“I’m sorry,” she says, and the apology sounds sincere.
I expect her to get up and leave the bar or maybe move to another table, but she does neither.
Instead she leans closer and lowers her voice.
“I’m not a tourist,” she says. “I have a mission, and I’m told you’re the only one who can help me.”
In the two years since the Dignity Vessel, no one has tried this old con on me. In the twenty years before, I’d get one or two of these approaches a year, mostly from rivals wanting coordinates to the wrecks I refused to salvage.
I’ve always believed that certain wrecks have historical value only when they’re intact—not a popular belief among salvagers and scavengers and most wreck divers—but one that I’ve adhered to since I started in this business at the ripe old age of eighteen.
I point to Karl. He too has made Longbow his home. But we haven’t spoken in two years. We nod at each other when we pass in the corridors, although mostly we avoid each other’s eyes.
We try not think about that last dive, about Junior’s legs sticking out of that barricade, about Jypé’s body collapsing in on itself, about Squishy’s betrayal.
Or maybe it’s just me who tries not to think about it.
I do know that we’ve never discussed it, and we probably never will.
“Karl’s good,” I say to the woman. “In fact, if you want real adventure, not the touristy kind, he’s the best. He’ll take you to deep space, no questions asked.”
“I want you,” the woman says.
I sigh. Maybe she does. Maybe she’s been led astray by some old-timer. Maybe she thinks I still have some valuable coordinates locked in my ship.
I don’t. I dumped pretty much everything the day I decided I would only do tourist runs.
“Please,” she says. “Just let me tell you what’s going on.”
I sigh. She’s not going to leave without telling me. Unless I force her. And I’m not going to force her because it would take too much effort.
I take another swig of my ale.
She folds her hands together, but not before I see that her fingers are shaking.
“I’m Riya Trekov, the daughter of Commander Ewing Trekov. Have you heard of him?”
I shake my head. I haven’t heard of most people. Among the living, I only care about divers, pilots, and scavengers. Among the dead, I know only the ones whose wrecks would have once made my diving worthwhile. I also knew the ones who had piloted the wrecks I found, as well as the people who sent them, and the politicians, leaders, or famous people of their time, their place, their past.
But modern commanders, people whose names I should recognize? I am always at a loss.
“He was the supreme commander for the Enterran Empire in the Colonnade Wars.”
Her voice is soft, and it needs to be. The Colonnade Wars aren’t popular out here. Most of the spacers sitting in this bar are the children or grandchildren of the losers.
“That was a hundred years ago,” I say.
“So you do know the wars.” Her shoulders rise up and down in a small sigh. She apparently expected to tell me about them.
“You’re awfully young to be the daughter of a supreme commander from those days.” I purposely don’t say the wars’ name. It’s better not to rile up the other patrons.
She nods. “I’m a post-loss baby.”
It takes me a minute to understand her. At first I thought she meant post-loss of the Colonnade Wars, but then I realize that anyone titled supreme commander in that war had been on the winning side. So she meant loss of something else.
“He’s missing?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“He has been for my entire life,” she says.
“Was he missing before you were born?”
She takes a deep breath, as if she’s considering whether or not she should tell me. Her caution piques my curiosity. For the first time, I’m interested in what she’s saying.
“For fifty years,” she says quietly.
“Fifty standard years?” I ask.
She nods.
I decide not to be delicate. “So you’re what? You can’t be an afterthought, not after fifty years. You’re bottle grown?”
“Implanted,” she says. “My parents froze embryos. It was common in wartime.”
“But fifty years,” I say.
She shrugs, clearly not willing to tell me any more about her own creation.
So, if I’m guessing her age right, and if she’s not lying, then her father went missing before the peace treaties were signed.
“Did your father go missing in action?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“A prisoner of war?” Our side—well, the side that populates this part of space, which is only mine by default—didn’t give the prisoners back even though that was one of the terms of the treaty.
“That’s what we thought,” she says.
The “we” is new. I wonder if it means she and her family or she and someone else.
“But?” I ask.
“But I put detectives on the trail years ago, and there’s no evidence he was ever captured. No evidence that he met with anyone from the other side,” she says with surprising diplomacy. “No evidence that his ship was captured. No evidence that he vanished during the last conflicts of the war, like the official biographies say.”
“No real evidence?” I ask. “Or just no evidence that can be found after all this time?”
“No real evidence,” she says. “We’ve looked in the official records and the unofficial ones. I’ve interviewed some of his crew.”
“From the missing vessel,” I say.
“That’s just it,” she says. “His ship isn’t missing.”
So I frown. She has no reason to approach me. Even in my old capacity, I didn’t search for missing humans. I searched for famous ships.
“Then I don’t understand,” I say.
“We know where he is,” she says. “I want to hire you to get him back.”
“I don’t find people,” I say, mostly because I don’t want to tell her that he’s probably not still alive.
No human lives more than 120 years without enhancements. No human who has spent a lot of time in space can survive an implantation of those enhancements.
“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m hoping you’ll recover him.”
“Recover?” She’s got my full attention now. “Where is he?”
The tip of her tongue touches her top lip. She’s nervous. It’s clear she isn’t sure she should tell me, even though she wants to h ire me.
Finally, she says, “He’s in the Room of Lost Souls.”
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: The Room of Lost Souls is a myth.
I’ve only heard it talked about in whispers. An abandoned space station, far from here, far from anything. Most crews avoid it. Those that do stay do so only in an emergency, and even then they don’t go deep inside.
Because people who go into the room at the center of the station—what would be, in modern space stations, the control room but which clearly isn’t—those people never come out.
Sometimes you can see them, floating around the station or pounding at the windows, crying for help
Their companions always mount rescue attempts, always lose one or two more people before giving up, and hoping—praying—that what they’re seeing isn’t real.
Then they make repairs or do whatever it is they needed to do when they arrive, and fly off, filled with guilt, filled with remorse, filled with sadness, happy to be the ones who survived.
I’ve heard that story, told in whispers, since I got to Longbow Station decades ago, and I’ve never commented. I’ve never even rolled my eyes or shaken my head.
I understand the need for superstition.