The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (18 page)

“I know,” I say.

“If I go,” he says, “I run the mission.”

My entire body freezes. “How can it be my mission if you run it?”

“The dives,” he says. “Anything to do with the Room. If I say we pull out, we pull out. If I say we leave someone behind, we leave them.”

I bite my lower lip. I’m barely breathing.

“C’mon, Boss,” he says, using my old divers’ nickname. “You know that’s why you’re asking me to go. I’m the only one qualified, and the only one you’ll listen to. You know that when I say we have to leave, I’ll be right.”

I let out the breath I was holding. Part of me has relaxed. He
is
right. That’s why I chose to approach him. Because of our history. Because I know he’s more cautious than I am, and because he has nothing at stake.

Except proving to me that I can be wrong.

“No grudges?” I ask.

He smiles for the first time. It’s a sad smile. “I’ve lost two divers in the years since the Dignity Vessel. I don’t know if I would have made the mistakes you made, but I’ve made some of my own. I think I’m finally beginning to understand you. So, no grudges. I’ll do what’s best for the mission, not what’s best for Riya Trekov or your father. Or for you.”

I nod. “You haven’t even asked about money.”

“I know you’ll be fair,” he says. Then his smile grows. “And I’ve always wanted to see the Room. The most mysterious place in this sector. I say let’s go.”

***

Maybe that’s why such places catch and kill so many. Because they capture the imagination. Certainly that’s why so many stories spring up around them.

And so many myths.

With Karl at my side, I do even more work. We sort through the repeated histories, and try to find the sources of various legends. We trace the Room in the modern era as best we can, and we ghoulishly make a list of all the souls known to have been lost in the place.

There are more than five hundred—and that’s just recorded losses. Who knows how many others there were? No one has kept track of the abandoned single ships found near the station or people on a pilgrimage all on their own.

In passing, I say to Karl that what we’ve learned isn’t worth the time we’ve spent. And he says what we’ve learned is that there are no odd recorded stories, things that don’t quite fit into the other stories.

Maybe there’s even a recognizable pattern. There certainly is to the losses. What happened to my father and his crew is the same as what happened to the very first ship that discovered the place, centuries ago.

“The same,” I say, “except me coming out of that Room.”

“Except that,” Karl says.

***

In the end, we put together a team of ten, not counting me or Karl or Riya or my father.

Karl will lead the mission once we arrive at the station. Until then, I am in charge. I’ll be in charge again when we leave the station as well. It’s only when we’re docked—when we’re near the Room—that Karl will have control.

We use the
Business.
It has never been so full—at least not as long as I owned it. My father has the captain’s cabin, which assuages my conscience. I’ve cut him off from all command and all control, which has to be difficult for him. So I reward him with the best quarters on the ship.

Riya has the third best cabin. Mine is second best, and with its dedicated hardwired computer, I don’t want anyone near it.

The dive team has the rest of the main deck and Karl has the only room on the upper deck. It has the best views, and is impressive, should anyone visit him. I want him to look powerful and in charge, even before he is.

Some—including my father—believe that I placed Karl in charge of the mission at the station because Karl and I are lovers. The dive team knows differently—it’s no secret in the diving community how angry Karl was with me after the events with the Dignity Vessel—but they’re under orders not to correct that misperception.

Karl helped me vet the dive team. Two women who’d been on some of his previous dives, an old timer who has more experience than me and Karl combined, three superb and fearless pilots, three young men hired more for their strength than their diving ability, and another old colleague, a woman who had accompanied me on my earliest professional dives.

I have decided to treat this as a real dive, which means that we are focusing on the station, not just the Room. From everything that Karl and I have found, it seems people who have gone to the station have gone for the Room—or only spent time in the Room.

No one has given the habitats more than a cursory examination, not even the scholars. In fact, the scholars have mostly relied on the discovery of others, being too afraid to examine things themselves.

On the first day out, I brief the dive team about our mission. We meet in the lounge. The
Business
’s lounge is not for recreation. I put all of my playback and analysis equipment here. I also use it to analyze upcoming dives. There are comfortable chairs as well as two sofas, but they’re arranged in an uncomfortable pattern—a semi-circle facing the various screens and portholes.

Nine members of the dive team are here, as well as myself and Karl. I have banned Riya and my father from attending any meetings about the upcoming dives. The missing member of the team is the pilot who is currently flying the ship.

The team spreads around the lounge, trying to look casual, but I recognize the emotions here. Everyone is excited. The work is what they live for—it’s what I used to live for—and when they’re approaching something new, it’s thrilling, not frightening.

I haven’t felt the thrill yet. I haven’t felt fear either, which I consider a victory. What I am feeling is nervous. I have no idea how any of this will play out.

I’m not sure how I want it too.

Still, I try to maintain an upbeat attitude, like I used to do when I started dangerous dive missions in the past. I walk in front of the screens, looking every member of the team in the eye as I speak.

I am not as honest with them as I was with Karl. I do mention problems—my father, the loss of my mother to the Room, which is why Karl will lead once we get to the station—but I do not mention my own reservations.

Instead, I talk about the history.

“We are not looking for items to resell,” I say, although everyone probably knows that. After all, they’ve signed on to dive with me and Karl, not some salvage divers or treasure hunters. “We’re looking for information—anything that will tell us about the station, about who built it, how it came to be here—why it’s out here at all so far away from everything—and what its purpose actually is.”

“Do we know if the Room is an integral part of the station?” asks Roderick. He’s slight but broad-shouldered, a landbound pilot, who somehow became one of the most highly rated in the sector. I supervised his first shift with the
Business
and was impressed. He found my control shortcuts without explanation in a matter of minutes.

“We know nothing,” I say. “We don’t know if the Room’s intentional or part of an accident.”

“We do know,” Karl says, “that the habitats next to the Room have been destroyed. But we don’t know how. We don’t know if someone destroyed them trying to block access to the Room or if the Room was something else and an accident or an explosion or something gone horribly wrong created the damage that we’ll find around it.”

“We’re not scientists,” says Odette. She’s the oldest diver, whom I’d partnered with long ago. She is standing in the back of the lounge near the main exit, her stick-thin arms crossed. She looks delicate against the bulkhead, as if nothing could prevent her from floating off into space. “How are we supposed to know what happened in there or what any of it means?”

“Between us, we have centuries of experience with ancient technologies.” I’m mostly talking to her and Karl now, but some of the other divers we hired have it as well. “We’ll know as much or more than any scientist we bring out here.”

“Besides,” Karl says, “we are going to bring back as much information as we can about the station. Our goal is to be the definitive historical mission for the station and the Room.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t give us a timeline?” asks Tamaz, one of the young male divers we hired for his strength and not for his great experience. He has muscles along his arms and chest that I haven’t seen in most divers. He probably had to have a special suit made.

But I wanted his strength in case we have to pull someone out of the Room. We’ve already established that machines can’t do it, but a person might be able to. A very strong, very motivated person.

“We are not giving you a timeline because we can’t,” I say. “The Room’s past history shows that people can sometimes be inside for hours or a day before coming out again.”

Although the only history that showed that was mine. All of the people hired by Riya and my father came out within hours of going in, just like they were supposed to.

Both Karl and I felt the dive team didn’t have to know this aspect of the Room’s history—nor did they have to know the fact that I had already been inside. I did not want to be seen as an expert on the interior, particularly when I can’t remember much about it.

“If there’s no treasure inside, why would people go in?” asks Mikk, another of the strong young men. He’s taller than Tamaz, but otherwise looks very much the same. I would have considered them brothers if I hadn’t known otherwise.

“There’s treasure,” I say before Karl can comment. “But it’s not the monetary kind. We warned you about that when we hired you for the dive.”

Mikk waves his right hand. It’s bigger than my thigh. “I’m not thinking for me. I mean all these five hundred people you say never came out. Why go in in the first place?”

“You’re not religious, are you, Mikk?” Davida asks softly. She’s one of Karl’s hires, a regular wreck diver who has the standard lean physique along with skin so taut it looks stretched over her frame.

“So?” he sounds defensive.

“That’s what a pilgrimage is, something religious.” Davida sounds sure of herself, but she’s obviously not that religious either.

“Pilgrimages have religious connotations, yes,” Odette says from her post in the back. This time, the dive team looks at her as if they haven’t really noticed her before. “But a pilgrimage is also a mission to a special place, not just a sacred place. One could say this is a pilgrimage.”

Her gaze is on mine. She knows some of my family’s history, but I don’t believe she knows all of it.

“It certainly is for Riya Trekov,” I say to cover my own discomfort. “She believes her father’s soul is trapped in this place, and she believes we can recover it.”

“Do you?” Tamaz asks me.

I think for a moment—the lights, the voices building one upon another, the clutch of my father’s arms as he holds me tight.

“No,” I say after a moment, “but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try.”

9

THE STATION IS BIGGER than I remember, bigger than my father’s descriptions of it, bigger than anything mentioned in the archives.

It looms ahead of the
Business
like a small asteroid or a tiny moon. It’s gray in the constant twilight of space, the reflection of far away stars making it seem brighter than it actually is.

There are no visible lights on the station, nothing that marks it as a landing site or an outpost or some kind of waystation. There are no energy readings, faint or otherwise.

I fly us toward the station as Roderick, Karl, and the other two pilots—Hurst and Bria—monitor the audio bands, trying to find any sign of life coming from the place.

The five of us sit shoulder to shoulder as we work the controls. The cockpit feels crowded, even though it’s built for ten or more. The station shows up on my viewscreen and in my controls as well as in the portholes throughout the ship.

Out of deference to my father, we do not dock on the exterior docking ring. This was where his large cargo ship docked—it couldn’t go any deeper into the station itself—and this was where the nightmares that have haunted the rest of his life began.

Instead, I pick a smaller ring on the upper level, where the habitats are still intact. From here, it looks as if we’ve approached a darkened but working space station. Reflections in the exterior windows of the station make it seem like someone is moving inside.

That startles Hurst—he even points it out—but Karl and I have approached so many wrecks, we’re used to the phenomenon.

“It’s just us,” he says. “We’re seeing our own reflections.”

Still Hurst works the sensors. He’s not convinced. He’s already spooked, and I don’t like that. I need solid, steady people, not superstitious ones given to outbursts.

I make a mental note to keep him away from the pilot’s chair during this part of the mission. And I will tell Karl that later on.

Right now, we settle into work. First we have to use our own equipment to map the station. Then we’ll proceed with a dive plan.