The Runabout Read online

  Nine

  I spend the next few hours thinking about the upcoming dive. I pace through part of the Sove as I do so, trying to keep myself calm.

  Yash’s words keep going through my head. There’s a lot we don’t know here, a lot we need to know.

  I’d like to send a probe inside that runabout, but the scans aren’t showing any openings a probe can fit through.

  We’re going to have to explore the exterior of the runabout—or at least pry the doors open to get a probe inside.

  My heart is pounding harder just thinking about that, and I suspect, if someone were monitoring me the way that I get monitored the way I do when I’m diving, they would say I have the gids.

  I’m too excited about this, and it worries me.

  I finally head back to the bridge to see Mikk. He’s running some scans from there, just double-checking what we’ve done. He wants to make sure we didn’t miss any other small ships nearby that might have anacapa drives.

  The bridge is cavernous when it’s not fully staffed. Even though four trainees are also working on the bridge, it looks empty. The trainees—two men and two women—are doing something to the equipment. I think I’d have to get closer to understand what they’re about. I don’t even know these people by name, even though I know we’ve been introduced.

  But I’m not interested in them. I’m interested in Mikk.

  He looks odd, his muscular body hunched over a console, his fingers dancing across it. I’m used to seeing Mikk piloting and engaged with exterior views, or diving wrecks himself.

  “Can you take a break?” I ask him quietly, but it doesn’t matter how low my voice is. The four trainees look up as if I was talking to them.

  He nods, and doesn’t even glance at them. But I note that he shuts down the program he’s running so that they can’t see it.

  I lead him to the small room off the bridge. When we restored this ship, Coop called that the captain’s office, but Yash called it the private meeting room. Neither of them have much use for it.

  But Coop runs a different kind of ship than I ever would. I like this room off the bridge, and could see myself using it on all kinds of major dives.

  Mikk and I go inside. There’s a table and three chairs bolted to the floor. Like most other meeting rooms in the Sove, there’s also a sideboard so that food and beverages can be served.

  Apparently that’s an essential part of Fleet culture—the constant appearance of food.

  Not that there’s any in here. In fact the room’s air seems just a little stale, even though I know it’s not. The air gets recycled in here as often as it does everywhere else on the ship.

  I extend a hand toward the chairs, but Mikk shakes his head just once. He stands so he can see through the clear door. I can opaque the door if I want to, but there’s no point.

  “Don’t tell me,” he says. “Yash doesn’t believe our readings are right.”

  “Actually,” I say, “she does.”

  He raises his eyebrows at me in surprise.

  I shrug. “That’s not the problem.”

  I tell him what Yash and I discussed, about all the possibilities with the anacapa drive in that runabout.

  Then I say, “What I want to do is send in a probe, but there are no obvious openings on that runabout. It seems intact.”

  “We could do a more in-depth scan,” he says.

  “We could,” I say, “and that might still miss an area we could probe. I’d rather do an exterior search.”

  “And launch the probe from there?”

  We’ve done that a bunch of times in the past.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He nods, then crosses his arms. “Somehow I don’t think that’s why you want to see me in private.”

  I take a deep breath. Time to face the music, both literally and figuratively.

  “I need to tell you what happened to me out there,” I say.

  He extends a hand toward the chairs now. “Should we sit?”

  “Probably,” I say.

  We move to chairs that face each other over the table. I decide to hit the small control that opaques the door after all. I don’t want those trainees to see me if this conversation ends up distressing me.

  He waits without asking me what’s going on. I love that about Mikk. He trusts me to tell him in my own good time.

  “When I was on that line,” I say, “I heard music.”

  He nods. He knew that. They all did.

  “I thought it beautiful.” I let the words hang for a moment, hoping he’ll understand.

  Something changes in his face. He looks guarded. “Like your mother?”

  “Yes,” I say quietly. “Or no. I have no idea. I can only guess what she went through.”

  “But you found that sound alluring,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  He sighs. “And you’re just telling me now?”

  “Yash says that the failing anacapa gives off different energy than most malfunctioning anacapa drives,” I say. “I wonder if that different signal is what I was reacting to.”

  “Have you discussed this with Orlando and Elaine?” Mikk says.

  Ever practical, he’s not thinking this is just about me. He’s thinking they might have experienced the same thing.

  My cheeks grow warm. I hadn’t thought of that at all. I was so caught up in my past that I failed to consider the implications for the other divers.

  “No,” I say.

  “We’ll need to discuss it with them,” he says. “We might not be able to dive this area after all.”

  “Possibly,” I say, even though I don’t like that solution. “But I have another idea.”

  He leans back, his expression even more guarded than before.

  “Remember your own rules, Boss,” he says. “Safety first. You and I both have seen too many people die on dives.”

  He helped me with the corpse of one of our old friends, pulling the body out of the Room of Lost Souls after we’d all been lured there on a fake mission. Mikk knows exactly what a malfunctioning anacapa drive can do.

  “I know we have,” I say. I’m trying not to minimize it. “We have two things to consider here. We want material from the Boneyard. It’ll help us not just with Lost Souls, but in any battle with the Empire.”

  Mikk opens his mouth to argue with me, but I don’t let him speak, not yet.

  “The problem is, as I see it,” I say, “that we’ll probably encounter malfunctioning anacapas and alluring tech like this all over the Boneyard. We all assume that these ships do not work for one reason or another.”

  He frowns. I know that assumptions aren’t always correct. I also know we shouldn’t debate that right now.

  I continue, “These ships are being stored here, either as a junkyard of damaged ships or as outdated models, maybe to be used for future ships.”

  “If anyone comes back for them,” Mikk says. “Coop believes they were damaged in a battle.”

  “I know he does.” I don’t agree with Coop, and I let my tone express that. “Whatever the reason these ships ended up stored here, the problem remains: we’re going to encounter more malfunctioning tech. All of it will be dangerous. All of it is dangerous.”

  Mikk shifts his crossed arms, as if trying to make them more comfortable. Or as if he’s letting them speak for him.

  “You want to dive the Boneyard right here, now, even though you felt lured by that tech,” he says.

  I nod.

  “It’s too dangerous, Boss,” he says. “You know that. There’s nothing you can do to make it safer.”

  “Yes, there is,” I say.

  He sighs softly enough that I realize he didn’t want me to hear it. I pretend that I didn’t hear him.

  I say, “We tether to the Sove as we dive outside the runabout.”

  He’s shaking his head even as I’m speaking. “We did that, Boss. Remember? At the Room of Lost Souls. The tether didn’t work.”

  It wasn’t that the te
ther didn’t work. It got removed—by the diver himself.

  “I know,” I say. “But I’ve been thinking about this, and there are some differences.”

  Mikk taps the fingers of his right hand on his left bicep. I’m not even sure he’s aware he’s doing it.

  “We’ve already dived the anacapa field,” I say.

  “What?” he asks, clearly surprised. Apparently he had expected me to say something else.

  “We were in the energy stream. You were monitoring us through it,” I say. “It’s different from that time in the Room.”

  He frowns at me, not entirely understanding.

  “When we dove the Room, the diver had to actually go inside the room itself to experience the malfunctioning anacapa. The same with that first Dignity Vessel Squishy and I dove.”

  Where two more of my divers died.

  “They entered the field, and then had problems. Those fields were hard to access,” I say.

  Mikk’s frown grows deeper.

  “Here,” I continue, “we’ve already experienced the field. Maybe not up close, not inside the runabout, exactly, but that’s not what we’re talking about.”

  Mikk uncrosses his arms. He’s clearly intrigued. “What are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about exploring the exterior, and then sending in a probe. No closed doors, no secondary area that you can’t see. You’ll be monitoring our vitals, and you can pull us back if something goes wrong.”

  He takes a deep breath, clearly thinking about that. He looks away from me, as if looking at me would influence his decision.

  Then he turns back toward me, and says slowly, “Before you go on that dive, we’re going to review every single second of the aborted dive.”

  My heart starts racing. I have him. He’s agreed.

  He knows I’m right. If we’re going to dive the Boneyard, we have to face difficulties like this one.

  But he’s not done with his conditions.

  He says, “We’re going to figure out if the suits’ clocks differ from the Sove’s clock, down to the nanosecond. We’re going to look at your response, in particular, nanosecond by nanosecond. If we find any spike or blip, we’re going to examine it.”

  I want to tell him that it won’t be necessary, that we’ll be able to handle whatever’s going to happen.

  But I know better. He’s absolutely right. We need information before we go in. We need to be as prepared as possible.

  He must have seen the resistance on my face.

  “For that reason,” he says, “the only people who can do the preliminary dive are you, Orlando, and Elaine.”

  I let out a small breath. I really want to make this dive. Which concerns me.

  “Okay,” I say. “Yash might argue with that.”

  “Let her,” he says. “We will have a baseline for comparison on the three of you. We won’t have it with her.”

  He’s right. I know he’s right.

  I nod.

  “And one more thing before I completely agree to any of this,” he says.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “You tell Yash,” he says. “All of it.”

  My cheeks heat again. “She doesn’t need to know about my family.”

  “Of course she needs to know about your family,” Mikk says. “You’re going to do the best you can out there, but you’re human, Boss, whether you like to admit it or not. You might get caught by an emotion you haven’t considered, something that won’t have an impact on Orlando or Elaine or anyone else who dives the Boneyard.”

  “You’re saying I’m the weak link,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Yes,” he says. “You are.”

  Ten

  It takes two days to prep for the next dive. Yash works side by side with Mikk, giving only a little of the grunt work to Zaria and the trainees. Yash doesn’t trust them with anything this important, and frankly, neither do I.

  Before the work got underway, I met with Yash, Orlando, and Elaine. I told them about my reaction to the malfunctioning tech, and how it felt different than it had before.

  Yash looked at me with concern, and afterwards, she asked me if I thought it was wise to dive the Boneyard, knowing all that. I recognized the verbal ploy. It meant she didn’t think I should dive it, and she was urging me to end up in agreement with her.

  I didn’t change my mind.

  Although, after speaking to Orlando and Elaine, I almost decided to do the dive on my own.

  Orlando had felt the lure as well. Elaine had too, but apparently she had the capacity to ignore it, which I thought fascinating. None of us were certain as to why there was a difference between Elaine, me, and Orlando, and nothing in the data told us what caused the difference. Her suit was the same as ours. It had the same slightly fluctuating readings as our suits.

  The only conclusion I can draw is that she is made of sturdier stuff than Orlando and I. I have always valued Elaine’s calm. I’m beginning to think it’s an inborn trait, and not something learned. And that calm will help us during this dive.

  Yash has repeatedly tried to scan the exterior of that runabout, and find a large enough hole for the probe to enter without us having to make a dive. She couldn’t find anything after several tries. She eventually gave that task to the trainees, telling them to be as creative as they could.

  She gave them a deadline of this morning to find an alternate way into the runabout.

  They couldn’t find one.

  We’re diving it, and I’m trying to ignore the fact that I am a little too happy about that.

  Eleven

  By the afternoon, we’re back in the bay. Elaine, Orlando, and I are suited up. My heart is pounding—the damn gids—and I hope I’m not more excited than usual.

  Part of me feels more excited than usual.

  I focus on the dive. A few hours ago, I made an executive decision. Only two of us would make this particular dive.

  I decided the two who would leave the Sove are me and Elaine. Elaine’s calm is valuable, and will offset my gids.

  Orlando would be our reserve diver. If we need rescue—and we might—we need someone who can enter that anacapa energy field as safely as Elaine and I can.

  Although “safely” is probably the wrong word. I don’t know what the actual word would be. The reason I made this decision is pretty simple: We at least have information on Orlando’s previous reaction to the field. Any other diver Mikk chooses to rescue us wouldn’t have that.

  And I’ve made one other thing clear to the team. Mikk is in charge of this dive. Mikk has been through dangerous anacapa situations before. He knows what to do.

  More importantly, he knows when to cut our losses and leave.

  When I presented this new plan, Yash argued with all of it. But her focus was on me.

  “Captains don’t go on the most dangerous missions,” she said to me.

  I shrugged. “I’m not a captain.”

  Apparently that answer was too flip for her.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “The most important person on the team does not take unnecessary risks.”

  “The most knowledgeable person on the team needs to take these risks at times,” I said. “I have the most diving experience, and the most experience in dangerous diving situations.”

  I didn’t add that I also had the most experience of anyone on this ship with malfunctioning anacapa drives—malfunctioning stealth tech—and that includes Mikk.

  Yash finally figured out that she couldn’t sway me. She knew when to stop arguing, which I respected about her.

  She also knew that I trusted her to get the entire team back to Lost Souls if something happened to me.

  Which it most decidedly will not. I’m doing all I can to make sure that Elaine and I survive this dive.

  Mikk and I made a list of everything we had done wrong in previous dives involving what we used to call stealth tech. We discussed solutions or ways to avoid all of those problems.
r />   After we had that list in hand, we talked with Yash to see if she had other ideas as well.

  She did.

  And she had some great work-arounds.

  Or I thought they were great until I suited up here in the bay. In addition to the suit, which I’m not really fond of, Elaine, Orlando, and I have attached two tethers to ourselves. Neither tether can be severed by us. They have to be cut off when we return to the ship.

  It means we’re constantly moving tethers. They are already getting in the way of our movements, which annoys me. Elaine and I will have to be cautious so we don’t get caught up in our own lines.

  I don’t like having extra things to think about, and said so as we were suiting up. Mikk was the one who responded.

  He said, You need something to keep your focus on the dive, Boss. Use the tethers as a mental ground, reminding you that you’re diving, not floating in some lovely light.

  The phrase irritated me—still irritates me—but he’s right. We need something to remind us that we’re part of the Sove, not the Boneyard.

  The thing that has haunted me the most about my mother’s death is that I was with her in that Room. She forgot me. She lost herself in that light and that music, and she forgot I was with her.

  I have always given her a pass on that. I have always used that piece of information as an indication of how strong the lure was, that it caused her to abandon her own child.

  I need to remember that each time I touch the tethers. I need to remember I can lose myself in beauty that I can only imagine right now.

  I try to explain that to Elaine. I think she gets it. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes.

  We’re also attaching the Sove to that runabout with an extra strong line. If need be, Yash and Mikk will tow the runabout back to the ship.

  I don’t want to do that—I don’t want the malfunctioning anacapa any closer to the Sove than it already is—but they say if they end up doing it, it’ll only be because I can no longer give orders.

  Whatever that means.

  I don’t think about it much.

  I need to focus on the dive. We all need to focus on the dive.