The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (41 page)

And for that, he needed to talk to the outsiders as soon as he possibly could.

***

He set up the briefing room as if he were receiving heads of state. For all he knew, he was.

He had his personal chef make some pastries and lay out various snacks. He set out bottles of wine he had picked up at Starbase Kappa. He also had flavored waters cooling on a sideboard, and various hot liquids on the other side of the room.

He wore his dress uniform. He posted two guards inside the room as a show of force, and had several others standing by. But he still planned to meet the woman and Bridge with only Perkins at his side.

Coop didn’t greet them at the airlock. He had Perkins do that, along with another set of guards. He ordered the areas where the outsiders would walk blocked off, so that they would have no contact with anyone except him and Perkins.

He watched the wall screen, as the outsiders stepped out of the airlock. The woman came first, then the man. The woman looked around as if she were trying to take in every detail. She even touched the wall gently with her fingers, as if trying to see what it was made out of.

As they walked through the corridors of the ship, the woman would occasionally reach out and touch a doorframe or run her fingers along a wall. Coop contacted Yash and asked if she was seeing all of this.

She was and, she assured him, the woman could do no harm with her naked fingertips.

He wasn’t worried so much about naked fingertips. He was worried about some little nanovirus or something she had attached to her fingertips. Yash promised to have the walls wiped as soon as the outsiders left the corridor, and she would let him know if something was amiss.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for the outsiders to walk from the airlock to the briefing room. As they stopped by the guards, Coop shut off the wall screen and stood at the head of the table, his hands clasped behind his back.

He was oddly nervous. He checked in with himself. He wasn’t nervous because he thought he might get some answers. He had already figured out that he wasn’t going to like the timeline the woman would give him—if, indeed, she had one. He suspected the
Ivoire
was much farther than two hundred years away from the Fleet.

The evidence kept coming in that the
Ivoire
was at least five hundred years away.

Coop had been thinking of how to break that news to his crew for more than a week now, the news that they were on their own, stranded in the future, with no purpose, no mission, and no chance of ever seeing the Fleet again.

He hadn’t quite come to terms with that, but he was braced for it.

So he wasn’t nervous that the outsiders would tell him a timeline he didn’t want to hear.

He was nervous about meeting them.

And really, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t nervous about them. He was nervous about her.

The woman had intrigued him from the start, even before he could see her face clearly. She explored an area that had clearly been abandoned, but she hadn’t looted it. She had treated it with respect.

She seemed to be gathering information. When she saw the ship, she didn’t flee, nor did she use weapons to try to break in. She continued her own explorations, and she also tried to figure out the ship.

Then, when she realized the ship was occupied, she didn’t attack. She regrouped, came back, and did her best to communicate with Perkins.

She had shown intelligence, curiosity, and courage, all traits that Coop admired.

He felt as if he was going to meet a colleague, not someone who could do him any harm.

He straightened his shoulders as the door slid open.

The woman came in first, her movements slow, but not tentative. She was slighter than Coop expected. Her image on the wall screen had distorted her height, made her seem taller than she actually was. But she had presence. He could feel it as she moved toward him, hand outstretched.

“Boss,” she said.

At least, that was what it sounded like. Coop glanced at Perkins.

“That’s what they call her,” Perkins said. “I don’t know if it’s a name or her title.”

“Or both,” Coop said.

The man, Bridge, was watching the conversation. His eyes did glitter more than any eyes Coop had ever seen. They must have been artificial. Bridge seemed to be taking in the entire conversation.

Coop decided to ignore him for a moment, and kept his attention on the woman.

He took her hand. It was dry and small, warmer than he expected, certainly warmer than his own hand.

“I’m Jonathon Cooper, the commander of this ship,” he said. “People call me Coop.”

Perkins translated.

The woman nodded. She repeated, “Coop.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

He hadn’t let go of her hand. She hadn’t let go of his. She didn’t smile in return, but the skin around her eyes crinkled as if she was pleased.

“Special Officer Perkins here,” Coop said, “isn’t certain if your name is Boss or if that’s your title.”

The man stepped forward. He seemed alarmed that Coop hadn’t let go of the woman’s hand.

“I’m Bridge,” he said, his words barely understandable. “Boss is her name and her title.”

The woman said something to Bridge, and he responded.

“They call you by your title?” Coop asked her, without looking at Bridge or Perkins.

“I prefer it,” the woman said. Or rather, Perkins said. Her translations were a bit slow, but they made Coop feel like he was having a conversation—albeit an awkward one—with the woman.

“Surely you can understand my position,” Coop said. “As commander of this ship, I can’t call someone else Boss.”

The woman shrugged, her hand still locked in his. “Then call me what you will.”

She wasn’t going to tell him anything else, not yet, and he wasn’t going to call her Boss.

Bridge came up beside her. “I’m McAllister Bridge,” he said in very bad Standard. “I’ll do my best to assist your translator.”

Coop reluctantly let go of the woman’s hand, but he didn’t extend his hand to Bridge, nor did Bridge extend his to Coop.

“Thank you,” Coop said. “I think we need all the help we can get trying to communicate with each other.”

He pulled back a chair at the side of the table for the woman. Then he indicated that they both should sit.

He went to the sideboard, held up the carafe of wine, and raised his eyebrows, silently asking the outsiders if they wanted some.

Bridge looked at the woman. So she was in charge, even if this Bridge was a bit pushy.

“Yes,” the woman said, and that word was clear. So she knew some Standard as well.

Coop looked at Bridge. He nodded.

Coop poured four glasses of wine. He set Perkins’ glass across the table from the woman’s.

Then he sat down at the head of the table. “We have a lot of questions,” Coop said. “We would have talked before, but we wanted to make sure we could understand each other.”

The woman finally smiled. The expression pulled her face together, making her seem both younger and prettier.

“That makes sense,” she said.

Coop folded his hands together. “It seems to me,” he said as clearly and slowly as he could, “that you seemed surprised when our ship arrived. Why is that? Didn’t you know that ships could land here?”

Bridge looked at the woman as Perkins translated. Bridge started to answer, but the woman held up her hand. She leaned forward just a little so that she blocked Bridge’s line of sight.

So, they had a few issues about who was in charge. Bridge verbally acknowledged the woman’s authority, by calling her Boss and telling Coop that was her position, but he didn’t seem to like her control.

The way that the woman tolerated Bridge without disciplining him in any way reinforced Coop’s sense that theirs was not a military operation. It was something else.

“This area has been abandoned for a very long time,” the woman said. “No one even knew the equipment was down here. It surprised us. We were just starting to explore this giant compound when your ship arrived.”

Coop hadn’t expected that answer. He expected something more concrete, something like,
The base has been abandoned for two hundred years, so we didn’t think anyone was using it…

“If you didn’t know the base was here,” he said, “why were you exploring underground?”

Bridge’s hand lightly brushed the woman’s arm, but she ignored him. Clearly he didn’t want her to say something. And just as clearly, she wasn’t going to listen to him.

“We were tracking the power source,” she said. “We’re familiar with it. We’ve found it throughout this sector. It’s dangerous and it’s causing problems on the surface.”

“The power source?” Coop looked at Perkins who shrugged.

“I’m not sure of the translation,” she said to him. “That’s what I understand and that’s what the computer gives us.”

“Your stealth drive,” Bridge said. He had to speak the words three times before Coop understood him. Perkins still looked a bit confused.

“Stealth drive?” Coop said.

“The energy signature,” Bridge said. “The thing that allows Dignity Vessels to cloak. It’s still active in this underground area.”

Dignity Vessels. Coop peered at Bridge and then asked him to repeat his words. Bridge did. Coop glanced at Perkins who nodded just once.

She had caught the same thing Coop had. The words “Dignity Vessels” had surprised them both.

Dignity Vessel was the original name of the ships in the Fleet. The name came from the Fleet’s original mission, to bring peace and dignity throughout the known universe.

The Fleet never did bring peace. They focused more on justice. And they did try to restore dignity where there was none.

But they didn’t call themselves Dignity Vessels, although the words were still part of the ship’s identification numbers. That these people knew what Dignity Vessels were gave Coop hope that less time had passed than he feared.

“What kind of trouble on the surface?” Coop asked.

“The excess energy,” the woman said quickly, before Bridge could answer, “creates death holes.”

Or at least, that was what Perkins thought she said. Perkins ran the sentence through the computer as well and got a similar translation. Bridge watched it all with curiosity.

“Death holes?” Coop asked. “Sink holes?”

“A wave of energy blows through the ground, like a geyser,” the woman said, “creating a tunnel. Vaycehn occasionally loses entire neighborhoods to these tunnels.”

“Vaycehn?” Coop asked.

“It’s what they call Venice City,” Perkins said, with an edge in her voice.

Coop didn’t want to explore that edge, not at the moment, anyway.

“You’re convinced these death holes are caused by something down here?” Coop asked the woman.

“We know it. A big hole opened when your ship arrived.”

Coop frowned. Clearly something had malfunctioned. “Why didn’t you contact the Fleet?”

The woman looked at Bridge. He shook his head slightly. She put her hand on his for just a moment, as if to keep him silent.

“Because,” the woman said after a moment, “until your ship arrived, we thought the Fleet was just a legend.”

“What?” Coop asked.

The woman looked a little sheepish. “We found some ruined Dignity Vessels before. I’ve dived some of the wrecks. But I never thought I’d see a functioning ship with a functioning crew.”

“Because we’re a legend,” Coop said.

“No one knows much about you,” she said. “We thought you traveled in large groups, going from section to section, distributing justice.”

“We do,” he said.

“But no one has any evidence of that. What we do know is garbled, lost to time and mythology. Some places claim you exist and you helped them create their civilizations. Some say you never existed. Others claim you were rogue agents fleeing a dying government, and that you stirred up trouble wherever you went.”

The hair on the back of his neck had risen. How long did it take for the Fleet’s exploits to get lost?

“What do you say?” Coop asked.

“I say that your Dignity Vessels have turned into the greatest mystery of my life.”

“A mystery I can solve for you,” he said.

She shrugged, as if she didn’t want to commit to the idea. “I don’t see a Fleet here,” she said. “You’re just one ship.”

“We were damaged,” he said. “We came here for repairs.”

True enough, but not complete. He didn’t want to give her the full answer—not yet.

“Alone?” Bridge asked.

She put her hand on his again, as if to remind him that she was asking the questions.

“The base should have been active,” Coop said. “We only left a month ago.”

Bridge shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“Shut up, Bridge,” the woman said. She didn’t seem surprised by Coop’s words. Bridge did. She knew more about Dignity Vessels and the Fleet than she was admitting.