City of Ruins - By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page 0,48
she says, but doesn’t sound like she agrees.
“All right,” I say, as if she is enthusiastic. “You will step where I step. You will touch what I touch. We’re going to assume those rock piles are unstable. We’re not going to disturb them. We’re not going to step on them unless we can’t get by any other way. We’re not going to touch the debris on the floor. Is that clear?”
“You think the stuff on the floor could harm us?” Kersting asks.
“If we step on it wrong, yes, I do,” I say. “I don’t want broken legs or twisted ankles. I don’t want any of us to bring rock piles down on us. We’re going to proceed slowly. No crowding, no pushing, no panicking. If you feel yourself panicking, you will take a deep breath, silently count to ten, and release it. You will do that five times before you speak again. Is that clear?”
“And what if one of us sees something wrong?” Rea asks.
At least he’s not asking out of fear. He’s asking because he knows that despite our best intentions, someone might dislodge something and we’d lose half the group to a rock fall.
“Speak up immediately and calmly,” I say. “Calmly is as important as quickly. Got that?”
They nod.
“Okay. If you see a problem beginning or if you’re having trouble, say ‘Boss, stop please.’ I will stop immediately.”
I pause until they nod again.
“All right then,” I say, realizing I’m repeating that phrase “all right” as if I’m trying to reassure myself.
Maybe I am. I want to shut off the gravity. I want to float around the debris. I want to travel closer to the ceiling of the corridor because the debris piles are bigger at ground level. If we were able to travel along the ceiling, we’d be able to get out a lot quicker—and with almost no trouble at all, at least as far as I can see down this corridor.
“Orlando,” I say to Rea, “you and I will have our suit lights on. The rest of you will not. Orlando, you’ll train yours upward. Mine will focus downward for obvious reasons. If any of you lose sight of me or need to slow down, ask me to stop. We stay in communication at all times.”
On a beginner’s dive that has gone wrong, this is where I’d extend a tether. We’d clip to it and travel slowly, one hand over the other, until we reach our destination.
But a tether won’t work here. In fact, a tether would be counterproductive.
So much of my training is counterproductive.
I take a deep breath.
“Ready?” I say, more to myself than to them. “Here we go.”
* * * *
TWENTY-FOUR
C
oop sat in the conference room with Lynda Rooney. Lynda was a big-^^ boned woman, raised planetside like Yash, but with more experience on a bridge than Coop had. A screw-up early in Lynda’s career had derailed her climb upward for nearly ten years, but she was back on track, and now, more than ever, he was glad she was on the Ivoire, glad she was going to take command.
Much as he respected Dix, much as Dix deserved first officer status, when it came to running the bridge in his absence, Coop secretly preferred Lynda.
She sat across from him. The huge table, designed to handle twenty or more, seemed even larger than usual. He opened the wall screens here, too, so that he could monitor the exterior.
So far, the outsiders had not returned. That relieved him somewhat. He knew now that they didn’t have extra teams, at least not extra teams on the ready. He suspected—he hoped—he would have time to work whenever the outsiders were not around.
He had briefed Lynda on everything that had happened since the Ivoire landed. Dix was briefing her bridge crew. Normally Coop would have briefed everyone together, but he needed to talk to someone who was fresh, someone rested, someone who was thinking clearly.
“I’m sending my team to get eight hours of sleep,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be effective if we stay on the bridge much longer, at least in this situation.”
In a fight, in something harrowing, with the adrenaline flowing, he had no trouble keeping the bridge crew on for thirty-six hours straight as he staggered the sleep schedules. But he felt that inappropriate here.
Lynda did not say anything, but he hadn’t asked her to. Not yet. She watched him, her face impassive, as she waited to find out what he really needed.