Kristine Rusch - City of Ruins

We’re inside the room. The others are going to wait. Seager and Quinte will guard the door. They’re to leave as quickly as they can if it looks like thing: have gone badly. Rea, DeVries, and Kersting will continue our not-so-great investigation of the room. I’m sure they’ll attract minders, and that’s all right

Al-Nasir stands beside me. He keeps rubbing the palms of his hands together. He’s afraid he’ll screw up the translations. I figure if the conversation doesn’t seem to be going well, I’m going to leave. The Dignity Vessel people can try to stop me if they want to. But I’ve asked for respect, and I’m going to continue to demand it.

I wish we had a translation program, too, but my people couldn’t put one together yet. I’m rather astonished that the Dignity Vessel people have. Stone believes—and I actually agree—that this is a sign of a full complement of crew on the ship itself. If five people work on something, they, by definition work slower than fifty. A group doesn’t have downtime. They can work more efficiently.

The ship’s door opens as we approach. The staircase lowers, and then two men in those black uniforms emerge. They walk to the base of the stairs and move to the side. Either they’re going to guard the ship or they’re going to escort us.

They each extend a hand. The person on the right extends his right hand and the person on the left extends his left. It’s choreographed, formal, and immediately sets a tone.

Ilona was right to make me dress up—much as I hate it.

“You ready?” I ask Al-Nasir.

He nods, then takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. We head into the ship, me first.

We’d argued about that. Everyone wanted me to go second, as if that makes a difference. If something goes wrong, I’m going to be in the same amount of trouble whether I hit the danger first or I hit it second.

Besides, my going first shows leadership, and that’s what I need to do here.

As I put my foot on the first stair, my heart rate increases. I am going inside a working Dignity Vessel.

The first time I went inside one, I had to lower myself through a hatch, with all of my suit lights on. I felt like a tourist then, nervous on her first dive, and Squishy warned me that I’d get the gids.

She was right.

If I were wearing a suit, I’d have the gids now.

I step inside the door into the airlock. It’s familiar and unfamiliar. We have this part of the ship on two different Dignity Vessels, but neither of those vessels work. Here there are lights in places I don’t expect them, circular lights on either side that are clearly assessing me and the kind of threat I pose.

Al-Nasir comes up beside me, and as he does, the door closes. The lights grow brighter.

The interior door opens, revealing a bright corridor and the lieutenant, standing just inside it. She’s wearing her black uniform, her hands clasped behind her back.

She’s nervous, too.

With the lights on and the environmental system working, the corridor seems bigger than it actually is. This one now holds me, Al-Nasir, the lieutenant, and two guards.

“Welcome,” she says, speaking a Standard so clear that it startles me.

“Thank you,” I say.

She smiles. “Please come with me.”

She’s practiced this part. That’s all right. I’ve practiced a few phrases too. I hope I can pull it off.

We walk too quickly through the corridor. I want to go slowly, like we would if we were diving.

I want to mark each intersection, take note of every turn. I want to examine doorways and the ceiling, and figure out exactly what the glowing panels are.

Our feet tap against the floor. The sound seems odd, dampened somehow, not at all what I’m used to when I go into one of the Dignity Vessels.

We go up two levels. I make a map in my head, compare it to what I know. We’re heading toward the cockpit, but I have a hunch we’re not going there. We’re going to one of two large rooms that I believe to be conference rooms. One is just off the cockpit, and I can’t imagine a captain bringing strangers there.

The other is one level down, and several meters away. That’s the one I would use, and as we turn right, that’s the one we’re headed to.

I don’t say anything. I’m too busy looking at things—the black walls, just like the walls in the caves; the writing that is missing in my Dignity Vessels; and the cleanliness that comes from constant maintenance.

None of the ships we’ve found have these smooth black walls. I suspect that beneath them is the gray metal we’re used to, with the rivets and the welded parts. This blackness is something new, or it’s something that doesn’t last when a ship loses power for centuries.

We reach the door to the conference room. The door is closed. There are no guards outside it.

The lieutenant stops and looks at me.

“The captain wants to have only four of us inside,” she says slowly.

“All right,” I say.

Then she swings the door open and waits until we go in.

I step in first.

The room is nothing like I imagined it to be. Only the dimensions remain the same as the rooms I’ve seen in the other two Dignity Vessels.

This room has a table down the center, so well polished that I can see my own reflection. A dozen chairs are bolted to the floor, and there are actual sideboards. The walls show an unfamiliar skyscape, but that’s no painting. It’s a recorded image being shown on the screens that encase us.

A man stands at the head of the table. He’s surprisingly tall and broad shouldered, with dark hair that touches his collar. His eyes are blue, his features sharp.

He doesn’t have the thinness of someone raised in space. He’s muscular with strong bones, certainly not something I would have expected, even though the lieutenant doesn’t look space-raised either.

He bows slightly to me. “Welcome,” he says in Standard, mangling the word so badly that I almost don’t recognize it.

“Thank you,” I say in his language. I’m probably mangling that phrase as badly as he mangled “Welcome,” but I don’t mind. The phrase brings a smile to his face, one that softens his features.

He greets Al-Nasir personally, and Al-Nasir answers. Then the captain offers us refreshments from the sideboard. There are baked goods I do not recognize, carafes of something that looks like wine, and a variety of fruits and cold vegetables.

He lets one of his hands linger near a carafe. I nod. He picks up a glass, pours an amber liquid for me, another for Al-Nasir, and hands them to us. Then he pours two more, one for himself and one for the lieutenant.

Apparently the polite customs are the same in both of our cultures.

He indicates the chairs near the table. The lieutenant sits, then looks pointedly at Al-Nasir. He sits near her.

The captain stands near the head of the table. He says very slowly, “My name is Jonathon Cooper. I am captain of this ship. People call me Coop.”

His nickname. “Coop,” I say, careful to pronounce it the same way. “People call me Boss.”

He pulls out his chair and sits. I sit at the same time, taking the chair to his right.

“Boss,” he says as he sits. “Lieutenant—” And then he says that word I can’t quite understand, clearly her name. “—is not sure Boss is your name or your title.”

“Both,” I say.

He doesn’t understand that, but she does. She repeats it to him.

He replies in his own language and looks at me. I don’t understand a word, but she is able to translate.

“They call you by your title?”

“I prefer it,” I say.

The conversation is slow as the translations go back and forth, but it feels right, as if he and I are actually talking. I glance at Al-Nasir. He nods. He’s understanding us both so far.