The knife has saved his life twice that I know of—once against a claim-jumper, and once as a pick that opened a hole big enough to squeeze his arm through.
They don’t put on the headpieces until I give them the plan. One hour only: twenty minutes to get in, twenty minutes to explore, twenty minutes to return. Work the buddy system. We just want an idea of what’s in there.
One hour gives them enough time on their breathers for some margin of error. One hour also prevents them from getting too involved in the dive and forgetting the time. They have to stay on schedule.
They get the drill. They’ve done it before, with me anyway. I have no idea how other team leaders run their ships. I have strict rules about everything, and expect my teams to follow.
Headpieces on—Turtle’s is as thin as her face, tight enough to make her look like some kind of cybernetic human. Karl goes for the full protection—seven layers, each with a different function; double night vision, extra cameras on all sides; computerized monitors layered throughout the external cover. He gives me the handheld, which records everything he “sees.” It’s not as good as the camera eyeview they’ll bring back, but at least it’ll let me know my team is still alive.
Not that I can do anything if they’re in trouble. My job is to stay in the skip. Theirs is to come back to it in one piece.
They move through the airlock—Turtle bouncing around like she always does, Karl moving with caution—and then wait the required two minutes. The suits adjust, then Turtle presses the hatch, and Karl sends the lead to the other ship.
We don’t tether, exactly, but we run a line from one point of entry to the other. It’s cautionary. A lot of divers get wreck blindness—hit the wrong button, expose themselves to too much light, look directly into a laser, or the suit malfunctions in ways I don’t even want to discuss—and they need the tactical hold to get back to safety.
I don’t deal with wreck blindness either, but Squishy does. She knows eyes, and can replace a lens in less than fifteen minutes. She’s saved more than one of my crew in the intervening years. And after overseeing the first repair—the one in which she got her nickname—, I don’t watch.
Turtle heads out first, followed by Karl. They look fragile out there, small shapes against the blackness. They follow the guideline, one hand resting lightly on it as they propel themselves toward the wreck.
This is the easy part: should they let go or miss by a few meters, they use tiny air chips in the hands and feet of their suits to push them in the right direction. The suits have even more chips than that. Should the diver get too far away from the wreck, they can use little propellants installed throughout their suits.
I haven’t lost a diver going or coming from a wreck.
It’s inside that matters.
My hands are slick with sweat. I nearly drop the handheld. It’s not providing much at the moment—just the echo of Karl’s breathing, punctuated by an occasional “fuck” as he bumps something or moves slightly off-line.
I don’t look at the images he’s sending back either. I know what they are—the gloved hand on the lead, the vastness beyond, the bits of the wreck in the distance.
Instead, I walk back to the cockpit, sink into my chair, and turn all monitors on full. I have cameras on both of them and read-outs running on another monitor watching their heart and breathing patterns. I plug the handheld into one small screen, but don’t watch it until Karl approaches the wreck.
The main door is scored and dented. Actual rivets still remain on one side. I haven’t worked a ship old enough for rivets; I’ve only seen them in museums and histories. I stare at the bad image Karl’s sending back, entranced. How have those tiny metal pieces remained after centuries? For the first time, I wish I’m out there myself. I want to run the thin edge of my glove against the metal surface.
Karl does just that, but he doesn’t seem interested in the rivets. His fingers search for a door release, something that will open the thing easily.
After centuries, I doubt there is any easy here. Finally, Turtle pings him.
“Got something over here,” she says.
She’s on the far side of the wreck from me, working a section I hadn’t examined that closely in my three trips out. Karl keeps his hands on the wreck itself, sidewalking toward her.
My breath catches. This is the part I hate: the beginning of the actual dive, the place where the trouble starts.
Most wrecks are filled with space, inside and out, but a few still maintain their original environments, and then it gets really dicey—extreme heat or a gaseous atmosphere that interacts badly with the suits.
Sometimes the hazards are even simpler: a jagged metal edge that punctures even the strongest suits; a tiny corridor that seems big enough until it narrows, trapping the diver inside.
Every wreck has its surprises, and surprise is the thing that leads to the most damage—a diver shoving backwards to avoid a floating object, a diver slamming his head into a wall jarring the suit’s delicate internal mechanisms, and a host of other problems, all of them documented by survivors, and none of them the same.
The handheld shows a rip in the exterior of the wreck, not like any other caused by debris. Turtle puts a fisted hand in the center, then activates her knuckle lights. From my vantage, the hole looks large enough for two humans to go through side-by-side.
“Send a probe before you even think of going in there,” I say into her headset.
“Think it’s deep enough?” Turtle asks, her voice tinny as it comes through the speakers.
“Let’s try the door first,” Karl says. “I don’t want surprises if we can at all avoid them.”
Good man. His small form appears like a spider attached to the ship’s side. He returns to the exit hatch, still scanning it.
I look at the timer, running at the bottom of my main screen.
17:32
Not a lot of time to get in.
I know Karl’s headpiece has a digital readout at the base. He’s conscious of the time, too, and as cautious about that as he is about following procedure.
Turtle scuttles across the ship’s side to reach him, slips a hand under a metal awning, and grunts.
“How come I didn’t see that?” Karl asks.
“Looking in the wrong place,” she says. “This is real old. I’ll wager the metal’s so brittle we could punch through the thing.”
“We’re not here to destroy it.” There’s disapproval in Karl’s voice.
“I know.”
19:01. I’ll come on the line and demand they return if they go much over twenty minutes.
Turtle grabs something that I can’t see, braces her feet on the side of the ship, and tugs. I wince. If she loses her grip, she propels, spinning, far and fast into space.
“Crap,” she says. “Stuck.”
“I could’ve told you that. These things are designed to remain closed.”
“We have to go in the hole.”
“Not without a probe,” Karl says.
“We’re running out of time.”
21:22
They are out of time.
I’m about to come on and remind them, when Karl says, “We have a choice. We either try to blast this door open or we probe that hole.”
Turtle doesn’t answer him. She tugs. Her frame looks small on my main screen, all bunched up as she uses her muscles to pry open something that may have been closed for centuries.
On the handheld screen, enlarged versions of her hands disappear under that awning, but the exquisite detail of her suit shows the ripple of her flesh as she struggles.
“Let go, Turtle,” Karl says.
“I don’t want to damage it,” Turtle says. “God knows what’s just inside there.”
“Let go.”
She does. The hands reappear, one still braced on the ship’s side.
“We’re probing,” he says. “Then we’re leaving.”
“Who put you in charge?” she grumbles, but she follows him to that hidden side of the ship. I see only their limbs as they move along the exterior—the human limbs against the pits and the dents and the small holes punched by space debris. Shards of protruding metal near rounded gashes beside pristine swatches that still shine in the thin light from Turtle’s headgear.
I want to be with them, clinging to the wreck, looking at each mark, trying to figure out when it came, how it happened, what it means.
But all I can do is watch.
The probe makes it through sixteen meters of stuff before it doesn’t move any farther. Karl tries to tug it out, but the probe is stuck, just like my team would’ve been if they’d gone in without it.
They return, forty-two minutes into the mission, feeling defeated.
I’m elated. They’ve gotten farther than I ever expected.