The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (39 page)

The older members of the crew might never see the Fleet again, but the younger members would.

If the scientists were right.

If the
Ivoire
truly was two hundred years in its own future.

“Two hundred years is manageable,” Yash said softly, clearly mistaking his silence for shock.

“I know,” he said, just as softly, silencing her.

He folded his own hands on the tabletop. He was strangely calm. Now that he knew what was happening, he would probably remain calm until they had a firm plan.

“What kind of evidence do you have?” he asked Rossetti.

She turned to one of the engineers, the only one that Coop had ever interacted with, an older man by the name of José Cabral.

“The equipment itself gives us the timeline,” Cabral said. “The sector base closed one hundred years after we left. A rudimentary staff remained, those who didn’t want to travel with the Fleet to Sector Base Y, which was where this group would be posted. This staff continued to live on the surface, charged with maintaining the equipment at low power levels for the next fifty years.”

Coop nodded. This was standard procedure.

Dix shifted in his chair. The news clearly made him nervous.

“After fifty years without human contact,” Cabral said, “the equipment went dormant. Everything shut down except the touch command.”

Touch command. Meaning that the systems would only reactivate if the equipment got touched by human hands. Coop would have to confirm that with Yash, but he didn’t think that some kind of falling debris would activate the system. Just contact from a member of the Fleet. At least, that was what he had been told.

“How long has this base been dormant?” Coop asked.

“Impossible to tell, sir,” Cabral said. “When the system goes dormant, even its internal clock mechanism ceases. Only the
anacapa
drive continues to function, at a very low level, of course, and then only because it is safer to keep the drive running than it is to shut it down.”

Coop nodded. He had been told that as well.

“If I may, sir.” One of the scientists, a middle-aged woman, spoke up. She was thin, with harsh lines around her mouth and eyes. Coop had to struggle to recall her name, which he had only heard in the context of this mission. “The evidence points toward the machinery being off for a very long time.”

One of the other scientists held up his hand, as if to stop her, but she caught it in her own and brought it down.

“What evidence?” Coop asked.

“The particles, sir,” she said. “Nanobits are durable. They don’t lose their bonding except in a few instances. Most nanobits lose their bonding through a chemical reaction that we haven’t seen here, or the room itself would be toxic.”

“And the other instance?” Coop asked.

“Time,” she said. “Specifically, five hundred to a thousand years, sir.”

“We don’t have proof of that,” said the scientist whose hand she still held. “We just have supposition.”

“And past experience,” she said. “We’ve encountered this before, and by we, I mean the Fleet. Never have the nanobits lost their bonding in less than five hundred years.”

Coop’s stomach flipped. He had to work to keep his hands relaxed, so that his knuckles wouldn’t show white.

“We’ll have to test to be certain,” said one of the other scientists. He wasn’t looking at Coop, but at Dix. Dix, who sat rigidly next to Coop. Dix, who, rumor had it, had fallen in love with one of the chefs on the
Geneva
.

The
Geneva
, which was traveling with the Fleet.

If the Fleet was five hundred years distant from them, in no way could Coop plot the Fleet’s course. There were too many variables. Two hundred years was at the very edge of possible.

Five hundred years meant that the
Ivoire
would never rejoin the Fleet.

Coop wouldn’t let himself think of that. He didn’t have proof.

“The equipment itself isn’t damaged,” Rossetti said, trying to take control of the briefing back from her scientist. “It’s just old.”

Coop nodded.

“We should be able to use information in the database to help us fix the
Ivoire
,” she said.

He nodded again. He wasn’t thinking about that quite as much. He knew his engineers could fix the
Ivoire
. She had extensive damage, but none of it was catastrophic.

He was more concerned about their current situation.

“The outsiders,” he said and paused. Everyone looked at him. They clearly hadn’t expected him to mention the outsiders at this point. “You told me their suits looked underdeveloped.”

He said this last to Yash.

She nodded. “Ours are technically superior, if that glove is any indication.”

“Oxygen cylinders, knives, inferior suits,” he said. “Their society didn’t develop from ours then.”

“Probably not,” Yash said.

“So the settlement on the surface is gone,” he said.

She shrugged. “We don’t know that.”

He nodded again. Two hundred years was a long time. They were going to need to know about the history of Sector Base V as well as Venice City, what they had missed, and what they faced.

“I assume that the shutdown was a standard shutdown,” he said to Rossetti.

By that, he meant that the sector base was shut down because the Fleet had moved on, not because of some problem on the planet itself.

Rossetti had to look at her team.

José Cabral nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, answering for the team. “The shutdown was ordered by the Fleet and completed according to procedure. Staff remained behind. At that time, Venice City was a thriving community, and many people did not want to leave.”

“No indications that anything went wrong on the surface?” Coop asked.

“None,” Cabral said.

Coop nodded. “Clearly, we’re going to need more information. We need to know how much time has lapsed. I’m also going to want to talk with the outsiders.”

“You sir?” Rossetti said, before biting her lower lip. She clearly hadn’t meant to speak out of turn. The statement had been involuntary.

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t think we should surprise them,” Yash said.

“We won’t,” he said. “We’ll let them know we’re here.”

Maybe the outsiders had answers. If nothing else, he could get past them and travel up to the surface. Someone in Venice City had to know something.

If Venice City remained.

He shuddered at that thought. Maybe the old-timers had been right. Maybe they should have been careful about how they named their city. They had named it Venice City because the Earth city had been built on canals. But it had eventually disappeared under the water.

What if this Venice had disappeared as well?

He placed his hands flat on the table and used them to push himself to his feet.

“Thank you all for the work,” he said. “You’ll have new orders tomorrow. We’re going to figure out exactly when we are. But know this: we’ll be all right.”

He sounded confident even though he didn’t feel confident. He felt as if someone had shut off the ship’s gravity, and he was floating, unfettered, in a world he thought he knew.

The others, though, seemed calmer. Maybe it was the shared knowledge. Maybe it was the fact that they were not in charge of it; he was, and as their commander, he was the one who needed to solve the problem.

But he knew, as a commander—as a human being—that some problems had no easy solution.

And this problem was one of those.

***

Coop had to work on three things at once: He had to repair the
Ivoire
; he had to download information from the sector base; and he had to approach the outsiders.

He ordered his engineering staff to concentrate on the
Ivoire
’s repairs. He needed the ship in full working order so that they could leave Sector Base V at a moment’s notice.

He assigned the scientists and some junior engineers to the sector base team. If repairs were needed on the sector base equipment, his senior engineering staff could handle those after they finished with the
Ivoire
.

He alone was going to worry about the outsiders.

His first step: he had to let them know he was here.

So, after the outsiders left from their latest foray into the repair room, he sent Rossetti’s team back into the room, with orders to download information and to leave the equipment running when they completed their five-hour mission.

Rossetti’s team didn’t wear environmental suits. The team had no trouble working, and didn’t seem to have any ill effects from the particles. The studies were correct; the room itself was as harmless as it had been two hundred plus years before.

Rossetti’s team worked hard. They left the equipment running when they returned to the ship. They went through decontamination and testing to make certain they remained healthy, and they continued their work inside the
Ivoire
. They weren’t to contact him unless or until they had processed new information from their downloads.

He was less concerned with that information than he was the outsiders.

He made sure he had control of the bridge when the outsiders returned.

They opened the door at the exact moment he expected them. The woman came in first. She stopped and held out a hand, as if to prevent the others from entering.

Then she took some tentative steps forward. She paused, looked around the room, and then turned toward the ship. For a moment, it felt as if she were looking through the screens directly at Coop. He felt his breath catch.

She had received his message; she clearly knew that someone was in the ship, that it hadn’t arrived automatically without a crew on board.

Then she backed toward the door, stepped back into the corridor with the rest of her team, and pulled the door closed.

He wanted to commend her:
Good job
.
You have no idea about the nature of the threat, or even if your team is prepared for it. But you do know that we’ve been observing you. And that we’re here.

He knew she wouldn’t return until she felt ready to do so, and he liked that as well.

Still, he watched for another hour, waiting. When she didn’t return, he felt oddly disappointed, and just as oddly pleased.

“I need Rossetti, Shärf, Ahidjo, and Perkins on the bridge,” he said to Dix.

“Yes, sir,” Dix said.

Coop stood, his hands behind his back, and studied that empty repair room. What would he do if he were the woman?

He would have retreated, as she had. He would have briefed his team. Then he would return, with his team ready for anything.

But he would return as soon as possible.

“Sir?” Rossetti had come onto the bridge. Her hair had the fly-away quality of the newly dry, but she wore her uniform—red with black, the sign of the Fleet, the same version of the uniform she had worn on her first trip into the repair room without an environmental suit.

“Sorry to bring you back here so soon, Joanna,” Coop said, “but I need you to go out there and wait for the outsiders.”

Shärf arrived, then Ahidjo, both wearing their uniforms as well. Perkins was only a moment behind them. She wore her dress uniform, the one the Fleet demanded its linguists wear for first contact.

“The three of you will guard Special Officer Perkins,” Coop said. “You will wait near the door of the
Ivoire
until the outsiders return. Perkins will do all of the talking, even if the outsiders address the rest of you. She knows the protocol. You do not. Is that understood?”

All four of them nodded. Perkins’ eyes were bright. As uncomfortable as she had felt after the failure of talks with the Quurzod, she was clearly eager to get back to work. As young and new as Perkins was, her enthusiasm was one of the things Coop liked about her.

She clearly loved this work and wanted to do it.

“If they don’t return, sir?” Rossetti asked.

“They will,” he said.

“But if they don’t, sir?”

She wanted to know how long they would stand out there, waiting.

“Give it three hours, Joanna. If they haven’t come back in that time, we’ll go on as if they’re not coming back. You four can come back into the ship and rest.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rossetti said.

“I do need you carrying weapons,” Coop said. “Just in case.”

Rossetti nodded.

“Me too, sir?” Perkins asked.

It wasn’t procedure for the linguist to be armed.

“No,” he said. “But remember that at least one member of the outsiders’ team is carrying a knife. Don’t get within striking range.”