The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (54 page)

But she kept staring at that dot, even as it became part of the blackness of space, indistinguishable from everything around it.

He had known her well. He had probably known what she would do.

He had made it easy for her to get into the Empire, to get back on a stealth tech research team. He had done it for the wrong reason, but he had done it.

Had he let her go this time?

She closed her eyes for just a moment. He had called her his Achilles heel. Maybe she was. And maybe she should be grateful.

But she’d rather believe that she had escaped him a second time.

She’d rather believe she had done it on her own.

“
Stealth” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch was first published in
Asimov’s
SF Magazine
, October/November, 2011.

STRANGERS AT THE ROOM OF LOST SOULS

1

OPERATIONS COMMANDER ELISSA TREKOV saw the weapons fire first. It came from what to her eyes looked like a blank spot on the screens in front of her. Fortunately, the
Discovery
’s sensors saw through the cloak that created that blank spot to the transport vessel which had left just moments before.

She bent over the controls on the bridge of the
Discovery,
not because she was flying the large science ship, but because she was arguing with the three people she had just left on the Room of Lost Souls. She still wore her environmental suit, even though she had removed the bubble helmet. It sat on the seat behind her.

She hadn’t had time to remove the suit because that damn Vilhauser, on the station, wasn’t listening to her.

But if she hadn’t been bent over, essentially hogging two stations while her bridge crew tried to work around her, she wouldn’t have seen the weapons’ fire from the transport vessel. Those flashes of light had given her just a few precious seconds to make a decision.

She hoped it was enough time.

Thank God she had ordered the
Discovery
to detach from the lower landing area on the Room of Lost Souls. She had planned to leave Vilhauser behind, along with two very good soldiers, because the idiot scientist wasn’t listening to her, and his actions threatened her crew.

Now there was a second threat—the weapons’ fire, cool and white across the dark starscape.

The betraying bastard who commanded that transport had waited until his ship was as close to the edge of his firing range as possible. Those shots would take seconds to arrive, but those seconds were enough.

“Calthorpe, activate the stardrive!” she said, as her gloved hand slapped the emergency beacon. They were going to need help, and she wanted to make sure they got it—even before she got the
Discovery
out of here.

Her first fucking solo command, and she wasn’t sure the
Discovery
would survive it. Not that she was in charge of the
Discovery.
That was Lieutenant Calthorpe, whom she just accidentally demoted to navigator.

Elissa was in charge of all the ships in the region, including the
Discovery
. And, at the moment, she could’ve handled one threat, but not two. There was Vilhauser and the damn device, and now that betraying bastard on the transport had decided to get involved.

She had no idea what would happen if the transport’s weapons’ fire missed the
Discovery
and hit the Room of Lost Souls.

And she didn’t want to find out.

2

“JANIK SAYS it’s my first real flag rank command.” Elissa held a glass of red wine in her left hand. The wine was some kind of specialty from a planet she’d never heard of. The Empire was so big, there were lots of planets she’d never heard of—and as for regions on those planets, well, forget it.

She could read a star map, she could remember who commanded what and when, she could remember battles, important historic figures, and all sorts of details about all sorts of ships.

But knowing the land-based details of the Empire itself, she figured she had to get some bits of knowledge from the databases. She couldn’t remember everything.

Rustin had ordered the wine, and frankly, she was scared to drink it. She’d had local specialty wines before, enough to be suspicious of any cheap wine on an expensive orbiting resort, like this one.

She had picked the resort. She had actually dug into her inheritance to pay her way. Normally, she couldn’t afford a place like this, not on her salary.

She ended up paying most of Rustin’s way too, if only because she had invited him, and he had assumed he would stay with her. She hadn’t specified that, but when he arrived and the misunderstanding got cleared up, there were no cheap rooms left. He had to share her suite.

When they got that news, he had grinned and said,
It’s not like we weren’t going to share a bed anyway
.

She had nodded at that, even though she knew he had expected it. Still, part of her felt odd about the assumption.

She was just beginning to figure out why.

Rustin watched her from the other side of the booth, his black eyes narrowing as he seemed to size her up. He had already managed to bunch up the fancy napkin, knock over a water glass, and drop the silverware. He was a large clumsy man, and proud of both facts. Sometimes she wondered how he managed to survive military life.

But of course she knew. He was an excellent raconteur when he wanted to be, he had a lot of friends, and when he focused down on a job, there was no one better.

She had forgotten, though, that in repose, he was annoying as hell.

She watched his long fingers play with the stem on the wine glass. She worried that he might snap the damn thing. He certainly didn’t care about the glass, and truth be told, he didn’t care about the wine either, as long as it was alcoholic.

But he could be political at times, and maybe that was why she had invited him. She wanted his political take on her situation. Like her, he was an Operations Commander. Unlike her, he had a fixed assignment of ships and a fixed area to patrol. Last year, before she had even received her promotion, she had heard he was on the short list to move up to Group Commander.

But he also had a wicked temper that seemed to be getting worse, so she doubted that his promotion would come any time soon.

Rustin downed the rest of his wine in a single gulp. He wiped his lower lip with his thumb.

“Technically,” he said, “Flag Commander Janik is right: you haven’t had a real command yet.”

A quick sudden anger made her breath catch. Rustin was supposed to agree with her. He was supposed to help her. He wasn’t supposed to criticize her.

“I saved your damn butt on the Loeven Front,” she snapped. “I was in charge of those ships.”

He raised his eyebrows. They needed trimming, and made him seem comical, which he was not. He clearly noted her tone. She never usually took that tone with him, although he’d taken it before with her.

“You were in charge of everything,” Rustin said calmly, “because the Operations Commander died in the middle of that fight. That doesn’t make the mission your command. It does, however, make the result your success.”

He sounded reasonable, for once. When did he become the reasonable one?

She swished the wine in her glass so fast that the liquid almost swirled out of it. She didn’t want him to sound reasonable. She wanted a fight—and, she now realized, she had invited Rustin to join her on these days off just so she could get it.

Only he wasn’t playing. Rustin was nothing if not contrary.

“I’ve commanded other operations since the Loeven Front,” she said, her words clipped.

“Oh, be fair, Elissa. Those were outings. Tests. You were still a Commander until last year. You don’t even have a regular posting yet. You’re so newly minted they could still demote you and no one would notice.” He picked up the bottle and poured more of the wine into his glass.

She had known about the outings and the tests. She would have welcomed them if she hadn’t been so damn educated in the ways of the military. Most Commanders didn’t have to prove themselves after they’d saved an entire squadron in a battle. They got an immediate mission or a posting to somewhere interesting.

She hadn’t. She had gotten a few more tests, as if she had actually screwed up instead of saving hundreds of lives.

“This is about my family, not me,” she said.

“Oh, probably.” Rustin drank half of his second glass in two quick gulps. He was going to be drunk before the appetizers got here.

And she really hated his tone. In fact, she hated everything about this evening, including the fact that it had been her idea.

“‘Oh, probably’?” she said, her tone sharp. “That’s all you can say?”

He rolled his eyes and set the glass down. A waiter came by with the cheese thingies that Rustin had ordered and the paté with crostini that had sounded good to her.

Either this restaurant wasn’t as good as advertised, or the fact that the paté looked more like baby poop than goose liver was a symptom of her mood.

“You’ve been complaining about your family connections as long as I’ve known you, Lis,” Rustin said, using the nickname that she hated. He’d always used that nickname, and it always irritated her.

Yep, she had invited him for the fight and nothing else.

“Either,” he said, grabbing one of the cheese thingies, “you complain because everyone expects you to be your great-grandfather—”

“Great-great,” she mumbled.

“—or it’s because everyone thinks you’ll fuck up like your grandmother—”

“Grand
father
,” she said just a little louder.

“—or it’s because they think you’ll melt down like your uncle—”

“I
know
,” she said forcefully. It was either that or correct him again, since the meltdown was courtesy of her aunt, just as Elissa was trying to get as many recommendations as she could to get into the military’s most elite officer training academy. Her aunt’s meltdown, which Elissa had discussed repeatedly with Rustin, had derailed that appointment, and sent Elissa to second-tier schools, because God and the military brass somehow knew she could’ve been cut from the same cloth.

No one cared that there were literally hundreds of Trekovs now, and they were all descendants of Ewing, the Great Hero of the Colonnade Wars, a legendary man, who had had a legendary number of children, including one not too much older than Elissa. That daughter was vat-grown, but that didn’t stop her from going after the family fortune and using the family name.

“I don’t know why you’re so damn defensive about all of it,” Rustin said. “I mean, it’s been a fact of your life since you were born. I’m sure a lot of us would love the Trekov fame and fortune.”

That was the first time he’d ever mentioned the money, and since the money paid for his room here, the mention was probably deliberate.

Elissa grabbed one of the cheese thingies and took a bite. It tasted like stale dog farts. She set the thing down and chased the taste out of her mouth with the questionable wine which, after the cheese thingie, didn’t taste that questionable at all.

“You don’t really get it, do you?” she said. “They’re giving me an SRP and expecting me to be grateful. Then they’re telling me—someone who has proven herself
in battle
—that I’m going to spend my time babysitting scientists until the day those scientists discover something. If and when they discover something.”

Rustin took a crostini and lavishly spread the paté on it. He ate the entire thing in one gulp, probably trying to irritate her even more. Considering how yucky it all looked, she really didn’t care what he ate and didn’t eat.

“Those scientists are both the pride of the Empire and its future,” he said, quoting the line they’d all heard since the guarding of the scientists had become a military priority. “You should be grateful.”

He
should be grateful that she didn’t take the paté and shove it in his face.

Everyone knew that an SRP was bullshit duty. SRP stood for Special Research Postings. They generally went to operations commanders who had served with distinction on the battlefield but who had proven themselves too scarred (or too difficult) to ever return to a front line.

She wasn’t scarred, and she wasn’t difficult. If anything, she was too accommodating, which, if she thought about it, might’ve been the other reason she got the SRP.

The other problem with an SRP was that the scientists could be trouble. They often believed themselves in charge of the military mission, when in fact, they were only in charge of the scientific part of it. In all situations involving the ship and outsiders, the military remained in charge.

How long the damn SRP lasted, however, depended entirely on the scientists and their stupid classified projects.