I think of the woman sitting on her bunk staring at her opaque wall—a wall you think you can see through, but you really can’t—and wonder. Maybe she always used to be like that. Maybe surviving was always her thing. Maybe diving was how she proved she was alive, until the past caught up with her all over again.
The stealth tech.
She thinks it killed Junior.
I nod toward the screen. “Let’s see it,” I say to Karl.
He gives me a tight glance, almost—but not quite—expressionless. He’s trying to rein himself in, but his fears are getting the best of him.
I’m amazed mine haven’t gotten the best of me.
He starts it up. The voices of men so recently dead, just passing information—”Push off here.” “Watch the edge there.”—makes Turtle open her eyes.
I lean against the wall, arms crossed. The conversation is familiar to me. I heard it just a few hours ago, and I’d been too preoccupied to give it much attention, thinking of my own problems, thinking of the future of this mission, which I thought was going to go on for months.
Amazing how much your perspective changes in the space of a few minutes.
The corridors look the same. It takes a lot so that I don’t lose focus—I’ve been in that wreck, watched similar vids, and in those I haven’t learned much. But I resist the urge to tell Karl to speed it up—there can be something, some wrong movement, some piece of the wreck that attaches to one of my guys—my former guys—before they even get to the heart.
But I don’t see anything like that, and since Turtle and Karl are quiet, I assume they don’t see anything like that either.
Then J&J find the heart. They say something, real casual—which I’d missed the first time—a simple “shit, man” in a tone of such awe that if I’d been paying attention, I would’ve known.
I bite back the emotion. If I took responsibility for each lost life, I would never dive again. Of course, I might not after this anyway. One of the many options the authorities have is to take my pilot’s license away.
The vids don’t show the cockpit ahead. They show the same old grainy walls, the same old dark and shadowed corridor. It’s not until Jypé turns his suit vid toward the front that the pit’s even visible, and then it’s a black mass filled with lighter squares, covering the screen.
“What the hell’s that?” Karl asks. I’m not even sure he knows he’s spoken.
Turtle leans forward and shakes her head. “Never seen anything like it.”
Me either. As Jypé gets closer, the images become clearer. It looks like every piece of furniture in the place has become dislodged, and has shifted to one part of the cockpit.
Were the designers so confident of their artificial gravity that they didn’t bolt down the permanent pieces? Could any ship’s designers be that stupid?
Jypé’s vid doesn’t show me the floor, so I can’t see if these pieces have been ripped free. If they have, then that place is a minefield for a diver, more sharp edges than smooth ones.
My arms tighten in their cross, my fingers forming fists. I feel a tension I don’t want—as if I can save both men by speaking out now.
“You got this before Squishy took off, right?” I ask Turtle.
She understands what I’m asking. She gives me a disapproving sideways look. “I took the vids before she even had the suit off.”
Technically, that’s what I want to hear, and yet it’s not what I want to hear. I want something to be tampered with, something to be slightly off, because then, maybe then, Jypé might still be alive.
“Look,” Karl says, nodding toward the screen.
I have to force myself to see it. The eyes don’t want to focus. I know what happens next—or at least, how it ends up. I don’t need the visual confirmation.
Yet I do. The vid can save us, if the authorities come back. Turtle, Karl, even Squishy can testify to my rules. And my rules state that an obviously dangerous site should be avoided. Probes get to map places like this first.
Only I know J&J didn’t send in a probe. They might not have because we lost the other probe so easily, but most likely, it was that greed, the same one that has been affecting me. The tantalizing idea that somehow, this wreck, with its ancient secrets, is the dive of a lifetime.
And the hell of it is, beneath the fear and the panic and the anger—more at myself than at Squishy for breaking our pact—this wreck is the discovery of a lifetime.
I’m thinking, if we can just get the stealth tech before the authorities arrive, it’ll all be worth it. We’ll have a chip, something to bargain with.
Something to sell to save our own skins.
Junior goes in. His father doesn’t tell him not to. Junior’s blurry on the vid—a human form in an environmental suit, darker than the pile of things in the center of the room, but grayer than the black around them.
And it’s Junior who says, “It’s open,” and Junior who mutters, “Wow,” and Junior who says, “Jackpot, huh?” when I thought all of that had been a dialogue between them.
He points at a hole in the pile, then heads toward it, but his father moves forward quickly, grabbing his arm. They don’t talk—apparently that was the way they worked, such an understanding they didn’t need to say much, which makes my heart twist—and together they head around the pile.
The cockpit shifts. It has large screens that appear to be unretractable. They’re off, big blank canvases against dark walls. No windows in the cockpit at all, which is another one of those technologically arrogant things—what happens if the screen technology fails?
The pile is truly in the middle of the room, a big lump of things. Why Jypé called it a battlefield, I don’t know. Because of the pile? Because everything is ripped up and moved around?
My arms get even tighter, my fists clenched so hard my knuckles hurt.
On the vid, Junior breaks away from his father and moves toward the front (if you can call it that) of the pile. He’s looking at what the pile’s attached to.
He mimes removing pieces, and the cameras shake. Apparently Jypé is shaking his head.
Yet Junior reaches in there anyway. He examines each piece before he touches it, then pushes at it, which seems to move the entire pile. He moves in closer, the pile beside him, something I can’t see on his other side. He’s floating, headfirst, exactly like we’re not supposed to go into one of these spaces—he’d have trouble backing out if there’s a problem—
And of course there is.
Was.
“Ah, hell,” I whisper.
Karl nods. Turtle puts her head in her hands.
On screen nothing moves.
Nothing at all.
Seconds go by, maybe a minute—I forgot to look at the digital readout from earlier, so I don’t exactly know—and then, finally, Jypé moves forward.
He reaches Junior’s side, but doesn’t touch him. Instead the cameras peer in, so I’m thinking maybe Jypé does too.
And then the dialogue begins.
I’ve only heard it once, but I have it memorized.
Almost time.
Dad, you’ve gotta see this.
Jypé’s suit shows us something—a wave? a blackness? a table?—something barely visible just beyond Junior. Junior reaches for it, and then
Fuck!
The word sounds distorted here. I don’t remember it being distorted, but I do remember being unable to understand the emotion behind it. Was that from the distortion? Or my lack of attention?
Jypé has forgotten to use his cameras. He’s moved so close to the objects in the pile that all we can see now are rounded corners and broken metal (apparently these did break off then) and sharp, sharp edges.