I don’t want to lose two on my watch.
When I reach him six minutes later, he’s pulling himself along the guideline, hand over hand, so slowly that he barely seems human. A red light flashes at the base of his helmet—the out-of-oxygen light, dammit. He did use all of his extra for his son.
I grab one small container, hook it to the side of his suit, and press the “on” only hallway, knowing too much is as bad as too little.
His look isn’t gratefuclass="underline" it’s startled. He’s so far gone, he hasn’t even realized that I’m here.
I brought a grappler as well, a technology I always said was more dangerous than helpful, and here’s the first test of my theory. I wrap Jypé against me, tell him to relax, I got him, and we’ll be just fine.
He doesn’t. Even though I pry him from the line, his hands still move, one over the other, trying to pull himself forward.
Instead, I yank us toward the skip, moving as fast as I’ve ever moved. According to my suit, I’m burning oxygen at three times my usual rate and I don’t really care. I want him inside, I want him safe, I want him alive, goddammit.
I pull open the door to the skip. I unhook him in the airlock, and he falls to the floor like an empty suit. I make sure the back door is sealed, open the main door, and drag Jypé inside.
His skin is a grayish blue. Capillaries have burst in his eyes. I wonder what else has burst, what else has gone wrong.
There’s blood around his mouth.
I yank off the helmet, his suit protesting my every move.
“I gotta tell you,” he says. “I gotta tell you.”
I nod. I’m doing triage, just like I’ve been taught, just like I’ve done half a dozen times before.
“Set up something,” he says. “Record.”
So I do, mostly to shut him up. I don’t want him wasting more energy. I’m wasting enough for both of us, trying to save him, and cursing Squishy for not getting here, cursing everyone for leaving me on the skip, alone, with a man who can’t live, and somehow has to.
“He’s in the cockpit,” Jypé says.
I nod. He’s talking about Junior, but I really don’t want to hear it. Junior is the least of my worries.
“Wedged under some cabinet. Looks like—battlefield in there.”
That catches me. Battlefield how? Because there are bodies? Or because it’s a mess?
I don’t ask. I want him to wait, to save his strength, to survive.
“You gotta get him out. He’s only got an hour’s worth, maybe less. Get him out.”
Wedged beneath something, stuck against a wall, trapped in the belly of the wreck. Yeah, like I’ll get him out. Like it’s worth it.
All those sharp edges.
If his suit’s not punctured now, it will be by the time I’m done getting the stuff off him. Things have to be piled pretty high to get them stuck in zero-g.
I’ll wager the Business that Junior’s not stuck, not in the literal, gravitational sense. His suit’s hung up on an edge. He’s losing—he’s lost— environment and oxygen, and he’s probably been dead longer than his father’s been on the skip.
“Get him out.” Jypé’s voice is so hoarse it sounds like a whisper.
I look at his face. More blood.
“I’ll get him,” I say just to calm him.
Jypé smiles. Or tries to. And then he closes his eyes, and I fight the urge to slam my fist against his chest.
“I’ll get him,” I say again, and this time, it’s a promise, not a lie.
A promise to a man who can no longer hear me.
A man who is already dead.
TEN
Squishy declared him dead the moment she arrived on the skip. Not ^^ that it was hard. He’d already sunken in on himself, and the blood— it isn’t something I want to think about.
She flew us back. Turtle was in the other skip, and she never came in, just flew back on her own.
I stayed on the floor, expecting Jypé to rise up and curse me for not going back to the wreck, for not trying, even though we all knew—even he probably had known—that Junior was dead.
When we got back to the Business, Squishy took Jypé’s body to her little medical suite. She’s going to make sure he died from suit failure or lack of oxygen or something that keeps the regulators away from us.
Who knows what the hell he actually died of. Panic? Fear? Stupidity? Maybe that’s what I’m doomed for. Hell, I let a man dive with his son, even though I’d ordered all of my teams to abandon a downed man.
Who can abandon his own kid anyway?
And who listens to me?
Not even me.
My quarters seem too small, the Business seems too big, and I don’t want to go anywhere because everyone’ll look at me with an I-told-you-so followed by a let’s-hang-it-up.
And I don’t really blame them. Death’s the hardest part. It’s what we flirt with in deep dives.
We claim that flirting is partly love.
I close my eyes and lean back on my bunk, but all I see are digital readouts. Seconds moving so slowly they seem like days. The spaces between time. If only we can capture that—the space between moments.
If only.
I shake my head, wondering how I can pretend I have no regrets.
When I come out of my quarters, Turtle and Karl are already watching the vids from Jypé’s suit. They’re sitting in the lounge, their faces serious.
As I step inside, Turtle says, “They found the heart.”
It takes me a minute to understand her, then I remember what Jypé said. They were in the cockpit, the heart, the place we might find the stealth tech.
He was stuck there. Like the probe?
I shudder in spite of myself.
“Is the event on the vid?” I ask.
“Haven’t got that far.” Turtle shuts off the screens. “Squishy’s gone.”
“Gone?” I shake my head just a little. Words aren’t processing well. I’m having a reaction. I recognize it: I’ve had it before when I’ve lost crew.
“She took the second skip, and left. We didn’t even notice until I went to find her.” Turtle sighs. “She’s gone.”
“Jypé too?” I ask.
She nods.
I close my eyes. The mission ends, then. Squishy’ll go to the authorities and report us. She’s going to tell them about the wreck and the accident and Junior’s death. She’s going to show them Jypé, whom I haven’t reported yet because I didn’t want anyone to find our position, and the authorities’ll come here—whatever authorities have jurisdiction over this area—and confiscate the wreck.
At best, we’ll get a slap, and I’ll have a citation on my record.
At worst, I—maybe we—will face charges for some form of reckless homicide.
“We can leave,” Karl says.
I shake my head. “She’ll report the Business. They’ll know who to look for.”
“If you sell the ship—”
“And what?” I ask. “Not buy another? That’ll keep us ahead of them for a while, but not long enough. And when we get caught, we get nailed for the full count, whatever it is, because we acted guilty and ran.”
“So maybe she won’t say anything,” Karl says, but he doesn’t sound hopeful.
“If she was going do that, she would have left Jypé,” I say.
Turtle closes her eyes and rests her head on the seat back. “I don’t know her anymore.”
“I think maybe we never did,” I say.
“I never used to think she got scared,” Turtle says. “I yelled at her—I told her to get over it, that diving’s the thing. And she said it’s not the thing. Surviving’s the thing. She never used to be like that.”