Kristine Rusch - Diving into the Wreck

Squishy is pleased that the bomb worked.

But as we continue to talk, her smile slowly fades.

I’m almost afraid to ask her what’s bothering her. I really don’t want the mood—which isn’t quite victorious and isn’t quite sad—to change.

But I do ask her.

“Your father figured out how to make stealth tech,” she says. “Ancient stealth tech.”

I frown at her. She’s sitting to my left. Mikk is across from her. He has a guarded expression on his face.

“And he was gone when you first arrived, dropping off his scientists and getting new ones for something else,” she says.

I nod.

“His stealth tech clearly worked.”

I shrug. “I could hear it, faintly. But I didn’t test it.”

“My device worked with it,” Squishy says. “My device wouldn’t have worked on just anything. It needed the stealth tech to power it.”

I have no idea how she built it, and I don’t want to know, even now.

“So that’s confirmation, then,” I say.

“And that’s bad news,” she says.

Mikk groans. He starts to get up, but I grab his wrist.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because,” Squishy says, “you say your father wasn’t a scientist.”

I nod.

“So someone else put that together.”

“It sounded like a group of someone elses put that together,” I say.

“Even so,” she says. “Enough of the technology has been revived. The military has it.”

“Provided,” I say, “that they can find some more ancient stealth tech to cannibalize. My father said they can’t use the Room.”

“And you believe him?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “They used the control panel from the Dignity Vessel. We’ve been all over the station around the Room. No one ever found a control panel.”

I look at the others for confirmation. They nod. They’re interested now.

“The Room, your Dignity Vessel.” Squishy sighs. “There’s a lot of ancient stealth tech around here. All the Empire needs is another wrecked Dignity Vessel.”

“It was a fluke that we found that one,” I say.

She shakes her head. “There’ve been others,” she says. “But there’s never been any working stealth tech in any of them. That’s how the military got the idea to rebuild ancient stealth tech in the first place.”

I stare at her, feeling cold. “You’re telling me that if they find another Dignity Vessel, they’ll be able to re-create my father’s work?”

“Most likely,” she says. “Now they know about people with markers and they know how to make something that approximates stealth tech. They have the know-how. They just need the right tools.”

She sounds like my father. He seemed so certain that destroying the Dignity Vessel and his little bottle wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Then he contradicted himself by fighting to save that little experiment.

My stomach twists. I stand up. The Empire cannot get stealth tech. I’ve set them back, but I haven’t destroyed their efforts.

I should have realized how hard it is to obliterate anything. After all, I dive wrecks from the distant past. Wrecks filled with time and history and lost dreams.

I leave the group, distraught. I pace my cabin until exhaustion finally takes me.

I sleep—only to wake up in the middle of the night.

With an idea.

If we can’t destroy stealth tech, we can share it.

We have the know-how. We have the money.

Thanks to Riya Trekov and to Squishy’s finder’s fee from long ago, we can continue for years without making a dime.

We’re pariahs now anyway: Mikk and Jennifer on a watch list; Turtle’s, Bria’s, and Davida’s images broadcast as possible thieves or pirates; and me— I’m a full-fledged criminal who has at the very least destroyed valuable imperial property.

At the most, I’ve committed murder to do so.

We want to stop the Empire from getting ancient stealth tech, and there’s only one surefire way to do it.

We have to find the stealth tech first. We have to find the Dignity Vessels; we have to track down other legends like the Room of Lost Souls. Once we find it, we work with it. We now know we can use bits of ancient stealth tech to create stealth tech of our own.

We also know that some people, with the right markers, can work in a stealth tech field. No one has to die.

Giving the Empire stealth tech will change the balance of power in the sector. But if all of the former rebel governments get stealth tech as well, then the balance remains.

It’s a big undertaking, and we wouldn’t be able to do it alone. But I have a hunch the Nine Planets Alliance will give us shelter and maybe, just maybe, some funds as well—especially when they hear how quickly the Empire can conquer them if the Empire is the only one in the sector with stealth tech.

I work up a presentation for the group. It takes me two days. By then, they’ve been wondering what they’re going to do with their lives.

I sit them down and give them my ideas. A few—Squishy, of course, and Mikk—modify them. We have a plan.

Then I give them a few more days to think about whether or not they’ll join.

Not all of them will. And that doesn’t matter, because our base will not be anywhere permanent—at least not at first.

At least, that’s what I’m thinking right now.

The only person who has a reason to leave us is Squishy, and it’s all right with me if she does. No one likes her (except me and possibly Turtle), and I know where to find her. If I need more explosive devices, I can ask her to build them and get them to me.

The team likes my plan. They understand it, and agree with it.

We have a new mission, a complicated mission. We have to find old Dignity Vessels and other forms of ancient stealth tech. We have to create a new version of that stealth tech in the lab.

And we have to keep our efforts secret from the Empire.

I’ll handle the search. Someone else can handle the science.

But I have to stay in charge.

I find it ironic, honestly, that I’ll be doing this—the woman who never much paid attention to the Empire. The woman who loves to be alone.

Now I have to put together another team. A bigger team.

One that builds on the smarts, determination, and talent of this crew.

One that will get everything right.

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