The Runabout Read online

  She’s right about the rest. I’ve fallen asleep in the middle of conversations. I’m still shaky at times.

  I don’t like how I feel.

  I also don’t like what I know.

  I know I won’t be diving in the next few days, or even the next few weeks. I know there’s a possibility that I might never dive again.

  But I don’t discuss that either. I don’t want people to tell me I’m being too pessimistic. I also don’t want them to tell me that I’m right.

  I’m dozing for the fifth time today when Yash and Mikk enter my room. They pull up chairs beside the bed. They look determined.

  I square my shoulders, scrunch my pillow behind my back, and pretend to have more energy than I do.

  I force myself to focus.

  “Okay,” Mikk says without preamble. “Here’s what we know. Whatever that energy field was—and we’ll discuss that in a minute—it came out of the runabout.”

  I look away from his face to Yash’s. She nods.

  “We checked every ship around the runabout again,” Mikk says. “Then we used that program Yash’s team was writing when you and I gave them all our information. Her program is very different from ours.”

  “It works this way,” Yash starts, but I wave a hand.

  “Tell me that later,” I say. “My ability to concentrate still fades in and out. Let’s make sure I’m completely focused for the important stuff.”

  She nods, but looks disappointed that she can’t explain how brilliant her team was.

  “Both programs found the same things,” Mikk says. He and Yash clearly planned the tag team part of this little talk. “There are minor anacapa readings coming out of some of the Dignity Vessels nearby.”

  Yash winces at the word. Mikk clearly doesn’t care about her feelings on that.

  “Not all of those readings are of malfunctioning anacapa drives,” he says. “Some are simply working drives that give off low-level readings.”

  That surprises me. Our search didn’t turn up those anacapa drives, primarily because the signals they give off aren’t what we used to think was stealth tech.

  “The energy readings that trapped you and Elaine,” Mikk says, “came out of that runabout. The readings were strong from the very start, but I hadn’t realized how strong until after we brought the two of you back to the Sove, when I checked everything against our past data.”

  When he said “our,” he meant his and mine.

  Except for that moment when Yash started to tell me about her search parameters, she has sat quietly in her chair, watching both of us.

  “You said the readings got stronger when I opened the runabout’s door.” I’ve been going over that and over that in my mind, wondering if I nearly got Elaine and I killed.

  “The airlock door,” Yash says. “The interior door.”

  “We’re not sure if there was some kind of failsafe you triggered,” Mikk says, “or if the energy was that much stronger inside the runabout.”

  “As far as I can tell,” Yash says, “the runabout’s hull isn’t strong enough to contain that much energy. I’m guessing that something activated.”

  “Or it was coincidence,” Mikk says. “Whatever was causing that energy was building, and we just happened to decide to dive the wreck right at the time the energy built up the highest.”

  They’ve clearly been having this discussion for some time. I can’t tell if they want me to offer an opinion about it, or if they are simply going over a familiar argument, catching me up on it.

  I decide not to have an opinion, not yet. I want to see the data. I want to come to my own conclusions.

  But right now, the idea of reading all the data makes me even more exhausted.

  “That energy field,” Mikk says, “was not only stronger than anything we encountered in the past, but it’s a little different.”

  He glances at Yash. I get a sense they’re not telling me something.

  “Different how?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I can show you the information,” he says, “but right now, we have no real interpretation for it.”

  “The thing is,” Yash says, “the field is gone. It vanished shortly after we yanked you back into the Sove and it hasn’t returned.”

  The word “yank” startles me, and makes it clear to me just how panicked they were as they were bringing Elaine and me back.

  I had to get past my own reaction to what was happening to me. I can feel my concentration break.

  I force it back to the conversation.

  “You say that the field ‘vanished,’” I say. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “It’s as if the runabout doesn’t have an anacapa drive at all,” Yash says. “There’s no reading from that little ship. None.”

  “And the anacapa reading hasn’t returned?” I ask.

  “Not at all. We’re monitoring it constantly.” Yash runs her hands over her knees, a nervous gesture I’m not used to seeing from her.

  I frown. I know her hesitation about investigating further. I also know that she’s worried we might not escape from the Boneyard.

  I need to get myself healthy again. I don’t have time to lie here any longer. I have to start moving.

  I’m just not sure I can.

  I scrunch the pillow up some more, and straighten my back, ignoring the growing exhaustion that makes my eyes want to close.

  “Are the doors still open?” I ask.

  Mikk looks at the door to my room here in the medical wing. After a second, Yash does too.

  They don’t understand me.

  “In the runabout,” I say. “Are the doors still open in the runabout?”

  Mikk glances at Yash. She shrugs.

  “We haven’t looked,” she says.

  “You need to look,” I say.

  She nods. She understands immediately. But Mikk is frowning.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Because one of your theories is that something blocked that signal,” I say. “If the doors closed, then the signal might be less than it was, but still blocked from the outside. If the doors are open, then perhaps the signal has burned itself out.”

  Or something like that. There are a million theories as to why that signal would vanish.

  But my idea might start Mikk and Yash on a new investigation.

  “I hadn’t even thought of that,” Mikk says.

  “I hope the doors didn’t close,” Yash says, one of her hands forming a fist. “If the doors did close, that runabout is still automated on some level. We got no indication of that either.”

  Mikk nods. Then he turns to me. “We have imagery from the interior of the runabout. We would like to look at it with you.”

  “You haven’t looked at it yet?” I ask.

  “Not the imagery,” Mikk says. “We have combed the telemetry the probe has been sending us.”

  “That’s another way we know there are no more readings,” Yash says. “We got no energy signatures from the interior at all.”

  “And the probe is still inside,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “Still sending us information.”

  “But I put it in there when that strange energy was at its peak,” I say. “You need to send in a new probe.”

  Yash made her familiar No way, that’s stupid face. She hadn’t done that with me for quite a long time. I had almost missed it.

  “Boss is right,” Mikk says. He clearly caught Yash’s expression as well. “The probe might not be inside the runabout we’re looking at.”

  “What?” Yash turns toward him, visibly surprised.

  “One of our theories about these malfunctioning anacapa drives,” he says, “is that it creates some kind of temporal distortion. We might be looking at data from the future, not from the present.”

  I doubt that’s the case. But I’m not sure how much of that is wishful thinking. I keep thinking about what Jaylene said, about the changes that happened on the cellular level occurring quickly r
ather than over days or weeks or months of perceived time.

  I’ve also been thinking about that incredible crushing feeling in my head, the way that the music had nearly swamped everything about me. Maybe my mother’s last few moments weren’t spent contemplating beautiful lights and lovely music. Maybe she hadn’t been thinking she had been abandoned by all who loved her.

  Maybe she hadn’t abandoned me at all.

  Maybe she had been crushed completely within a few minutes of entering that room. Maybe we had been misreading this all along.

  But I’m not going to say that, because all we do when faced with this strange energy is make suppositions about it.

  We don’t get actual data.

  I’m proposing that Mikk and Yash try again, they get more data, and we actually learn something new.

  “You think the probe is not even here?” Yash asks Mikk. “That it’s in its own time field?”

  He shrugs. “We have to explore all possibilities.”

  She looks at me, clearly just a bit annoyed.

  “All right,” Yash says, “but that doesn’t change what we came to say to you. Do you want to look at the first visuals with us?”

  Something in her face tells me she’s less excited about the visuals now that she knows they might be from a different time frame.

  But I’m not less excited. Because they might also be from now. And those images will tell us a lot about what’s going on inside that runabout. Just seeing the layout alone will help.

  “I do want to look at the images with you,” I say, “but can it wait until tomorrow? I’m not sure I can concentrate much longer.”

  My traitorous eyes want to close again. I’m not sure how long I can keep them open—which irritates me beyond measure.

  Yash’s lips thin. She’s clearly still operating on that make-believe timetable.

  “Yes, we can wait,” Mikk says. He was trained by me. The timetable is whatever we make it.

  Yash frowns at him. I recognize that look of hers as well. She’s about to argue with him.

  He recognizes the look too. He shakes his head, just a little, clearly warning her off.

  He’s being protective of me. I’ve seen Mikk be protective of others on the team, but I’ve never seen him act that way with me. Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t been. I just haven’t seen it before.

  His gaze meets mine, and his cheeks flush just a little. He knows I’ve caught him defending me in a way that, had I been healthier, I might have objected to.

  I don’t say anything, which seems to concern him more. But I’m concerned. I’m not anywhere near full capacity, and it disturbs me.

  “Waiting,” he says in a tone that tells me he’s talking to Yash more than me, “will allow us to send a second probe and get some telemetry back from it.”

  “If it can go inside the runabout,” Yash says.

  “Even if it can’t,” he says. “We’ll get some readings from the exterior.”

  “I have to be clear about one thing.” I sound tired even to me. The words are coming out slower. “No one is diving anywhere near that runabout until we know what’s going on. Not even taking a line and going near the runabout like Elaine and I did. If we’re sending a second probe, we do our best to get it inside the runabout from inside the Sove.”

  Mikk nods. “I was thinking the same thing. I should have said so.”

  “There’s no way we would send anyone out into that—whatever it is,” Yash sounds affronted that I even made the suggestion.

  “You scared us, Boss,” Mikk says so softly, I’m not sure he meant for Yash to hear it.

  But she did, and she doesn’t contradict him.

  I should say, Yeah, it scared me too, but I decide against it. I’ve been preaching the dangers of diving for my entire career. I’ve seen a lot of injury and death, and while I’ve come close to serious problems throughout my diving career, I’ve never really had any of my own.

  It was just my time, and I know that.

  “It’s a good reminder,” I say, “that diving is one of the most dangerous things we do.”

  To my surprise, Mikk grins. He reaches out, pats me on the hand, and says, “I knew you were in there somewhere. That’s the first major sign that I’ve had that you’re improving.”

  Yash isn’t smiling. She looks from him to me and back again. Then she stands up.

  “We will have the footage from the first probe tomorrow, no matter what,” she says. “If we wait to view the information we get until afternoon, we might have information from the second as well.”

  “Then by all means,” I say, “let’s meet in the afternoon.”

  “But you tire easily,” she says, sounding almost argumentative.

  “I’ve heard of these things called ‘naps,’” I say. “I might indulge in one.”

  Mikk’s grin gets wider. Yash glares at me. Then she taps Mikk on the shoulder.

  He stands too. He looks like he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t. After a few platitudes directed at me, urging me to feel better, they both leave.

  I slide back down on the bed, straighten out the pillows, and nearly fall asleep doing so.

  I should feel more urgency about us being trapped in the Boneyard, but I don’t. Some of that is the exhaustion I feel. I’m too tired to be scared, if that’s possible.

  But the bulk of it is something else. Underneath all the shakes and the fog and the tiredness, I’m intrigued.

  It has been a while since I’ve faced a mystery ship.

  I hadn’t realized just how much I have missed them.

  Eighteen

  The next afternoon takes forever to arrive, partly because I’m feeling significantly better. I’m not one hundred percent. I feel like I’ve just come off one of the most difficult dives of my life, sweaty, exhausted, and wrung out.

  But my brain is clear for the first time since I woke up, and I feel halfway human. In fact, I’ve had to fight most of the morning to keep myself in check. I want to walk around the medical wing of the ship, and maybe eat my way through everything I can find.

  I don’t, of course. Instead, I eat judiciously, and drink copiously, and let Jaylene poke and prod me to find out what, if anything, has changed.

  When Mikk finally comes to get me, he seems surprised that I’m sitting in a side chair, dressed and ready. It’s only in the reactions of others that I am slowly realizing just how close to death I might have been.

  “Elaine will join us too,” Mikk says. “I didn’t clear it with you. I hope it’s okay.”

  “She nearly died for this information as well. Of course it’s okay,” I say. “Is Yash getting her?”

  “Jaylene will bring her. Elaine’s not quite as mobile as you are.” He looks a little strange. “She was injured in different ways than you were.”

  I flush just a little. I had asked if she survived, and I had also asked if she received the same treatment I had, but once I learned we had both awakened, I figured we were healing in the same way.

  I always tell my divers to watch out for their assumptions. I had forgotten my own lessons.

  Mikk stands near me as I climb out of the chair, not grabbing me and pulling me up, not touching me to help me stand, but close enough to catch me if I fall. Mikk isn’t the kind of man who hovers, so the fact that he is actually shows just how worried he is about me.

  We walk at my pace to one of the medical conference rooms. I had expected to go up three levels in the Sove to one of the regular conference rooms. Considering how ill I was yesterday, however, I understand this new change in venue.

  The medical conference rooms on Dignity Vessels are smaller and much more comfortable than the conference rooms for crew. The medical conference rooms are designed for families to discuss treatments with doctors, rather than for the crew to make some kind of life-saving decision for the entire ship.

  There is a central table, with screens that form over the surface, but the chairs are different. They’re therapeutic
chairs, designed for the ill or injured to sit in, and for the ill’s doctors to set up the proper support. The chairs also diagnose, which chairs in the main conference areas do not. So, if I pass out here, Jaylene will know exactly why.

  Or rather, if Elaine passes out. She’s already here, propped up in one of the chairs off to the side, her legs extended before her, her arms resting on long armrests. A support holds her head in place.

  She’s so pale that she’s almost translucent. Her eyes are sunken deep into her head. I’ve seen my own reflection today, and I don’t look that bad. In fact, my skin has returned to an acceptable color. Not a “normal” color—I’m not there yet—but I look like someone who is tired, not someone who might die tomorrow.

  I make my way over to her, and touch her arm. She tilts her head toward me, but doesn’t turn. The right corner of her mouth is bent downward at an unnatural angle. She smiles, but the smile only reaches the left side of her face.

  “Good to…see you,” she says, her voice at a half whisper.

  “You too,” I say.

  Jaylene sits beside her, almost protectively. Normally, I would object to a med tech sitting in on this briefing, but it’s obvious that Elaine needs her. I don’t feel like I need Jaylene, but had we had this meeting yesterday, I might have.

  Yash sits at the head of the table, her entire body taut. She’s watching both me and Elaine as if expecting us to die at any moment.

  “Are we going to be able to do this?” Yash asks, and she’s not addressing me or Elaine, but Jaylene.

  Still, it’s Elaine who answers. “I’ll stay… as…as long as I can.”

  I wait half a second, contemplating how to respond. I don’t want to say that I’m fine—because I’m not—but I’m so much better than Elaine. I know I can sit through an entire meeting and an entire discussion, and continue my improvements afterwards.

  “Yes,” I say. “We’ll be able to do this.”

  Jaylene looks at me, but there’s no assessment in the look like there had been in the days before. She isn’t waiting for me to keel over or pass out. However, after her glance at me, she turns her attention to Elaine.

  Clearly Jaylene is still worried about her.