Boneyards (17 page)

S
quishy found two different tracers in her control panel, both in the travel logs. She had spent the last two hours digging through the logs, seeing if she could find anything.

She was hunched over the control panel, her back aching, not just from the position she was sitting in but from the tension. She was beginning to feel like eight kinds of fool. She always told the scientists working with her to envision the entire problem, not just the interesting parts.

But in planning this mission, she had envisioned it all the way to the destruction of the research station and not beyond.

She stood, stretched her back, and listened to her spine crack. Her stomach growled. Back before she thought of the tracers, she had planned to make herself a meal. She didn't have time for that now.

Instead, she went into the galley and got some dried fruit, bringing it back to the control panel. She made herself eat while she worked.

One of the tracers was easy to remove. It hadn't completely integrated itself with the travel log and, it seemed, that tracer was the most recent.

The other one, however, was much more intricate, and she wasn't even sure how long it had been there. Digging into the programming of a cruiser wasn't her area of expertise even though she could do it, but if she actually had some expert help, it would go faster.

Faster was what she needed. With each moment that she used to remove this tracer, she felt like the Empire was getting closer to her.

Besides, she probably hadn't even gotten to everything Quint had planted. He had to have done something simple as well.

As she had that thought, her mind flashed to his hands, resting on the side of the bed as he prepared to lean back so that she could operate on his cuts. His fingers had curled along the edge.

She got up, walked to that cabin, and pulled open the door. It still smelled faintly of blood and anesthetic. She took her medical scanner and ran it along the edges of the bed. She got four different hits.

Every time he touched the bed he left another tracer.

She frowned at that. Had he had some kind of substance on his fingertips? Or had he had a group of very small tracers in his uniform jacket?

She wagered it was the second. She would have to go to every place he touched, and somehow remove all of those tracers.

Or she could use them to her advantage.

She stopped and made herself breathe. The only way to use tracers to her advantage was to go somewhere unexpected.

She either had to go deeper into the Empire as she had initially thought or she had to abandon the
Dane.

The problem with abandoning the
Dane
was that if she did it planetside, she would get caught. And if she did it here, in space, her escape pod wouldn't go far enough away from the ship itself.

She gathered the four tracers she found on the bed and took them to three of the remaining four pods. She planted two of the tracers in one pod, and the other two in different pods.

Her heart was pounding. She would release the pods at different points, but she had to wait to do so until she made certain all the tracers were out of her control panel.

It was no longer a question of if the Empire would find her; it was a question of when.

In fact, it was amazing that they hadn't caught her yet.

And then she froze.

Maybe they did know where she was. Maybe they were tracking her for another reason.

Maybe they wanted her to lead them back to the Nine Planets.

What had Quint said?
Don't worry. I couldn't track you inside the Alliance. They have good protections in place.

Maybe he hadn't let her into the research station because he trusted her. Maybe he—or his bosses—knew about her association with Boss. Maybe they weren't after Squishy at all. Maybe they wanted Boss.

Her stomach churned.

If she wasn't careful, she would have led them right back to Boss.

And the others. Squishy's team.

Quint hadn't been lying when he said he was surprised about the bombing. She could almost imagine his presentation to his superiors:
She's no real threat to us. We'll catch her before she gives away any of our secrets. And she's squeamish. She doesn't understand that you have to lose some lives to save others.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

You lose some lives to save others.
He had said that to her outside the court. And she had known that, from a military standpoint, he was absolutely right.

And what if you get caught?
Boss had asked her a year before.
They'll get you to tell them about the
anacapa
drive
.

I'd die first
, Squishy had said.

And Boss's response had been automatic:
Don't be melodramatic.

Squishy thought she hadn't been melodramatic.

But now she faced that very situation. She was going to get caught, because she certainly wasn't going to lead the Empire to Boss inside the Nine Planets.

What then?

Would she die before she gave away any secrets? Or would she try to bluff her way through?

She actually had no idea. And that very fact scared her more than anything else.

ELEVEN MONTHS EARLIER

S
quishy had never done anything this elaborate before—planning a mission of this magnitude without Boss. Squishy had never planned a mission of this magnitude, period.

She had taken the weekend off and organized a retreat for ten of her best people. They met in the island city of Topabano, on Ral, the planet closest to Lost Souls' newest science base.

Topabano had become a favorite resort destination for the science teams. The island was large, the city relatively new, the climate temperate.

Squishy had decided to hold her last mission meeting here at the recommendation of three of her scientists. She had planned to hold the meetings indoors—envisioning two days of discussions, without anyone leaving the (rather expensive) hotel.

Instead, she had relocated the meetings shortly after she arrived to a private beach, complete with tiled patio, an outdoor kitchen (staffed by the hotel), and some kind of roll-out roof in case one of the island's sudden rainstorms struck without notice.

Squishy arranged the tables and chairs herself, guaranteeing a privacy even when the hotel staff served the meals. Squishy had forbidden drinks on all but the last night. She wanted her team awake as they got their final instructions.

The hotel was set up for these kinds of meetings, which surprised her. What surprised her more was the fact that she could order surveillance equipment to go with the meeting. She did order a surveillance package, one that not only kept silent track of her team members, but also made sure no one kept track of her.

She didn't want anyone smuggling in recording devices or sending information back to Boss at Lost Souls. Nor did she want someone selling the information to the Empire.

She had handpicked her team carefully. She had followed all of their work for more than a year. But more than that, she had followed their attitudes.

Most everyone who worked for Lost Souls, at least in the beginning, had started out in the Empire. They had come to Lost Souls because of their dissatisfaction with the Empire, and Squishy made sure that the dissatisfaction was deep.

Boss also made sure that no one who worked for Lost Souls was some kind of imperial spy, and Squishy wasn't sure how Boss did that. All Squishy knew was that in Lost Souls' early years, a handful of people were summarily fired because they had too much contact with the Empire.

Squishy herself had had an interview with Boss's purity squad. In fact, Squishy had an interview every six months or so, when someone new came on board.

Squishy still got her military pension from the Empire. The pension went directly to her accounts in Vallevu, and the money went to her family there. Or the people she called her family. She kept care of them, even though she hadn't seen them in years.

She got notification through a variety of different sources, going through place to place, through addresses real and fictitious, to eventually get to her. None of it the Empire could trace—or at least, it couldn't trace any of it after the information left the Empire proper—but the purity squad worried.

Finally Squishy had given them permission to check the routes and to reroute some of her information if the addresses got compromised. She didn't want the Empire anywhere near her either, and she was glad that the purity squad was helping her keep track.

She used the purity squad to her advantage. And she made sure the purity squad helped her with her potential team members as well.

But she had to keep her own eye on the purity squad. Squishy had planned half a dozen retreats for various scientists this past year, and she had three more retreats in her future.

This was the only retreat with her mission team. All of the rest were ruses, so that this retreat seemed ordinary.

It didn't feel ordinary.

Some of that was the venue. The soft ocean breezes, the hot, almost sticky air, the white sand reflecting the sunlight, and the pale blue ocean made her feel like she had entered some kind of dream.

She hadn't thought she would be the kind of woman to find a place like this beautiful, but she did. She wished she had planned all of her retreats on Topabano. But she had gotten it into her head that she should change venues all of the time, and she had.

So far, though, Topabano was the best.

The retreat had worked well so far. She had five teams of two. Each team would go to a different backup site within the Empire. It had taken a lot of research to discover where the Empire maintained its information on stealth tech.

The backup sites were often attached to other research stations. Her team members had to figure out a way in, and then figure out how to destroy the right material without destroying all of it.

She also wanted her teams to get out before anyone knew that something was wrong.

It had taken several planning sessions, most in captured moments with each individual team, to figure out how to get into those backup sites, how to get out, and how to target the right information. Each team had a different assignment, and none of the other teams knew what that assignment was.

That way, if someone got caught, the only person they could implicate for certain was Squishy herself.

She adjusted the linens on the table, made sure the settings were proper, and that a sheer drape enclosed the lunch area. She didn't want anyone on her team distracted by the ocean or by some kind of bird on the beach. She wanted their full attention.

Today was the day of the final speech, the one she had learned from Boss. The “this is a dangerous mission and we could all die” speech. The “you can quit now if you're afraid” speech.

She had learned how important it all was, and how necessary it was to give the team members the illusion of choice. Most of them were too deep into the process to quit, and even though she had told them that this mission could cost them everything, she wasn't sure most of them understood that.

She left the enclosed area to check on the meal. Grilled meats garnished with island fruits, fish for those who preferred something a bit lighter, a salad, and a few dishes native to Ral. Already everything smelled marvelous. The staff waited, keeping its distance.

Squishy nodded at them, not even hiding her nervousness. She had debated for a long time as to whether she would bring her teams together at all. She didn't want them knowing each other's missions, and she wasn't sure she wanted them to know who the other team members were.

Then she realized that they would all rendezvous to get out of the Empire, and if they didn't know who was going to show up, then they might panic when they saw a familiar face, even if that face was from Lost Souls.

She moved to the edge of the patio, where she could see the entrance to the private beach. Her team was starting down the steps: four men and six women, all in loose, white clothing purchased here, all laughing as if this truly was a vacation.

Later in the day it would become one. She gave them their last night free.

She waited for them, patting her pocket as she did. She had actually written down the rendezvous coordinates. She would give the coordinates to one team member and ask that member to commit the coordinates to memory. Then she would take the paper back and destroy it herself.

She had paired scientists with security personnel. The scientists all had eidetic memories. The security personnel were brilliant at systems. Most knew how to get in and out of anywhere. Most had served in one special forces team or another, either with the Empire or somewhere in the Nine Planets.

She didn't worry about loyalty. It was too late for that.

She worried that someone would die on this mission.

The laughter stopped as the teams came down the hill and saw her face. She was serious.

They had to be serious now too.

As they passed her, heading to the tables set out for the spectacular meal, she realized she didn't need to give the speech for them.

They had known the moment they decided to work for her on the side that they were taking risks. They understood the dangers.

Just like she had understood the dangers whenever she went diving with Boss all those years ago.

Still, Boss had given the speech, and Squishy had found it annoying. Particularly when everyone on the dive had gone with Boss on a previous trip.

For the first time, Squishy understood what Boss had been doing.

She had been talking to herself.

She had discussed the plan. Now saying it out loud, knowing that someone could die, might make her change her mind.

Squishy's heart pounded.

She wasn't going to change her mind.

Unless someone talked her out of it.

And she wasn't sure anyone could.