But the thrumming keeps me on edge, reminds me why I’m actually here. If anything, my feelings about destroying the stealth tech have grown stronger.
“Here,” Odette says to me.
She hands me the packet. It seems smaller now that it’s not attached to her suit.
I don’t attach it to mine. Instead, I clutch it in one hand. My heart rate is increasing again, and I make myself breathe evenly so that I stay calm.
“Come with me,” I say. “It’s not far.”
And indeed, it isn’t. It only takes us a minute to get there.
My worries about the padlock weren’t justified. The door is propped open. Someone has braced it open by attaching it to the wall.
Apparently, whoever did this was afraid of being trapped inside.
“If it’s so dangerous, why would they do that?” Odette asks.
“So you can get out quickly,” I say. I add the “quickly” mostly for her sake. Because the real answer is that they just want to make sure they can get out.
We peer in. The cockpit looks very different. All the debris is gone. What remains is broken edges and hints of places where the furniture had once been. Lights, activated by our movement, have come on around the controls.
But no lights come on near the stealth tech field. I automatically look in that direction.
I was afraid I would see Junior, still horizontal in the debris field.
He’s no longer there. Someone—the military probably—removed his body. I knew they would
But I was afraid just the same.
I let out a small sigh.
“It doesn’t look threatening,” Odette says.
In fact, it’s even more dangerous now. Because the debris field marked where the stealth tech was. It’s harder to determine now where the stealth tech begins and the regular part of the cockpit ends.
“Stay back,” I say.
I stop just inside the door. It’s easy to see through that hole open to space. The hole where our probe is. I resist the urge to go to it and peer out.
Now I’m hearing the same soft harmonies I heard when I came here with Karl. They’re soothing instead of distracting.
“Someone’s been working in here, haven’t they?” Odette says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Where’s the field?” she asks, even though I told her before we came. She and Hurst both studied the maps with me.
“Over there.” I point. “You stay as far from that part of the cockpit as you can.”
“I’m not going any deeper,” she says.
But she’s looking. So am I.
After a moment, she says, “I think the best place to put the explosive is on the floor.”
I glance at her.
“In the exact center of the room,” she says. “Then we can be sure to get the maximum effect inside the ship.”
I had envisioned putting it on the walls I had investigated with Karl. But I think that Odette has made a good point.
“All right,” I say.
She has gotten me moving. I would have hovered longer, thinking about the past.
Getting lost in it, like Karl was afraid I would do in the Room.
You’ll be looking for your mother. You know you will, he said, and you won’t be focused on the small but necessary details. I will.
He had been right. I had just looked for Junior.
Part of me can feel Karl here.
Because the cockpit, without its furniture and debris, reminds me of the Room.
That thought makes me move faster. I pick a spot in the exact center of the floor, away from the broken areas. I remove the bomb from the packet and attach it, just like Odette showed me how to do.
It seems ridiculously easy. Just like the bomb seems ridiculously small to cause such extreme damage. It’s not much bigger than my laser pistol.
I set it down. “Okay,” I say. “Remind me again how to activate this thing.”
She does. She’s the one who programmed it. She gave us forty-five minutes to clear the area—which is the very minimum we could come up with.
I move slowly, repeating everything she says, touching each part of the device as I activate it.
Which I do.
It snaps into place and seems to sink into the floor.
“Is that normal?” I ask.
“That’s what it’s supposed to do,” she says.
One small blue light appears on the top edge. That’s the only indication that the explosive is armed.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
THIRTY-NINE
We do. We get the hell out of there.
We move faster than we probably should. I don’t monitor my heart rate or my breathing. Both are elevated.
I probably have the gids.
I don’t care.
We reach the hatch and we climb. Odette stays with me. Halfway up, she removes one of her breathers and adds it to her suit. So clearly she’s been breathing too hard too.
We’re both nervous, which isn’t a good thing.
But we’re almost done.
I reach the top first. I ease myself out and down to the tether. I’m about to contact Hurst when something stops me. I turn and look at the skip.
It’s dwarfed by a ship I’ve never seen before. The ship is the size of the Business, but it isn’t the Business. It has Enterran Empire logos and the military’s red, square symbol along the side.
Apparently, this is the command ship that Mikk had seen. It has returned.
And it’s grappled onto the skip.
It could have taken the skip inside one of its cargo bays, but hasn’t, probably because of the tether.
Odette pulls herself out. I hear a crackle in my helmet. She’s about to say something.
I extend my hand in front of her in an attempt to silence her. She looks at me questioningly, and again the weird material of her helmet reflects the lights of the ships. I can’t see her face.
I hold my gloved index finger up. She looks up, but she doesn’t say anything. So I point at the skip.
She lets out a breath of air, which I can hear through our comm system.
If someone is paying attention, they can hear it too.
What I’m hoping is that they’ve lost track of us, that Hurst is trying to talk with them or deal with them or fight with them.
If he is, and they’re not paying attention to us, then we have an advantage.
If they’ve already captured him and are watching the Dignity Vessel, then they’ve seen us and are prepared for us.
Either way, we have no choice. We have to get back to the skip and get out of here.
The fact that they’re waiting for us is a good sign. I told Hurst to leave if it looked like trouble was coming—unless we were just about to come out of the Dignity Vessel.
If he followed orders—always a big “if’ with divers who aren’t actually diving—then the command vessel has only been there for a few minutes.
I test the tether. It’s holding just fine.
I nod at Odette, and together we pull our way to the skip. We move quicker than we moved going to the Dignity Vessel.
As we travel, I stare at the new ship. It doesn’t look like the older models of command ships. I’ve dived the wrecks of several, and they all seem to be based on the same design.
Up front are weapons, in the back, extra thrusters. Some have life pods scattered throughout. Newer models have replaced many of the life pods with more weapons bays. Along the bottom of the ship are bay doors for smaller ships—about the size of the skip—to exit and also battle.