I’m loath to work on the public networks. Sometimes an inquiry is enough to notify a claim jumper. I prefer to use the databases I’ve developed.
Even using mine, it takes a full day of nonstop work before it locates a match.
The system shows me the match holographically, creating models of the ship I saw and the ship in the database. The holographic ships cover the carpeted floor. I can walk around them. I can put one image on top of the other. I can enlarge or reduce them.
I do all of these things. My computer believes these ships are the same, and my eyes tell me that they are as well.
But I don’t like what I’m seeing.
Because that means my single ship computer was right: this wreck is five thousand years old.
Worse, it’s Earthmade.
And even worse than that, it’s a Dignity Vessel.
Dignity Vessels, while legendary, have never traveled more than fifty light-years from Earth.
Dignity Vessels weren’t designed to travel huge distances, at least by current standards, and they weren’t manufactured outside of Earth’s solar system. Even drifting at the speed it’s currently moving, it couldn’t have arrived at its present location in five thousand years, or even fifty thousand.
Yet it’s there.
Drifting. Filled with mystery.
Filled with time.
Waiting for someone like me to figure it out.
TWO
I need a team. I can’t dive a ship the size of a Dignity Vessel alone even if
I want to. First of all, it won’t be safe. Second, I would spend the rest of my life mapping the damn thing. And third, no one would believe me if I decide that my information is right.
I take the Business to Longbow Station. Longbow sits at the very edges of Empire Space. When the Colonnade Wars began, Longbow belonged to the group the Empire now calls the rebels. Some maps place Longbow in the Nine Planets Alliance; others place it in the Enterran Empire.
Both the Empire and the Alliance long ago learned to leave Longbow alone. Longbow is such an important trading hub that both sides decided it was better—and safer—to let the station be just a little bit lawless, and to govern itself, than it was to attempt to take over the place.
As a result, a lot of people with iffy allegiances live on Longbow. You quickly learn that it’s better not to ask people’s politics or their past history.
Longbow started as a docking berth five hundred years ago. You can still see the original station, tucked inside one of the modular units that was new a hundred years before.
Over time, Longbow became a major hub. Instead of replacing sections, the owners simply built onto the existing parts. So the station looks like a child’s toy, held together by spit and static. Depending on how you approach it, you can’t even see where the ships dock.
The station looks like a creature with a thousand tentacles and no center core.
But there is a center core. It’s buried underneath all the rebuilding. Very few people make it to that core. Only longtime spacers even know where the core is, which is fortunate, since the old spacers’ bar on Longbow doesn’t let tourists and first-timers through the door.
The old spacers’ bar is the only bar on Longbow that doesn’t have a name. No name, no advertising across the door or the back wall, no cute little logos on the magnetized drinking cups. The door is recessed into a grungy wall that looks like it’s temporary due to construction.
To get in, you need one of two special chips. The first is handheld—given by the station’s manager after careful consideration. The second is built into your ID. You get that one only if you’re a legitimate spacer, operating or working for a business that requires a pilot’s license.
I have had the second chip since I was eighteen years old.
And I know that the people I will find in that bar will be as experienced as I am. As experienced, as space-worn, and as skeptical.
They’ll also be on break or looking for work.
In essence, any divers I see inside will be exactly what I need.
In the end, I settle on five divers.
The least experienced are a father-and-son team, Jypé and Junior. I tourist-dived with them a few times, years ago, when they were starting to get their space legs. I’m the one who encouraged them to go beyond the safe dives and move to wreck diving, salvage, and historical diving.
They both have natural diving talent, an ability to float through zero-g even though both are land-born. They understand history and they love new places, new things.
They’re also one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. They move in synch, think in synch, and work in synch. They even look alike. Junior is a younger version of Jypé, same black hair, dark skin, and strong bone structure—stronger than that of most divers. The fact that they’re land-born shows in their build. But their background doesn’t harm their diving.
Besides, they have the money to pursue this new career. Jypé made a fortune in some land-based business and now invests it in preserving historical wrecks—wrecks he’s helped discover.
I trust Jypé’s knowledge of historical ships almost as much as I trust my own.
Deep down, I was hoping I’d find Jypé and Junior when I came to Longbow. The fact that I have makes me feel like this mission is destined.
The next two people I hire are also a longtime team. I first met Squishy and Turtle when I started wreck diving, decades ago.
Squishy and Turtle have been a couple as long as I’ve known them. They’re both thin, active women who can run their own team if they have to. Squishy’s a bit secretive—she doesn’t like to talk about her past—and Turtle respects that. But every dive we’ve gone on together has been successful. They have a level of expertise that no other divers I know have achieved.
Turtle has an uncanny sense of corners and danger spots. She’s also a good pilot. She’s saved my life more than once.
And somewhere along the way, Squishy learned field medicine. I discovered long ago that it’s best to have a medic on each mission.
It’s even better to have a medic who dives.
It takes me nearly a week to find the last member of the team. Many of the more established divers say no to me when I refuse to tell them what kind of ship we’re diving.
All I will tell anyone is that we have a mystery vessel, one that will tax their knowledge, their beliefs, and their wreck-recovery skills.
I don’t want anyone who goes to the coordinates to know we have a Dignity Vessel before we arrive. I don’t want to prejudice them, don’t want to force them along one line of thinking.
I also don’t want to be wrong.
Besides, while I’m hunting for the last member of the team, I don’t want to tip my hand. If we do have a Dignity Vessel, it’ll be worth a fortune in curiosity value alone. The wrong word to the wrong person and my little discovery will disappear as if it hasn’t existed at all.
But a lot of divers won’t go into a wreck blind. They believe it’s better to know what they’re facing, even if they later discover that they’re wrong about the type of ship.
Because of that, a lot of experienced divers turn me down.
That’s how I end up with Karl.
Even though I’ve known him for more than ten years, we’ve rarely worked together. He has always intimidated me. He’s big for a diver, blond, muscular, and very pale. Yet he is one of the best divers in the sector. He has incredible rankings from almost every certifying body that exists. He’s gone on more dives than I have and has dived more kinds of ships than I ever will.
But he is also cautious, and caution isn’t always compatible with historical wreck diving. Some of his dive partners have made fun of the redundant equipment he carries and the large knife he sticks into his belt.