Free The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

ahead of them for a while, but not long enough. And when we get caught, we get nailed for the full count, whatever it is, because we acted guilty and ran.”
    “So, maybe she won’t say anything,” Karl says, but he doesn’t sound hopeful.
    “If she was gonna do that, she woulda left Jypé,” I say.
    Turtle closes her eyes, rests her head on the seat back. “I don’t know her anymore.”
    “I think maybe we never did,” I say.
    “I didn’t think she got scared,” Turtle says. “I yelled at her—I told her to get over it, that diving’s the thing. And she said it’s not the thing. Surviving’s the thing. She never used to be like that.”
    I think of the woman sitting on her bunk, staring at her opaque wall—a wall you think you can see through, but you really can’t—and wonder. Maybe she always used to be like that. Maybe surviving was always her thing. Maybe diving was how she proved she was alive, until the past caught up with her all over again.
    The stealth tech.
    She thinks it killed Junior.
    I nod toward the screen. “Let’s see it,” I say to Karl.
    He gives me a tight glance, almost—but not quite—expressionless. He’s trying to rein himself in, but his fears are getting the best of him.
    I’m amazed mine haven’t got the best of me.
    He starts it up. The voices of men so recently dead, just passing information—”Push off here.” “Watch the edge there.”—makes Turtle open her eyes.
    I lean against the wall, arms crossed. The conversation is familiar to me. I heard it just a few hours ago, and I’d been too preoccupied to give it much attention, thinking of my own problems, thinking of the future of this mission, which I thought was going to go on for months.
    Amazing how much your perspective changes in the space of a few minutes.
    The corridors look the same. It takes a lot so that I don’t zone—I’ve been in that wreck, I’ve watched similar vids, and in those I haven’t learned much. But I resist the urge to tell Karl to speed it up—there can be something, some wrong movement, piece of the wreck that gloms onto one of my guys—my former guys—before they even get to the heart.
    But I don’t see anything like that, and since Turtle and Karl are quiet, I assume they don’t see anything like that either.
    Then J&J find the holy grail. They say something, real casual—which I’d missed the first time—a simple “shit, man” in a tone of such awe that if I’d been paying attention, I would’ve known.
    I bite back the emotion. If I took responsibility for each lost life, I’d never dive again. Of course, I might not after this anyway—one of the many options the authorities have is to take my pilot’s license away.
    The vids don’t show the cockpit ahead. They show the same old grainy walls, the same old dark and shadowed corridor. It’s not until Jypé turns his suit vid toward the front that the pit’s even visible, and then it’s a black mass filled with lighter squares, covering the screen.
    “What the hell’s that?” Karl asks. I’m not even sure he knows he’s spoken.
    Turtle leans forward and shakes her head. “Never seen anything like it.”
    Me either. As Jypé gets closer, the images become clearer. It looks like every piece of furniture in the place has become dislodged, and has shifted to one part of the cockpit.
    Were the designers so confident of their artificial gravity that they didn’t bolt down the permanent pieces? Could any ship’s designers be that stupid?
    Jypé’s vid doesn’t show me the floor, so I can’t see if these pieces have been ripped free. If they have, then that place is a minefield for a diver, more sharp edges than smooth ones.
    My arms tighten in their cross, my fingers forming fists. I feel a tension I don’t want—as if I can save both men by speaking out now.
    “You got this before Squishy took off, right?” I ask Turtle.
    She understands what I’m asking. She gives me a disapproving sideways look.