The Runabout Read online

  “I’d like you to go over the data from my dive with Elaine one more time. Check our reports of the sounds getting stronger and compare them to the interior layout of that runabout.”

  He doesn’t complain about the extra work. Instead, he says, “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m relying on my memory and a strange sense of spatial relations,” I say, “but I think that we had our worst experience near that casing which Yash believes houses the anacapa drive.”

  “You had your worst experience near the door,” he says, “which is nowhere near the drive.”

  “Yes,” I say, “things became desperate there. But we were having different sound experiences right from the start. I’m just curious about this.”

  “Why?” he asks. “We know what happened to you was caused by the drive.”

  He’s right. But I think something might be there.

  “Humor me,” I say.

  “All right,” he says. “I will.”

  Twenty

  That night, I remain awake for a long time, going over everything in my mind.

  Someone is dead inside that runabout. That someone mummified, just like my mother in the Room of Lost Souls.

  But bodies that have been in space a very, very, very long time also mummify. It takes forever.

  Still, the similarity to my mother bothers me.

  I didn’t ask Yash how that hand could adhere to the navigation panel. I’m not sure I want to think about it, but I know she has ideas.

  I don’t think the person in that ship is a scavenger, killed by the anacapa field. I don’t know why I am of that opinion, but I am. Something strikes me as different here.

  Both Yash and Mikk say that the anacapa field is now gone, but Yash wants to make sure the anacapa has burned itself out. I don’t blame her. She’s also afraid of activating the Sove’s anacapa.

  I’m not sure how much of that fear comes from Yash’s own personal experience of being stranded in foldspace only to emerge five thousand years in her own future.

  I’m also not sure how much of a risk I want to take of that happening to me. I like to think of myself as resilient, but I’m not sure I want to prove it.

  I also think Yash’s fear that activating our anacapa drive as we try to leave might cause some kind of explosion is a good one, and one we probably should contemplate any time we come into the Boneyard in the future.

  If, indeed, we believe that we have a future with the Boneyard. That’s not a decision I want to make on my own. I want everyone who is running Lost Souls to consider it. We’re closing a lot of doors if we abandon the Boneyard. We need to determine how much risk those doors are worth.

  And then there’s the other problems with causing an explosion as the anacapas activate. We might end bringing all of that explosive energy back to Lost Souls.

  Or we might end up lost in foldspace ourselves.

  Which leaves only blasting our way out of the Boneyard, and again, that might hurt everything around us. It might also get the Boneyard to fire on us, and we have no idea what kind of weaponry is near us.

  Yash and Mikk discussed this in depth together, but ultimately, I need to be part of the decision.

  I have slept for days, and my healing at least is working.

  But Elaine is still down.

  After hours of thought, and being unable to sleep, I get up and make my way to Elaine’s room.

  There is no medical staff here because we’re running such a limited crew. Jaylene is sleeping in the medical wing, but as hard as she’s been working, she’s probably out for the night.

  I pad my way down the hall, being as quiet as I can. Despite the lack of sleep, I’m feeling energetic. Well, maybe not energetic, exactly. I’m not tired, and that feels really good.

  Elaine’s room is the only one with a closed door and a medical alert blinking to the side. If there were other medical personnel here, they could tap on that alert and see exactly what’s wrong with the patient inside the room.

  Unfortunately, she’s on her own, as I was. I didn’t mind. I hope she doesn’t either.

  I slip through the door. The room smells faintly of antiseptics and sweat.

  Elaine lies in the middle of a large bed, curled on her side, blankets swirled around her as if she’s been sleeping restlessly. There are three alert buttons near her, and another not too far from her left hand.

  I stare at the alert for a moment, vaguely remembering that I had had that many as well. Someone had explained it to me, and I had forgotten until now.

  I wonder how much of my life and memories from the past few days are just gone because of what happened. Then I set that thought aside. I’ll worry about it later.

  A chair sits close to the bed. It’s not a diagnostic chair. It must be one of the chairs Jaylene has been using.

  She hasn’t been in my room as much these past two days. She’s probably been here, worrying about Elaine.

  I sit down.

  “Elaine?” I say softly. If I can’t wake her, I’ll sit for a while. If she doesn’t stir, then I’ll leave when I get tired. “Elaine?”

  Her eyes flutter open.

  “Boss,” she says in that half whisper. “Sh…should you be here?”

  She’s worried about my health. That touches me.

  “Probably not,” I say. “But I am. I want your opinion on something.”

  “My…?”

  “Yes,” I say. “You and I are the only ones on this vessel who’ve experienced that malfunctioning field. I think we’re the only ones who are truly qualified to make an important decision.”

  She hasn’t moved. She still remains curled in a semi-fetal position. But her eyes are alert.

  “What decision is that?” she asks.

  “Let me explain,” I say.

  It takes a while to review all the options, with their pros and cons. It also takes some time to explain the dangers as Yash perceives them, versus how I perceive them.

  Elaine listens attentively, asking a few questions. Mostly, though, I can see her engagement through her eyes. She seems riveted and worried at the same time.

  When I finish, she levers herself upright. It takes her a moment. Her right side is weak. I reach out to help her, but she glares at my hand as if it will hurt her.

  I withdraw it, and let her take care of herself.

  She leans on a pillow, visibly tired from the movement.

  “We have no good choices,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “Apparently, we’ve had none since we entered the Boneyard.”

  She smiles at me. I’m getting used to the half smile. It might be the light, but it seems like she’s gaining more mobility in her face.

  I hope so.

  “The problem is,” she says, “you are not… involved.”

  I didn’t expect her to say anything like that.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You have been…rescued,” she says. “You are our…le…our….”

  She looks visibly frustrated, as if the word eludes her. “You are our boss,” she says.

  “Yes.” I don’t know where she’s going with this.

  “If Orlando and I had been diving, not you, then what would you have done?”

  “Exactly what Mikk did,” I say. “I would have pulled you out.”

  “Yes,” she says calmly. I love that calm. “Then what?”

  I haven’t thought about that. I frown, contemplating it, and as I think, I can almost see it.

  “I would have immediately gone through the data, to see what happened,” I say. “I would have reviewed everything, sent in a second probe immediately, and—”

  “Dived…again?” she asks.

  It would have just been me. Not Elaine, not Orlando. In Elaine’s scenario, the two of them would have been hurt, not me.

  “Yes,” I say. “Of course.”

  She smiles. Because she’s right.

  I would have gone back, with whatever protection we could r
ig up, because I would need to get everyone out of here. I might have lost my life, and saved the entire team.

  I would have had Yash talk me through whatever I needed to do to that rogue anacapa drive. Or I would have seen if I could move that runabout, and maybe blow it up farther away from the Sove.

  I would have been taking action, not—I’m afraid—hovering over the people who were injured.

  Yash is a woman of action as well, but she’s used to a hierarchy, and when it comes to taking risks, she doesn’t take them with people’s lives. Her job is to take risks with equipment.

  Coop, as captain, takes risks with people’s lives. It’s one of the things the two of us have bonded over. We know what it’s like to lose people we’re in charge of.

  Yash has lost friends and colleagues as well, but never from an order she has given.

  I reach over and touch Elaine’s damaged arm. It trembles involuntarily, probably non-stop.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  She nods, and I’m pleased to see it. Her head isn’t wobbling as badly as it was. As she sees my expression, her face softens in sympathy.

  “What will you do?” she asks, the words clear.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  But I do.

  And so does she.

  Twenty-One

  The next morning, I discharge myself from the medical wing. Or I would have, if there were actual medical personnel in charge of me. Jaylene is a med tech, something I had forgotten as I was healing. She has no say over me, even if I were dying.

  No one does.

  Even though Yash and Mikk protest, I work with them as we go through the data. They think I’m still fragile, and they might be right. But I’m not paying attention to that.

  We run simulations. We examine every single detail that we can find.

  Mikk has already determined that my hunch was right: when Elaine and I felt the pressure from the energy field, we were near that casing. I’m not sure what that information tells us, except that if the anacapa is activated, it has a range. But I file that away, along with everything else.

  The anacapa drive is strangely dormant at the moment. It shut itself off after we left, and it has not activated again.

  Yash isn’t sure what caused it to shut down, and is going with the theory that the drive burned itself out. But everything about that drive is different from what we know of anacapa drives.

  It’s smaller, it’s in a runabout, and it caused injury to two of us with the genetic marker—injury that we haven’t received in any malfunctioning anacapa field before.

  I don’t trust Yash’s theories.

  Nor can I listen to her fears.

  In fact, I cannot react from fear. I need to protect my team, not hide with it.

  We didn’t just come here to dive a Dignity Vessel. We’re also coming to the Boneyard for answers.

  There are answers on that runabout. There are also more questions than Yash is comfortable with.

  But we need to get information, and we need to go where the information will take us.

  We have a window of quiet. No malfunctioning anacapa drive, and no more strange energy readings—that we can find, anyway.

  We have an opportunity.

  We need to take it.

  Twenty-Two

  “No way in hell,” Mikk says. “We are not risking you.”

  Another day has gone by—another day wasted—and I am standing on the bridge of the Sove with Yash, Mikk, and Orlando. We’ve gone over even more footage from the two probes.

  “You want me to risk other lives, but not my own?” I ask. “I’m back to one hundred percent.”

  I’m not back entirely to 100 percent—if I’ve ever been 100 percent—but I’ve felt worse when I’ve dived in the past. Much worse, in fact. I can do this dive now, if nothing changes.

  The problem is that Elaine is still not better, and I’m not sure she will be, if we don’t get her back to Lost Souls soon.

  What I’m really worried about is that we might have missed the window to help her days ago.

  “We don’t know that you’re back to one hundred percent,” Yash says. “None of us has enough medical experience to know that.”

  “None of us—not even at Lost Souls—has the medical experience to know what happened to me,” I say. “So we won’t know what’s going on, exactly.”

  “Yet another reason not to have you dive,” Mikk says.

  I take a deep breath, trying not to get too angry. If I get too angry, I’ll alienate them further. This crew doesn’t make its decisions by emotion; they’re guided by logic, which is usually a good thing.

  “All right,” I say, and I hear the challenge in my voice, but I can’t seem to make the challenge leave my tone entirely. “Who dives this, then? Because we have to. Believe it or not, it’s the least risky proposition, given what we know.”

  “Lots of qualifiers there,” Yash says.

  “Yes, there are,” I say. “Diving is risky. It’s my job, as the person in charge of this dive, to examine and manage risk. Right now, that dive is the best thing we can do. A dive might cost us another diver. But it also might get all of us out of here alive, without damaging the Sove, the Boneyard, or any of the other ships we want to dive in the future. As a bonus, this dive might give us other information that we might need for our own research. Important information, not just on how ships work, but on what’s happening with the Fleet, right now.”

  I want to add If the Fleet still exists, but I don’t. I don’t want to antagonize Yash further.

  Yash’s mouth sets in a thin line. She knows I added that last to manipulate her.

  The thing is, it worked.

  “All right,” Yash says tightly, “if you think we need to do this, Orlando and I will dive.”

  Orlando doesn’t say a word. In fact, he has moved back just slightly so that he has physically made it clear he’s not part of this conversation. He’s just listening.

  He’s a very smart man.

  “You and Orlando,” I say to Yash. That challenge is still in my voice. My tone would alienate me if I heard it. I’m trying to modulate, but it’s not working well. “I initially thought of that pairing and ruled it out.”

  Yash shakes her head, but Mikk is the one who speaks.

  “None of the rest of the team we brought is going to be good at this kind of dive,” he says. “The Fleet people have a lot of experience in space, but they don’t know how to dive wrecks.”

  “I know,” I say. It’s pretty clear he and Yash have had this discussion.

  I look at her now. She raises her chin so that her gaze meets mine full-on.

  “You don’t have experience diving this kind of wreck either,” I say to her.

  “I need to go on this dive,” she says. “I have to see that anacapa. No one here has the anacapa experience I do. There’s the possibility we can’t bring it back to the Sove. I’m the only one who can shut the anacapa off on site.”

  Finally, I calm down just a bit.

  I take a deep breath so that I sound calm too.

  “There’s no possibility that we bring the anacapa back to the Sove,” I say. “That anacapa malfunctioned. We’re not bringing anything that dangerous on board this ship no matter how much we believe we can contain it or if we believe we can shut it off.”

  Yash looks away from me, two spots of color on her cheeks. I’m a little stunned she even thought bringing the anacapa back here was a possibility.

  “If it’s deactivated, it’s safe,” she says.

  “I’d trust you on the anacapas you’re used to,” I say, “but not on this one. It’s a completely different kind. You even said that. It’s too small to be like anything you’ve seen before. God knows what else is different inside that container.”

  She takes a deep breath but doesn’t argue with me.

  “So,” I say to her, “you’re right. You’re on this mission no matter what. An inexperienced wreck diver whose focus will be on e
quipment, not on the dive itself.”

  Those spots of color on her cheek grow.

  “Orlando can handle that by himself,” I say as if he’s not here.

  He’s looking down, so that he doesn’t meet my gaze, clearly pretending not to be here. I don’t blame him. He usually doesn’t take part in these planning sessions. He’s usually told what to do and when to do it. He’s not used to seeing this particular kind of fight.

  “He’s one of our best divers,” I say. “He’s a quick thinker and he’s handled all kinds of difficult dives, including something that wasn’t a dive at all.”

  Everyone looks at me. I can’t believe they’ve forgotten.

  “He was on the team in the abandoned sector base when the Ivoire first arrived,” I say. “That’s valuable experience. He knows how to handle the unexpected. He’s done it many times before.”

  “So, it’s decided then,” Mikk says. He’s used to dealing with me in these kinds of discussions. Sometimes he can shut me down with a declaration like this.

  Sometimes.

  “It is decided,” I say. “I’m diving this wreck.”

  Mikk lets out a sigh of exasperation. “That’s not what I said.”

  “I know,” I say. “But here’s why. You all think I’m not up to the dive.”

  “Yes,” Yash says forcefully as Mikk says, “Yeah.”

  Orlando isn’t saying a word.

  “So think it through,” I say. “The two divers—Yash and Orlando—get in trouble inside the runabout. You can’t just yank them back to the Sove like you did me and Elaine. There are too many corridors and doors. You’d have to bring the entire runabout back into the Sove to save them, and that would endanger everyone.”

  No one says anything. They’re all looking at me, even Orlando.

  I turn to Yash, because she hasn’t gone on a truly catastrophic dive with me. Not even Mikk was on the worst one, the one where I encountered my first Dignity Vessel.

  “Normally, on a dive like that,” I say, “we let the divers get themselves out. It’s too dangerous to go in after them. And that might be the case here.”

  Yash doesn’t move. She’s with the Fleet. They’re trained in deciding whether or not an individual is worth rescuing, in considering what would happen to the team.