Boneyards (18 page)

S
quishy sat alone in the cockpit of the
Dane.
She had done this to herself.

Boss had warned her.

Squishy herself had warned her team, and, in warning them, had warned herself.

This was not unexpected. And yet, oddly, it was.

She took a deep breath. Quint had thrown her off. Quint and his news about Cloris. Quint and his cuts.

She wiped a hand over her face, and as she did, she realized she didn't regret what she had done. She had meant to destroy the Empire's stealth-tech research, and she had done so.

Or at least, she had done her part. She hoped her team had done theirs. She would never know now.

But she had to assume that they had completed the task. She had to operate on that.

Those who had survived—and, if things had gone according to plan, that should have been all of them (considering they should have left their bases and research stations before anyone knew what they had done)—would have gone to the rendezvous point.

According to her timeline, they should have realized she wasn't going to arrive, and they should have left by now.

But had she been in charge of them, she would have waited—a few hours, an afternoon, maybe an entire day—before following that order.

So if they had stayed for a day, they were still there. They were just considering leaving.

She needed to prevent their capture. Because she knew where they were going—they were going to the Nine Planets—but she didn't know how they would get there.

And if it was standard procedure for bases in the Empire to put tracers in the travel logs of all foreign ships passing through Empire space, then those ships could be traced. But only if someone knew they needed to be traced.

So she needed to buy even more time. She couldn't tell anyone in the Empire about that rendezvous point until the ships had a good chance of getting out of the Empire. A few days, maybe a week.

She needed to plan for a week.

She sighed. Her hands were shaking. She glanced around the cockpit, her gaze resting on those places where Quint had left tracers. She wasn't going to pull the rest, if there were any more. She wasn't going to take any more tracers out of her control panel either.

She would chart a new course, heading toward the Nine Planets, and she would be dodgy about it, as if she were trying to lose someone following her.

Instead, she wanted them to follow her. That way, she could keep them from her team.

That was the first part of the plan.

The second—she had to decide what she would do. Boss had been right: Squishy wasn't the type to sacrifice herself for an idea. She wouldn't die first. But she might die down the road.

Still, she would give up information—and that might not be bad.

The Empire had to know it was on the wrong track. She could feed them information about stealth research without mentioning the
anacapa
for months, and that would direct the research in a direction that didn't cause hundreds of deaths, but also wouldn't compromise the Lost Souls research.

She had to die before giving up the
anacapa.
Or she had to escape. Or figure out a way to manipulate the Empire away from that information.

She would have to give that part some thought.

She stood, and as she headed to the galley for her long-delayed meal, she froze. She hadn't considered one other piece of this mess:

Boss.

When Boss found out that Squishy had destroyed the research base and hadn't come to the rendezvous, Boss would try to find her. Boss might not do anything more than figure out what happened to Squishy's ship.

But Boss was unpredictable, and she had been putting
anacapa
drives in smaller ships.

She might come for Squishy, and that would play right into the Empire's hand.

Boss would deliver a working
anacapa
drive right to them.

Squishy had to stop that. But she had to do it in a way that wouldn't lead them directly to Boss.

So Squishy couldn't just send a message to Lost Souls.

She needed help. She needed someone she could trust.

She needed Turtle.

W
e arrive at the nearest starbase nearly a day later. This trip is turning out to be much longer than I expected—than any of our team expected. Nerves are frayed, partly because of the length of the trip, and partly because of the things we've discovered. Or haven't discovered, as the case may be.

I research the base before we get there, and learn it doesn't call itself a base at all. It calls itself a resort, and it acts like one: we have to pay fees just to reserve a berth for the ship. Then we have to pay fees to disembark. We must choose our level of service, and because we're going to be asking a lot of questions, I choose the top tier, spendy as it is.

The resort itself, so far as I can tell, is unaffiliated with any nearby planet or any particular group. From the documentation and the history of the place available in the public records, the resort has been around for about seventy years.

A partnership with a corporate name bought the place for its location about eighty years ago. The partnership, called the Azzelia Corporation, used an existing starbase as its foundation and redesigned everything, taking its time, making everything “perfect” or so its literature says. The resort is now called, quite simply, Azzelia. I have no idea what that word means, if it means anything.

I've gone to resort bases before in the Empire, mostly to pick up repeat clients on the way to a tourist dive. On those trips, I deliberately never left the docking bay. I have always assumed these places are not for me, even though I've never had direct experience with them.

I do know, from dealing with high-end clients of my own in the past, that you get what you pay for in these places, and the more money you have, the fewer questions the staff asks of you.

I am supposed to submit financials, which I do under one of the aliases Lost Souls usually uses when we're in the Empire. I make a point, as I submit them, to mention that this is just one of my holdings. I also let the staff at the resort know that if there are any troubles, they must come to me.

The
Two
is included in those financials (as it is in many of my aliases), so that it looks like part of that particular business. I made sure I changed all the registration information in our systems long before we ever charted a path to the resort.

Since many of us are wanted throughout the Empire, I've learned to be cautious—even though we're as far from the Empire as most of us have ever been.

Docking is easy. These resorts make it possible for arrogant rich people to do the tricky maneuvers even if they have very little piloting experience. I learned on one of my earliest dive missions involving the superrich that it's better to follow the resort's automated docking glide path than it is to try to chart one on my own.

The resort's systems weave into mine, and generally leave tracers. I always turn that information back onto the resort (and starbases) themselves. I leave the tracers in, but disable their permanent implantation. Then when I leave, I make sure that my own tracers follow the same path back into the resort's (or starbase's) systems, so that I can find any information I need quickly.

Sometimes it pays to be paranoid. I have gleaned a lot of information that way, often without the starbase knowing I've even hacked into their systems.

Although, technically, I'm not sure it is hacking. They opened the channel—the computer dialogue if you will—between us, and I'm simply continuing the conversation.

I'm alone in the cockpit, doing the last of the work. Everyone else is waiting to disembark. I've already told them our plans. We're going to be here for two days. We need the rest and the break from each other. Since it's costing us a fortune just to visit this resort, I've decided to give the tense team a minivacation. We can't afford private rooms for all of them, so they can share. Some of us—me, Stone, Coop, and Yash—will have our own rooms, primarily because I need the privacy.

I've instructed everyone to do as much research on the sector as possible. Some individuals have specific tasks, things they should find. Others should do some general work. No one is supposed to call attention to themselves.

Except me, of course. I'll be asking some of the tougher questions. But I've done this many times before, and unless there are rules and regulations or things I don't know about, I should be just fine.

We're going to have a touch-base meeting twenty-four hours from now, and then we'll reassemble on the ship itself. I don't want to have long meetings, exchanging information, on the resort. High-end places can afford high-end security, and high-end security often means that surveillance exists in places we would normally expect privacy.

I don't want us to have any conversations about who we are or what we're doing while we're on this station. And I've let everyone know that.

I finish setting up the ship's privacy protocols and let myself out of the cockpit. As I walk toward the airlock, Coop joins me.

“Have you looked at this place?” he asks.

“Not beyond the specs.” I grab my overnight kit from its place beside the door. “Why?”

“It's unreal,” he says. “There are
swimming
pools here.”

I shrug. I've heard of stranger things in high-end resorts. “Have you gotten off the ship then?”

“Not yet,” he says. “I was waiting for you.”

I don't look at him. I pretend that I haven't heard that last. I'll deal with that in a few minutes.

Instead, I say, “Is everyone else gone?”

“Like kids stepping into a dreamland,” he says. “Each one was met by some kind of personal guard.”

“It's a butler,” I say. “It was in the specs. We all have our own personal guide if we want one.”

“I don't want one,” he says tightly.

“Then you can tell your personal guide when we get off the ship to leave you alone.”

He catches my arm, then clearly remembers the fight we had the day before and lets his hand fall. He doesn't apologize, though. Coop rarely apologizes, which I rather like about him.

“This place is really expensive, isn't it?” he asks.

“It's not the priciest place I've seen,” I say, going for nonchalance.
But
, I add mentally,
it's close.

“Let me pay for this,” he says.

If he were a regular client, I'd tell him that he would be paying for it. But he's not. “Don't worry about it.”

“I do worry about it,” he says. “You've covered the costs of so many things over the years. I have income now.”

He does. They all do. The money that Lost Souls makes on the bits of technology and patents we sell based on Fleet technology gets split between the corporation and the crew of the
Ivoire.
If someone made a particular contribution, they get a higher percentage, just like they would if they were regular employees of Lost Souls.

So many of them are regular employees. I haven't put Coop on the payroll—his job is captain of the
Ivoire
—but he gets consulting fees. He has money so that, if he wants to, he can survive in this time without my help at all.

What he doesn't quite fathom is how little money he has in comparison to me. If I don't want to, I don't have to work again. But I want to. I can't imagine life without work. I'm just questioning the type of work.

“I know you do,” I say. “But it was my decision to come here. I could have looked for somewhere else to stay. And it's my decision to let everyone off the
Two
for some R and R.”

His hand comes up as if he wants to touch me again. “This trip isn't what you expected, is it?”

“It's not what you expected either,” I say.

He nods. Then he straightens his shoulders, a clear sign he's going to say something he believes will be difficult for both of us.

“I have a request,” he says. “I'd like to trail you while we're here. I don't want to work this place alone.”

I feel my heart sink. I can't do the kind of work I do with a shadow. I'm shaking my head even before I realize it.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “If you want some answers, then—”

“I have to find them on my own, I know,” he says.

I'm not entirely used to this new, impatient Coop. I prefer the old, patient version. I realize, however, that I'm seeing the real man for perhaps the first time.

“That's not what I was going to say.” I take his hand and hold it between mine. His skin is warm. “I was going to say that sometimes people give out more information to a person alone than they do to couples.”

“Is that what we are?” he asks. “A couple?”

He's asking seriously, but I don't want to answer that. I can't answer it. I don't know what the answer is.

“That's how they would perceive us here,” I say.

He sighs. Then nods. “No sharing rooms either, then, huh?”

I smile softly. “I'll make sure they're adjoining.”

He smiles too, but the smile is somewhat defeated. I ignore that. I can't let his needs get in the way of what we're trying to discover.

“Now,” I say, “you head out. I need to set up all the security protocols.”

“Shouldn't you leave someone on the ship?” he asks.

That's standard procedure for the
Ivoire.
It's often standard procedure for my ships as well.

“If they want, they'll get in,” I say. “We're far from home and we don't have a lot of defenses. We also don't have a lot to steal.”

“Just information,” he says.

“That will take them a long time to make use of,” I say. “I make sure that we don't have a lot of proprietary information on any of the ships we take out of the Nine Planets.”

“You're a strange one,” he says to me. “Sometimes I think you're too cautious, and sometimes I find you too reckless by half.”

“It's my lack of military training,” I say, only half seriously.

“That's probably it,” he says, then leans in and kisses me quickly on the lips. “Are you going to make sure our rooms adjoin or should that be my only request of my personal majordomo?”

“You can do it,” I say. I kiss him again, then let go of his hand. “I'll see you at the twenty-four-hour meet, if I don't see you sooner.”

He grins. “Oh, you'll see me sooner,” he says, and heads into the airlock.

I watch him leave. I don't trust anyone with the
Two
's secondary security procedures. Not even Mikk and Roderick, who are authorized to run this thing should anything happen to me, know all of the security I've added. And, should something happen to me, they won't know everything.

Some of the information on this ship will die with me, just like information on the
Business
, and information in the corporation itself. Not that I'm paranoid.

But I am cautious.

And there are things no one else ever needs to know.

I lock down the
Two
, and feel a slight pang as I leave her. I hope to find her in the exact same condition when I get back.