

  As I was today.

  And that’s why I aborted the mission.

  I was scared, for the first time in a long time.

  I don’t admit that to the others, though. If I do, they’ll never let me dive the Boneyard again. Even though I’m the one in charge of everything, I can’t dive alone, and they know that. No one will accompany me. Everyone will consider me dangerous.

  And I find myself wondering: Am I dangerous?

  I let the thought slide off me as I head to the conference room. We’ve commandeered the nicest conference room near the bridge. One of the culinary staff keeps it constantly supplied with fresh coffee, tea, and water, as well as each diver’s favorite personal beverage. There’s fresh fruit as well, and some pastries for those of us who like to indulge.

  The food doesn’t look good to me at the moment. I’m still too wrapped up in the dive.

  Instead, my gaze goes to the holographic map of the Boneyard that we’ve managed to assemble over the months. The Boneyard is huge, and it has blank spots that we can’t seem to map no matter what kind of equipment we use. We’re probably going to have to explore it with a Dignity Vessel, but I’m not ready to do that yet. And neither is anyone else.

  My gaze goes to the holographic map, and then to the smaller representation of the area we have chosen to dive. Our target ship is a different color than the other ships in that model, just so that we know exactly what we’re looking at.

  Someone has updated that map to include the Sove as well.

  I’m the last to arrive, which surprises me. I only stopped in my cabin for a minute to change out of the clothes I wear underneath my suit. I didn’t even take time to shower. I splashed cool water on my face, and then came directly here.

  Mikk sits at the head of the table. He’s been at my side for years. He’s one of the best divers I’ve ever known, and he rarely complains about not being able to dive things like the Boneyard. We can’t send him unprotected into the Boneyard, but Fleet-designed ships protect people without the genetic marker from a malfunctioning anacapa drive.

  Yash and Coop had told me that for a long time before I was willing to test it. And, if I was being honest with myself, I had been unwilling to test it at all. Mikk and a few other members of Lost Souls had decided to test it themselves.

  They had known they could die, and they hadn’t cared.

  I like that kind of courage in the face of exploration, and I hate it at the same time. Especially when people I care about test things that scare me.

  And malfunctioning anacapa drives scare me.

  Of course, Yash was right. She knew Fleet tech better than any of us.

  However, she can’t convince me to let Mikk (or any of the others without the genetic marker) dive the Boneyard.

  I don’t want to risk his life based on the strength of the suit technology. We know the layers of nanobit construction protect him in the Sove, but the environmental suits are simply one thin layer against a cold and unforgiving universe.

  Mikk himself has never argued to go on these Boneyard dives.

  Right now, he watches me, arms folded in front of himself, and there’s something in his e
yes, an unease, maybe? He looks as strong as ever, but his face is set in a hard line.

  Yash sits next to him. She looks as strong as he does. Like Mikk, she was raised in real gravity, and it shows in the thickness of her bones and the layers of muscle along her powerful body. She wears her hair short so that she doesn’t have to deal with it, although at the moment, it could use a comb.

  So could Orlando’s. He doesn’t look like he’s done anything except remove his suit. He looks tiny compared to the two of them—a true wreck diver, the kind of thin, wiry man who can go into every nook and cranny.

  He didn’t start diving until I found him, thanks to an Empire study of people who could survive in what they called “stealth tech.” Stealth tech was really anacapa waves, but the Empire didn’t know that.

  I’m not sure they know it now.

  And Elaine sits at the foot of the table, chewing on the cuticle on her left thumb. That surprises me. Elaine, who is nearest to my age, is usually calm. That’s one of the reasons I like diving with her. She’s generally unflappable.

  I grab some water, then sit down. I’m still a little emotionally unsettled. That callback to my mother’s death upset me more than I want to consider.

  Yash frowns at me. “You aborted the mission without discussing it with me,” she said.

  She doesn’t dive—or rather, doesn’t dive much. She’s used to a more military structure. Even if we were operating in a military structure right now—and we aren’t—I’m in charge of the dives.

  But I’m not going to fight with her about that. Not here, not in front of the others.

  Maybe not ever.

  Because, on one level, she’s right: we should discuss before aborting early in a dive, especially given the time and resources we spend getting here.

  “That’s right,” I say after I take a sip of the water. “We couldn’t stay out there.”

  “We saw no danger there,” she say.