“When I leave here, I’m going to make a shipwide announcement, saying we’ve clearly arrived at an abandoned sector base, and no one should expect to leave the ship until it’s cleared with me. If there are any problems, the crew should report them to the bridge immediately.”
“Are you going to elaborate on what you mean by problems’?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Because I’m not sure what I mean by ‘problems.’ We’re in a new situation, Lynda, something that’s not in the guidelines. I told the bridge crew we’re going to proceed as if this is a first-contact situation, but that’s not entirely accurate. This situation is fluid and unsettling, and might be a lot worse than a hostile first contact.”
“Worse how, sir?” She asked that with no trepidation. In fact she leaned forward slightly as if this was the piece of information she’d been waiting for.
“There is the possibility that we’re not at Sector Base V,” he said. “Just some place that resembles it. Our navigation equipment might be very far off. We could be in an ancient base. The anacapa was damaged worse than I initially thought. It could have sent us through a different kind of fold. We’ve heard speculation about the problems with foldspace all our lives. We might be in one of those situations.”
She nodded, then swallowed visibly. “I’ve been thinking that since we got stuck, sir.”
“We’re going to take this one shift at a time, one problem at a time,” he said. “It’s our job to make sure the crew remains upbeat and working toward our future. But it’s also our job to keep the promises to a minimum. I don’t want us to reassure them that we’ll rejoin the Fleet. I don’t want to hear discussion of friends and family on other ships. If someone tries to talk about that, I want the conversation redirected or truncated as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
“Won’t that make people suspicious, sir?” Lynda asked.
He shook his head. “They’re already suspicious, just like you were. They know something is very wrong here. We’re going to prepare them by degrees for the worst-case scenario. If by some chance we get reunited with the Fleet and not much time has passed, then the crew will appreciate our caution. If we don’t, then they’ll have acclimatized more or less to the new reality.”
Her finger tapped the table, for the first time revealing her nervousness.
“What do you think that worst-case scenario is, sir?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I honestly don’t know.”
* * * *
TWENTY-FIVE
P
icking our way through the rock-strewn corridor is easier than I expected. Some parts of the corridor have very little debris, just a bit of gravel, none of it black. The walls are pure smooth black as if nothing has changed. The ceiling is dark. The lights, however, are dim if they work at all.
I have to move slower than I want to. My heart pounds. I am having trouble regulating my breathing.
Because I thought of all the dangers that can occur down here, I’m now focused on them. I worry that the ceiling will cave in, the walls will crumble, big chunks of blackness will fall on us. I want to find out if Mikk and Roderick are still alive. I’m terrified that the opening of the cave is blocked.
For the first time in years, I’m afraid I’m going to die.
I am not monitoring the Six as well as I should. I should keep an ear tuned to their breathing. But I don’t. I try not to hesitate, try not to show the fear that I’m feeling.
The rocks look eerie in the light from our suits. I have my lights on bright, casting a clear white light ahead of us, catching the rocks in shadow.
Rea’s light from his suit, bringing up the rear, augments my lights. I can see the shadows of the Six elongated around me, as if they’re right next to me. I use those to track their progress.
Often I stop, particularly after I’ve executed a difficult walking pattern. I watch them pick their way over the debris, turning their heads so that they can watch their hands or looking down to keep track of where they place their feet.
The Six are following my instructions. They’re trying to walk in my footsteps.
I round a corner, and pause. Rocks litter the corridor in piles taller than I am. My light barely seems to penetrate the opening on the left side of the corridor.
A tight squeeze.
Something I’ve been afraid of.
I make my way there, careful to keep my boots away from the larger rocks in the center of the floor. I reach the huge pile, and hear a sound beyond it.
Voices.
In my ear?
“Mikk?” I say.
“Boss?” I hear relief in his voice, but it can’t match the relief I feel.
He’s alive.
“Is Roderick with you?” I ask.
“He’s helping me,” Mikk says. “Don’t move. We’ll get you out as quickly as we can.”
Don’t move?
“We’ve been moving,” I say. “We just got here.”
“All of you?” he asks. “You’re all right, then?”
I don’t want to explain what happened over the comm link. “We’re fine,” I say. “It’s not so bad here.”
“The rock fall blocked the corridor,” Mikk says. “We’ve been trying to clear it, but the stack is pretty precarious. Don’t touch anything. You might bring the whole thing down on us.”
The others have joined me. They’re pressing closer than I like, as if they want to see through the opening, just like I do.
“We’ll wait,” I say as much to the Six as to Mikk and Roderick. I can see their movement through the opening on the left side. The poor men—they’re lifting rocks and moving them aside.
Have they been doing that since the rockslides happened?
I stand near that left side so they can see me. The rock fall is deeper than I thought. It is at least six meters wide. The fact that I can see through it is a testament to how hard they’ve worked.
“We should help,” Kersting says, surprising me.
“No,” I say softly. “They asked us not to. And this thing is pretty big.”
We watch as they work. Our side is relatively clear. The block is on their side of the corridor. That’s why my light had trouble penetrating the crack. I keep the light shining on their work area.
We take the time to rest.
And we wait.
* * * *
TWENTY-SIX
I
t takes Mikk and Roderick nearly an hour to move enough rock for us to squeeze through. We have to slide past jagged edges that can destroy our environmental suits.
I’m thin. I have no trouble getting past. But I worry about DeVries and Kersting. They’re big men—DeVries is tall, and despite the exercise he’s getting, Kersting is still too wide.
I get through, sliding my back against the black wall, worrying that I’ll dislodge something else or that the groundquake will happen again and I’ll get buried under tons of rock. I continue to regulate my breathing, but it does little good.
I’m as nervous as a new diver on a training run. It’s a good thing I don’t have to rely on my oxygen canisters. I’d use them up in record time.
Finally, I squeeze out and there are Mikk and Roderick, their environmental suits on the floor, their shirts off, their bodies covered in sweat and black dust.
They look better than they ever have. I want to hug them, but it would be awkward with me in my suit and them without theirs.
“Boss?” Mikk asks.
I nod, and then he does hug me, wrapping his powerful arms around me and pulling me close.
Clearly he has no qualms about having my suit rub up against his bare skin.
I step back and Roderick grins. He doesn’t hug me—people usually don’t hug me at all—and I smile at him.
Then I realize he can’t see me through my faceplate.
“The air’s okay here?” I ask.
“It’s fine.”
“The corridor’s open the rest of the
way?”
Roderick shrugs. “We were more worried about you. We didn’t hear. We thought you might be dead.”
I thought they might be dead, too, but I don’t say that. “We didn’t know there was a groundquake.”
“How could you not know?” Mikk asks. “That was the scariest experience of my life.”
“The ground didn’t shake,” Roderick says. “It felt like it was coming apart.”
I hear DeVries’s voice, but I can’t quite make out what he’s saying.
“Let’s help them out,” I say. “Then we can debrief you.”
We turn toward the opening and pull the Six out. Or rather, Mikk does, one by one. I step away from the rock pile and pull off my helmet. It’s warmer without the helmet, but I feel free. And I feel like I can breathe normally for the first time since I saw the debris.
I look at the walls here. They are as unblemished as the walls inside the corridor.
Roderick watches me. “It grew back,” he says.
He’s not needed to help the Six out. Mikk just takes their hand, gives them a bit of encouragement, and then has them step out. Carefully he guides them to one side before reaching for the next.
They seem as relieved as I am. All of them see that my helmet is off and remove theirs as soon as they can.
“It was weird,” Roderick says. “It started as soon as the ground stopped moving. The rocks were falling all around us. They kept tumbling, but Mikk pointed to the wall. The black was filling in the ruined areas, and then it smoothed right out.”
“You didn’t get hit or anything?” I ask.
“We covered our heads and crouched—or I did. Mikk stood in the middle and looked up, figuring he could run to avoid it all. But it missed us, mostly. Some smaller rocks hit my back and shoulders, but didn’t do any damage. I don’t know if they hit Mikk.”
I can imagine him, standing in the center of the corridor defiantly, as if challenging the falling rock to hit him.
“We really thought you were dead,” Roderick says softly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We didn’t feel anything. But when we got out . . .”
I let my voice trail off. It would do no good to let them know how frightened I was. “Well, we’re not out yet, are we?”
“No one has come down for us?” DeVries asks. He has joined our conversation. His face is shiny with sweat. I can’t tell if that’s from the exertion or the warmer temperature in the corridor without our suits on.
“No,” Roderick says.
“That’s not a good sign,” DeVries says.
“It’s not?” Roderick asks.
“Think about it,” DeVries says. “What would you do if you had a team underground and the ground shifted?”
“I’d try to get to them,” Roderick says slowly.
DeVries nods. “No one is here yet.”
“Does that mean we’re trapped?” Quinte asks from behind me.
“There’s no way to know,” I say.
“What else could prevent them from coming?” DeVries asks.
I look at him, surprised. He’s usually so level-headed. He sounds levelheaded, even now. But he’s not thinking clearly.
“We’ve had damage down here,” I say. “We have no idea what’s happened on the surface.”
The others have joined us.
“What do you mean?” Kersting asks.
“We only know a few facts,” I say.
Rea starts, “The ship, the—”
“Ship?” Mikk asks.
“In a minute,” I say, just like I had to when we met up with Quinte and Al-Nasir. “What we know about Vaycehn is that it’s plagued occasionally by death holes. We have no idea what happens underground when a new death hole appears.”
Mikk breathes out a curse.
“You think there could be a new death hole on the surface?” Roderick asks.
“I think anything’s possible,” I say. “And there’s no sense in worrying about what could be. We have to concern ourselves with what is.”
They’re all looking at me. Quinte and Seager look frightened. Even DeVries seems uneasy.
“And the only way to know what is,” I say, “is to carefully make our way out of here.”
“I don’t like being underground,” Roderick says softly, speaking to me.
“I’m not fond of it myself,” I say. “But this is where we’ve chosen to work. Let’s just be smarter about it the next time we come down here.”
If there is a next time.
If we get out at all.
* * * *
TWENTY-SEVEN
W
e walk.
We walk through the darkened corridors, stepping over fallen rock, dealing with dust that remains even though the walls are still covered with black. The air is humid and a little too warm for my taste, although I know it is cooler than the air on the surface.
Sometimes I think I should put my environmental suit back on. But I don’t. Instead, I tell Mikk and Roderick about the ship.
“I’m amazed you left the room at all,” Mikk says, but his eyes twinkle. He knows that I’m a slave to the schedule, but he also knows how tempted I can be by the unknown.
“We had no idea that anything had changed outside,” I say. “We thought we’d take a break, sleep, eat, and come back to work.”
Now I’m not sure when we’ll be back. I’m not sure what we’ll find when we get out.
If we get out.
I don’t say those things, but I know the others are thinking them. We all know they’re implied.
Finally we reach the end of the main corridor, where we left one of the hovercarts. This area is dark, and my heart starts pounding as we get close. Something is wrong. I can sense it, but I’m not sure what I’m sensing.
We round the corner—and stop.
I can’t see the hovercart. There’s a pile of rock where we left it, a pile that reaches to the ceiling and stretches as far as the eye can see.
DeVries curses. Quinte makes a small sound of dismay. I glance at Mikk.
“Roderick,” I say, happy to have experienced people with me now, “you stay with the group. Mikk and I are going to see how far this goes.”
Roderick nods. No one complains. Mikk and I walk forward, and as we do, he says softly, “We’ve been working with these rock piles. They’re incredibly unstable. We have to be very careful.”
“Do you think it would be better if you and Roderick investigate?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “But you and the group will have to listen to me if we need to move rock. And you’re going to let me go first here.”
I almost protest until I realize he’s right. He’s got a few hours’ more experience with this stuff than I do, and that’s a few hours more than any of us have.
He slides into an opening along the left side—they all seem to have openings along the left side; I wonder if that means anything—and then beckons me forward.
The enclosure is tight, almost tighter than the one we came through earlier, but it’s shorter. Mikk is standing in an open area. Another rock fall lies in front of him, and its haphazard pattern is what gave the illusion of an unbroken rock fall from farther back in the corridor.
The back of the hovercart is here, bent forward from the weight of the rock on its front. The back end is unbroken, not even marred by dents or dust. The bench seats, however, are full of rock.
“Where are the guides, you think?” I ask.
Mikk shrugs. He knows as well as I do that they usually don’t wait near the hovercart. They often return to the surface while we work.
The guides might be under the rubble. They might be just fine up above. We might not know until we get out of here.
If the guards are under that rubble, they’re dead.
We don’t say anything more. We walk across the unbroken part of the corridor to the next rock fall. There I peer through the opening, which is, again, on the left side.
Through it, I can see natural li
ght. The cave opening, up above. Several meters above, meters we’ve traveled only by hovercart so far.
“We can get to the opening,” I say, “and there’s daylight.”
City of Ruins - [Diving Universe 02] Page 15
