Boneyards (32 page)

W
e take two Dignity Vessels into the Empire, even though we don't have enough people to man both ships. The first ship is, of course, the
Ivoire
, with Coop in command. The second is one we found almost intact and have managed to rebuild with the help of Coop's engineers. We have named it the
Shadow.
It's my ship at the moment, although I will probably give it to Coop for his trip to the Boneyard. I have a third fully functional Dignity Vessel still at Lost Souls, and that's the one I plan to keep for myself.

Coop's original second officer, Lynda Rooney, commands the
Shadow.
With Pompiono's suicide, she had become Coop's first officer, but Coop has always said she needed her own ship.

This is her chance, and she doesn't complain.

Even though both ships are terribly short staffed, Coop wants them for possible rescue efforts should our commando raid (as he calls it) go wrong. He also wants both ships for the increased firepower.

He said that in the meeting we had with everyone who would lead this mission, mostly his people, and then he looked at me. The increased firepower thing was supposed to get me to change my mind.

I know he plans to obliterate that station. I also know he expects me to protest that. I have no idea why he thinks I would, when I'm against the Empire having stealth tech in the first place.

Of course, he wasn't around when I blew up one of the Empire's science labs.

Each ship has a skeleton crew of one hundred people who will man the support systems and maintain the equipment—all doing jobs I don't entirely understand. Fifty of my people are training with them on each ship, mostly observing.

Then each ship has thirty purely military assault teams. I wanted more people, but Coop says a mission like this needs to surprise and overwhelm, but not cause friendly fire casualties.

I didn't even know that last part was an option.

I'm on Coop's ship, but have no command duties. I have a seat to the side of the bridge so that I can watch everything as we travel. The bridge amazes me. The first time I was on a Dignity Vessel bridge, I was diving it. It was a mess of debris and it seemed smaller than this bridge, even though I know it wasn't.

This bridge is huge. It has equipment on all sides and in the center, along with Coop's massive command chair. Screens cover the walls. The screens are off when we're in foldspace, making the walls black.

Coop has his full bridge crew complement on this mission. It's his usual team, except that he has promoted someone I don't know—Mavis Kravchenko—to first officer. She's a big woman, landborn, with flaming red hair and a brash manner. It seems odd to see her in Pompiono's spot on the far side of the bridge, and as I have that thought, I realize I have only ridden on the
Ivoire
when Pompiono was alive.

It's been three years, then. Three years since I've actually flown inside Coop's Dignity Vessel. And we're not going to spend a lot of time here, or at least, I'm not.

I have insisted that I get to go with the teams when they invade the research station.

Coop doesn't like that. Not even he gets to go to the research station. He stays on board and runs the entire operation.

But my trip down there is the only condition I made when Coop said he would command this mission. I made it sound like I was protesting his decision, but I had secretly hoped he would take charge.

I have no military experience. I don't have a military brain. I know this is a military mission, and I know that on my own I would have botched it up horribly.

As we head out, I am relieved that Coop will take this mission, and I am terrified. I have never done anything of this magnitude before.

We have the map to the facility that Turtle gave us, and the map
of
the facility. Coop doesn't trust it, but I do. I've done some work on Turtle's recent past in the time since we started designing this mission, and I realize she has become someone powerful, someone who lives on the fringes, someone who believes that complete access to information is the only way to freedom.

She works in the shadows; perhaps that's why I named the second Dignity Vessel
Shadow.
After Turtle.

It was a way of bringing her on this mission. Because even though I trust her map, I don't entirely trust her. Not anymore. Too many years have gotten between us, too much life.

Besides, I actually have things to protect now. People to protect.

Coop said he didn't want Turtle along, and I let him think he won that battle. But I had made the decision long before he spoke up.

Our trip into the Empire is short. It doesn't even feel like a trip. It feels like we close our eyes and then we arrive.

Foldspace is a miraculous thing. First we are at Lost Souls, and then we are at the research station—so top secret that even its name is classified.

It sprawls like so many imperial space stations do. It has wings upon wings, rings along some of them. It's got several levels, and some of them appear to be detachable.

As we look at it on our screens, Coop says to me—softly—“Last chance.”

He's asking me to abort.

“See if she's there,” I say.

He scans. Or rather, orders his chief linguist Kjersti Perkins to scan. She nods.

Squishy is on board. The
Ivoire
has found her personal signature and knows exactly where she is.

“We're not aborting,” I say. “We're going to rescue Squishy, and we're going to do it now.”

T
he station has three different landing bays and two emergency bays. We're going to take transport to all of them while fighters provide cover.

I'm heading to join my battle team when Coop says, “Wait.”

I stop, turn, and look at the screen in front of me. In addition to a bunch of science vessels docked on one of the bays, there's a military vessel. I don't know the class—the Empire has changed class names since I stopped diving—but it's one of the military flagships. Something important.

“Is that what I think it is?” Coop asks, but I can't tell if he's asking me.

“It has fifteen different weapons systems,” says Anita Tren. She's Coop's tiniest officer, who usually sits on a very high chair just so that she see everything. Right now she's standing, the chair pushed against her back.

“Not to mention a variety of missiles, fighters, transports, and God knows what kind of weaponry inside,” Yash says from her position down front.

“It also seems to have a full crew,” says Kravchenko.

“They're probably noticing us right now,” Coop says. “We can leave before this gets messy.”

I swallow against a dry throat. “What's messy?”

“We were prepared for a well-guarded science station that has no exterior defensive capability,” Coop says. “We weren't prepared to meet a battleship.”

I don't know how these things work. “Meaning?”

“Meaning we take it out now, before you go in.”

I stiffen. “With the full crew on board?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he says. He never calls me “ma'am” and I realize he's in full captain mode.

“Are there other options?” I ask.

“We try limited strikes, but I don't know what we're up against here,” Coop says. “That might not be effective.”

“Won't a full shot on the vessel destroy the landing bay?” I ask. “Won't it hurt the station?”

“We're here to destroy the station,” Coop says. “It either begins now, or we abort.”

I swallow. What I was about to do was only a theory before. Now it's reality.

“Attacking that vessel is an act of war,” Coop says, reminding me of our earlier conversation.

“So's attacking the station,” I say, and to my surprise, my voice doesn't shake. “We're not going to abort. Do what you need to, Captain.”

And with that, I leave the bridge.

I
don't see the results of the explosion until we're in transit. I'm in a military transport vehicle along with five other people. Our ship is protected by fighters. We're heading to one of the emergency bays.

The transport vehicle is open—just a long box. I can easily see into the cockpit and see what the pilot sees.

She sees red and orange and white light everywhere, light filled with debris. She occasionally has to steer around pieces that come flying out at her. The shields take care of the rest.

That military vessel was big, bigger than I expected. At least I'm not seeing body parts in the wreckage—or at least, if I am, I don't recognize them.

I look away.

I clasp my hands in my lap and make myself take a deep breath. I'm wearing black body armor, which feels so much bulkier than my environmental suit. The armor will act like an environmental suit, but it will also protect me from weapons' fire.

Yash says our weapons are much more primitive than any she's seen, that this body armor is built for shots that would completely destroy the body armor the Empire wears. She says the laser pistol I'm carrying now—one based on the Fleet's design—has more firing power than the laser rifle I had hidden under my cockpit in the
Business.

I don't just have a laser pistol. I have Karl's knife, although it's under my armor, more as a talisman than anything else, a reminder of all that can go wrong with out-of-control stealth tech. I also have a laser rifle strapped to my back.

I feel like a soldier, even though I'm not one. I wear a white helmet to distinguish me from everyone else, so that no one is surprised if I don't follow a military order to the letter.

Rossetti is in charge of this mission. She sits across from me, looking serene. Apparently, she's led a dozen missions. She's handpicked this team, and I recognize two of them from our early meetings back in Sector Base V—Adam Shärf, who seems like a good young officer despite his eagerness, and Salvador Ahidjo, who is Shärf's opposite in most things, a calm older man who seems like he's seen everything. The other two—Edith Fennimore and Idina Winsor—I know mostly as muscle. They're both exceptionally strong, and when I see them (usually together) they're firing weapons or doing some other kind of training.

Having them on the team reassures me more than I can say.

I know that I'm the wild card here, and we've all tried to plan for that. I thought I might inadvertently give orders, but now that I'm sitting here, gloved hands clutched together, I'm worried more about how tense I am.

Underneath, I'm terrified.

Fortunately (I tell myself) we're the extraction team. Our job is to go in, get Squishy, and leave. If we don't succeed, there's another extraction team coming from the
Shadow
, only it arrives a few minutes later.

We dock on the emergency bay. I have no idea how the transport opened the bay doors, but it did—or maybe someone did from the
Ivoire
, or maybe someone shot it out ahead of us.

At this point, I'm along for the ride.

“You have full environment,” the pilot says, which means we don't have to activate the environmental part of our body armor. When we put the suits on, Rossetti told me not to use the environmental part of the armor unless I had to.

It's the worst part of the suit
, she said.

I believe her.

Still, I adjust my helmet, and follow Ahidjo and Shärf down that ramp. Rossetti is beside me, and Fennimore and Winsor follow her.

They have their weapons out. I'm clutching my laser pistol too tightly.

I can almost hear Squishy in my head, warning me of the gids.

Thank God I don't have on my environmental suit. Thank God I'm not relying on oxygen. Because I would be hyperventilating. I would be having the gids.

I'm out of my element, and I think that's truly become clear for the very first time.