Boneyards (15 page)

S
quishy had to program a whole new route into her control panel, one she had never taken before. Her hands were shaking. She had already activated her FTL, leaving Quint's pod far behind.

But she realized that when he was alone in the
Dane
, he probably accessed the computer logs. He couldn't get into all of them; most were coded to her DNA as well as to the poem she had learned in proper Ancient, thanks to the
Ivoire
crew.

However, the most recent flight records were easy to access because so many starbases and space stations wanted to download them before allowing a ship to dock. Squishy had always felt it better to make the information easy to access so she didn't have to go through a lot of regulations once she got into a policed part of space.

She made herself sit in the control chair and breathe deeply. The entire ship felt odd without him. He had a bigger presence than she remembered, and even though he had only been in two rooms—the cockpit and the main cabin—it felt like he had touched every part of the ship.

She had put all of the used medical equipment into her biohazard bin, but she hadn't yet jettisoned the waste. She didn't want to leave a trail, and she still wasn't sure what had embedded itself in his skin. Part of her—the stealth scientist more than the medic—wanted to know. She wouldn't be able to conduct any real experiments here—she lacked both the equipment and a safe lab on the
Dane
—but she wanted to do so the moment she returned to Lost Souls.

If she returned to Lost Souls.

And that “if” was a much bigger “if” than it had been before.

She leaned over the cockpit and stared at the star chart before her. She had several problems. The first was that the research station had been deep in Enterran territory, far from most settled planets. The Empire had learned that much from her mistakes. The research station had been an island unto itself.

In some ways that had played in her favor. No nearby population had seen the station explode. In other ways, it caused her problems.

Getting out of the Empire wasn't an easy task, especially now that Quint had alerted them to her presence.

If he had been efficient—and knowing him, he had—he had let the imperial authorities know that she would be returning to the Nine Planets. There were a thousand routes out of the Empire, a million ways to get to the Nine Planets, which should have made her task easy.

But it didn't.

Each culture within the Empire had its own police force, and most of those forces had some sort of space patrol. Add to that planetary and regional patrols, as well as subdivisions of the Enterran military, and suddenly each route she could travel had a dozen ways she could get caught.

She needed to dump the
Dane.
But if she did that, then they would know what ship she had replaced it with. If she wanted to get rid of the
Dane
, she had to go farther into Enterran territory rather than trying to get out of it.

The authorities would expect her to dump her ship on the way to the Nine Planets, but they wouldn't be looking for her to do it deeper inside the Enterran Empire.

But she wasn't sure she wanted to do that.

Part of her wished she had upgraded the ship with an
anacapa
drive. Then she wouldn't have to worry about getting caught at all. But she had deliberately not brought an
anacapa
drive into the Empire. She didn't want them to get their hands on that technology.

She stood up and rubbed a hand over her face. Then she paced the small cockpit, wandered back into the main cabin, saw the mussed-up bed without its usual coverings, and frowned. A red light glowed above the empty escape pod hatch, informing her that the pod was gone.

She grabbed the door and pulled it closed.

She was done with the main cabin for the duration of this trip. She would sleep—if she could sleep—in the other cabin.

That was probably part of her problem. She hadn't eaten since that morning, long before the evacuation of the station.

She would figure out her new route and then she would cook herself something.

The new route didn't have to be permanent. It only had to do two things: it had to steer away from the rendezvous point, and it had to get her as far from Quint's pod as possible.

She could change direction later. Right now, she had to get far away, whatever that meant.

And while she cooked, she could figure out if she wanted to replace the
Dane
or if she wanted to see if her luck would hold.

She made herself look at the star chart again, and then she charted a new course. It wasn't quite on the trajectory she had used a few moments ago, but it wasn't far off.

Her problem was that she didn't have a backup plan. She had gotten herself and her team into the Empire. She had figured out a way to destroy so much of the stealth-tech research that she would set the Empire back years in its research (and maybe put it on a new path). She had figured out a way to get her team out of the Empire, and she had thought she would join them.

But Quint had spoiled that, and she should have seen it.

Not Quint exactly, but her own failure to make a clean getaway.

After all, her task had been the risky one. She had taken it on for that very reason. She hadn't wanted anyone else exploding the station. Not because she didn't trust them (even though she didn't), but because she knew that job was the visible one, the tough one, the one that would take complete focus.

She should have planned on getting caught.

And she hadn't.

She hadn't planned on it at all.

ONE YEAR EARLIER

S
quishy found Boss next to her latest project, a reconstructed Dignity Vessel that Boss had deliberately kept nameless. Boss was preoccupied, her hair cut short, new lines near her eyes. But she didn't seem tired, even though she was working impossible hours. Lately, Boss seemed energized, as if the Dignity Vessel projects had revitalized a part of her.

The Dignity Vessel itself dwarfed everything else in the bay. The ship was huge. Squishy always forgot how big the Vessels were, even though she had now been inside several of them. The first Dignity Vessel, all those years ago, had been a derelict, floating in space, and even though it had taken a long time to dive it, the ship hadn't seemed as big as these. Space itself made everything seem small.

Since Squishy had come to work at Lost Souls, she had worked on five derelict ships. Then the
Ivoire
had arrived and some members of the crew had helped repair one of the five derelicts. This ship was another found ship, and it needed a lot of interior work, which Boss was supervising.

“We did it once before,” Squishy said as she walked beside Boss, staring up at the Dignity Vessel. The ship jutted above them, shading them from the lights at the top of the bay.

Boss stopped walking. Squishy had made her entire presentation while they examined the exterior of the Dignity Vessel. Squishy felt a bit uncomfortable, arguing that they should take a team into imperial space, with the mission of destroying stealth tech. She was half hoping that Boss would take in a Dignity Vessel on a trial run, maybe even go in with the
anacapa
engaged, use the high-powered weaponry, and destroy the base that Squishy had discovered.

But Boss was frowning. “Why do you care? The Empire kills people in a variety of ways. We can't stop that. We're working to keep the balance of power in the sector, to keep the Empire from moving out here. That's more than enough.”

Squishy swallowed. She had thought Boss would understand. But Squishy had forgotten how Boss could overlook disturbing things. Boss had done that on their first dives in a Dignity Vessel, ignoring Squishy's warning, and leading to the breach that had hurt their relationship for years.

“People are dying because of me,” Squishy said.

“Nonsense,” Boss said. “You haven't been part of stealth-tech research for decades, at least not in the Empire.”

“But I'm the one who took them down this path. I'm the one who started all of these experiments. Everyone who died since then died because of me.”

Boss shook her head.

“Don't be dismissive,” Squishy snapped. “In the past, you've dismissed me and that was a mistake.”

“One mistake,” Boss said. “A big one, I grant you. But just one. And I've apologized repeatedly. This is different.”

“How is this different?” Squishy asked.

“It's not personal, Squishy,” Boss said. “I know you think it is, but it's not. A lot of people can hold the blame for all those deaths, including the people who continue the experiments in light of the disasters they're causing. It's not about you.”

Squishy straightened. “You don't understand—”

“I do,” Boss said. “I've lost people because of mistakes I've made. I understand. But the worst thing we can do is go into the Empire.”

“You did it,” Squishy said. “You went to Vaycehn, and found the
Ivoire
.”

Boss nodded. “And it could have been a disaster. The Empire didn't catch us that time, but they might this time. We're fugitives.”

“Not all of us,” Squishy said. “I still get my military pension. It goes to my home in Vallevu.”

Boss didn't say a word, but she was clearly struggling to remain silent.

“I can go back in with a team,” Squishy said before Boss could say anything. “We can use the same explosives that I developed a few years ago. I did the research, Boss. The Empire has confined stealth tech to one gigantic base. We get rid of the base, we get rid of the tech.”

“They're not stupid enough to keep all of the research on that one base,” Boss said. “It's backed up somewhere.”

“And once we find where the backups are kept, we launch the mission. I could go back, revamp my credentials, and work in the lab until we're ready to launch the attack. They wouldn't suspect anything.”

Boss snorted. “You haven't worked in stealth tech in decades and then you return? How is that not suspicious?”

“I would blame the leaked studies.” Squishy straightened. “I'm on the record—several legal records—protesting the way the experiments were conducted. That was decades ago. I would have complete credibility if I went back and stated that I wanted to return to correct the mistakes and make sure no one died.”

“And they'd hire you?” Boss asked.

“They asked me to rejoin when I brought them that first Dignity Vessel.” Squishy had claimed the vessel she had taken from Boss on that fateful trip for the imperial government to get it out of Boss's hands.

“And you said no,” Boss said. “That was years ago. Things change.”

Squishy shook her head. “I'm still considered the godmother of stealth-tech research. I'm mentioned in a ton of studies. I'd like to fix that.”

“And what?” Boss asked. “Give the Empire the
anacapa
drive?”

“Make sure they can never catch us,” Squishy said. “Make sure that their research goes a different direction.”

“You can't control research,” Boss said. “You know that.”

“But you can alter it,” Squishy said.

“And what if you get caught?” Boss asked. “They'll get you to tell them about the
anacapa
drive.”

Squishy shook her head. “I'd die first.”

“Don't be melodramatic,” Boss said.

Squishy made a face. She wasn't being melodramatic. But apparently Boss wouldn't believe that.

Squishy needed a different argument, so she said, “I still don't have a great working knowledge of the
anacapa
drive. It's vast and complex, and I certainly couldn't build one from scratch. If the Empire catches me, the only thing they'd get from me is that the drive exists. They'd also learn how powerful it is. They'd learn that they're making a terrible mistake when they try to treat it as a cloak.”

“And then they come after us,” Boss said.

“They'll come after us eventually anyway,” Squishy said.

“No,” Boss said, and walked away.

Squishy scrambled to keep up. “People are dying, Boss.”

“All over the Empire, for all kinds of reasons,” Boss said. “Hell, people are dying in the Nine Planets for all kinds of reasons too. Some are too poor, some are too sick, some still live under repressive regimes. I'm not going in there to rescue those folks. Why should I rescue a bunch of scientists in the middle of the Empire? Scientists who specialize in weapons research, I might add.”

Squishy was shaking. Her initial answers—
they're important, they're
scientists
for fuck's sake, there might be someone like me
—wouldn't be good enough for Boss.

“You wouldn't go in,” Squishy said. “I would.”

Boss stopped walking and turned around. “So I should send in the only one of us who isn't connected to the
Ivoire
who has any chance of understanding how an
anacapa
drive works.”

“There are a lot of people here who understand it as well as I do,” Squishy said. “And they're not all connected to the
Ivoire
.”

“But they're not you,” Boss said softly. “So my answer stands. No.”

She started walking again. Squishy started to follow, then stopped. Boss had said no. She rarely revisited decisions, and only when faced with a great deal of evidence that her assumptions were wrong.

Her assumptions weren't wrong here. She was right: this wasn't a Lost Souls' mission.

This was a personal mission.

And it was one Squishy would complete. With or without the help of anyone else.