Hannes Suessi lay prone on the heavy work sled next to Thomas Orley. The gaunt, balding artificer gestured at the wreck before them.

“It’s a Thennanin ship,” the chief engineer said. “It’s pretty badly crumpled, but there’s no doubt. See? No objectivity anchors, only stasis projectors on the main flanges. The Thennanin are terrified of reality alteration. This ship was never designed to use a probability drive. Definitely Thennanin, or a Thennanin client or ally.”

The dolphins circled slowly nearby, taking turns at the airdomes underneath the sled, emitting excited sonar clicks as they eyed the gigantic crushed arrowhead below them.

“I think you’re right, Hannes,” Tom said. “It’s a behemoth.”

That the ship was still in one piece was amazing. In its Mach five meeting with the ocean, it had caromed off at least two sub-surface islands—leaving substantial dents in them—and plowed a deep gouge in the ocean floor before finally catching up against a furrow of pelagic mud, just before it would have smashed into a sheer scarp. The cliff face looked crumbly and precarious. Another substantial jolt would surely cause a collapse, burying the wreck completely.

Orley knew, it was the quality of the Thennanin stasis shields that made such a performance possible. Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle they were slow, unmaneuverable—and as hard to disable permanently as a cockroach.

It was difficult to assess the damage. Down here the illumination from the surface was blue-tinged and dim. The fen wouldn’t turn on the arc lights they had strung up until Tsh’t said it was safe. Fortunately, the wreck was in water shallow enough to visit, yet deep enough to shield them from spy eyes overhead.

A pink-bellied bottlenose dolphin swam up next to the sled. She worked her foodmouth in a thoughtful circular motion.

“It’s really amazing, isn’t it, Tom?” she asked. “It should be in a jillion piecesss.”

This deep, there was an odd clarity to the fin’s voice. Bursts of air from her blowmouth and sonar clicks joined in a complex manner to make speech an intricate juggling of bodily functions. To a landlubber human, a neo-dolphin speaking underwater sounded more like an avant-garde orchestra tuning up, then someone speaking a derivative of the English language.

“Do you think we can make any use of it-t?” The dolphin officer asked.