The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (43 page)

Coop looked at the woman, this Boss. He said, “We’re going to figure out what’s gone wrong with the equipment. We’ll stop it from killing your friends.”

She frowned, then glanced at Perkins, who translated.

The woman spoke. Coop didn’t understand a single word.

“What about your problem?” Perkins translated.

Meaning, what about you being stranded five thousand years in the future?

“We have some study to do,” Coop said. “Then we will talk further.”

He stood. He wanted the meeting to end. He needed to think about all of these things.

He needed to figure out what to do next.

***

Perkins took them back to the airlock. Coop told her and the guards that they couldn’t reveal any aspect of the conversation. Coop stressed that he wasn’t sure the others were telling the truth.

The guards looked relieved at that, but Perkins clearly didn’t believe him.

He didn’t believe it either.

After everyone left, Coop sat alone in the briefing room. He shut off the wall screens, opaqued the door, and put his head in his hands.

Stranded. Five thousand years from family, friends, the Fleet, his mission, his very life.

Stranded.

Not drifting, like he had done for fifteen days, but stuck in a new place, a place that didn’t remember much about his people, a place that didn’t even speak the same language.

He had the training to deal with parts of this. He had been taught to go into a new culture, to understand it, and to use that understanding for the betterment of the Fleet and the culture itself.

But the Fleet was gone.

It was now the ship. The
Ivoire
and its crew of five hundred.

Five hundred people, who would feel exactly what he was feeling.

Lost. Abandoned. Trapped.

Helpless.

It took him nearly an hour to realize he had accepted the woman’s version.

He stood, ran his hand through his hair, and went to the bridge.

He finally knew what he had to do.

***

He sent the scientists to confirm what the woman had said. They had to test the equipment, test the
anacapa
drive, figure out the age of the repair room itself, as if it were an alien place.

He sent a small team through the corridors in environmental suits, figuring if most of the others couldn’t come in here, his people couldn’t go out there. But that was wrong.

They could and did go through the corridors, most of them unfamiliar and unmapped. They used handhelds to figure out where the city was—Coop didn’t want them interacting with the locals, not yet—and how long it had been there.

He sent Yash to investigate the base’s
anacapa
drive.

It was malfunctioning and it had been blowing holes in the surface for a very long time. Energy would back up in the system and come out sideways, making the holes unpredictable.

It took very little to repair that problem.

But, Yash said, the problems with the
anacapa
drive meant that it could have brought them to the right place at the wrong time.

They were stranded, and there was absolutely nothing Coop could do about it.

***

After nearly a week, he asked the woman to meet him in the repair room. He asked her to come alone. He carried a handheld with Perkins’ language program downloaded, so that he could get at least a partial translation of the woman’s words.

He had been studying her language as well. He had a hunch it would be his language in the future.

He waited for her just outside the ship.

This was his first time out of the
Ivoire
since it returned to Sector Base V. The air was chilly and it smelled metallic, like always. The particles brushed his skin as they fell around him, gentle and soft.

He wore a pair of black pants and a short-sleeved black shirt, with black boots. He had decided against a uniform.

He wanted her to take him to the surface.

She came alone. She didn’t ask how he was. She could tell. She would have guessed that he had done his research, and had confirmed much of what she told him.

He knew now that she had told him the truth.

Perkins had already asked her to take him to the surface. She had warned him that no one knew that the ship existed. He would have to pass himself off as part of her crew.

He didn’t mind.

He needed to know what he was facing.

The woman came up to him and stopped. She gave him a rueful smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said in his language.

He wanted to say that he was fine, that it didn’t matter. He was the commander of the
Ivoire
, one of the best ships in the Fleet, and as such, he could help her with her problem, shutting down the energy leaks all over the sector.

But he didn’t say that. He would tell her that eventually, but he wasn’t that strong.

He wasn’t fine.

“Thank you,” he said in her language.

She slipped a hand through his arm, a gesture he had never seen from her, not in all the time he had observed her.

He put his hand over hers. She looked up at him.

“What do I call you?” he asked in her language.

She paused for a moment. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder just briefly before answering.

“Friend,” she said in his language. “I am your friend.”

Friend. It was a beginning.

“Friend,” he said to her. “I like that very much.”

Then they walked through the repair room doors, into the corridor, heading to the surface, to a place Coop had never seen before, a place he had been as a child, as a young man.

A place he had once known and a place he had to learn anew.

They walked, and with each step, Coop felt his mission changing. He would represent the Fleet here, in this place.

Once he understood it.

Once he knew exactly how he and his new friends fit in.

“
Becoming One With The Ghosts” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in
Asimov’s SF Magazine
, October/November 2010

STEALTH

NOW

“GO, GO, GO,
GO
!” Squishy waved her arms, shouting as she did.

She stood in the mouth of the corridor and watched as scientist after scientist fled the research station, running directly toward the ships.

The corridors were narrow, the lights on bright, the environmental system on full. It would have been cold in the corridors if it weren’t for the panicked bodies hurrying past her. The sharp tang of fear rose off them, and she heard more than one person grunt.

“Go, go, go!” She continued shouting and waving her arms, but she had to struggle to be heard over the emergency sirens.

An automated voice, androgynous and much too calm, repeated the same instructions every thirty seconds:
Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area. If that evac area is sealed off, proceed to your secondary evac area. Do not finish your work. Do not bring your work. Once life tags move out of an area, that area will seal off. If sealed inside, no one will rescue you. Do not double back. Go directly to your designated evac area. The station will shut down entirely in…fifteen…minutes
.

Only the remaining time changed. Squishy’s heart was pounding. Her palms were damp, and she kept running her fingers over them.

“Hurry!” she said, pushing one of the scientists forward, almost causing him to trip. “Get the hell out of here!”

Another ran by her, clutching a jar. She stopped him, took the jar, and set it down.

He reached for it. “My life’s work—”

“Had better be backed up off site,” she said, even though she knew it wasn’t. The off-site backups were the first thing destroyed, nearly three hours before. “Get out of here.
Now
!”

He gave the jar one last look, then scurried away. She glanced at the jar too, saw it pulsating, hating it, and wanting to kick it over. But she didn’t.

She stood against the wall, moving the teams forward, getting them out. No one was going to die this day.

A woman clutched at her. “My family—”

“Will find you. They’ve been notified of the evac,” Squishy said, even though she had no idea if that were true.

“Are they far enough away?” the woman asked, clutching at Squishy.

What made these people so damn clingy? She didn’t remember scientists being clingy before.

“They are,” Squishy said, “but you’re not.”

She pushed at the woman, and the woman stumbled, then started to run, letting her panic take over. They’d had drills here: Squishy made sure of that when she arrived, but apparently no one thought about what the drills actually implied.

And this was no drill.

Her ears ached from the sirens. Then the stupid automated voice started up again.

Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area….

She tuned it out, counting the scientists as they passed. There was no way she could count a thousand people, not that all of them would run past her anyway. But she was keeping track. Numbers always helped her keep track.

Her heart raced, as if it were running along with everyone else.

Quint stumbled out of the side corridor, his face bloody, his shirt torn. He reached her and she flinched.

“We have to evacuate,” he said, grabbing her.

“I’m going to go,” she said. “I want to make sure everyone’s out.”

“They’re out,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She shook her head. “You go. I’ll catch up.”

“Rosealma, we’re not doing this again,” he said.

“Yes, we are,” she said. “Get out
now
.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

This was not the moment for him to develop balls. “Get out, Quint. I can take care of myself.”

I always have
, she thought, but bit back the words.

“Rosealma,” he said. “I’m sorry—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Get
out
.”

And she shoved him. He lost his balance, his feet hitting the jar. It skittered across the floor, and she looked at it, wondering what would happen if the damn thing shattered.

He saw her. “Do we need that?”

“Aren’t you listening?” she said. “You’re supposed to leave everything behind.”

“You didn’t make the rules,” he snapped.

She pointed up, even though she wasn’t sure if the automated voice came from “up” or if it came from some other direction. It did rather feel like the Voice of God.

“Those aren’t my rules,” she said. “They’re the station’s. Now, hurry. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, Rosealma,” he said.

“When have I done anything stupid?” she asked, sounding calmer than she felt. Sometimes she thought that everything she had done was stupid. Hell, she knew that everything she had ever done was stupid. That was why she was here, to make up for the stupid, and it wasn’t coming out so well.

“Rosealma—”

“
Go
,” she said.

He gave her an odd look and then hurried, half-running, half-walking down the corridor. Twice he glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected her to follow.

She didn’t.

The corridor was emptying out. No one had run past in at least a minute. The damn sirens sounded even louder in the emptiness.

Emergency evacuation underway. Proceed to your designated evac area….

“Shut up,” she whispered, wishing she could shut the stupid voice down. But she didn’t dare. She needed everyone off this station.

She needed everyone to live.

NINETEEN YEARS EARLIER

THE MOOD ON THE SKIP was tense. The light was terrible. The tourist was lying next to the door, unconscious, blood covering his face. The three women running the dive stood near the control panel, looking down at him.

None of them wanted to help him. Rosealma knew that without consulting with the other two.

“He hasn’t even gotten off the skip yet,” Turtle said. She was thin and looked strange in her environmental suit. She hadn’t put on the helmet, and without it, she really did look like a turtle.