The Runabout

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  We’re nervous. It’s pretty clear just from the way we’re all behaving. On a normal dive, Orlando, Elaine, and I would suit up alone. This time, Yash is with us, double-checking everything, from the suits to the tethers.

  She’s spending extra time on the suits, using functions I’ve never seen. She designed the suits, and apparently, she put in redundant systems.

  Normally, I’d be annoyed that she had added things to the design that she hadn’t told me about, but on this day, I’m not annoyed at all.

  I’m grateful.

  Yash is checking everything, from a completely different perspective than Mikk and I bring to this dive.

  She’s gone over Mikk’s findings, the ones that showed us what happened on the previous dive nanosecond by nanosecond.

  I went over those readings as well. I know exactly where I heard that music. There was a definite physical change in my suit’s readings. It looked like a slightly different version of the gids.

  We all marked that.

  What bothered me—what still bothers me—is that there was no physical change when I felt the pull of the music the most strongly. When I was hooked by that lure, there was no evidence of it whatsoever.

  I’m on my own when it comes to that, and I have promised both Yash and Mikk that I will report any feelings I have that are similar.

  I’m hoping there won’t be any.

  Elaine and I both have probes that we can release into the runabout. If we find an opening, we immediately release a probe, and then signal Mikk and return to the Sove.

  That’s the plan we all hope will work. We all doubt that it will, however.

  Elaine and I also have levers attached to our belts so that we can pull the runabout’s doors open by hand, if need be. Yash has given us her passcodes to Fleet ships, but I doubt the codes will work.

  I suspect this vessel is thousands of years newer than the Ivoire. I’m sure that entry passcodes have changed in the intervening centuries.

  But I don’t say that to Yash, particularly after she has impressed on me, for the third time, that I should try the codes first if we don’t find any other entry point.

  Mikk is nowhere near the bay. He’s on the bridge, where he’s going to monitor everything that we do. He’s already got the previous dive data on the screens before him.

  Mikk has already told me that I am a little too giddy, but he’s careful in his word choice. He did not say that I have the gids.

  And when Yash asked if my readings are different than they were before the previous dive, Mikk said they are.

  Apparently, I’m calmer.

  Which is a relief to me, because I feel calmer. I feel like I know what we’re getting into. I feel like I am going into this dive as prepared as I can possibly be.

  Elaine doesn’t say much. She doesn’t look nervous either, but then she never does before a dive.

  Yash finishes, giving us one more lecture, and checking the tethers one last time.

  Then she leaves the bay.

  Elaine and I put our hoods on, and double-check each other’s. Orlando puts his on as well.

  He’s going to wait down here until we’re done, monitoring everything.

  I give the order to have the bay’s environmental system shut off—not the gravity, but the earth-like oxygen mix.

  We use the oxygen mix as our baseline for the suits. If the suits have some kind of leak, we will learn about it while we’re inside the Sove, not outside and already at risk.

  We breathe in. We breathe out. Everything registers as normal.

  “You ready?” I ask Elaine.

  She doesn’t give me a cute or flip answer, which I appreciate.

  “I am ready,” she says.

  “Well, then,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  Twelve

  On my command, the bay doors slide open. I go out first, gripping the line between the Sove and the runabout with my left hand. It feels odd to travel with two other tethers attached to my suit. They float around me like loose coils on a badly designed ship. I have to ignore them as I move, ignore them while making certain that they do not trap me.

  Already I can hear the siren song of the malfunctioning anacapa drive. It’s not a full-blown chorus yet. More like voices heard underwater.

  I grip the line, and wait for Elaine to exit.

  She shoves at her other tethers as well; clearly, they bother her as much as they bother me.

  Then she nods, and we start forward.

  We have allotted ninety minutes for this dive. That’s longer than a standard dive, but we’ve all agreed that it’s better to make one long dive than make several short ones.

  It helps that the runabout is much closer to the Sove than the other Dignity Vessel is.

  I’m moving toward the runabout, hand over hand, going slowly, keeping my breathing even. It must be working, because Mikk confirms that I’m still not nearly as giddy as I was on that first dive.

  Elaine and I take turns reporting on what we hear.

  She doesn’t seem to have the same kind of reaction that I have to the anacapa energy swirling around us. I hear faint voices before she does, and then I hear full harmony, as if those voices have worked their way into a crescendo.

  At that point, she just starts hearing those voices.

  As I get closer to the runabout, I hear even more voices. Full-fledged choral music, running up and down the diatonic scale, just like before.

  Elaine can’t hear the runs. She only hears the voices, growing louder.

  I try not to think about those differences. I need to focus on the dive itself.

  As we move forward, I survey everything around us.

  I’m still hoping to see smaller bits of ships, something else that might be causing this energy field.

  I’m not seeing anything new, though. The same fighters, an orbiter, and the runabout, all in the shadow—so to speak—of the Dignity Vessel, which is off to my left.

  Far above us, the Boneyard’s force field glistens ever so slightly. Yash thinks the glistening is a weak area, which makes sense to me, if there’s a strong malfunctioning anacapa field.

  Although I also consider that hypothesis to be just that—a theory, something we haven’t tested yet.

  I pull myself closer to the runabout. We’re not far from it now.

  Deeper voices add into the music, also singing in identical chords, pure and strong. The voices provide a much-needed baseline. And, for the first time, I hear myself mentally call that music beautiful.

  Before Mikk can comment on that, I make note of it, and my heart starts pounding hard. Now, we might get to the moment where they pull me back.

  I don’t want to go back. I want to finish this dive.

  I check in with myself, though. I need to make sure that I want to finish this dive because of the dive itself, not because I’m feeling drawn toward the runabout.

  The thought calms me down, makes me feel more like myself. There’s a place I go to inside myself, a place I’m very familiar with but is hard to get to. It’s as if I wrap my personality inside a shell, which exists inside my body.

  I use this place most often on dangerous dives. I’ve trained it, with the hopes that it will appear when I need it. Sometimes it doesn’t—not in situations outside of diving.

  But in dives, it does.

  And it has.

  And that fills me with just a little relief.

  I don’t let my guard down though. I find that I can focus better, though. I no longer worry about Elaine. It’s her job to track her own reactions, and Mikk’s job to assess whether or not she needs to be removed.

  My job is to examine the exterior of that runabout, and get a probe inside it.

  It takes only ten minutes of very slow going to reach the runabout. The line has dug into the runabout’s side just below the main entry doors, which is not something we intended. But the entrance faces the Sove, which is a point that works in our favor.

  The music is loud here, crash
ingly loud. It makes my head ache.

  I no longer consider it beautiful. Now it’s as annoying as an unknown neighbor in my old apartment building on Hector Prime who played his music so loud that it echoed through the entire building, no matter how the rest of us set our apartments’ privacy settings.

  My suit shakes from the music—or it seems to—and it feels like the beat has invaded my skin.

  I report that to Mikk, then ask if my heart rate has elevated.

  “No,” he says curtly. All of his responses have been curt, as if I’m bothering him every time I speak.

  I know that’s a sign that he’s concentrating, and I try not to worry about it. But usually he’s more talkative when he’s in charge of a dive—even a dicey one like this.

  “I’m feeling it too,” Elaine says. “It’s as if something is crawling on my skin, but to a musical beat.”

  “Weird.” That comment, faint but pointed, comes from Yash. She apparently has looped into our comm. I don’t entirely appreciate that, but it’s too late to change now.

  The music is starting to give me a headache in my forehead, just above my eyes. I report that as well, but I get no real response from Mikk. I don’t expect one.

  He’s probably making certain that the environmental systems in my suit are working properly, and there’s not another reason for the headache.

  I check the oxygen mix, just to make sure. It’s normal. According to all the readings on my suit, everything on the interior is exactly like it was when we left the Sove.

  I take a deep breath. The air has a slightly metallic taste, which is normal for these suits, and I focus on that.

  Normal.

  Then I lean forward and put my right glove on the runabout.

  My glove has sensors everywhere. It automatically sends readings back to the Sove. Mikk won’t tell me what those readings say unless I specifically ask or unless something in them puts me in danger.

  I keep my left hand on the main line to the Sove, at least for the moment, giving Mikk a minute to record all of this information and maybe tell me to abort. He still says nothing.

  Elaine reaches my side, and mimics my action, only keeping her right hand on the line, and placing her left glove on the side of the runabout.

  We both look around.

  The perspective here is different: I can feel the rest of the Boneyard around me, but it also seems far away. The only important ship is the one I’m nose to nose with.

  The runabout’s side is badly pockmarked and gray with age. This is a decay I recognize. I’ve seen it in the ancient sector bases that I traveled to with Coop. I’ve seen it at the Room of Lost Souls. I have no idea if the information from my glove will reinforce this, but my eyes tell me that this runabout isn’t just damaged, it’s thousands of years old.

  Some nanobits slough off the side near my right hand. It almost feels like I activated a small storm of bits when I touched the runabout. Tiny tiny particles float past me and into the space around me. They’ll be on the suit when I return, just like they’ll be on Elaine’s.

  I look over at her. She’s also in a small cloud of bits.

  The side of the runabout feels flimsy. Parts of it have clearly been sloughing off for a very long time now.

  Aside from the pockmarks, I see no holes on this part of the runabout. Elaine is examining her side as well.

  “Anything?” I ask.

  “Lots of damage,” she says, “but time did this, not some other ship.”

  I agree.

  “There might be something off to my right,” she says. “I’m going that way.”

  “We’re going together,” I say. This dive is too dangerous to separate, even for a few minutes.

  I keep my left hand on the line, then slowly sink below it. That will also give me a view of the underside of this runabout—or what passes for the underside, given our perspective.

  The part of the underside that I see has the same kind of pockmarking. I have no idea how thick the hull of a runabout should be, but this just looks flimsy to me. Thin.

  I touch it, and it almost feels as if I can shove my hand through it.

  I don’t, of course. The last thing I want to do is cut my suit.

  And I don’t want to use a laser pistol or any kind of weaponry out here to open the runabout, if we can avoid it.

  I duck under the line and ease my way to Elaine’s side. The bad thing about going this direction is that she will be first, not me. I hadn’t thought that through when we made the decision, and that bothers me.

  I feel focused, but I’m also aware that part of my brain is now coping with the headache. It hasn’t grown worse, but it’s there, strong and powerful. My teeth ache. I move my jaw just a little to make sure I’m not grinding my teeth together.

  I’m not.

  But I can feel that music in my bones.

  I pull myself up so that my head reaches Elaine’s waist.

  “I’m going to stay low,” I say.

  “I’ll move up,” she says in response.

  We can cover more ground this way. The runabout isn’t that big, not like a Dignity Vessel. We couldn’t go all the way around a Dignity Vessel on one dive. But we should be able to see the entire exterior of the runabout, launch the probe, and get back long before our ninety-minute window.

  We’ve only been out here for fifteen minutes so far, although with this pounding in my head, it feels longer.

  Then that thought registers. I say, “Mikk, how long have we been here according to the Sove?”

  “Fifteen minutes, eighteen seconds,” he says.

  It matches the reading in my suit exactly.

  “That’s what I have,” I say.

  “Me, too,” Elaine says.

  Good news then. So far, Yash’s suits are working better next to the runabout than they had on the line.

  Elaine has let go of the line. Both of her hands are gripping the side of the runabout, using some kind of adhering technology that is Fleet-made, not the half-assed stuff I used to use. She also finds handholds and props her boots against the side of the runabout, probably in deference to me.

  My feet dangle because there’s no runabout below my thighs. I hang onto the side of the runabout as tightly as I can, and still allow my gloves to register something.

  The pockmarks remain consistent as we move along the side.

  “I’ve got something,” Elaine says, “but it doesn’t go all the way through. This little ship took some fire once upon a time.”

  She reaches up, and puts her hand in a groove that I can see from below. As we move slowly around the side of the runabout, the groove becomes apparent to me as well.

  Something shot at this runabout, probably with a laser weapon, but didn’t penetrate the hull. I raise myself just a little so that I’m face-to-face with the bottom of the scoring. If there’s a small hole here, we might be able to use one of our tools to make it a larger hole.

  But it looks like the damage occurred long enough ago that the nanobits repaired the injury to the side of the runabout as the damage happened. They apparently did not have the strength or the numbers to replicate well enough to make the damage go away entirely.

  Either that, or the hull is thicker than I expected.

  As we move to the side of the runabout, I glance over my shoulder. Small ships that I had only seen as holoimages inside a three-dimensional map in the Sove hover behind me. They look bigger than I expected them to be.

  And they’re canted at odd angles, so they actually look like they’re moving just a little. Or like they’ve been frozen in the midst of some kind of battle.

  Moving my head enough to look at those ships has eased my headache somewhat. Then I realize it’s not cause and effect. The headache eased when I moved to this side of the runabout.

  The headache didn’t entirely go away, but the music seems a lot less loud.

  “Has the music changed for you, Elaine?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “It’s
softer. Although I’m not sure you can use the word ‘soft’ for this stuff.”

  She’s right about that. It’s less intense.

  “My head feels a bit better as well,” she says.

  “Mine, too,” I tell her.

  We keep going, examining the side closely. I’m not seeing holes, and Elaine isn’t saying that she is either. Occasionally, when she moves her hands, more nanobits come off the vessel.

  Since I’m holding on to the scored groove in the runabout, nothing is coming off here. It’s also darker than the part that Elaine’s touching, which leads me to believe that this injury to the side of the runabout happened after it had been abandoned, lost, floating—something—for some time, but before it got so old that the exterior started coming apart.

  I’m sure the readings from my gloves will give us more information on that.

  Every few meters, I duck down and look underneath the runabout. So far, I’m not seeing any holes there either, and no more examples of some kind of laser fire. At some point, one of us will have to look at the part of the runabout that we’re now calling the top, even though it’s not the top of the runabout. Like everything else we see, it’s slightly canted.

  Faint swirls mark doors that open when the regular engine is in use. Attached to the one area near my feet is the bubble in the hull that marks an escape pod tube. The tube is closed, which means the pod was never used.

  Had the pod been used, the tube would have had an opening on at least one side.

  Elaine keeps moving, hand over hand, and starts to turn the corner to the back side of the runabout.

  “No,” Mikk says. He sounds more forceful than I’m used to hearing from him. “You can’t go around that side. I need to be able to see you. Both of you.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Elaine says, knowing he’s talking to her. “There’s a lot to cover—”

  “No,” I say. “Mikk’s right. We don’t go on that side.”

  “But—” Elaine starts, then stops herself. She knows better than to argue with the people in charge of the dive. I hear her sigh. “You can’t see much when you’re looking at us, Mikk. Just monitor us on the equipment.”

  “No,” he says so forcefully that it startles me. I don’t recognize the tone in his voice, but I understand it.