Kristine Rusch - Diving into the Wreck

Danger.

Do Not Pass without Authorization.

Warning: To Unapproved Personnel, the Field Inside These Doors Can Be Lethal.

The signs begin about six meters from the entrance, and grow more and more insistent the closer we get. But there is no barrier, nothing the military has constructed to prevent illegal entry.

I wonder if they couldn’t get anything to work here.

Just like our communications devices don’t work here.

For the first time, I worry that I’ve made a mistake bringing Odette’s device.

Maybe it won’t work here either.

I make myself take a deep slow breath. It’ll work. If I keep it outside the stealth field. It’ll have to work.

Odette has slowed down. I look at her. She’s doing something to the packet on the front of her suit.

“I think I’m going to stay out here,” she says.

“You’re going to have to come closer than that,” I say. “You have to talk me through setting the device.”

She takes such a deep breath that I can hear it. “I’ll do it through the door,” she says.

That’s fine with me. As long as she can see what I’m doing, then we’ll be all right.

Provided we can get through the door. The signs make me worry that someone has locked it - the old-fashioned way, with some kind of padlock.

The thrumming is stronger. If I don’t pay attention, it sounds like a chorus of hums. If I concentrate, I can hear the different sounds at the different levels.

The sound isn’t giving me a headache like it normally does. Instead, it’s lifting my spirits. I was worried that I’d back out once I saw the interior again, that my preservationist instincts would collide with my desire for revenge and I would back away from destroying the ship.

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.”

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.