City of Ruins - [Diving Universe 02]

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  fidget in the center of the room. The engineers from the ship are working on something I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen the shell, though. It looks like part of the stealth tech we’ve seen on the various Dignity Vessels.

  The shell is contained inside a part of the floor that rose up when the engineers started their work. They’re delving deep inside it, and of course, they’re speaking in a language I don’t understand.

  Al-Nasir isn’t listening. He’s pacing. He keeps looking at the exterior door, his expression tight. I wonder if he’s regretting his decision to come with me. He could be on one of our ships, heading to the Nobody’s Business right now, and he knows it.

  Safe, without any complications.

  And God knows there are going to be complications.

  At exactly two hours, the door to the ship opens. People step out, one at a time. They’re all wearing the black uniforms that I’d seen, and they all have a weapons belt around their hips. Their laser pistols—if indeed that’s what they have—-are smaller than ours, but they look just as lethal.

  Everyone is expressionless. Soldiers, heading into battle.

  Three, six, nine, twelve. More than I ever expected. My heart twists. What have I done?

  What have I agreed to?

  I always try to stay away from the military, and now I’m marching with them into a city that has done nothing to me except make me follow a few rules.

  The lieutenant comes next, followed by the captain. As he comes down the stairs, he scans the room until he sees me. Our gazes lock.

  He nods.

  He looks so official in his black uniform with its gold trim. None of the other uniforms have as much gold trim, so his must show his rank somehow. His shoulders are square, his jaw set. He looks like a captain of legend, which, I suppose, he is.

  I’m doing nothing to hide my qualms. I’m staring at all of those soldiers with complete dismay. Men, women, all of them staring straight ahead, all of them in some form of position, awaiting command.

  I hate this.

  He stops in front of me and bows a little. He speaks slowly, but I still don’t understand what he’s saying.

  The lieutenant reaches his side, but before she can translate, Al-Nasir says, “He’s apologizing for inconveniencing us. He hopes that nothing will go wrong, and he’ll do everything in his power to make sure we’re all safe.”

  “I’m sure the soldiers will guarantee that,” I mutter.

  To my horror, the lieutenant translates my words.

  The captain’s mouth thins, but he’s clearly not angry. “It’s a first-contact team,” he says through the lieutenant. “We bring a team like this whenever we’re faced with people we’ve never interacted with before.”

  “And you come with them?” I ask. “Really? That’s not wise.”

  “That’s not procedure,” he says. “But I have to see. . . .”

  Her translation misses his wistful tone. He’s worried that I’m right. I wonder what he’ll do when he figures out that I am.

  “Let’s go, then,” I say, and I lead. If I have to march with a group of soldiers, I’m not going to hide behind them.

  “Please,” the lieutenant says, “stay in the center with us.”

  “No,” I say, and walk to the door. I pull it open and step into the corridor. It looks normal to me. I’ve been in and out of here so many times that I’m used to it.

  But I wonder what he’s seeing, what he’s feeling. Is this corridor normal for him? Is it unusual? Is it what he expected?

  No one talks as we walk. When we reach the demarcation line between the stealth-tech field and the rest of the caves, I half expect to see Mikk and Roderick waiting for us.

  But of course they aren’t. They’ve evacuated, just like everyone else.

  For the first time, I realize just how alone Al-Nasir and I are. If something goes wrong, if the captain’s military proves hostile, we’re as good as dead.

  I continue to walk and don’t look around. The hovercarts aren’t where we left them, but that’s also as it should be. If the hovercarts are still below, they’ll be just below the cave’s entrance.

  I should have asked for someone’s weapon. I went into the Dignity Vessel unarmed, which means I’m unarmed now.

  So is Al-Nasir. Everyone else has those laser pistols and a lot of determination.

  My curiosity brought me here. From the moment I saw that first Dignity Vessel until the moment I walked on board the captain’s ship, I’ve been curious about the ships and their crews. Now I know. The military forces of legend aren’t romantic and sweet.

  They’re as tough and dangerous as any military force.

  As the Empire’s force.

  And I’m leading them to the surface.

  I only hope that my people have had enough time to get away.

  * * * *

  SIXTY-FIVE

  T

  he woman set the pace faster than Coop would have liked. Had he set the pace, he would have lingered and examined the walls, noting that the lights lining the edge of the ceiling were gray with unbonded nanobits. He would have asked someone, maybe Dix, how that was even possible. The nanobits were black; how had they turned gray?

  But he didn’t. He walked rapidly to keep up with her, just like the rest of his team did.

  She didn’t like the team. He could tell that from the start. She didn’t greet them, didn’t talk to them, didn’t seem at all curious about them. That edge of panic she’d had since he had told her he was going to the surface remained.

  The corridors looked familiar and unfamiliar. He’d been in a thousand corridors just like this, in various sector bases. The newer sector bases had smooth corridor walls like this, or the newer corridors had them, before someone went in and reprogrammed the nanobits to make some kind of art. The reprogrammings were limited in time, so that various artists had a chance to work. He never knew what he would see going through a corridor, from representational art to calligraphy to school projects by very young children.

  What had been here when he left was long gone, no longer even remembered.

  If she was right.

  They rounded a corner and the light changed. Natural light filtered in with the lighting created by nanobits. The team wasn’t far from the opening.

  They rounded one more corner, and there were four vehicles parked side by side.

  His breath caught and he looked at the woman. She looked relieved to see them.

  “Tell her to wait for us,” he said to the lieutenant.

  He studied the vehicles. Flat, open, with bench seats and controls that looked primitive. He walked to the nearest, ran his hand along the edge, and shook his head slightly.

  What had happened here? He had left a thriving community filled with scientists, engineers, and intellectuals, a community that used the cutting edge of the Fleet’s technology to build these caverns as well as the repair room, to keep the anacapa running and to create a city above.

  He had returned to a place with technology that looked ancient and unwieldy, to people who did not speak his language and who thought energy spikes that blew holes in the ground were some kind natural phenomenon that they superstitiously called death holes.

  “Coop?” Dix came up beside him. “She wants us to go up in these things?”

  “I haven’t asked,” Coop said, “but since they’re the only vehicles here, I’d think the answer is yes.”

  He walked around them and headed to the opening of the caves. The ladder remained, carved into the walls, just like he remembered. But the opening was twice as high as he remembered. That climb would tire all of them.

  The woman spoke.

  “She says you don’t want to do that,” the lieutenant said. “She did it a few weeks ago, and it exhausted her.”

  Coop turned and looked at the woman. She had her arms crossed. “Did these vehicles fail?”

  “There was a groundquake when we arrived.” The lieutenant didn’t even translate his com
ment. She had known this. “It destroyed their vehicles. She’s the one who climbed out for help.”

  Coop watched the woman as Al-Nasir translated for her. She climbed out for help, even though her people looked fit. She didn’t command others to do the hard tasks. She did them herself.

  She might not have a military force, but she acted like a leader.

  He walked over to her, the lieutenant trailing him.

  “Please,” he said in her language. Then he had to use his. “Sit beside me as we go to the surface.”

  She didn’t take her gaze off his face as Al-Nasir translated for her. “Why?” she asked.

  He wasn’t sure why. If he were to give a reason, he would say that he didn’t want her to go first to warn people on the surface, but that wasn’t the reason. Whether she was right about the five thousand years or not, something was very wrong at this place, and she had nothing to do with the wrongness.

  He wanted her beside him because, even though they didn’t speak the same language, they had the same attitude toward the people under their command. It was a small bond, but it was the only one he had at the moment, and he valued it.

  He didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “So you can explain what I’m seeing.”

  She sighed and looked at the vehicles. Then she said, “I’m driving.”

  “Perhaps she’d better show the rest of us how to drive these things,” Dix said softly to Coop.

  He nodded. “We’re going to send a team up first,” he said to the woman. “Would you show Rossetti how to pilot this?”

  The woman beckoned Al-Nasir, then walked with Rossetti to the vehicle closest to the opening. Both women leaned over the controls. The woman spoke as her hands illustrated her instructions.

  “I got it,” Rossetti said to Coop. “It’s pretty straightforward.”

  “You hope,” he said.

  “You hope,” she said.

  “Make sure there’s no one waiting for us up there,” he said. “If there is, and there are too many of them, come right back down.”

  “Got it,” she said. She picked a team of three, and they climbed into the vehicle. Then she got in and started it. It immediately rose an inch above the ground. She did something that Coop couldn’t see and it wobbled precariously, then righted itself and floated slowly upward.

  “Teams of four,” Coop said to the others. “Dix, you’re in the next vehicle.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dix said.

  “Perkins, you’re with me and our guests,” Coop said.

  She nodded.

  Everyone else got into the various vehicles. Dix’s vehicle slowly followed Rossetti’s. Then the next vehicle.

  The woman climbed into the last vehicle, her hands moving with an expertise that none of his people showed. He shouldn’t have trusted her to do this, but he did. Even though he knew she could upend the entire vehicle and hurt both him and Perkins, or maybe even kill them.

  Theirs was the only vehicle that floated up smoothly without a single wobble. The cave’s opening narrowed toward the top, but there was still plenty of room to go out.

  The other vehicles had landed around the opening. Several of his people had gathered around two other people, preventing them from moving, maybe even detaining them.

  The ground didn’t look the same; he remembered dozens of buildings here, vehicles, people. Now there was only one outbuilding, the opening, and a broad expanse of dirt.

  “Can you ask her to take it high enough so that I can see the city?” Coop asked.

  The lieutenant complied.

  The woman let the vehicle rise even higher.

  Along the mountainsides, he saw buildings, more than he could have imagined. The city had sprawled outward. He looked into the valley and saw some buildings, but not nearly as many as he expected.

  But the ground itself was familiar. He knew the peaks on those mountains, recognized the orangish red color of the sky. The air smelled right—a mixture of dryness and something a little sweeter than any other place he had ever been.

  His heart ached.

  This was—or had been—Venice City. He was on Wyr. He recognized the mountains, the valley, this little bit of the planet itself.

  But the city, the city was terrifyingly unfamiliar.

  No city grew like that in a few years.

  “What happened to the valley?” he asked through the lieutenant.

  “Death holes,” the woman said. “I’m told it wasn’t safe to live in the old city any longer.”

  Death holes. For centuries. The anacapa had been malfunctioning for centuries.

  He was shaking. This was what he wanted—some kind of confirmation that the Venice City of his memory had become something else.

  Years had clearly passed, but he had no way to know if there were eight hundred years or five thousand.

  Although no military force awaited them. And, he realized, the woman had no reason to lie.

  “You want me to go higher?” she asked through the lieutenant.

  “No,” he said in her language. “Thank you.”

  She moved the vehicle toward a landing spot and slowly brought it down.

  He glanced at his team. Rossetti was standing on the edge of the landing area, staring at the city beyond. Dix was beside her. Four of his men had detained two heavyset men who were dressed in brown uniforms.

  “Those two men,” Coop said to the woman, “are they yours?”

  “No,” she said with force. “They’re our guides. The Vaycehnese government insists that they accompany us at all times.”

  “Locals,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “They know the history of Vaycehn. You can probably ask them all the questions you want.”

  He studied them. They looked confused and terrified. They clearly hadn’t expected a force to come out of the caves.

  Talking to them would be easy. But he wasn’t ready for easy.

  Besides, they could lie to him.

  He needed someone not connected to the woman and her friends.

  “Later,” he said. “Is the old city habitable?”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  “Then I’d like to get close. I’d like to see it.”

  She gave him a sideways look, filled with something—sadness? Compassion? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to analyze it.

  “We can take the cart,” she said, and without giving him a moment to answer, let it rise.

  He felt dizzy for a half second as he realized what she could do. She could take him and Perkins into the city, without the rest of his team.

  But she didn’t. She hovered there while he instructed everyone except the four guarding the guides to get into their vehicles and follow her.

  They did, and then she led the way, driving the vehicle above a mountain road as if she had done this every single day of her life.

  * * * *

  SIXTY-SIX

  A

  s we rise out of the cave, I say to Al-Nasir, “See if you can reach anyone from our group.”

  I’m hoping he can’t. Right now, they should be on our ships, heading toward the Business. Our communicators are for land only, and have limited range. We shouldn’t be able to reach anyone if they’re off-planet.

  He nods. I glance over my shoulder at the captain and his lieutenant. The captain’s expression is fixed, but he can’t control the slight frown forming between his eyes. He recognizes Wyr.

  I recognize the guides, surrounded by the captain’s people, and I curse. The two men are our two most regular guides. They know all of us. They were probably wondering why most of the group left, and why they insisted on having four hovercarts waiting below ground. And I’ll wager that none of my people took time to explain beyond “Boss wants it.”

  When the first hovercart rose out of the cave, those guides had to know why I wanted it. They were probably shocked at seeing a military group, but these two guides know their stuff. And as they tried to flee, I’m sure they contacted someone. Po
lice, the guide office, the regular government—I have no idea.

  But someone in authority on Vaycehn now knows that we’ve brought military to the edge of the city, somehow.

  The captain really isn’t noticing any of this. He’s asking me questions about the city, about death holes. I’m keeping my eye on Al-Nasir, whose gaze is focused far off.