Diving into the Wreck du-1 Read online

I take the Business to Longbow Station. Longbow sits at the very edges of Empire Space. When the Colonnade Wars began, Longbow belonged to the group the Empire now calls the rebels. Some maps place Longbow in the Nine Planets Alliance; others place it in the Enterran Empire.

  Both the Empire and the Alliance long ago learned to leave Longbow alone. Longbow is such an important trading hub that both sides decided it was better—and safer—to let the station be just a little bit lawless, and to govern itself, than it was to attempt to take over the place.

  As a result, a lot of people with iffy allegiances live on Longbow. You quickly learn that it’s better not to ask people’s politics or their past history.

  Longbow started as a docking berth five hundred years ago. You can still see the original station, tucked inside one of the modular units that was new a hundred years before.

  Over time, Longbow became a major hub. Instead of replacing sections, the owners simply built onto the existing parts. So the station looks like a child’s toy, held together by spit and static. Depending on how you approach it, you can’t even see where the ships dock.

  The station looks like a creature with a thousand tentacles and no center core.

  But there is a center core. It’s buried underneath all the rebuilding. Very few people make it to that core. Only longtime spacers even know where the core is, which is fortunate, since the old spacers’ bar on Longbow doesn’t let tourists and first-timers through the door.

  The old spacers’ bar is the only bar on Longbow that doesn’t have a name. No name, no advertising across the door or the back wall, no cute little logos on the magnetized drinking cups. The door is recessed into a grungy wall that looks like it’s temporary due to construction.

  To get in, you need one of two special chips. The first is handheld—given by the station’s manager after careful consideration. The second is built into your ID. You get that one only if you’re a legitimate spacer, operating or working for a business that requires a pilot’s license.

  I have had the second chip since I was eighteen years old.

  And I know that the people I will find in that bar will be as experienced as I am. As experienced, as space-worn, and as skeptical.

  They’ll also be on break or looking for work.

  In essence, any divers I see inside will be exactly what I need.

  In the end, I settle on five divers.

  The least experienced are a father-and-son team, Jypé and Junior. I tourist-dived with them a few times, years ago, when they were starting to get their space legs. I’m the one who encouraged them to go beyond the safe dives and move to wreck diving, salvage, and historical diving.

  They both have natural diving talent, an ability to float through zero-g even though both are land-born. They understand history and they love new places, new things.

  They’re also one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. They move in synch, think in synch, and work in synch. They even look alike. Junior is a younger version of Jypé, same black hair, dark skin, and strong bone structure—stronger than that of most divers. The fact that they’re land-born shows in their build. But their background doesn’t harm their diving.

  Besides, they have the money to pursue this new career. Jypé made a fortune in some land-based business and now invests it in preserving historical wrecks—wrecks he’s helped discover.

  I trust Jypé’s knowledge of historical ships almost as much as I trust my own.

  Deep down, I was hoping I’d find Jypé and Junior when I came to Longbow. The fact that I have makes me feel like this mission is destined.

  The next two people I hire are also a longtime team. I first met Squishy and Turtle when I started wreck diving, decades ago.

  Squishy and Turtle have been a couple as long as I’ve known them. They’re both thin, active women who can run their own team if they have to. Squishy’s a bit secretive—she doesn’t like to talk about her past—and Turtle respects that. But every dive we’ve gone on together has been successful. They have a level of expertise that no other divers I know have achieved.

  Turtle has an uncanny sense of corners and danger spots. She’s also a good pilot. She’s saved my life more than once.

  And somewhere along the way, Squishy learned field medicine. I discovered long ago that it’s best to have a medic on each mission.

  It’s even better to have a medic who dives.

  It takes me nearly a week to find the last member of the team. Many of the more established divers say no to me when I refuse to tell them what kind of ship we’re diving.

  All I will tell anyone is that we have a mystery vessel, one that will tax their knowledge, their beliefs, and their wreck-recovery skills.

  I don’t want anyone who goes to the coordinates to know we have a Dignity Vessel before we arrive. I don’t want to prejudice them, don’t want to force them along one line of thinking.

  I also don’t want to be wrong.

  Besides, while I’m hunting for the last member of the team, I don’t want to tip my hand. If we do have a Dignity Vessel, it’ll be worth a fortune in curiosity value alone. The wrong word to the wrong person and my little discovery will disappear as if it hasn’t existed at all.

  But a lot of divers won’t go into a wreck blind. They believe it’s better to know what they’re facing, even if they later discover that they’re wrong about the type of ship.

  Because of that, a lot of experienced divers turn me down.

  That’s how I end up with Karl.

  Even though I’ve known him for more than ten years, we’ve rarely worked together. He has always intimidated me. He’s big for a diver, blond, muscular, and very pale. Yet he is one of the best divers in the sector. He has incredible rankings from almost every certifying body that exists. He’s gone on more dives than I have and has dived more kinds of ships than I ever will.

  But he is also cautious, and caution isn’t always compatible with historical wreck diving. Some of his dive partners have made fun of the redundant equipment he carries and the large knife he sticks into his belt.

  I think the knife is dangerous—he could poke a hole in his environmental suit—but I also know I can’t convince him to give the knife up. It’s saved his life more than once—the last time when he was solo diving a wreck he discovered and got ambushed by three claim jumpers.

  He killed them, finished the dive, and then reported his actions. I was on Longbow when he went up on charges and ably defended himself with holo-cordings, audio, and not a little bit of personal outrage.

  Karl is the only member of the team who worries me. If I can’t keep him under control, he might take over the dive.

  And there’s nothing I hate more than losing control of a mission.

  Except losing a member of my team.

  ~ * ~

  THREE

  We approach the wreck in stealth mode: lights and communications array off, sensors on alert for any other working ship in the vicinity. I’m the only one in the cockpit of the Nobody’s Business. I’m the only one with the exact coordinates.

  The rest of the team sits in the lounge, their gear in cargo. I personally searched each one of them before sticking them to their chairs. No one, but no one, knows where the wreck is except me. That is our agreement.

  They hold to it or else.

  We’re six days from Longbow Station, but it took us ten to get here. Misdirection again, although I’d only planned on two days working my way through an asteroid belt around Beta Six. I ended up taking three, trying to get rid of a bottom-feeder that tracked us, hoping to learn where we’re diving.

  Hoping for loot.

  After I’m sure I have lost every chance of being tracked, I let the Business slide into a position far enough from the wreck that we’re out of normal scanner range. We can’t eyeball the wreck either. We match the wreck’s speed, but do little else.

  I use this precaution on all of my valuable wreck dives. If my ship’s energy signals are caught on someone el
se’s scans, they won’t pick up the faint energy signal of the wreck. I have a half dozen cover stories ready, depending on who might spot us. I’ll tell them lies about why we’re in this area of space. I’ll tell them anything I can to get rid of them.

  But most of all, I hope no one will stumble upon us while we dive the wreck.

  Taking this precaution means we need transport to and from the wreck. That’s the only drawback of this kind of secrecy.

  First mission out, I’m ferry captain—a role I hate, but one I have to play. We’re using the skip instead of the Business. The skip is designed for short trips. It has a main room that melds into the pilot’s area, a cargo bay, a galley kitchen, and a bathroom. It also has two escape pods in case something goes wrong. The pods only fit one person each—a design flaw, since the skip itself holds four.

  The skip is also designed to travel anonymously. I had the name and logo removed right after I bought it. Not even the pods have any identifying features. I don’t want to be easily identified, particularly when I’m diving an unknown wreck.

  On this trip, there’s only three of us—me, Turtle, and Karl. Usually we team-dive wrecks, but this deep and this early, I need two different kinds of players. Turtle can dive anything, and Karl can kill anything. I can fly anything.

  We’re set.

  The process we’re about to embark on gets its name from the dangers: in olden days, wreck diving was called space diving to differentiate it from the planetside practice of diving into the oceans.

  We don’t face water here—we don’t have its weight or its unusual properties, particularly at huge depths. We have other elements to concern us: no gravity, no oxygen, extreme cold.

  And greed.

  My biggest problem is that I’m land-born, something I don’t confess to often. I spent the last forty years of my life trying to forget that my feet were once stuck to a planet’s surface by real gravity. I even came to prolonged zero-g late: fifteen years old, already landlocked. My first instructors told me I’d never unlearn the thinking real atmosphere ingrains into the body.

  They were mostly right; land pollutes me, takes out an edge that the space-raised come to naturally. I have to consciously choose to go into the deep and dark; the space-raised glide in like it’s mother’s milk. But if I compare myself to the landlocked, I’m a spacer of the first order, someone who understands vacuum like most understand air.

  But because I’m the least able diver on the skip, I’ll stay on board, even though I’m the one who discovered the Dignity Vessel. I trust Karl and Turtle; besides, they’ll record everything they see.

  It will almost be as if I’ve dived with them.

  Almost.

  I fly the skip with the portals unshielded. It looks like we’re inside a piece of black glass moving through open space. Turtle paces most of the way, walking back to front to back again, peering through the portals, hoping to be the first to see the wreck.

  She’s even thinner than she was when I first met her decades ago. Her bones look fragile enough to snap. Her skin is rough from the chemicals some suits are contaminated with and from weird exposures from bad dives. Her fingers are long, birdlike.

  She no longer looks like the woman we nicknamed Turtle. Then her head had been the smallest thing about her. When she put on an environmental suit, it seemed like she put on a protective shell.

  In those days, I was convinced she could slide her helmeted head inside her suit and pretend to be a rock, just like a real turtle.

  Now her head seems large against her skeletal frame. Middle age has not treated her well, although she is as strong and healthy as ever.

  Karl monitors the instruments as if he’s flying the skip instead of me. If I hadn’t worked with him before, I’d be freaked. I’m not; I know he’s watching for unusuals, whatever comes our way.

  Karl is the opposite of Turtle. He looks as sturdy as she seems fragile. He has a broad open face and close-cut blond hair.

  Everything about him seems efficient and strong, as powerful as that knife he carries everywhere he goes.

  The wreck looms ahead of us—a megaship, from the days when size equaled power. Still, it seems small in the vastness, barely a blip on the front of my sensors.

  Turtle bounces past. She’s fighting the grav that I left on for me—that landlocked thing again—and she’s so nervous, someone who doesn’t know her would think she’s on something.

  “What the hell is it?” she asks. “Old Empire?”

  “Older.” Karl is bent at the waist, looking courtly as he studies the instruments. He prefers readouts to eyeballing things; he trusts equipment more than he trusts himself.

  “There can’t be anything older out here,” Turtle says.

  “‘Can’t’ is relative,” Karl says.

  I let them tough it out. I’m not telling them what I know. The skip slows, and shuts down. I’m easing in, leaving no trail.

  “It’s gonna take more than six of us to dive that puppy,” Turtle says. “Either that, or we’ll spend the rest of our lives here.”

  “As old as that thing is,” Karl says, “it’s probably been plundered and replundered.”

  “We’re not here for the loot.” I speak softly, reminding them it’s a historical mission.

  Karl turns his angular face toward me. In the dim light of the instrument panel, his gray eyes look silver. “You know what this is?”

  I don’t answer. I’m not going to lie about something as important as this, so I can’t make a denial. But I’m not going to confirm either. Confirming will only lead to more questions, which is something I don’t want just yet. I need them to make their own minds up about this find.

  “Huge, old.” Turtle shakes her head. “Dangerous. You know what’s inside?”

  “Nothing, for all I know.”

  “Didn’t check it out first?”

  Some dive team leaders head into a wreck the moment they find one. Anyone working salvage knows it’s not worth your time to come back to a place that’s been plundered before.

  “No.” I pick a spot not far from the main doors and set the skip to hold position with the monster wreck. With no trail, I hoped no one was gonna notice the tiny energy emanation the skip gives off.

  “Too dangerous?” Turtle asks. “That why you didn’t go in?”

  “I have no idea if it’s dangerous.” I’m referring to the skip, not diving alone.

  Diving alone is always dangerous.

  “There’s a reason you brought us here.” She sounds annoyed. “You gonna share it?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. I just want to see what you find.”

  She glares, but the look has no teeth. She knows my methods and even approves of them sometimes. And she should know that I’m not good enough to dive alone.

  She peels off her clothes—no modesty in this woman—and slides on her suit. The suit adheres to her like it’s a part of her. She wraps five extra breathers around her hips—just-in-case emergency stuff, barely enough to get her out if her suit’s internal oxygen system fails. Her suit is minimal—it has no backup for environmental protection. If her primary and secondary units fail, she’s a little block of ice in a matter of seconds.

  She likes the risk; Karl doesn’t. His suit is bulkier, not as form-fitting, but it has external environmental backups. He has had environmental failures and has barely survived them. I’ve heard that lecture half a dozen times. So has Turtle, even though she always ignores it.

  He doesn’t go naked under the suit either, leaving some clothes in case he has to peel quickly. Different divers, different situations. He only carries two extra breathers, both so small that they fit on his hips without expanding his width. He uses the extra loops for weapons, mostly lasers, although he’s got that knife stashed somewhere in all that preparedness.

  They don’t put on the headpieces until I give them the plan. One hour only: twenty minutes to get in, twenty minutes to explore, twenty minutes to return. Work the buddy system.
We just want an idea of what’s in there.

  One hour gives them enough time on their breathers for some margin of error. One hour also prevents them from getting too involved in the dive and forgetting the time.

  They have to stay on schedule.

  They get the drill. They’ve done it before, with me anyway. I have no idea how other team leaders run their ships. I have strict rules about everything, and expect my teams to follow.

  Headpieces on—Turtle’s is as thin as her face, tight enough to make her look like some kind of cybernetic human. Karl goes for the full protection— seven layers, each with a different function; double night vision, extra cameras on all sides; computerized monitors layered throughout the external cover. He gives me the handheld, which records everything he sees. It’s not as good as the camera eye view they’ll bring back, but at least it’ll let me know my team is still alive.

  Not that I can do anything if they’re in trouble. My job is to stay in the skip. Theirs is to come back to it in one piece.

  They move through the airlock—Turtle bouncing around like she always does, Karl moving with caution—and then wait the required two minutes. The suits adjust, then Turtle presses the hatch, and Karl sends the lead to the other ship.

  We don’t tether exactly, but we run a line from one point of entry to the other. It’s cautionary. A lot of divers get wreck blindness—hit the wrong button, expose themselves to too much light, look directly into a laser, or the suit malfunctions in ways I don’t even want to discuss—and they need the tactical hold to get back to safety.

  I don’t deal with wreck blindness either, but Squishy does. She knows eyes, and can replace a lens in less than fifteen minutes. She’s saved more than one of my crew in the intervening years. And after overseeing the first repair—the one in which she got her nickname—I don’t watch.

  Turtle heads out first, followed by Karl. They look vulnerable out there, small shapes against the blackness. They follow the guideline, one hand resting lightly on it as they propel themselves toward the wreck.

  This is the easy part: should they let go or miss by a few meters, they use tiny air chips in the hands and feet of their suits to push them in the right direction. The suits have even more chips than that. Should the diver get too far away from the wreck, they can use little propellants installed throughout their suits.