The Runabout

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “However,” I say, “we’re stranded here if we don’t deal with that anacapa, so leaving the team probably isn’t an option. We’re close to the runabout, and depending on the scenario, we might be able to send someone in to untangle you, Yash, and Orlando, from whatever has you hung up inside. The key would be to get you physically outside of the runabout so that you can be pulled back to the Sove.”

  They’re staring at me. Yash’s face is a mask. Mikk’s lips have thinned.

  I straighten my shoulders. “You’re saying that I’m not one hundred percent, even though I say I am.”

  Mikk’s eyes narrow.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let me give you that assumption. Let’s say that I’m not at my peak condition. That I might not be able to dive at my usual abilities.”

  Mikk closes his eyes. He knows where I’m going with this.

  “Do you really want a diver who is not at her usual capability to dive in as the rescue diver? The person who has to act fast and make sure everyone is all right? Shouldn’t the person in reserve be the best person we have, just in case something does go horribly, horribly wrong?”

  I look at all of them. Orlando has bowed his head so I can’t see his reaction. Yash hasn’t moved.

  Mikk sighs. “I don’t like it,” he says.

  “I don’t either,” I say. “But all the evidence we have is that the anacapa field is gone. If that’s the case, and what we’re seeing from the probes is accurate, then this dive should be easy.”

  “It won’t be,” he says.

  “I know that, and I don’t expect it to be,” I say. “But the data we have implies that it will. The trip from the Sove to the runabout is short, the runabout is small, and it looks like the anacapa drive is fairly easy to access. We won’t know that for certain until we get there, but that’s what we’re seeing.”

  He’s shaking his head slowly, disagreeing without saying a word.

  “Do you have any other ideas?” I ask. The challenge is back in my voice.

  “No.” Yash finally speaks. I turn toward her. Orlando raises his head.

  Of course, she would disagree with me. She hasn’t done this kind of diving—

  “I don’t have other ideas,” she says, and it takes me a moment to realize that her firm no a moment earlier wasn’t in response to my entire idea. It was in response to my single question.

  She doesn’t have other ideas.

  Neither does Mikk, and Orlando has moved himself out of the discussion.

  “We are down a diver,” Yash says. “We can take someone completely inexperienced or Orlando and I go, hoping that nothing will go wrong.”

  “You can’t hope for that,” Mikk says.

  “I agree,” Yash says. “Our history inside the Boneyard, let alone our history with this runabout, suggests that something will go awry. Orlando will do very well no matter where we put him. But we’re limited to him and Boss as our most experienced onsite divers, because of those anacapa fields.”

  “And because of Elaine,” Mikk says softly.

  Her presence hangs over this discussion.

  “We never asked you directly,” Yash says, looking at Orlando, “are you still willing to dive the Boneyard?”

  My breath catches. Yash has moved into our way of doing things without even realizing it. In the Fleet, people didn’t get a choice.

  I always try to give my divers a choice.

  Orlando raises his head. He looks calmer than I expected, given how hard he’s fought not to be in this conversation.

  “Boss already asked me,” he says quietly.

  And that’s all he says. We had a bit of a discussion the day before, mostly me reminding him of the risks and him listening as if I were insulting him ever so slightly just by bringing it all up and questioning whether or not he wanted to participate.

  “What do you think about the dive?” Yash asks him.

  “I think Boss and I should dive it,” he says. “You can talk us through whatever we need with the anacapa drive.”

  “No,” Yash says, before we even get a chance to discuss it. “I need to see that drive before I tell you how to mess with it. If I tell you to do the wrong thing, you will die.”

  Orlando’s gaze meets mine. I suddenly realize that he thinks we’ll die no matter what is going to happen. I’m not entirely sure that bothers him.

  Most of us who dive feel it would be better to go out in the middle of a dive than alone in a bed like Elaine is right now.

  “We’re doing it my way,” I say. “I’m going on this dive. Yash is going. Orlando will remain in the bay, waiting to come get us if need be. Mikk will run the dive from here.”

  “I don’t like it,” Mikk says again.

  “I know,” I say, and leave it at that.

  Twenty-Three

  I’m not scared.

  Not as we map the dive using the interiors we pulled from the runabout. Not as we decide how we’re going to keep verbally pinging the Sove. Not as we figure out how many tethers we’re going to wear.

  Not as we pull the equipment, and make sure it functions.

  Not even as Yash asks the occasional stupid question, all of which I answer with great patience, at least according to Mikk.

  I should be scared. I nearly died last time. Elaine might be permanently injured because of that dive. I nearly stepped off into oblivion like my mother had.

  I should be terrified.

  But I’m not.

  It’s as if I’ve seen the abyss, and while it’s a painful place to cross into, I can face it now. I might not be able to handle it on a day-to-day level, but I know what I’m getting into.

  If I die on this dive, I know how I will die. I know how painful it will be. I know how fast it will be.

  And I’m ready for that. Just like I’m ready for the dive itself.

  We are standing inside the bay where we had launched our last, horrid dive. Yash and I are suited up. Orlando is as well, because we all expect the dive to go badly.

  He will remain here, with the bay door open, monitoring us. All three of us have tested our diving suits to make sure they function properly. I test and double-test mine, since I’m wearing my backup suit.

  We all decided that the suit I wore on the last dive would be too risky to wear again.

  This suit fits just the same as my usual suit, but it feels different against my skin. Newer, fresher, with just a little less give in the fabric. The oxygen smells fresher too, which tells me the rebreather in the other suit probably needed a better cleaning than I had originally given it.

  Mikk is monitoring from the cockpit, along with some of the newer techs. He’s training them, which we should have done earlier.

  Elaine is there too. She wants to watch the dive. Mikk doesn’t want her there, but I do. She’s the only other person who knows how this particular malfunctioning anacapa field feels, and she’s the only one who knows just how fast everything can crash in on you.

  She’s perfect. If she had just a little more energy, I would have considered having her run the dive instead of Mikk.

  As it is, I made him promise he would listen to everything she said. He seemed a little affronted that I would be so firm about that, but I don’t care.

  Elaine is as valuable to this dive as Mikk is.

  Orlando and I have just launched and secured the line between the Sove and the runabout. Yash is double-checking her tether. We decided we’re only going to wear one around our waists so that we won’t get tangled up in each other’s tethers.

  Mikk, who is clearly terrified of this dive, wants us to wear two.

  Orlando has strapped his on as well, mostly to show Yash exactly how it’s done. He double-secures hers. I don’t think she notices, but I do.

  And I approve. I don’t want her to accidentally untether herself in the middle of a crisis.

  Yash seems nervous. She made sure we’re wearing gloves that enable us to tag things as dangerous. We made the tags shortly after we started diving t
he Boneyard months ago. She had worried that we might send ships back to Lost Souls without someone to adequately explain the dangers of what we find. So we have notifiers attached to our gloves.

  Everyone back at Lost Souls knows to avoid the things marked “dangerous” until we can explain what we know about them or what they do.

  On this dive, Yash and I will have to toggle back and forth between the notifiers and the markers for the handholds. Usually I just use the gloves to mark the best handholds for people who follow me.

  But given the problems we’ve already had with this runabout, I’m happy to tag parts of it as dangerous.

  “Hey, Boss,” Mikk says in my ear, “are you sure you’re diving today?”

  I brace myself for a fight. Why is he bringing this up now?

  “What’s the problem, Mikk?” I ask, my tone cold.

  “Your heart rate is normal,” he says.

  I let that information sink in for a moment. I’m about to dive and my heart rate hasn’t gone up. I check in with myself. I don’t feel overly excited. I’m happy to be diving, but that’s a completely different emotion than the gids.

  Orlando and Yash have heard him, but they don’t say anything.

  I do. I give them the chance I used to give my divers back when I ran my own wreck-diving company.

  “Last chance to back out,” I say to the two of them.

  “If I do, what will you do?” Yash asks, her voice a bit clipped.

  I shrug. “You and I will figure out how to handle the anacapa, with you here on the ship.”

  “I already told you that’s not an option,” she says.

  I look at Orlando. His face seems filmy inside the hood.

  “I’d love to join you,” he says. And I can hear strength in his voice. Unlike Yash, he’s not afraid of what’s out there.

  I wish he were diving with me.

  “Well, next time,” I say. “I hope I don’t see you out there today.”

  “Me, too,” he says, his tone serious. He pauses, then adds, “You ready?”

  I double-check my tether, then tug on Yash’s just to make sure. Then I nod at Orlando.

  He’s the one who is going to shut off the environmental controls inside the bay. Before he does so, we grab the handholds beside the bay door. Then he slams a palm on the control pad, and the environmental system shuts off. All three of us float upwards. I breathe normally inside my suit, and run the usual checks.

  Mikk reminds Yash to do so through the comm. She nods quickly, apparently startled that she had forgotten something that basic.

  I am forgiving. I’m usually the one who’s a little off at the beginning of a dive, but I’m not this time.

  I’m ready to go back out there.

  “All right,” Mikk says. “Unless there are objections, we’re opening the bay door from up here.”

  “No objections,” Orlando says. He’s in charge of that door, of everything in the bay, really, including me and Yash. Again, that’s how we designed the dive.

  The door slides open, revealing the Boneyard. It always takes my breath away. Those ships, looking frozen against the blackness of space. The light filtering in from distant stars and just from the Boneyard itself.

  And the faint hint of music, just like I always hear.

  I half expected that music to upset me, but it doesn’t. It’s familiar and comforting.

  “I’m going out first,” I remind Yash.

  Since she forgot to do her double-check, I’m going to assume that she’s going to forget things until we get inside that runabout’s cockpit.

  “You’ll have to tell me if I’m going too fast,” I say to her.

  “I will.” She sounds nervous. I’m not used to that. Yash usually covers her emotions well.

  I ease myself down, keeping my left hand on the handhold and with my right, I grab the line we’ve tethered to the runabout.

  Then I step into the Boneyard.

  Twenty-Four

  The music is so faint it sounds like someone is playing their favorite tunes loudly on a different floor of the ship. The sound is there, but not any more noticeable than the light filtering around us.

  I check the line to make sure it’s actually hooked to the runabout. I’ve gone on dives where the line wasn’t hooked up properly, and fell away as we started to use it as a guide.

  This line remains taut. I sink beside it, enjoying the sense of weightlessness. I pull myself along, focusing on that runabout.

  The runabout’s doors are still open, as I left them. Nothing else looks different, even though the data stream we got was right: I’m not hearing that choral music at all. The music that was so distracting on my first dive toward the runabout is completely gone.

  The line bobs in my hand as Yash joins me. I stop moving and turn just enough so that I can see her. I can’t see her face because I’m too far away. The light and ships are reflected in her faceplate, blocking my view of her.

  She waves at me with her right hand. I like the touch of whimsy.

  “I’m not hearing anything,” she says, sounding tense.

  “Your comm is off?” I ask, suddenly worried.

  “No,” she says, proving that the comm works just by responding to me. “I’m not hearing that music you and Elaine heard.”

  “I barely hear it,” I say. “It’s nothing like it was that day.”

  “Good,” Yash says in a near whisper. “Really good.”

  I agree. We aren’t quite in the clear, but things aren’t as bad as they were that day.

  We’re running a time check on this mission, but we don’t have a time limit. We never even discussed one, because we all want to get this done. I’m hoping for a quick in and out, although I don’t say that.

  I don’t want to hurry Yash.

  Still, we make it to the runabout in what seems like record time. I check my time with Mikk, and we are clocking everything exactly to the second, which is good. If I remember correctly, we were already a thousandth of a second off the last time we reached this point.

  I make myself focus on this dive. We will go in, check the anacapa, and get out. That’s all.

  I reach the side of the runabout, and cling to the exterior door. The nanobits float around me, disturbed by my presence, but I don’t hear any music at all here. That seems strange to me, but I don’t comment on it.

  Instead, I turn slightly, and watch Yash make her way across the line, one rather nervous handhold at a time.

  She reaches my side much more slowly than I would have liked. Part of me still wants Orlando on this dive. He and I would have been inside already. We would have made our way to the cockpit, and maybe even to the drive, depending on what we would have discovered.

  I hadn’t thought this through, working with a newer diver. I hadn’t realized how slowly we would have to go.

  Still, I make myself smile at her in case she can see into my hood. Even if she can’t, she can hear the smile in my voice.

  “Ready?” I ask her.

  She takes an audible breath. My suit might not be recording any gids from me, but I’ll bet hers verges on gids for her.

  “Honestly,” she says, sounding a little surprised, “I can’t wait to see this.”

  I hadn’t expected the enthusiasm from her. I think I expected more fear. My smile becomes a real one.

  I grab the edge of the outer door, and slide into the airlock.

  I don’t remember the interior of the airlock much at all. I just remember that interior door. It shows up in my dreams, only without the handprint in the center of it.

  That handprint is mine.

  I touch it, like a talisman, remembering slapping my palm against that door trying to get it to open. It’s open just far enough now for me to slip through uncomfortably.

  I think Yash can get through that opening as well.

  More nanobits float around me. This runabout is sloughing off materials at a surprising rate. Or maybe we just disturbed so many of them that have fall
en off over the years.

  Yash pulls herself into the airlock as well. It’s bigger than I realized. Both of us can float in here comfortably. I suspect Orlando and Mikk would fit in here as well.

  This runabout is well designed, like all Fleet ships. Most small ships of Empire build don’t have spacious airlocks, apparently not considering what might happen if a group of people needed to get inside quickly.

  Yash looks at the walls, then runs a gloved finger over one side, releasing more nanobits.

  “This thing is falling apart,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Have you marked it already?” she asks, and I know she’s not referring to simple handhold marks. She means danger marks.

  “No,” I say. I wasn’t planning on marking the runabout itself, but that makes sense given the problems we have.

  She reaches up, places her glove on the center of the airlock door, and runs her thumb along the edge of her forefinger, where the mark trigger is.

  She moves her hand away. The danger sign flares blue. Beneath the word danger, which is written in both the Fleet’s Standard and modern Standard, is the name of the Lost Souls Corporation. She actually added a “property of” tag, which I hadn’t expected.

  It was a brilliant thing to do, in case this runabout ends up somewhere unexpected—which, given everything else that’s happened, wouldn’t surprise me.

  I nod toward the small opening in the interior door. “Can you fit through that?”

  I know she can, but that matters less than what she believes. If she struggles to squeeze through, she might damage her suit.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Time check,” Mikk says.

  Both of us give him the time on our clocks. Again, we’re not finding a difference. That bothers me. I’m not sure why this dive would be so dramatically different from that first one.

  My muscles tense. I let out a long breath, reminding myself to relax.

  I check my own vitals, though, and nothing is unusually elevated.

  The nerves haven’t even reached my usual diving levels.