"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Diving Into The Wreck" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

little discovery would disappear as if it hadn't existed at all.

Which was why I did the second and third scans myself, all on the way to other missions, all without a
word to a soul. Granted, I was taking a chance that someone would notice my drops out of FTL and
wonder what I was doing, but I doubted even I was being watched that closely.

When I put this team together, I told them only I had a mystery vessel, one that would tax their
knowledge, their beliefs, and their wreck-recovery skills.

Not a soul knows it's a Dignity Vessel. I don't want to prejudice them, don't want to force them along
one line of thinking.

Don't want to be wrong.

The whats, hows and whys I'll worry about later. The ship's here.

That's the only fact I need.
****
After I was sure I had lost every chance of being tracked, I let the Business slide into a position out of
normal scanner and visual range. I matched the speed of the wreck. If my ship's energy signals were
caught on someone else's scans, they automatically wouldn't pick up the faint energy signal of the wreck.
I had a half dozen cover stories ready, depending on who might spot us. I hoped no one did.

But taking this precaution meant we needed transport to and from the wreck. That was the only
drawback of this kind of secrecy.

First mission out, I'm ferry captain—a role I hate, but one I have to play. We're using the skip instead of
the Business. The skip is designed for short trips, no more than four bodies on board at one time.

This trip, there's only three of us—me, Turtle, and Karl. Usually we team-dive wrecks, but this deep
and so early, I need two different kinds of players. Turtle can dive anything, and Karl can kill anything. I
can fly anything.

We're set.

I'm flying the skip with the portals unshielded. It looks like we're inside a piece of black glass moving
through open space. Turtle paces most of the way, walking back to front to back again, peering through
the portals, hoping to be the first to see the wreck.

Karl monitors the instruments as if he's flying the thing instead of me. If I hadn't worked with him before,
I'd be freaked. I'm not; I know he's watching for unusuals, whatever comes our way.

The wreck looms ahead of us—a megaship, from the days when size equaled power. Still, it seems
small in the vastness, barely a blip on the front of my sensors.

Turtle bounces in. She's fighting the grav that I left on for me—that landlocked thing again—and she's
so nervous, someone who doesn't know her would think she's on something. She's too thin, like most
divers, but muscular. Strong. I like that. Almost as much as I like her brain.

"What the hell is it?― she asks. “Old Empire?"