Boneyards (21 page)

S
ix days had passed, and Squishy was nowhere near the edges of the Empire. She traveled through the less populated areas of Empire space, following a zigzag pattern, and occasionally changing it up, retracing her steps or finding a different way through the area.

She tried to remain as true to what she would have done had she not known she was being tracked. When she realized, somewhere about the second day, that she was being deliberately stupid, she stopped and went back to her original plan, such as it was.

If the Empire wanted to take her, they would. And they would probably do so closer to the somewhat porous border with the Nine Planets Alliance.

On the sixth day, she charted a course that took her directly to the Nine Planets. Not to Lost Souls. She didn't go anywhere near Lost Souls, nor did she try to go too far from Lost Souls.

Her brain hurt from all the second-guessing. She was usually a straightforward thinker, blunt and to the point. The idea of going around everything, of trying to outthink other people, was harder for her than simply pretending to do one task while doing another, like she had done on the research station.

Sometimes she wondered if she was making everything too tricky. And then she would have to remind herself that it didn't matter. She needed to buy time, and that was all she had been doing.

Besides cleaning the
Dane.
She had decided that if she knew she was actually being pursued (and without her backup plan), she would have continued to pull tracers out of the ship. She left the secondary ones she found in the control panel.

The tracers she focused on were the ones that Quint had left. First, she cleaned out her cockpit, going over it with several devices set at different levels. She found two more tracers.

Every time she found a tracer, she put the tracer in her garbage system, dropped out of FTL, and jettisoned the tracer. Then she resumed FTL, traveled a short distance, and plotted a new course, just like she would have done had she thought she had gotten away.

That was one reason for the zigzag course.

The other was the messages she sent.

She sent them in a single storm, as if she had panicked about her future. Most of the messages went to friends and family in Vallevu, along with a will, so that there would be a lump sum payment from Squishy's pension for the children. She also sent a revised will, bequeathing everything she had left on Vallevu in trust for the children.

She knew that would scare people, but there wasn't much she could do about it. They would end up scared no matter what Squishy did. Eventually the imperial military would show up in Vallevu looking for Squishy. Or maybe Quint would or his people would.

Everyone would wonder what Squishy did, and when Quint told them (if Quint told them) some of them would understand.

The rest would condemn her even more.

If that was possible.

Because no one condemned her more than she condemned herself.

ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER

S
he was actually starting to get fat.

Squishy climbed the road to the house. At first, she went up the steep hillside, and she thought she was out of shape—which she sort of was. After all, she had lived in manufactured gravity for years now, and did most of her exercise in zero-g. Diving with Turtle and Boss had become a lifestyle, one that she was no longer a part of.

But it had taken different muscles than living in Vallevu without any transportation. Now she used her real muscles, walking, lifting, just plain old existing, and breathing the fresh air.

She was starting to think she'd learn the name of the flowers that grew roadside. They bloomed for months, a riot of pink and purple and red against such a sharp green that it almost hurt her eyes. The sky beyond was a bluish purple covered with the occasional thin cloud.

Someone had told her the clouds were thin here because of the elevation. Squishy had no idea about any of that, and she should have known. After all, she had had a home here once before, a home that the city assessor told her Quint still owned.

The assessor said he had never received a notice of dissolution of marriage, so technically, Squishy still owned the home as well, and she was welcome to live in it.

Instead, she avoided it. She didn't even walk down that street.

She had enough money to buy a home here; prices were low for residents of Vallevu. The catch was that no one was considered a resident of Vallevu unless they had been born here or unless they had lived here during the Event.

She qualified, but she didn't want to own a home. Not a place where she would live by herself.

Instead, she had moved into the Refuge.

She had been appalled to learn that no adult lived there full-time. The children had a rotating group of babysitters, for lack of a better term. And their holographic nanny, who was worse than useless, in Squishy's opinion.

She had never lived with children before, and it had required a hell of an adjustment. Particularly with the teenagers, who had become used to running things over the years.

She had brought extra food in, tried to give the children some consistency, changed a few of the rules, but in reality, all she had done was become one of the babysitters. The only difference between her and the other residents of Vallevu was that she actually moved into the Refuge.

She rounded the corner, and stopped, partly to get her breath in the thin air, but partly because this view always made her stop.

The house was built on a cliff-face and had a 360-degree view of the entire area. It had been a VIP house for anyone from the Empire who showed up and needed to stay longer than a few days. The interior was still plush, despite all the years of children trampling it, but it was the exterior that always caught her eye.

Five stories, each smaller than the last, with the top little more than a single round room with a balcony that went all the way around. When Squishy came here the first time, she had been told that balcony around the fifth floor was a widow's walk.

Squishy had thought that in particularly poor taste, and only later did she learn that “widow's walk” was an actual architectural term, one kept from Old Earth. It was frighteningly appropriate, and it was stuck in Squishy's brain, something she thought about every single day as she crested this hill.

The yard was made for children, with its many paths, myriad hiding places, and well-kept plants, planted around all of the rocks. The plants covered everything, including the front of the actual porch. It looked, to Squishy, as if the porch had grown out of the ground.

The holographic nanny sat there, drinking her tea, which meant that some well-meaning resident was inside, keeping an eye on the children.

Thirty children lived here, scattered among all of the rooms. None of the children were younger than ten, and only one was older than fifteen. He would leave next year. He had already been accepted into Mehkeydo University, where his parents had gone to school. The only reason he remained was because Mehkeydo had rules about children under the age of eighteen: they needed to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, and technically, he didn't have either.

She sighed and walked the rest of the way, her legs aching from the climb. She wasn't used to hauling her weight up mountainsides, even though she had lived here most of a year now. The added weight didn't help, but the added weight was necessary.

Squishy had been much too thin when she arrived.

Squishy wouldn't have known that without her medical degree. The medical degree had given her life purpose here, and for that she was grateful, but she never thought of herself as a doctor, not even when she was treating people in her clinic.

She thought of herself as a lapsed stealth-tech scientist. And that gave her an almost palpable feeling of shame.

She was almost to the steps when a woman came out. Squishy recognized her. She was often in her favorite restaurant at the morning rush, sitting in a corner, drinking coffee and watching Squishy.

Squishy had known it would only be a matter of time before the woman came to see her, but Squishy hadn't expected it here. She had expected it at the clinic in town.

“Do you mind if I talk to you?” the woman asked.

Of course Squishy minded. She hated talking to the locals about anything except the weather, the children, and the future. But her very presence here reminded them of the past, and when they thought of the past, they needed to talk about their hopes.

Their hopeless hopes.

“Not at the house,” Squishy said. “Come with me.”

She gave the building one longing glance. Inside was a cool drink, a nice conversation with some of the older kids, a chance to put her feet up and catch her breath. Out here, she would have a conversation she'd had at least two dozen times in the past six months, one that would anger the woman and might make her Squishy's enemy forever.

Squishy didn't look to see if the woman followed her.

Instead, Squishy just trudged down a side path to the gazebo. It was on the very edge of the cliff-face. When she sat inside, she felt like she was floating on air.

She had loved that place initially, and now it was the place where she held the toughest conversations, a place that provided no refuge at all.

The gazebo was open on all sides, although she could pull panels closed in a storm if she wanted to. The chairs were made of some kind of bamboo and creaked when she sat. She favored one chair above the others—it had a high back and arms she could grip, so that she didn't tear fingernail holes in her palms.

She didn't have to have these meetings. She could refer people to the information center near the town hall. But Squishy knew they had all been to that information center, and they hadn't liked what they learned.

They were coming to her in the hopes that she had a different perspective.

She didn't. But this was, whether she liked it or not, part of her penance.

She sat in her chair, heard the familiar squeak, and looked out over the mountainside. Clouds and bluish purple sky, more mountains in the distance, nothing visible overhead.

She could remember when that sky was full of transports and other junk, when the sound of a dozen different vessels constantly echoed overhead.

“My name is Nianni Pavlovic,” the woman said. “Maybe you remember me?”

Everyone thought Squishy should remember them. If she hadn't met them in Vallevu or on the research base, she met them during one of the trials. The meeting was significant to each and every one of them, but to her, after a time, the meetings had acquired a sameness.

She hadn't wanted them to, but they had.

“Yes, I remember you,” Squishy lied. “But not all the details. You're related to Edan Pavlovic.”

She didn't remember the survivors here in Vallevu, but she remembered the names of all the victims. She would never ever forget them.

“I'm his wife,” the woman said as she eased herself into one of the chairs. “We still have two kids at home.”

Lucky them
, Squishy thought.
At least one parent survived, unlike the parents of the kids here in the Refuge.

But she didn't say that. She was learning to be politic here, at least a little bit.

“I just was wondering,” the woman said uncertainly, as if she didn't know how to broach the subject, “how your research is coming. It's been ten years, and I thought maybe you'd have an idea now as to when the cloak will let them go.”

So many things wrong with that question, and Squishy didn't want to correct any of them. She didn't want to have this conversation at all.

“I'm not doing any research,” Squishy said.

The woman gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Of course you are. That's why you came back. Everyone knows that.”

Squishy sighed. She'd heard this now dozens of times. It didn't matter how often she corrected people, they persisted in believing that she was doing top secret research that would rescue their loved ones.

“I'm not,” Squishy said. “I don't work for the Empire anymore.”

“It's all right,” the woman said. “I know they make you say that. But you can tell me. I promise I won't tell anyone.”

Squishy shook her head. If she lied to make this woman feel better, the woman would tell her children, who would tell their friends, whose parents (if they had survived) would come to see Squishy, and then she would have to lie some more.

Or tell someone the truth.

She thought of this every time she was faced with one of these discussions, and she was always tempted. But she never lied.

She didn't dare.

“I'm not saying anything that the government wants me to say, Mrs. Pavlovic,” Squishy said. “I'm not with the military anymore. I don't do stealth-tech research. I haven't since the court cases. I've spent the last few years working on a salvage team. I came home—”

She caught herself before she said too much.
I came home because of stealth tech, because we lost two more and I can't take it. This stuff haunts me, even more than it haunts you.

“I came home,” Squishy repeated. “I couldn't stay away any longer. But I didn't mean to bring expectations with me.”

The woman's eyes were bright; it was clear Squishy wouldn't be able to convince her that her husband was dead.

“Someone is researching this, though, right?” the woman asked.

No one had asked that question before, and that one probably had some truth to it. But Squishy didn't know it for a fact, and besides, it would do no good. The research base was gone, destroyed, taken bit by bit for parts.

“I'm sorry,” Squishy said. “I know the Empire refuses to make the declaration, but I can tell you one thing based on all my years in stealth-tech research.”

The woman leaned forward. Squishy could feel her anticipation. Her mouth was open slightly, her cheeks flushed. She looked eager.

“Your husband is dead, Mrs. Pavlovic,” Squishy said as gently as she could. “He's been dead since the day of the Event. We just weren't able to recover a body. That's all.”

The woman leaned back and rolled her eyes. “Can't you get in trouble for saying that?”

If Squishy still worked in stealth-tech research, she probably would have. There were too many unanswered questions, and the Empire didn't want to deal with the repercussions.

“No,” Squishy said. “I don't work for the Empire. I was, though, one of the primary researchers on that project. I know for a fact that your husband is dead.”

The woman's jaw set. She was starting to get mad.

One of the reasons Squishy brought people here was that they often became unpredictable at this point. One man had actually slapped her across the face.

“He is not,” the woman said. “If he was, the Empire would pay us our death benefits. But he's not. All I'm asking you is some kind of estimate. I won't even hold you to it. I just want to know how the research is coming so that I know what to tell my kids.”

And the lies you can tell yourself as you're trying to fall asleep at night
, Squishy thought.

“He's dead,” Squishy said again. “If the Empire truly thought these people were still alive, no one would have dismantled the military base. Think it through: if the cloak goes away, then your husband and everyone else who was working that day would return to the same spot. Only there wouldn't be an environment to hold them. They'd be floating in space.”

“You lie,” the woman said with such venom that it took all of Squishy's strength to hold her position. “Everyone knows they brought the labs to another research station, completely intact, so that when the cloak fades, the survivors will be in a protected environment.”

“Believe what you want,” Squishy said. “But it would probably do you and your children a lot more good if you just accepted the truth.”

The woman stood. “I don't know why I came here. I thought maybe you'd put the need of families before your oath to the Empire. I thought when you moved into the Refuge, you had some
compassion.
All I'm asking for is information.”

“No,” Squishy said. “You're asking me to participate in your own personal fantasy. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to lie to you, no matter how badly you want me to.”