I set up that equipment alone. I am the only one who knows how it works, and I want to remain that way. Usually I set up equipment like that in my own bedroom, but this is a hotel, not a ship. I can take advantage of the room.
From the conference room, I have a view of the city below. It sprawls. Buildings crawl up from the ground as far as the eye can see. Humans live and work in each of those buildings. Hundreds of buildings, maybe thousands. And if I think about that too much, I get claustrophobic.
I think the staff of thirty that I’ve brought with me is twenty-nine people too many; if I think about the millions who’ve settled here in Vaycehn, I will drive myself crazy.
Still, it’s a pretty place. The basin walls rise up around the city itself like the walls of a space station. Sunlight falls on ruins in the distance—one of the many abandoned sections of the city.
Those sections have been explored by historians and archeologists through the ages. Vaycehn is one of the most studied areas in this sector of the galaxy.
As I stand in these windows and look at the orangish light settling on the rooftops below me, I realize that layers are visible before me. If I squint, I can see the Great Ages of the city just in its architecture, and that makes my heart pound.
This is not one of the Great Ages of Vaycehn. Now it is merely the largest settlement on Wyr. The city itself has several million inhabitants. But in some of the more populous sections of the galaxy, there are permanent space bases that boast a similar population—and those are sprawled over a greater area. Attached by warrens and cubbies and gangways, those large stations were once small stations that joined with others for the sake of power or wealth or sheer greed.
Vaycehn became a city because of its location. It remains one because it has done several things: it has preserved its history; it serves as the center of trade for this small region of space; and it has the longest-existing continuous government in the known universe.
Ilona thinks Vaycehn is a major source of stealth tech.
I don’t think stealth tech can exist on land. I think the technology is too unstable, and too dangerous.
And even if it did somehow manage to exist on a planet, there is no way that the stealth tech could have remained hidden for thousands of years, only to reveal itself in a dramatic and frightening way just a few years ago.
Ilona argues differently. She says that since stealth tech originated on Earth, it was probably invented on land, and there were safeguards for working and living with it.
Maybe so, I have said in response, but in no way would those safeguards exist so many light-years away from the home planet, in a place those ancient Earthers could not imagine.
I feel safe in my argument; I have had several direct experiences with stealth tech. Ilona has not.
But she does have one small point in her favor.
The Six.
They all—and me, so really, we all—are built-in safeguards because we can work with stealth tech and survive.
The Six are in my conference room, along with the rest of the team. We are mapping the morning strategy session. The Six are Orlando Rea, a quiet, bookish man with a surprising amount of gumption; Fahd Al-Nasir, black-haired, dark-eyed, timid; Elaine Seager, a fit middle-age woman who hangs to the back of any group; Nyssa Quinte, skinny and tough, who should be my best diver, and is not; Rollo Kersting, a charming man, very fond of his comforts; and of course, Julian DeVries.
Our guides—who are not here—already know that we are not average tourists. Ilona spent an hour after our arrival explaining that we will not follow the same path as the other archeologists.
One guide has already threatened to quit. I’m sure others will as well.
The key point is whether or not we can legally work on Vaycehn without the guides.
I assign Ilona to discover that piece of information. She makes a note, while I continue directing the staff.
We will have six teams, composed of a diver, an archeologist or historian, a scientist, a pilot, and one of the Six. I will head a seventh team, and what I don’t tell them—but which becomes clear as I make the assignments—is that my team will have the best people from each division. I’m going to work the site just like everyone else, and if there’s a discovery, I want it to be mine.
Only two teams will go down with the guides each day. The other teams will explore the city, interview residents and experts about the city’s past as well as its legends, and investigate the fourteen deaths that preceded us. So far the Vaycehnese government does not want us to discuss those deaths with the locals. But I have promised Ilona that on my days off, I will fight that prohibition in the name of safety; I will say that unless we know what happened, we cannot know what went wrong.
I don’t know if that will work—I’m a diver, not a diplomat—but it’s the only argument I can come up with that the local government might back. From all the work we’ve done off-planet, the only conclusion we can come to is that no one knows what’s been happening here since the ground collapsed.
The collapsed section is visible from the conference room window. The section is a black smudge near the convergence of the basin’s two steep walls. I glance at it as I speak, pausing occasionally to wonder at the darkness below the surface.
When I finish laying out my plans, I open the discussion to the team.
Lucretia Stone, one of the archeologists, says, “I don’t understand why we need pilots on each team. The guides will drive the hovercarts.”
She’s squarely built, with muscular arms and legs. She’s worked all over the galaxy, on some of the most famous digs in recent years. That she signed on with us is surprising until you get to know her history; she’s lost five digs in the past ten years to imperial interference. She likes the fact that we’re not part of the Empire.
Signing on with us was as much a political statement for her as it was a personal one.
But this is her first off-site, on-planet work for us, and I can already sense how much she dislikes not being in charge.
“I’m not going to run this like a dig,” I say. “I’m running it like a dive.”
“A space dive?” She frowns at me. The other two archeologists look to her for guidance. In the past few months, they’ve all gone diving with me because I insisted. But it was tourist diving on established wrecks.
Even then, the archeologists were terrified. To them, space suits are something you wear in an emergency, when the ship you’re riding in loses its environmental controls, not something you don voluntarily to go into abandoned ships in the emptiness of space.
These people are, perhaps, the exact opposite of those of us who have spent our lives diving. The archeologists love the firmness of the ground beneath their feet. They understand gravity and they love to sift through dirt.
We prefer to float, and dirt is something dangerous, something that can clog our oxygen supply and damage our suits.
Not for the first time do I feel a slight hesitation. Maybe I am configuring these teams wrong. Maybe I should dump the historians and the archeologists and the geologists for people who understand dangerous free-floating situations.
Because if I’m wrong and Ilona is right, we will be in a dangerous space-type situation underneath the city of Vaycehn. We will need every bit of diver’s creativity that we have.
“You’re running this like a dive.” Lucretia repeats my words with a touch of incredulousness. “We’re going to suit up and everything?”
I nod. “We’re bringing our suits. That’s why I want an experienced pilot on the hovercart. It’s too bad the Vaycehnese don’t allow other vehicles inside the site. I would prefer something with more maneuverability and power. But they’re afraid that something with that kind of thrust might cause more collapse.”