Move your arm.
But I see no corresponding movement. The visuals remain the same, just like they did when I was watching from the skip.
Just a little to the left.
And then:
We’re five minutes past departure.
That was panic. I had missed it the first time, but the panic began right there. Right at that moment.
Karl covers his mouth.
On screen, Jypé turns slightly. His hands grasp boots, and I’m assuming he’s tugging.
Great. But I see nothing to feel great about. Nothing has moved. Keep going.
Going where? Nothing is changing. Jypé can see that, can’t he?
The hands seem to tighten their grip on the boots, or maybe I’m imagining that because that’s what my hands would do.
We got it.
Is that a slight movement? I step away from the wall, move closer to the vid, as if I can actually help.
Now careful.
This is almost worse because I know what’s coming, I know Junior doesn’t get out, Jypé doesn’t survive. I know—
Careful—son of a bitch!
The hands slid off the boot, only to grasp back on. And there’s desperation in that movement, and lack of caution, no checking for edges nearby, no standard rescue procedures.
Move, move, move—ah, hell.
This time, the hands stay. And tug—clearly tug—sliding off.
C’mon.
Sliding again.
C’mon, Son.
Again.
Just one more.
And again.
C’mon, help me, c’mon.
Until, finally, in despair, the hands fall off. The feet are motionless, and, to my untrained eye, appear to be in the same position they were in before.
Now Jypé’s breathing dominates the sound—which I don’t remember at all—maybe that kind of hiss doesn’t make it through our patchwork system—and then vid whirls. He’s reaching, grabbing, trying to pull things off the pile, and there’s no pulling, everything goes back like it’s magnetized.
He staggers backward—all except his hand, which seems attached— sharp edges? No, his suit wasn’t compromised—and then, at the last moment, eases away.
Away, backing away, the visuals are still of those boots sticking out of that pile, and I squint, and I wonder—am I seeing other boots? Ones that are less familiar?—and finally he’s bumping against walls, losing track of himself.
He turns, moves away, coming for help even though he has to know I won’t help (although I did) and panicked—so clearly panicked. He gets to the end of the corridor, and I wave my hand.
“Turn it off.” I know how this plays out. I don’t need any more.
None of us do. Besides, I’m the only one watching. Turtle still has her face in her hands, and Karl’s eyes are squinched shut, as if he can keep out the horrible experience just by blocking the images.
I grab the controls and shut the damn thing off myself.
Then I slide onto the floor and bow my head. Squishy was right, dammit. She was so right. This ship has stealth tech. It’s the only thing still working, that one faint energy signature that attracted me in the first place, and it has killed Junior.
And Jypé.
And if I’d gone in, it would’ve killed me.
No wonder she left. No wonder she ran. This is some kind of flashback for her, something she feels we can never ever win.
And I’m beginning to think she’s right, when a thought flits across my brain.
I frown, flick the screen back on, and search for Jypé’s map. He had the system on automatic, so the map goes clear to the cockpit.
I superimpose that map on the exterior, accounting for movement, accounting for change—
And there it is, clear as anything.
The probe, our stuck probe, is pressing against whatever’s near Junior’s faceplate.
I’m worried about what’ll happen if the stealth tech is open to space, and it always has been—at least since I stumbled on the wreck.
Open to space and open for the taking.
Karl’s watching me. “What’re you gonna do?”
Only that doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s the greed. It’s the greed talking, that emotion I so blithely assumed I didn’t have.
Everyone can be snared, just in different ways.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I have no idea at all.”
I go back to my room, sit on the bed, stare at the portal, which mercifully doesn’t show the distant wreck.
I’m out of ideas, out of energy, and out of time.
Squishy and the calvary’ll be here soon to take the wreck from me, confiscate it, and send it into governmental oblivion.
And then my career is over. No more dives, no more space travel.
No more nothing.
I think I doze once because suddenly I’m staring at Junior’s face inside his helmet. His eyes move, ever so slowly, and I realize—in the space of a heartbeat—that he’s alive in there: his body’s in our dimension, his head on the way to another.
And I know, as plainly as I know that he’s alive, that he’ll suffer a long and hideous death if I don’t help him, so I grab one of the sharp edges—with my bare hands (such an obvious dream)—and slice the side of his suit.
Saving him.
Damning him.
Condemning him to an even uglier slow death than the one he would otherwise experience.
I jerk awake, nearly hitting my head on the wall. My breath is coming in short gasps. What if the dream is true? What if he is still alive? No one understands interdimensional travel, so he could be, but even if he is, I can do nothing.
Absolutely nothing, without condemning myself.
If I go in and try to free him, I will get caught as surely as he is. So will anyone else.
I close my eyes, but don’t lean back to my pillow. I don’t want to fall asleep again. I don’t want to dream again, not with these thoughts on my mind. The nightmares I’d have, all because stealth tech exists, are terrifying, worse than any I’d had—
And then my breath catches. I open my eyes, rub the sleep from them, think:
This is a Dignity Vessel. Dignity Vessels have stealth tech, unless they’ve been stripped of them. Squishy described stealth tech to me—and this vessel, this wreck, has an original version.
Stealth tech has value.
Real value, unlike any wreck I’ve found before.
I can stake a claim. The time to worry about pirates and privacy is long gone, now.
I get out of bed, pace around the small room. Staking a claim is so foreign to wreck divers. We keep our favorite wrecks hidden, our best dives secret from pirates and wreck divers and the Empire.
But I’m not going to dive this wreck. I’m not going in again—none of my people are—and so it doesn’t matter that the entire universe knows what I have here.
Except that other divers will come, gold diggers will try to rob me of my claim—and I can collect fees from anyone willing to mine this, anyone willing to risk losing their life in a long and hideous way.
Or I can salvage the wreck and sell it. The Empire buys salvage.
If I file a claim, I’m not vulnerable to citations, not even to reckless homicide charges, because everyone knows that mining exacts a price. It doesn’t matter what kind of claim you mine, you could still lose some, or all, of your crew.
But best of all, if I stake a claim on that wreck, I can quarantine it—and prosecute anyone who violates the quarantine. I can stop people from getting near the stealth tech if I so choose.