Boneyards (31 page)

TWENTY-ONE YEARS EARLIER

S
ixteen hours after Quint brought food, Rosealma managed to shut down the experiment. It had taken all kinds of finagling. She thought she had shut it down six hours before, but she hadn't. Testing and retesting and even more testing showed her something was still pulsing.

She had to go back to the earliest experiments to figure out how to turn the damn thing off. She had to go back to that afternoon when they lost Professor Dane in one of the simplest stealth-tech experiments ever done.

Rosealma—a post-doc—had been the one to finally shut down that experiment, and she was the one who shut down this one.

And if someone asked her to explain exactly how she did it, she wouldn't be able to do so. Normally she had a very orderly mind, but not this afternoon or evening or whenever the hell it had become. Her expanded mind felt like it was becoming part of the stealth tech, like it was stretching into a variety of dimensions, and that was when she realized what the pulses were—an attempt to reach those dimensions.

She had been trying to shut down a cloak, and that hadn't worked. But when she shut down the device that could reach outside of this dimension—when she had actually looked at the experiment as something that crossed both space and time—she was able to deactivate it.

She still wasn't sure she had shut it all down—she wasn't sure they could shut it down. Not after what they had done. But she had disabled it or made it inactive, at least for the time being.

Then she had sent the others out, asked for a meeting with the head of the base via vid conference, and told him that this device, this cloak that her people had created, needed to be put somewhere far away from human beings, from any possibility of human beings ever traveling through, and certainly not any place where those human beings would colonize.

He said he understood. He said the military would find such a place. She gave instructions for transport, made him swear that he wouldn't destroy the base with the device in it—explaining, once again, the disaster—and then she left it to him.

She evacuated like everyone else had, and trusted the military to take care of it.

Only later did she realize that they had followed part of her instruction, but not all of it.

They had taken the device away before destroying the military base. They blew up the base, but first they made sure that no stealth tech was on board.

And they hadn't abandoned the experiments at all.

Instead, they moved the experiments to an even more remote site, did not let the scientists working on them have their families anywhere nearby, and made everyone who worked around stealth tech sign waivers in case of “accidental death or disappearance.”

But Rosealma didn't find out about that for a year. She was too busy, testifying at the various courts-martial and being investigated herself for some kind of negligence.

Eventually, she was cleared, and then she was offered a new job: director of Stealth-Tech Research.

And that made her furious—so furious she had screamed at them as she said no.

But she did say no.

And somehow she managed to secure a retirement, and a pension. And an honorable discharge.

Somehow.

Whether she wanted them or not.

T
he layout of this research station was exactly the same as the layout of the research station Squishy had blown up. Quint was leading her through corridors that looked almost the same as the corridors on the station she had destroyed. The wall color was different, the floor a bit more scuffed.

This station was older, and had been in use longer.

And that made her furious. All of that work, all of that deception, for nothing.

She hoped the rest of her team had survived, because if they hadn't, they had died in vain.

As they walked, she didn't ask any questions. She didn't need to. She knew where they were going.

Quint was leading her to the heart of the administrative wing, which surprised her, although on second thought, he couldn't really lead her anywhere else. There wasn't a brig on a research station, no place to hold prisoners, no place to put heretical reluctant scientists whose research somehow did not measure up.

They arrived at one of the offices, bigger than hers had been on the other station. Those 360-degree views along with an open ceiling that looked at the stars. Apparently whoever had this office didn't mind being viewed from the upper rings.

He led her inside. The décor was also open, all hard edges and black lines. Even the couches were more bench than a comfortable upholstered place to sit.

Still, Quint put her on one of those couches, facing a black laminated desk so shiny that she could see the reflection of the rings above.

“Wait here,” he said, and went to the desk. Then, before he touched the in-house com system, he looked over his shoulder at her. “Cooperate, okay?”

“With what?” Squishy asked.

“Please,” he said. “I'm trying to save your life.”

She knew that. She didn't understand it, but she knew it. And she didn't want to tell him that she didn't care about her life. She didn't care enough about it to end it, and she certainly didn't care enough about it to save it.

But she didn't say that because it would be melodramatic, and she was done with melodrama, at least for now.

He touched the desk, said, “She's here,” and then took his hand off the surface. Then he walked to the door, as if he expected her to bolt.

She wasn't going to bolt. She probably wasn't going to cooperate either, but she wasn't going to bolt.

She waited. After a while, Quint smiled at someone in the hallway. Quint's phony smile, the one that he put on to be polite.

A man came into the room. He was tall, planet-born, with strong bones and sharp features. He was older and had never bothered with enhancements. His face was lined, but in a pleasant way, adding depth to his features rather than making him look like his bones had shrunk.

He had white, white hair and bushy white eyebrows, and he somehow looked familiar, although Squishy knew she had never seen him before.

“Rosealma Quintana,” he said as he came toward her, hand extended. “I have heard so much about you.”

She glanced over at Quint. “I'm sure you have,” she said dryly.

Then she raised her cuffed hands so that the man could see that she couldn't shake his hand.

He turned to Quint. “Take those off her.”

“I don't think so,” he said. “She's tricky.”

“She cannot do anything here,” the man said.

“She destroyed an entire station,” Quint said.

“And a science vessel, if I'm not mistaken,” the man said with a bit of admiration. “And maybe a few other things. But that took planning and some small bombs. I trust you've searched her for weaponry?”

So that was what the shower had been about. Not just to make her presentable, but to make sure she had nothing else on her person. A sonic shower was best, because even if she had managed to squirrel away a small bomb, it would have gone off inside her as the sound vibrated through her. Tricky.

She now wondered if those showers had been reinforced to handle a blast. Probably. The imperial military didn't trust anyone.

But it seemed this man did. He waved a hand toward her, giving Quint a silent command to set her free.

She had no idea how she could get away, but she wished she could, just to prove this man wrong.

Quint's mouth thinned, and he sighed in exasperation. Then he came over to Squishy, grabbed her hands, and unhooked the cuffs.

“Try anything and I will shoot you,” he said softly.

“I thought you were trying to save my life,” she said.

“I didn't say I would kill you,” he snapped. “I just said I would shoot you. And believe me, I'd make sure it hurt.”

She believed him.

He stepped away, returning to the door. He pulled it shut, then stood with his back to the wall, so that he faced her.

The man watched with undisguised amusement.

“So Rosealma Quintana,” the man said, “your husband fears you.”

“Ex-husband,” she said.

The man shrugged. “Relationships are supposed to be forever, aren't they?”

“Some relationships,” she said. “Not this one.”

The man raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, then looked at Quint to see if the barb had hit. Quint hadn't moved.

“You've angered the lady,” the man said.

“Years ago,” Quint said flatly. The tone sounded dismissive, almost an order to get on with things.

The man nodded. “I'm amazed, Rosealma—may I call you Rosealma?”

He didn't wait for her to answer, not that she would have answered. She had no idea what people should call her now.

“I'm amazed that you and I have never met before. You, the godmother of stealth tech, and me, the man who has brought it into a new era.”

She watched him. She had no idea who he was.

“You did almost kill me, you know.”

She almost said,
So you were on the base?
but she caught herself just in time. She knew better than to admit to anything.

“Your bombs are quite efficient,” he said. “I'm as impressed by them as I am by the way that you completely revamped stealth-tech research twenty years ago.”

“I had stopped researching twenty years ago,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “You completely changed the direction of the research, made us all see things we had never seen before. We were happy when you came back to us, before we realized it was a ruse.”

“What do you want from me?” Squishy asked.

“Your brain, primarily,” the man said. “It's a marvelous brain, capable of thinking in multidimensions, conquering a part of science the rest of us can't fathom. I'd like to turn you away from the darkness that has been holding you and get you to help us.”

“Why would I do that?” Squishy asked.

“Enlightened self-interest,” he said. “You're about to go to prison. Once you lose your court case—which you will, because we have footage of you setting the bombs on that base—you will be subjected to the worst kind of hell. I doubt that marvelous brain of yours will survive intact.”

“That's what Quint tells me,” she said. “But that could all be a lie to get me to do what you people want.”

“It could be,” the man said. “What an interesting risk you would be taking if it was. You'd risk everything—your intelligence, your personality, your freedom—because you believe we might lie.”

“You have no guarantee that anything I told you would work,” Squishy said. “I could lie to you about the things I've discovered in stealth tech.”

“You could,” the man said, “but you wouldn't. Because you would soon realize that we have other gifted scientists here who would figure out if you took us in the wrong direction.”

She smiled just a little. “Like the gifted scientists did in Vallevu.”

“Are you saying you sent them in the wrong direction?”

“Not deliberately,” Squishy said. “But the research you're doing is dangerous. You're messing with things you don't understand.”

“And you do?” His question had a sharper edge than she expected. He had finally gotten to the part of the conversation that interested him.

“I understand the dangers,” she said. “Of course, I have a non-imperial attitude.”

She looked at Quint before continuing.

“I believe that all lives have value. I don't believe any lives should be sacrificed for the greater good.”

Quint glared at her, but the man was the one who answered her.

“What about your life, Rosealma? If you don't cooperate, aren't you sacrificing your own life for the greater good?”

“What good would that be?” she asked.

“You might be one of those true-believer rebels who thinks that the Empire is evil, and that you must keep all things from us at all cost.”

“You're assuming I have something to keep from you,” she said. “Look at my history. I quit the military, stopped doing research, and got a medical license.”

“And then came back to us six months ago,” he said.

“To stop the deaths,” she said. “Your experiments kill people.”

“Sometimes,” the man said. “But the occasional life is a worthy sacrifice if it saves other lives.”

“If I believed that,” Squishy said, “I would never have become a doctor.”

He studied her. “You're an intriguing woman, Rosealma. Does my daughter find you that way as well?”

Squishy frowned, confused. “Your daughter?”

“I believe you call her Boss.”

Squishy blurted, “Boss said you were dead.”

“In that science vessel?” he asked. “I thought she saw the bridge detach.”

Then he glanced at Quint, as if Quint had been there. For all Squishy knew, Quint had.

“Boss probably figured I tried to save my experiment. I saved the research and have since replicated it. I didn't need to risk my life to save something I could repeat.”

“She said—.” Squishy stopped herself. She wasn't going to argue this. It might implicate her. But Boss had reported he stayed to save that tiny bottle of budding stealth tech. She said she had watched the science vessel, with him still on board, explode.

“She said what?” he asked.

Squishy shook her head.
She said you're evil. She said you have no soul. She said the universe was better without you.

He smiled just a little. “My daughter and I have never gotten along. She blames me for her mother's death.”

Yes, she had told Squishy that.

“She never tells people the actual truth,” he said. “I'm the one who saved her life.”

Actually, she did tell people that, but she made it sound self-serving. She said it was because he had tested her the only way he had known how, before they knew exactly how to find the marker for working inside stealth tech. He had put her in a stealth-tech field along with her mother. Her mother had died. Boss had not.

She had been four years old.

“I can see we're going to have to have a few discussions before you'll trust me,” he said. “We only have your best interests at heart.”

It was her turn to smile. “Forgive me, sir,” she said. “But it's clear you've never had anyone's best interests at heart except your own.”

“And the Empire's,” he said without disagreeing with her. “You need to realize we have the same goal. We want people to stop dying in stealth-tech experiments. We're not going to stop the experimentation. So the best way to save lives, my dear Rosealma, is to help me. Tell me what you know. You'll save lives. I guarantee it.”

The hell of it was he was right. She would save lives—at least in the short term. But probably start a war in the long term.

And she knew his answer to that as well. It was something she would have said years ago, something that Professor Dane had said in one of his early classes:

Scientists cannot control how the knowledge they discover is used. They can only search for truth and hope that others will show some restraint.

But throughout human history, people did not show restraint. She hadn't shown restraint either.

“I'm not going to work with you,” Squishy said—but her voice wavered just a little, and she wondered if, deep down, she really meant it.