Squishy didn’t come back with them. I don’t know why I thought she would. She dropped off Jypé, reported us and the wreck, and vanished into Longbow Station, not even willing to collect a finder’s fee that the Empire gives whenever it locates unusual technologies.
Squishy’s gone, and I doubt she’ll ever come back.
Turtle’s not speaking to me now, except to say that she’s relieved we’re not being charged with anything. Our vids showed the Empire we cared enough to go back for our team member, and also that we had no idea about the stealth tech until we saw it function.
We hadn’t gone into the site to raid it, just to explore it—as the earlier vids showed. Which confirmed my claim—I’m a wreck diver, not a pirate, not a scavenger—and that allowed me to pick up the reward that Squishy abandoned.
The reward is embarrassingly large. I’ve never seen that much money all at once.
Normally, though, I would have left it. I don’t like making money that way.
But I couldn’t leave it this time. I needed to fund the expedition, and I’m not going to be able to do it the way I’d initially planned—by taking tourists to the Dignity Vessel so far from home.
The Empire chased us away from the vessel. They’re talking about moving it to some storehouse or warehouse or way station, but I’m not sure how they’re going to do it.
I don’t think they dare move it, not with the stealth tech still functioning. I think they’ll lose some divers and some equipment, just like the rest of us have.
But I didn’t tell them that. I didn’t get a chance to tell them much of anything. All I could do was defend myself and my crew, accept the ticket for the lost claim and the hollow thanks of the agent in charge of that convoy.
As we left that group of ten ships, we couldn’t even see the Dignity Vessel they surrounded. Turtle now agrees with Squishy; she thinks we should have blown the vessel up.
Karl is just glad that it’s no longer part of our lives.
But it’ll always be a part of mine.
I think about it constantly, speculating. Worrying.
Wishing I had more answers to all the questions the Vessel raised.
Like this one: That vessel had been in service a while—that much was clear from how it had been refitted. When someone activated the stealth, something went wrong. What happened to the crew then? Did they abandon the vessel or die in it? Did they try to shut the stealth tech off or did they run from it?
Were they running tests with minimal crew, or had the real crew looked at that carnage in the cockpit and decided, like we did, that it wasn’t worth the risk to go in? Was this a repair mission gone wrong?
I never looked for escape pods, but such things existed on Dignity Vessels—at least they do in the specs. Maybe the rest of the crew bailed, got rescued, and blended into cultures somewhere far from home.
Maybe that’s where Jypé’s legends come from.
Or so I like to believe.
I’ll never know.
Just like I’ll never know how the vessel got to the place I found it. There’s no way to tell if it traveled in stealth mode over those thousands of years, although that doesn’t explain how the ship avoided gravity wells and other perils that lie in wait in a cold and difficult universe. Or maybe it had been installed with an updated FTL.
I was never able to examine it well enough to figure that out, and what images I got from the cockpit raised more questions than they answered.
The entire ship raises more questions than it answers.
And I can’t shake it.
But I have to, and I pretend that I have as we pull into Longbow Station.
The station has never seemed so much like home. It’ll be nice to shed the silent Karl, and Turtle, who claims her diving days are behind her.
My diving days are behind me too, only in not quite the same way. The Business and I’ll still ferry tourists to various wrecks, promising scary dives and providing none.
But I’ve had enough of undiscovered wrecks and danger for no real reason. Curiosity sent me all over this part of space, looking for hidden pockets, places where no one has been in a long time.
Now that I’ve found the ultimate hidden pocket—and I’ve seen what it can do—I’m not looking anymore. I’m hanging up my suit and reclaiming my land legs.
Less danger there, on land, in normal gravity. Not that I’m afraid of wrecks now. I’m not, no more than the average spacer.
I’m more afraid of that feeling, the greed, which came on me hard and fast, and made me tone-deaf to my best diver’s concerns, my old friend’s fears, and my own giddy response to the deep.
I’m getting out before I turn pirate or scavenger, before my greed— which I thought I didn’t have—draws me as inexorably as the stealth tech drew Junior, pulling me in and holding me in place, before I even realize I’m in trouble.
Before I even know how impossible it’ll be to escape.
This isn’t the life I imagined for myself, but as I look around the station, I realize none of us live the life we imagined. For some of us, life is better than anything our imaginations could conjure.
For others, it’s worse.
I’ve lived an adventurous life.
I’m getting too old to continue on that path.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now.
And I suspect I’ll tell myself that for a long, long time to come.
~ * ~
PART TWO
THE ROOM OF LOST SOULS
THIRTEEN
She’s land-born. I don’t need to see her thick body with its heavy bones ^^ to know that. Her walk says it all.
I am sitting in the old spacers’ bar in Longbow Station. Sometimes I think I live here. Ever since the Dignity Vessel, I have made Longbow my permanent residence.
I sold my possessions and my apartment on Hector Prime. I have no more secrets to keep. I no longer wreck dive.
I take tourists to famous wrecks and pretend we’re having an adventure.
Sometimes even that pretense is too much for me.
So I tilt my chair back and watch the woman weave her way through the tables. The other spacers watch too. They’re wondering the same thing that I am: Who is she coming to see? What is she doing here, with her land-heavy legs and her know-it-all expression?
She so clearly does not belong.
The space-born have a grace—a lightness—to everything they do. This woman has a way of putting one foot in front of the other as if she expects the floor to take her weight. I used to walk like that.
We have the same build, she and I—that thickness that comes from strong bones, the fully formed female body that comes from the good nutrition usually found planetside.
She sits down at my table. The other spacers look away, as if they expected it all along.
But I didn’t, and neither did they. They’re watching out of the corners of their eyes, making sure she really came for me.
Making sure she does no harm.
She says my name as if she’s entitled to. She has come for me, then, and somehow she knew where to find me.
“How’d you get in here?” I pull my drink across the scarred plastic table and lean my chair against the wall. Balancing chairs feels like that second after the gravity gets shut off but hasn’t yet vanished—a half-and-half feeling of being both weighted and weightless.
“I have an invitation,” she says and holds up the cheap St. Christopher’s medal that houses this week’s guest chip. Station management shifts the chip housing every week or two so the chips can’t be scalped or manufactured. After five guest chips are given out, management changes housing. There is no predictable time, nor is there predictable housing.
“I didn’t invite you,” I say, picking up my drink and balancing its edge on my flat stomach. I can’t quite get the balance right, and I catch the drink before it spills.
“I know,” the woman says, “but I needed to see you.”
“If
you want to hire my ship to do some wreck diving, go through channels. Send a message, my system’ll scan your background, and if you pass, you can see any one of a dozen wrecks that’re open to amateurs.”
“I’m not interested in diving,” the woman says.
“Then you have no reason to talk to me.” I take a drink. The liquid, which is a fake but tasty honey-and-butter ale, has warmed during the long afternoon. The warmth brings out the ale’s flavor, which is why I nurse it— or at least why I say I nurse it. I don’t like to get drunk—I hate the loss of control—but I like drinking and I like to sit in this dark, private, enclosed bar and watch people I know, people who won’t give me any guff.
“But I do have a reason to talk to you.” She leans toward me. She has pale green eyes surrounded by dark lashes. The eyes make her seem even more exotic than her land-born walk does. “You see, I hear you’re the best—”
My snort interrupts her. “There is no best. There’s a half a dozen companies that’ll take you touring wrecks—and that’s without diving. All of us are certified. All of us are bonded and licensed, and all of us guarantee the best touring experience in this sector. It just varies in degree—do you want the illusion of danger or do you want a little bit of history with your deep-space adventure? I don’t know who sent you in here—”
She starts to answer, but I raise a finger, stopping her.
“—and I don’t care. I do want you to contact someone else for a tour. This is my private time, and I hate having it interrupted.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and the apology sounds sincere.
I expect her to get up and leave the bar or maybe move to another table, but she does neither.
Instead she leans closer and lowers her voice.
“I’m not a tourist,” she says. “I have a mission, and I’m told you’re the only one who can help me.”
In the two years since the Dignity Vessel, no one has tried this old con on me. In the twenty years before, I’d get one or two of these approaches a year, mostly from rivals wanting coordinates to the wrecks I refused to salvage.
I’ve always believed that certain wrecks have historical value only when they’re intact—not a popular belief among salvagers and scavengers and most wreck divers—but one that I’ve adhered to since I started in this business at the ripe old age of eighteen.
I point to Karl. He too has made Longbow his home. But we haven’t spoken in two years. We nod at each other when we pass in the corridors, although mostly we avoid each other’s eyes.
We try not think about that last dive, about Junior’s legs sticking out of that barricade, about Jypé’s body collapsing in on itself, about Squishy’s betrayal.
Or maybe it’s just me who tries not to think about it.
I do know that we’ve never discussed it, and we probably never will.
“Karl’s good,” I say to the woman. “In fact, if you want real adventure, not the touristy kind, he’s the best. He’ll take you to deep space, no questions asked.”
“I want you,” the woman says.
I sigh. Maybe she does. Maybe she’s been led astray by some old-timer. Maybe she thinks I still have some valuable coordinates locked in my ship.
I don’t. I dumped pretty much everything the day I decided I would only do tourist runs.
“Please,” she says. “Just let me tell you what’s going on.”
I sigh. She’s not going to leave without telling me. Unless I force her. And I’m not going to force her because it would take too much effort.
I take another swig of my ale.
She folds her hands together, but not before I see that her fingers are shaking.
“I’m Riya Trekov, the daughter of Commander Ewing Trekov. Have you heard of him?”
I shake my head. I haven’t heard of most people. Among the living, I only care about divers, pilots, and scavengers. Among the dead, I know only the ones whose wrecks would have once made my diving worthwhile. I also knew the ones who had piloted the wrecks I found, as well as the people who sent them, and the politicians, leaders, or famous people of their time, their place, their past.
But modern commanders, people whose names I should recognize? I am always at a loss.
“He was the supreme commander for the Enterran Empire in the Colonnade Wars.”
Her voice is soft, and it needs to be. The Colonnade Wars aren’t popular out here. Most of the spacers sitting in this bar are the children or grandchildren of the losers.
“That was a hundred years ago,” I say.
“So you do know the wars.” Her shoulders rise up and down in a small sigh. She apparently expected to tell me about them.
“You’re awfully young to be the daughter of a supreme commander from those days.” I purposely don’t say the wars’ name. It’s better not to rile up the other patrons.
She nods. “I’m a post-loss baby.”
It takes me a minute to understand her. At first I thought she meant post-loss of the Colonnade Wars, but then I realize that anyone titled supreme commander in that war had been on the winning side. So she meant loss of something else.
“He’s missing?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“He has been for my entire life,” she says.
“Was he missing before you were born?”
She takes a deep breath, as if she’s considering whether or not she should tell me. Her caution piques my curiosity. For the first time, I’m interested in what she’s saying.
“For fifty years,” she says quietly.
“Fifty standard years?” I ask.
She nods.
I decide not to be delicate. “So you’re what? You can’t be an afterthought, not after fifty years. You’re bottle grown?”
“Implanted,” she says. “My parents froze embryos. It was common in wartime.”
“But fifty years,” I say.
She shrugs, clearly not willing to tell me any more about her own creation.
So, if I’m guessing her age right, and if she’s not lying, then her father went missing before the peace treaties were signed.
“Did your father go missing in action?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“A prisoner of war?” Our side—well, the side that populates this part of space, which is only mine by default—didn’t give the prisoners back even though that was one of the terms of the treaty.
“That’s what we thought,” she says.
The “we” is new. I wonder if it means she and her family or she and someone else.
“But?” I ask.
“But I put detectives on the trail years ago, and there’s no evidence he was ever captured. No evidence that he met with anyone from the other side,” she says with surprising diplomacy. “No evidence that his ship was captured. No evidence that he vanished during the last conflicts of the war, like the official biographies say.”
“No real evidence?” I ask. “Or just no evidence that can be found after all this time?”
“No real evidence,” she says. “We’ve looked in the official records and the unofficial ones. I’ve interviewed some of his crew.”
“From the missing vessel,” I say.
“That’s just it,” she says. “His ship isn’t missing.”
So I frown. She has no reason to approach me. Even in my old capacity, I didn’t search for missing humans. I searched for famous ships.
“Then I don’t understand,” I say.
“We know where he is,” she says. “I want to hire you to get him back.”
“I don’t find people,” I say, mostly because I don’t want to tell her that he’s probably not still alive.
No human lives more than 120 years without enhancements. No human who has spent a lot of time in space can survive an implantation of those enhancements.
“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m hoping you’ll recover him.”
“Recover?” She’s got my full attention now. “Where is he?”
The tip of her tongue touches her top lip. She’s nervous. It’s clear she isn’t sure she should tell me, even though she wants to h ire me.
Finally, she says, “He’s in the Room of Lost Souls.”
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: The Room of Lost Souls is a myth.
I’ve only heard it talked about in whispers. An abandoned space station, far from here, far from anything. Most crews avoid it. Those that do stay do so only in an emergency, and even then they don’t go deep inside.
Because people who go into the room at the center of the station—what would be, in modern space stations, the control room but which clearly isn’t—those people never come out.
Sometimes you can see them, floating around the station or pounding at the windows, crying for help
Their companions always mount rescue attempts, always lose one or two more people before giving up, and hoping—praying—that what they’re seeing isn’t real.
Then they make repairs or do whatever it is they needed to do when they arrive, and fly off, filled with guilt, filled with remorse, filled with sadness, happy to be the ones who survived.
I’ve heard that story, told in whispers, since I got to Longbow Station decades ago, and I’ve never commented. I’ve never even rolled my eyes or shaken my head.
I understand the need for superstition.
Sometimes its rituals and talismans give us a necessary illusion of safety.
And sometimes it protects us from places that are truly dangerous.
Like the Room of Lost Souls.
“Why in the known universe would I go there to help you?” I ask, with a little too much edge in my voice.
She studies me. I think I have surprised her. She expected me to tell her that the Room of Lost Souls is a myth, that someone had lied to her, that she is staking her quest on something that has never existed.
“You know it, then.” She doesn’t sound surprised. Somehow she knows that I’ve been there. Somehow she knows that I am one of the only people to come out of the Room alive.
I don’t answer her question. Instead, I drain my ale and stand. I’m sad to leave the old spacers’ bar this early in the day, but I’m going to.
Diving into the Wreck du-1 Page 9
