The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (50 page)

“Professor,” she said, “eyewitnesses throughout the known history of the Dignity Vessels reported weapons fire hitting the area where the vessels had been seconds—sometimes nanoseconds—after the Vessel engaged its stealth drive. No ship can maneuver out of the way that quickly. Couldn’t the stealth technology have worked in a different way?”

“You’re assuming that their technology is similar to ours,” he said. “They could maneuver faster than any other ship.”

“Then why, when they were in trouble in battle, didn’t they just maneuver out of the way without cloaking? If they could travel much faster than all of the other ships, wasting energy on a cloak makes no sense.”

He gave her a patronizing smile. “I assure you the ships couldn’t have operated any other way.”

“But you’re assuming the stealth tech is a cloak,” she said.

“What else could it be?” he asked, pretending at patience, but clearly annoyed that she had questioned his intellectual prowess.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But—”

“Of course you don’t know,” he said. “None of us know. Stealth technology is lost.”

“But you said our ships used it in the early days of the Empire.”

His pretense at patience left. “Look at the histories, young lady, then talk to me. We didn’t use the stealth technology. It malfunctioned and nearly destroyed our fleet. The Dignity Vessels were much stronger ships than ours, built by better engineers, run by gifted scientists. They could adjust for the various stresses of the cloak. We could not.”

Then he turned away from her and moved to a different part of the lecture. And he never ever called on her in class again.

But it didn’t matter, because she knew he was wrong. He didn’t understand several things about space-faring vessels. Not deep down. He had no idea how terrifying it got when a ship’s energy reserves faded or the power system collapsed. He didn’t seem to understand that the kind of maneuverability he described was impossible outside of FTL drives. The Empire had FTL drives, had had them for centuries, and never used them for maneuvers that Professor Dane described.

Once engaged, all FTL drives forced ships to travel great distances in a matter of minutes. Returning to the same spot in a battlefield was ridiculous, but even if it was militarily recommended, it would be difficult after engaging an FTL drive—particularly in the minute or two mentioned in account after account after account from people in different time periods, from different sectors, people who had never spoken to each other, and indeed, couldn’t have spoken to each other because their cultures wouldn’t connect in a meaningful way for another two thousand years.

“It sounds like he has a different definition of magic than you do,” said Edward Quintana. Quintana—Quint to his friends—had decided mid-semester that Rosealma interested him. He sat next to her in class, walked her across the quad, and had been angling to spend more time with her.

He was good-looking for someone planet-bound, with a heavy bone structure and muscle mass. He was both broader and taller than she was used to, and it took a while for her to become accustomed to his strong features. Planetside, he was considered handsome, his blue-black hair skimming his strong jawline, accenting rather than hiding his thick neck.

On the
Bounty
, he would be considered too big to be beautiful, clumsy and lumbering, without the grace of those who spent at least half of their time in zero-G.

“Definition of magic?” she asked, trying not to sound too defensive, although she felt that way.

They had just left the Lost Technologies building, which was smack in the middle of campus. Hector Prime’s sun, considered weak by some standards, was in the center of the sky, and a pale yellow light coated everything. Students sat outside, shoes and coats off, sitting on blankets or the specially made grass the university had planted to avoid Hector Prime’s environmental regulations. The grass was blue, rather than green, which irritated more traditional students, but Rosealma liked it, particularly on days like this when the weak sun made the grass sparkle.

“Yeah,” Quint said, taking her arm and leading her around a pile of shirts and pants. Half a dozen students were jumping naked in a nearby fountain, squealing as the cold water hit their skin.

Rosealma didn’t think it that warm, but she was used to the constant temperature on board the
Bounty
. Any change in temperature took her days to adjust to.

“Join me for a beer and I’ll explain,” he said.

She smiled. He’d been asking her out for weeks—beers, lunches, dinners—and she’d been saying no.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, and followed him to the student union.

It was a clear building designed to reflect the sun’s rays, making the building look like it glowed from within. The interior was surprisingly dim, which made it less comfortable for Rosealma than she would have liked.

Quint led her to the beer bar and before she could stop him, he bought her something dark and rich and smelling faintly of cherries. Then he led her through a tunnel she hadn’t known existed into an open space inside the building. It felt like she was stepping inside a ray of sunshine, and it took her breath away.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“One of the Academy’s many secrets,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. She sat, then took her sweet-smelling beer. The scent told her it had been brewed on campus—the food services majors always experimented with new forms of old products. She took a tentative sip. The beer didn’t taste as bad as she thought it would. In fact, it had a tang that she liked.

Quint smiled at her, then raised his eyebrows just a little. “And that,” he said, “is another of the Academy’s many secrets.”

She laughed, then eased back in her chair. She didn’t relax enough here. It was hard for her. On the
Bounty
, she used to go to the zero-G playground and float for relaxation. Here, the zero-G areas were either research intensive or by appointment only.

“So, magic,” she said. “You’re saying I believe in magic.”

“Both of you do,” he said. “And you and Professor Dane are arguing about whose belief is right.”

She frowned. She did not believe in magic. She believed there were things in the universe she did not understand, things that functioned in ways she couldn’t explain, but that didn’t mean those things were magic.

Still, she didn’t want to argue with Quint. Not yet, anyway.

“Enlighten me,” she said.

“Professor Dane believes that ships can move quicker in a microburst than they should be able to,” Quint said. “He thinks that the Dignity Vessels have a drive different than, maybe even faster than, an FTL, and combined with the cloak, that makes them magical. When you asked your question, you threatened to destroy his magical theory and it unnerved him.”

“I thought I just nipped at his pride by questioning his expertise,” she said.

“That too,” Quint said, cradling his mug. “But you also believe in magic.”

She resisted the urge to cross her arms. “Really?”

Quint nodded. “You believe that a ship could remain in place, become invisible to the naked eye, and not be affected by weaponry. That’s magic.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Then how could those ships become invisible and not deflect a direct shot without the eyewitnesses all over the known universe being wrong?”

“I can think of two ways off the top of my head,” she said. “In the first, the ship absorbs the shot and takes the energy from it, creating the illusion of the shot going through.”

“Like it created the illusion of disappearing?” he asked.

“Something like that,” she said. “Or it could go slightly out of phase.”

“Out of phase?” he asked.

“Move just a hair into another dimension.”

He laughed. “As if that’s possible.”

“It’s more likely than a ship maneuvering the way that the professor describes,” she said. “It’s one of the theories of time travel, that people can move out of time for just a moment, and then come back. There’ve been experiments in a controlled environment that show such a thing is possible.”

“And there’ve been experiments that postulate a drive faster than FTL,” he said. “It’s all theory, which goes back to belief, which goes to magic.”

“You are stubborn,” she said.

“And so are you,” he said. “Why do you want to prove the professor wrong?”

“Besides the fact that he’s a pompous ass?” she asked.

Quint’s grin grew. “Besides that, yes.”

“Because my maneuver—my magic, if you will—is simpler,” she said.

Quint set his beer down. His smile remained, but changed just a little, as if what she said made him think.

“Simpler?” he asked.

She nodded, then leaned forward. “We’re talking about a fleet of vessels so advanced that they’ve survived away from their home base for centuries. These vessels rebuild on the run, they move from place to place, they’re like a living city that’s constantly changing. I’ve lived like that, although not to the same extreme.”

Quint leaned forward too. He was closer to her than she expected, which made her breath catch for just a moment. She could feel something between them, something electric.

Something unseen, unmeasured, and untested. Yet she knew it was there—and more than that: she knew that he knew. Without asking. Without confirming. Without precision and rigor, she had certainty.

“To live like that,” she said, surprised that her voice didn’t betray her sudden emotion, “you have to be efficient. No movement can be wasted. Every command does double-duty. The ship has to perform at the top of its ability with every single thing it does. And Professor Dane’s theory isn’t efficient. It might be logical, but in practice, it would use more resources than it would save.”

“Even if it saved the ship,” Quint said.

“Especially if it saved the ship,” she said. “That ship is part of the fleet and the fleet is an entity in and of itself. Lose too many ships and there is no fleet. So you must develop some kind of system to save individual ships that is efficient, quick, and easy to execute. Professor Dane’s system is none of those things.”

“And yours is?” Quint asked.

She shrugged and leaned back, grabbing her mug of beer like a shield. “He’s had decades to think about this. I’ve been working on my theory for two whole days.”

Quint stared at her for a long moment, as if he were sizing her up. Then he said, “You do know that there’s an entire scientific wing here devoted to recovering lost technologies.”

“For science majors,” she said.

“Why aren’t you one?” he asked. “You seem to have the interest. You could see if your out-of-phase thing is even possible.”

“When I’m a post-doc,” she said.

“What is it Professor Dane says?” Quint asked. “Romans weren’t built in a day.”

“Rome,” Rosealma said. “He said Rome.”

But she wasn’t thinking about the ancient saying that Professor Dane had taught them. She was thinking about efficiency and cloaks and cargo ships.

She could study something here that would actually have a use on the
Bounty
. If she could discover how to replicate stealth technology, cargo ships could travel through difficult and dangerous parts of the sector, and deliver goods on the far side of the known universe. It would increase profits and safety all at the same time.

“You hadn’t thought of studying science, huh?” Quint asked.

She smiled at him for the very first time—a real smile, not a polite one to get him to leave her alone. “You want me to study magic.”

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “Because I believe you’re actually onto something, and I’d hate to work on your theory all alone.”

NOW

SQUISHY HAD FORGOTTEN that Quint had been there from the beginning. She had forgotten until just now.

Then perhaps it was fitting that he was here on
The Dane
, the ship she named for that incorrect professor to remind herself how often she had been incorrect, despite her arrogance.

Or maybe—like Professor Dane—because of it.

She cleared her throat, set her surgical instruments down, then let her hands hover over them as if she were going to use them as weapons. She didn’t glance at
The Dane
’s control panels, and she didn’t look at exactly where they were going. She didn’t want to know to think about that, at least not yet.

Nor did she want to think about all of the implications of this conversation. But she had to think about it.

She couldn’t put off thinking about it any longer.

“How do you know that there are some things I don’t want to live through?” she asked Quint.

He finally touched his face, his fingers briefly brushing against the cuts. Then he stopped as if he realized he was violating an instruction. Which he was. She had asked him not to touch the wounds, even though she had known that would be hard for him.