Becoming One with the Ghosts: A Diving Universe Novella

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Fleet. In Boss’ time, a thing of legend. Long before Boss and her crew found their first Dignity Vessel, long before the Room of Lost Souls claimed its first life, the Fleet used its advanced technology to explore the galaxy. But even in its heyday that technology sometimes malfunctioned. And occasionally, that malfunction exacted an unfathomable price.
Winner of the 2010 Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award and coming in third place in the prestigious international UPC Contest, Becoming One with the Ghosts tells the story of Captain Jonathon “Coop” Cooper and the crew of the Ivoire—a story that began in Becalmed—and their ill-fated journey out of foldspace.
The Becoming One with the Ghosts novella also appears in a slightly different form in its entirety in the novel City of Ruins.

"Becoming One With the Ghosts" is a science fiction mystery with a creepy around the edges feel.
—Tangent Online

This entry into the ‘Diving’ canon is a doozy ... a suspenseful story of a large spaceship returning to base, and finding that the base is quite different to normal.
—Best SF

International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and six Asimov’s Readers Choice Awards. For more information about her work, please go to kristinekathrynrusch.com. For more information about the Diving universe, to which this story belongs, go to divingintothewreck.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Apr 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301617869

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Becoming One With The Ghosts

A Diving Universe Novella

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Copyright Information

Becoming One With The Ghosts

Copyright © 2013 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Asimov’s SF Magazine, October/November 2010.

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2013 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Philcold/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Becoming One With The Ghosts

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

They landed smoothly, which surprised the hell out of Coop. The Ivoire had suffered more damage than he ever could have imagined, and yet the venerable old craft had gotten them here—all five hundred of them, mostly in one piece.

For a brief moment, he bowed his head. He took a deep breath and let a shudder run through him—the only emotion he’d allowed himself in more than a week.

Then he raised his head and looked.

The walls had full screens, top to bottom, just like he’d ordered. It didn’t matter much when the Ivoire transitioned, but now that the ship had arrived at Sector Base V, the walls told him a lot.

A lot that he didn’t understand.

The Ivoire had landed inside the base, just like usual. The ship stood on the repair deck, just like it was supposed to.

The base was cavernous. It had to be. Like the other ships of her class, the Ivoire was large. She comfortably housed five hundred people, providing family quarters, school, and recreation in addition to being a working battleship. Two ships the size of the Ivoire could fit into this base, with another partially assembled along the way.

Not to mention the equipment, the specialized bays, the private working areas.

The Sector Base was huge and impossible to process all at once.

But what Coop could process looked wrong.

For one thing, no one manned the equipment. Much of it looked like it wasn’t even turned on. The lights were dim or off completely. The workstations—the ones he could see in the half-light—looked like they’d suffered minor damage.

But he didn’t know how they could have. Like all the Sector Bases, Sector Base V was over a mile underground in a heavily fortified area. No one could get in or out without the proper equipment.

To his knowledge, no Sector Base had ever been attacked, not even in areas under siege. Granted, his knowledge wasn’t as vast as the history of the Fleet, but he knew how difficult it was to damage a Sector Base.

Although it looked like someone had harmed this one. Because it had been fine a month ago.

Before the battles with the Quurzod, he’d brought the Ivoire in for its final systems check and repair. He had known that he wouldn’t get another full-scale repair for a year, maybe more. Particularly if the Fleet conquered the Quurzod and moved on, like planned. Then the Ivoire, and the other ships in the Fleet wouldn’t get the full-scale treatment for five years. It would take that long to build Sector Base W, at the edges of the new sector of space.

He hadn’t planned on ever returning here.

He certainly hadn’t planned on returning here in defeat.

Or what felt like defeat.

And now the base looked wrong.

You sure we’re seeing Sector Base V? he asked his First Officer Dix Pompiano. Dix was tall and thin, almost too tall for a bridge command. Yet he could bend himself as if he were made of string, and fit into the smallest of places.

Like his command post. Dix insisted on the station farthest from Coop, in case the bridge got hit. Dix figured that if as much distance as possible separated them, one of them would survive.

Coop had always figured if the bridge got hit, the entire vessel would disappear. The anacapa drive—small as it was—was located on the bridge itself. If the drive took a direct hit, then the drive’s protections would fail. Half the ship would be in this dimension, half in another—if they were lucky. If they weren’t, the entire thing might explode.

Maybe it was the half-and-half dimensions that made Dix want to stay separate from Coop. They’d never discussed it, and they weren’t about to now.

It sure as hell doesn’t look like Sector Base V, Dix said. But the readings say it is.

It looked like Sector Base V to Coop. He recognized some of the specialized equipment, built with parts of the indigenous rock.

We’re in the right point in space, said Anita Tren. She stood at her post, even though her built-in chair brushed against her backside. She was small, so small that she had to boost herself into that chair. On good days, she would kid that she needed to stand so that she could be closer to her board.

Have you confirmed that we’re under Venice City? Coop asked.

Venice City, the latest settlement. Latest was technically accurate, but the location, on the most remote planet in this sector, had been settled fifty years before Coop was born. At his first visit here, on his tenth birthday, he had thought the city old.

His father had laughed at that, telling Coop there were places in this sector that had been colonized for thousands of years. Human habitation, his father said, although no one knew where those humans had originated.

The Fleet, everyone knew, originally came from Earth, but so long ago that no one alive had seen the home planet or even the home solar system. Earth was as much a myth as the Fleet itself, something rare and special and lost to time.

As a young man, Coop had toyed with the idea of going back there. He thought of building a ship, begging, borrowing (hell, stealing) an anacapa drive, and plotting the trip back.

But ultimately, he feared disappointment. He’d seen too many legendary parts of space already and they rarely lived up to the billing they’d gotten.

He liked the Earth of his imagination. He didn’t want to see anyone or anything spoil it.

Like they had spoiled Venice City. When he’d heard that the settlement was named for an old Earth city that had disappeared into the ocean—an