Either the Vaycehnese don’t want to discuss these caves, the black stuff on the walls, and their technology with outsiders, or the Vaycehnese really don’t know where a lot of the things they live with come from. I’m betting it’s a combination of both.
I rise to my toes again and run my hand along the edge of the hatch, finding little, not even particles, which surprises me. I haven’t found any on the ship, when it was coated two days ago. That very detail unnerves me.
When we started, I asked Kersting and Seager if there were particles still on the equipment. Kersting said no, but Seager said there were still some on the underside of the consoles.
Almost as if someone had wiped them off.
I move my hand from the edge of the hatch toward the middle when DeVries says, “Boss.”
His inflection is so flat that I know he’s not telling me he found something. He’s reminding me our time is up.
I look at my suit’s internal clock. We have a minute to spare. He’s probably been waiting for me to notice.
I suppress a sigh. We’re going to be here a long time.
“All right, gang,” I say. “Let’s go.”
No one complains. No one even gives their work a second glance. We head toward the door. We’re still tired and nervous from our last trip down here.
And this trip was a victory the moment we opened that door to the room and saw the Dignity Vessel.
It’s still here, and someday I’m going to get into it.
Someday, I’m going to make it work.
* * * *
FORTY-SIX
B
efore the outsiders left, Coop prepped his team to go into the sector base. But he warned Rossetti to prepare for one more addition to the team: him.
He wasn’t going to sit in the command chair any longer.
After Coop had spoken to Rossetti, Dix had given him a baleful glance, but hadn’t said a word. Instead, Yash had spoken up.
“You said this is a first contact.” She turned to him, arms crossed.
“It is,” Coop said.
“Then the captain doesn’t go near the site until we understand the nature of those outsiders.” She sounded fierce.
“The captain won’t go near the outsiders,” Coop said, although he wanted to. He wanted to more than he would ever admit to anyone. “They won’t be back for hours, if not days.”
“You hope,” Yash said. “You have no idea if they had to leave the site to get those extra two people.”
“I know that they limit their time in the base to six hours. They’ve done it twice, and I think that’s a pattern. So we’ll honor the pattern,” Coop said.
“And it you run into them?” Yash asked.
Coop shrugged. “I’ll say hello.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “We can’t afford to lose you right now.”
He raised his eyebrows and then smiled. “You can afford to lose me at other times?”
“You know what I mean,” she snapped.
And the truth of it was, he did. He did know what she meant. When a captain died within the Fleet, the Fleet command appointed a new captain. Sometimes that captain came from within the ship’s ranks, and sometimes the captain came from another ship. The captain wasn’t always promoted. Sometimes the captain was moved laterally because he or she had skills that particular ship needed.
No one on the Ivoire had lost a captain in the middle of a command—or at least, a command like this one, where there was no Fleet backup at all.
“I’ll be fine,” Coop said, and he firmly believed he would be.
If he didn’t believe it, he wouldn’t be suiting up with Rossetti’s team. They agreed to wear the environmental suits without the face protection, not because they needed their own environment, but just in case the outsiders returned.
The environmental suit would provide protection against attacks from various kinds of weaponry, including that large knife the woman carried.
Coop’s hands shook as he detached the hood from the collar of his suit. He wasn’t nervous about going in; he was excited.
Finally, after two-plus weeks of ordering everyone else to take action, he was taking action, too. Real, physical action.
Lynda replaced him as acting captain. If she ordered him back inside the ship, he would have to listen. He didn’t mind. He saw envy in her eyes when she reported to the bridge.
She knew how he felt about moving around; he had a hunch they all did.
He was the last one into the airlock, and he went by himself. He was last as a concession to Yash, who demanded that he protect himself at all costs.
He listened to the airlock door latch behind him. The required seconds between the latching of the interior door and the opening of the exterior door felt like hours to him.
He would have to pace himself. He wanted to run through the entire base, checking on everything and maybe catching a ride to the surface.
He wasn’t going to, of course. He knew better. But the impulse was strong.
As he stepped out the exterior door, down the small steps that extended whenever the door opened, he glanced at the base’s main door. He wanted the outsiders to come back. He wanted them back the moment the ship’s exterior door closed.
Then he would go talk to that woman, knife be damned.
But no one came in. Just Rossetti’s teams, moving to their assigned places
Rossetti herself walked across the sector base floor and turned on the interior lights, lights the outsiders had thoughtfully turned off before they left.
In addition to gathering information, Coop had instructed everyone to leave the equipment running. He also instructed them to leave a couple small things—a partially eaten apple and a mug of coffee.
He wanted to let the outsiders know that people were inside the Ivoire. Subtle was the best way to do so.
He stepped into the base proper. It smelled different. It had the same some-what sulfuric odor that Sector Base V had always had, but it also had a musty smell of decay. The scent, old and dry, not mildewy like he would have expected from Venice City’s hot climate, made the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The conversations from the other team members echoed in the emptiness. The base felt bigger than it actually was. Bigger and lonelier.
The last time the Ivoire had been here, there had been two other ships in the bays.
He walked under the Ivoire, deliberately tracing the outsider woman’s steps. She had known where the hatches would be—or at least it seemed that way. She had also released the latch on the door four separate times.
Fortunately, Dix had programmed the doors to guard, so no one could get in without using a weapon.
But the woman’s ability to release that latch caught Coop’s eye. He hadn’t mentioned it to the bridge crew—he would later, during a briefing— any more than he had commented on her ability to find the hatches.
He was convinced she had touched a Fleet vessel before. Her actions belied his earlier supposition that the outsiders had never seen a spaceship before.
They had—or, at least, she had—and they had seen a ship from the Fleet. They had been close enough to it to know where the lower hatches were.
He checked the sides, saw no knife marks, nothing except a glove print near the hatch’s release on the far side.
He smiled. Maybe that meant she spoke Standard. Maybe he would have someone to talk with, after all, someone to tell him the history he had missed, the things he needed to know.
He hoped so.
But he wouldn’t count on it. He needed to find out information on his own.
He walked to the far end of the sector base, crossing landing pad after landing pad, trying not to think of the openness and the emptiness.
As he walked, lights came on just ahead of him, revealing consoles covered in unbonded nanobits and even more, sending up a dust cloud along the floor. He coughed once, thought of returning for his hood, then changed his mind.
Instead, he headed to the personnel quarters, storage, and the emergency lift.
It took him nearly fifteen minutes to reach the far side of the bay. When he did, he pulled off his glove and put his hand against the door leading into the personnel quarters.
For a moment, the door stayed dark, and he wondered if the recognition lock had broken. Then lights came on, revolving slowly around his hand.
A creaky voice, sounding just a bit warped, said, “Jonathan Cooper, captain of the Ivoire. Recognition queried, but granted.”
He nodded. He had expected queried but granted status, although he had hoped for just a simple recognition granted. Queried but granted meant that he didn’t belong in this place; he was an anomaly. But the system had to recognize anomalies, since the anacapa sometimes created them.
So long ago—from his perspective, decades (maybe centuries) before he was born—someone had invented the queried but granted status. What it usually meant was that someone else, a living person, would double-check the credentials later, and then update the system.
He doubted that would happen here.
Not that it mattered at the moment.
What mattered now was that the door slid open and the interior lights went on.
A waft of dusty, stale air greeted Coop. He didn’t even have to go inside. Normally quarters on a sector base were for guest workers or people who hadn’t yet been cleared to join the community up top. The quarters were state-of-the-art, built for comfort and relaxation.
Every other sector base quarters he had visited smelled of food and cleaned air. A month before, this one had, too. But it didn’t now. It had no furniture. Only a slightly dusty floor, and doors that opened into the room, revealing more empty quarters beyond.
He had hoped to find furniture, a functioning kitchen, maybe even a caretaker hiding from the ship. Not more emptiness.
Although the emptiness didn’t surprise him. It made sense, given the information his crew had already gathered.
He stepped back, let the door slide closed, and then put his hand on the door to the supply area. He had a hunch he would find the same thing, and he did, except it looked like the tool safe remained. That part of the supplies closet was supposed to exist as long as the base did, in case someone needed handheld tools in order to repair something.
Like a ship.
He opened the safe long enough to see that, yes indeed, there were tools inside. Whether they were the proper tools or the best tools or the most useful tools, he would let Yash decide.
He closed the safe, then backed out of the supply area.
Finally, he walked to the emergency lift and pressed his hand against the door, waiting for it to identify him.
It did, with the same queried but granted notification the other doors had given him. The door slid back and revealed something he didn’t want to see.
The lift was gone, filled in with dirt and debris, trapped on the lower level by a wall built of clear nanobits.
Exactly as the handbook said that any emergency lift should be decommissioned. When a base was deemed no longer useful, the lift to the surface was shut down, so that a gaping hole would not exist beneath the ground, something that could cave in once the passage of years let everyone forget exactly where the emergency lift opened onto the surface.
“Dammit,” he said softly. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
Nothing had been that easy on this trip. And nothing would be.
Not for a while, at least.
Maybe not for years.
* * * *
FORTY-SEVEN
W
e huddle outside the door to the Dignity Vessel room, all seven of us. The moment feels momentous. We’ve tested and retested all of our findings about the particles. They’re large and could be harmful if swallowed, but they have no effect on the skin—at least short-term. They don’t hurt us in any known way.
The air inside the room is a bit stale, but otherwise fine, and the temperature is just a little cooler than the caves themselves.
In other words, we don’t need the environmental suits.
However, I’m going to wear mine, all except the helmet, which I have attached to my belt. Lentz’s university professor friend has surreptitiously given us two dozen face masks, the kind that the Vaycehnese wear when they go deep in the caves.
The Vaycehnese have encountered the floating particles as well, and have found that some people suffer no ill effects from them whatsoever, while others end up with lung problems for years. The masks have a thin weave that prevents the particles from being inhaled. The masks go over the mouth and nose, and their bright whiteness looks a bit odd against the skin.
At our meeting last night, Lentz laughed when I mentioned that. He reminded me that the mask will probably get caked with particles in a matter of minutes, taking it from white to gray to black.
Some of the others—Quinte and Seager, in particular—have decided to wear the helmets, although I made them bring masks as well. We’re carrying quite a few things, actually. A small ladder, a pouch of tools, and my own personal pair of grippers so that I can climb the side of the ship and see what’s above us.
We’re stopped outside, however, because Al-Nasir is dithering. He holds his mask in one hand. In the other he clings to his helmet. He hates being confined, but the room still makes him nervous.
We’re all a bit more nervous than we’ve been, although the smoothness of yesterday’s mission has gone a long way toward calming us down.
I pluck the mask out of Al-Nasir’s hand. “Put it on. You’ll feel better.”
He takes it from me, stares at it, then puts it in the pouch along his waistband. Then he takes his helmet and attaches it to the rest of the suit.
I suppress a smile. I knew if I made the choice for him, he would know what he really wanted.
I put my hand on the door. “Same order as yesterday,” I say. Which means me first.
I pull the door open, and freeze.
The lights are on. We figured out how to shut them down just before we left yesterday. They were off. I’m as sure of that as I am of my own name.
“Okay,” I say softly, the mask moving gently against my lips and nose as I speak. “We could have a problem. Rea, DeVries, I need you with me. The rest of you can wait here if you want.”
I don’t wait for an answer. I pull my laser pistol and go in, heart pounding.
Someone has been here. The lights are on, the equipment is on all the way around the room, the various screens showing parts of space both familiar and unfamiliar.
One screen shows my science station back home. The station is empty, but through the glass viewing area on the far side of that room, I can see one of my scientists, taking readings.
I step all the way inside. Rea and DeVries follow me, laser pistols out. The two men are flanking me, as I taught them when they first came into the group, back at their very first tourist dive.
The other four come in as well, proper position, half a step behind each other, as if we’re a trained military unit. Without my telling them to, Quinte and Al-Nasir remain by the door, and they keep it open, making it easier for us to escape if we have to.
I glance at Rea and DeVries, then nod. We pointedly do not look at the screens, and we carefully examine the room from our stopped position.
I see no one, not out here, not with us.
But I have a hunch I’m not supposed to see anyone.
This is a message.
Someone is on board that Dignity Vessel—and they want me to know it.
* * * *
FORTY-EIGHT
C
oop stood as the door to the repair room opened. Everyone on the bridge turned toward the screens. Even Dix looked up, and Dix hadn’t looked at much of anything in days.
The outsider woman stopped when she saw the lights. They glistened off her hair, a chestnut brown that surprised Coop. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, but she was wearing a mask of some kind over her mouth
and nose. The particles worried her.
For some reason, that reassured him. These people weren’t that different after all.
As she looked at the lights, she drew her weapon—not that silly knife, which he couldn’t even see. From this distance, the weapon looked like some kind of laser pistol, but bulkier than he expected.
City of Ruins - [Diving Universe 02] Page 26
