Read Online The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online

wondering why Junior isn’t answering him, hoping that the only reason is he’s in a section where the communications relay isn’t reaching the skip.
    Because I can think of a thousand other reasons, none of them good, that Junior’s communication equipment isn’t working.
    “We’re five minutes past departure,” Jypé says, and in that, I’m hearing the beginning of panic.
    More silence.
    I’m actually holding my breath. I look out a portal, see nothing except the wreck, looking like it always does. The handheld has been showing the same grainy image for a while now.
    37:24
    If they’re not careful, they’ll run out of air. Or worse.
    I try to remember how much extra they took. I didn’t really watch them suit up this time. I’ve seen their ritual so many times that I’m not sure what I think I saw is what I actually saw. I’m not sure what they have with them, and what they don’t.
    “Great,” Jypé says, and I finally recognize his tone. It’s controlled parental panic. Sound calm so that the kid doesn’t know the situation is bad. “Keep going.”
    I’m holding my breath, even though I don’t have to. I’m holding my breath and looking back and forth between the portal and the handheld image. All I see is the damn wreck and that same grainy image.
    “We got it,” Jypé says. “Now careful. Careful—son of a bitch! Move, move, move—ah, hell.”
    I stare at the wreck, even though I can’t see inside it. My own breath sounds as ragged as it did inside the wreck. I glance at the digital:
    44:11
    They’ll never get out in time. They’ll never make it, and I can’t go in for them. I’m not even sure where they are.
    “C’mon.” Jypé is whispering now. “C’mon son, just one more, c’mon, help me, c’mon.”
    The “help me” wasn’t a request to a hearing person. It was a comment. And I suddenly know.
    Junior’s trapped. He’s unconscious. His suit might even be ripped. It’s over for Junior.
    Jypé has to know it on some deep level.
    Only he also has to know it on the surface, in order to get out.
    I reach for my own communicator before I realize there’s no talking to them inside the wreck. We’d already established that the skip doesn’t have the power to send, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. We’ve tried boosting power through the skip’s diagnostic, and even with the Business’s diagnostic, and we don’t get anything.
    I judged we didn’t need it, because what can someone inside the skip do besides encourage?
    “C’mon, son.” Jypé grunts. I don’t like that sound.
    The silence that follows lasts thirty seconds, but it seems like forever. I move away from the portal, stare at the digital, and watch the numbers change. They seem to change in slow-motion:
    45:24 to
    …25 to
    …2…6…
    to
    …2… … … 7…
    until I can’t even see them change any more.
    Another grunt, and then a sob, half-muffled, and another, followed by—
    “Is there any way to send for help? Boss?”
    I snap to when I hear my name. It’s Jypé and I can’t answer him.
    I can’t answer him, dammit.
    I can call for help, and I do. Squishy tells me that the best thing I can do is get the survivor—her word, not mine, even though I know it’s obvious too—back to the Business as quickly as possible.
    “No sense passing midway, is there?” she asks, and I suppose she’s right.
    But I’m cursing her—after I get off the line—for not being here, for failing us, even though there’s not much she can do, even if she’s here, in the skip. We don’t have a lot of equipment, medical equipment, back at the Business , and we have even less here, not that it mattered, because most of the things that happen are survivable if you make it back to the skip.
    Still, I suit up. I promise myself I’m not going to the wreck, I’m not going help with Junior, but I can get Jypé along the guideline if he needs me too.
    “Boss. Call for help. We need Squishy and some divers and oh,