Karl is just glad that it’s no longer part of our lives.
But it’ll always be a part of mine.
I think about it constantly, speculating. Worrying.
Wishing I had more answers to all the questions the Vessel raised.
Like this one: That vessel had been in service a while—that much was clear from how it had been refitted. When someone activated the stealth, something went wrong. What happened to the crew then? Did they abandon the vessel or die in it? Did they try to shut the stealth tech off or did they run from it?
Were they running tests with minimal crew, or had the real crew looked at that carnage in the cockpit and decided, like we did, that it wasn’t worth the risk to go in? Was this a repair mission gone wrong?
I never looked for escape pods, but such things existed on Dignity Vessels—at least they do in the specs. Maybe the rest of the crew bailed, got rescued, and blended into cultures somewhere far from home.
Maybe that’s where Jypé’s legends come from.
Or so I like to believe.
I’ll never know.
Just like I’ll never know how the vessel got to the place I found it. There’s no way to tell if it traveled in stealth mode over those thousands of years, although that doesn’t explain how the ship avoided gravity wells and other perils that lie in wait in a cold and difficult universe. Or maybe it had been installed with an updated FTL.
I was never able to examine it well enough to figure that out, and what images I got from the cockpit raised more questions than they answered.
The entire ship raises more questions than it answers.
And I can’t shake it.
But I have to, and I pretend that I have as we pull into Longbow Station.
The station has never seemed so much like home. It’ll be nice to shed the silent Karl, and Turtle, who claims her diving days are behind her.
My diving days are behind me too, only in not quite the same way. The Business and I’ll still ferry tourists to various wrecks, promising scary dives and providing none.
But I’ve had enough of undiscovered wrecks and danger for no real reason. Curiosity sent me all over this part of space, looking for hidden pockets, places where no one has been in a long time.
Now that I’ve found the ultimate hidden pocket—and I’ve seen what it can do—I’m not looking anymore. I’m hanging up my suit and reclaiming my land legs.
Less danger there, on land, in normal gravity. Not that I’m afraid of wrecks now. I’m not, no more than the average spacer.
I’m more afraid of that feeling, the greed, which came on me hard and fast, and made me tone-deaf to my best diver’s concerns, my old friend’s fears, and my own giddy response to the deep.
I’m getting out before I turn pirate or scavenger, before my greed— which I thought I didn’t have—draws me as inexorably as the stealth tech drew Junior, pulling me in and holding me in place, before I even realize I’m in trouble.
Before I even know how impossible it’ll be to escape.
This isn’t the life I imagined for myself, but as I look around the station, I realize none of us live the life we imagined. For some of us, life is better than anything our imaginations could conjure.
For others, it’s worse.
I’ve lived an adventurous life.
I’m getting too old to continue on that path.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now.
And I suspect I’ll tell myself that for a long, long time to come.
PART TWO
THE ROOM OF LOST SOULS
THIRTEEN
She’s land-born. I don’t need to see her thick body with its heavy bones ^^ to know that. Her walk says it all.
I am sitting in the old spacers’ bar in Longbow Station. Sometimes I think I live here. Ever since the Dignity Vessel, I have made Longbow my permanent residence.
I sold my possessions and my apartment on Hector Prime. I have no more secrets to keep. I no longer wreck dive.
I take tourists to famous wrecks and pretend we’re having an adventure.
Sometimes even that pretense is too much for me.
So I tilt my chair back and watch the woman weave her way through the tables. The other spacers watch too. They’re wondering the same thing that I am: Who is she coming to see? What is she doing here, with her land-heavy legs and her know-it-all expression?
She so clearly does not belong.
The space-born have a grace—a lightness—to everything they do. This woman has a way of putting one foot in front of the other as if she expects the floor to take her weight. I used to walk like that.
We have the same build, she and I—that thickness that comes from strong bones, the fully formed female body that comes from the good nutrition usually found planetside.
She sits down at my table. The other spacers look away, as if they expected it all along.
But I didn’t, and neither did they. They’re watching out of the corners of their eyes, making sure she really came for me.
Making sure she does no harm.
She says my name as if she’s entitled to. She has come for me, then, and somehow she knew where to find me.
“How’d you get in here?” I pull my drink across the scarred plastic table and lean my chair against the wall. Balancing chairs feels like that second after the gravity gets shut off but hasn’t yet vanished—a half-and-half feeling of being both weighted and weightless.
“I have an invitation,” she says and holds up the cheap St. Christopher’s medal that houses this week’s guest chip. Station management shifts the chip housing every week or two so the chips can’t be scalped or manufactured. After five guest chips are given out, management changes housing. There is no predictable time, nor is there predictable housing.
“I didn’t invite you,” I say, picking up my drink and balancing its edge on my flat stomach. I can’t quite get the balance right, and I catch the drink before it spills.
“I know,” the woman says, “but I needed to see you.”
“If you want to hire my ship to do some wreck diving, go through channels. Send a message, my system’ll scan your background, and if you pass, you can see any one of a dozen wrecks that’re open to amateurs.”
“I’m not interested in diving,” the woman says.
“Then you have no reason to talk to me.” I take a drink. The liquid, which is a fake but tasty honey-and-butter ale, has warmed during the long afternoon. The warmth brings out the ale’s flavor, which is why I nurse it— or at least why I say I nurse it. I don’t like to get drunk—I hate the loss of control—but I like drinking and I like to sit in this dark, private, enclosed bar and watch people I know, people who won’t give me any guff.
“But I do have a reason to talk to you.” She leans toward me. She has pale green eyes surrounded by dark lashes. The eyes make her seem even more exotic than her land-born walk does. “You see, I hear you’re the best—”
My snort interrupts her. “There is no best. There’s a half a dozen companies that’ll take you touring wrecks—and that’s without diving. All of us are certified. All of us are bonded and licensed, and all of us guarantee the best touring experience in this sector. It just varies in degree—do you want the illusion of danger or do you want a little bit of history with your deep-space adventure? I don’t know who sent you in here—”
She starts to answer, but I raise a finger, stopping her.
“—and I don’t care. I do want you to contact someone else for a tour. This is my private time, and I hate having it interrupted.”