The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (12 page)

She starts to answer, but I raise a finger, stopping her.

“—and I don’t care. I do want you to contact someone else for a tour. This is my private time, and I hate having it interrupted.”

“I’m sorry,” she says and the apology sounds sincere.

I expect her to get up, leave the bar or maybe move to another table, but she does neither.

Instead she leans closer and lowers her voice.

“I’m not a tourist,” she says. “I have a mission and I’m told you’re the only one who can help me.”

In the two years since the Dignity Vessel, no one has tried this old con on me. In the twenty years before, I’d get one or two of these approaches a year, mostly from rivals wanting coordinates to the wrecks I refused to salvage.

I’ve always believed that certain wrecks have historical value only when they’re intact—not a popular belief among salvagers and scavengers and most wreck divers—but one that I’ve adhered to since I started in this business at the ripe old age of eighteen.

I point to Karl, a slight but muscular diver who has the best reputation on Longbow. He’s not very good at finding things, but he has his moments. He was with me on that last run and we haven’t spoken since we docked.

“Karl’s good,” I say. “In fact, if you want real adventure, not the touristy kind, he’s the best. He’ll take you to deep space, no questions asked.”

“I want you,” the woman says.

I sigh. Maybe she does. Maybe she’s been led astray by some old-timer. Maybe she thinks I still have some valuable coordinates locked in my ship.

I don’t. I dumped pretty much everything the day I decided I would only do tourist runs.

“Please,” she says. “Just let me tell you what’s going on.”

I sigh. She’s not going to leave without telling me. Unless I force her. And I’m not going to force her because it would take too much effort.

I take another swig of my ale.

She folds her hands together, but not before I see that her fingers are shaking.

“I’m Riya Trekov, the daughter of Commander Ewing Trekov. Have you heard of him?”

I shake my head. I haven’t heard of most people. Among the living, I only care about divers, pilots, and scavengers. Among the dead, I know only the ones whose wrecks would have once made my diving worthwhile. I also knew the ones who had piloted the wrecks I found, as well as the people who sent them, and the politicians, leaders or famous people of their time, their place, their past.

But modern commanders, people whose name I should recognize? I am always at a loss.

“He was the supreme commander in the Colonnade Wars.”

Her voice is soft, and it needs to be. The Colonnade Wars aren’t popular out here. Most of the spacers sitting in this bar are the children or grandchildren of the losers.

“That was a hundred years ago,” I say.

“So you do know the wars.” Her shoulders rise up and down in a small sigh. She apparently expected to tell me about them.

“You’re awfully young to be the daughter of a supreme commander from those days.” I purposely don’t say the wars’ name. It’s better not to rile up the other patrons.

She nods. “I’m a post-loss baby.”

It takes me a minute to understand her. At first I thought she meant post-loss of the Colonnade Wars, but then I realize that anyone titled supreme commander in that war had been on the winning side. So she meant loss of something else.

“He’s missing?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“He has been for my entire life,” she says.

“Was he missing before you were born?”

She takes a deep breath, as if she’s considering whether or not she should tell me. Her caution peaks my curiosity. For the first time, I’m interested in what she’s saying.

“For fifty years,” she says quietly.

“Fifty
standard
years?” I ask.

She nods. If I’m guessing her age right, and if she’s not lying, then her father went missing before the peace treaties were signed.

“Was he missing in action?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“A prisoner of war?” Our side—well, the side that populates this part of space, which is only mine by default—didn’t give the prisoners back even though that was one of the terms of the treaty.

“That’s what we thought,” she says.

The “we” is new. I wonder if it means she and her family or she and someone else.

“But?” I ask.

“But I put detectives on the trail years ago, and there’s no evidence he was ever captured. No evidence that he met with anyone from the other side,” she says with surprising diplomacy. “No evidence that his ship was captured. No evidence that he vanished during the last conflicts of the war, like the official biographies say.”

“No real evidence?” I ask. “Or just no evidence that can be found after all this time?”

“No real evidence,” she says. “We’ve looked in the official records and the unofficial ones. I’ve interviewed some of his crew.”

“From the missing vessel,” I say.

“That’s just it,” she says. “His ship isn’t missing.”

So I frown. She has no reason to approach me. Even in my old capacity, I didn’t search for missing humans. I searched for famous ships.

“Then I don’t understand,” I say.

“We know where he is,” she says. “I want to hire you to get him back.”

“I don’t find people,” I say mostly because I don’t want to tell her that he’s probably not still alive.

No human lives more than 120 years without enhancements. No human who has spent a lot of time in space can survive an implantation of those enhancements.

“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m hoping you’ll recover him.”

“Recover?” She’s got my full attention now. “Where is he?”

The tip of her tongue touches her top lip. She’s nervous. It’s clear she isn’t sure she should tell me, even though she wants to hire me.

Finally, she says, “He’s in the Room of Lost Souls.”

***

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you. The Room of Lost Souls is a myth.

I’ve only heard it talked about in whispers. An abandoned space station, far from here, far from anything. Most crews avoid it. Those that do stay do so only in an emergency, and even then they don’t go deep inside.

Because people who go into the room at the center of the station, what would be, in modern space stations, the control room but which clearly isn’t, those people never come out.

Sometimes you can see them, floating around the station or pounding at the windows, crying for help.

Their companions always mount rescue attempts, always lose one or two more people before giving up, and hoping—praying—that what they’re seeing isn’t real.

Then they make repairs or do whatever it is they needed to do when they arrive, and fly off, filled with guilt, filled with remorse, filled with sadness, happy to be the ones who survived.

I’ve heard that story, told in whispers, since I got to Longbow Station decades ago, and I’ve never commented. I’ve never even rolled my eyes or shaken my head.

I understand the need for superstition.

Sometimes its rituals and talismans give us a necessary illusion of safety.

And sometimes it protects us from places that are truly dangerous.

***

“Why in the known universe would I go there to help you?” I ask, with a little too much edge in my voice.

She studies me. I think I have surprised her. She expected me to tell her that the Room of Lost Souls is a myth, that someone had lied to her, that she is staking her quest on something that has never existed.

“You know it, then.” She doesn’t sound surprised. Somehow she knows that I’ve been there. Somehow she knows that I am one of the only people to come out of the Room alive.

I don’t answer her question. Instead, I drain my ale and stand. I’m sad to leave the old spacer’s bar this early in the day, but I’m going to.

I’m going to leave and walk around the station until I find another bar as grimy as this one.

Then I’m going to go inside and I am, most likely, going to get drunk.

“You should help me,” she says softly, “because I know what the Room is.”

I start to get up, but she grabs my arm.

“And I know,” she says, “how to get people out.”

3

HOW TO GET PEOPLE OUT
.

The words echo in my head as I walk out of the bar. I stop in that barren corridor and place one hand against the wall, afraid I’m going to be sick.

Voices swirl in my head and I will them away.

Then I take a deep breath and continue on, heading into the less habitable parts of the station, the parts slated for renovation or closure.

I want to be by myself.

I need to.

And I don’t want to return to my berth, which suddenly seems too small, or my ship, which suddenly seems too risky.

Instead I walk across ruined floors and through half-gutted walls, past closed businesses and graffiti-covered doorways. It’s colder down here—life support is on, but at the minimum provided by regulation—and I almost feel like I’m heading into a wreck, the way I used to head into a wreck when I was a beginner, without thought and without care.

I don’t remember much. I remember thinking it looked pretty. Colored lights—pale blues and reds and yellows—extended as far as the eye could see. They twinkled. Around them, only blackness.

My mother held my hand. Her grip was tight through the double layer of our spacesuit gloves. She muttered how beautiful the lights were.

Before the voices started.

Before they built, piling one on top of the other, until—it seemed—we got crushed by the weight.

I don’t remember getting out.

I remember my father, cradling me, trying to stop my shaking. I remember him giving orders to someone else to steer the damn ship, get us out of this godforsaken place.

I remember my mother’s eyes through her headpiece, reflecting the multi-colored lights, as if she had swallowed a sea of stars.

And I remember her voice, blending with the others, like a soprano joining tenors in the middle of a cantata—a surprise, and yet completely expected.

For years, I heard her voice—strong at first and unusual in its power—then blending, and mixing, until I can’t pick it out any longer.

I didn’t know if that voice—mixing with other voices—was an aural hallucination, a dream, or a reality. Sometimes I thought it both.

But it sneaks up on me at the most unexpected moments, sometimes beginning with just a hum. The hum sends shivers down my back, and I do whatever I can to silence the voices.

Which is usually nothing.

Nothing except wait.

***

After three days, Riya Trekov finds me.

I’m having dinner in Longbow’s most exclusive restaurant. The food is exquisite—fresh meat from nearby ports, vegetables grown on the station itself, sauces prepared by the best chef in the sector. There’s fresh bread and creamy desserts and real fruit, a rarity no matter what space port you dock on.

The view is exquisite as well—windows everywhere except the floor. If you look up, you see the rest of the station towering above you, lights in some of the guest rooms, decoration in some of the berths. If you look out one set of side windows, you see the docks with the myriad of ships—from tiny single-ships to armored yachts to passenger liners.

Another group of windows show the gardens with their own airlocks and bays, the grow lights sending soft rays across the entire middle of the station.

On this night, I’m having squid in dark chocolate sauce. The squid isn’t what Earthers think of as squid, but an ocean-faring creature from one of the nearby planets. It has a salty nutlike taste that the chocolate accents.

I try to focus on the food as Riya sits down. She’s carrying a plate and a full glass of wine.

Clearly she had been eating somewhere else in the restaurant, on one of the layers I can’t see from my favorite table. But she had seen me come in and somehow, she thinks that gives her permission to join me.

“Have you thought about it?” she asks, as if she made an offer and I said I would consider it.

I can lie and say I hadn’t thought about any of it. I can be blunt and say that I want nothing to do with the Room of Lost Souls.

Or I can be truthful and say that her words have played through my head for the last three days. Tempting me. Frightening me.

Intriguing me.

At odd moments, I find myself wondering how I would see the place, after all my years of wreck diving, after all the times I’ve risked my life, after all the hazards I’ve survived.