Boneyards (4 page)

“Here's what we know,” he says, wiping his injured hands on his suit, then slapping them together as if he needs to get the dust off them. “We know that whatever happened here happened quickly.”

“That still means there could have been a groundquake or something,” Stone says stubbornly.

“We don't build sector bases near areas that have an active volcano or a recent volcanic history, meaning nothing has gone off in a thousand years or more. We also have the capability of finding fault lines.” Yash is speaking both in present tense about the Fleet and with an undercurrent of anger. She's telling Stone that the Fleet—whatever Stone thinks—wasn't stupid when it came to the bases.

“So all of the evidence that we have at the moment argues for an external cause,” Mikk says.

“Not outside necessarily,” I say.

“No,” he says. “I mean something man-made as opposed to natural forces.”

Coop nods. He's rubbing his fingers. They must be sore.

“Whatever happened,” Coop says, “it happened quickly. That lift argues for an attack of some kind.”

“Why are you so set on believing that?” Stone asks.

He looks at her. “I'm not set on anything, Professor. I wanted this base to be intact, like Sector Base V. I wanted to be able to gain information from it and figure out roughly when my people left this place. The more I learn, the quicker I can track the Fleet's trajectory.”

“Why does that matter?” Stone asks.

“Because if he can plot the trajectory,” I say, “he can reunite with the Fleet.”

“Not me, necessarily,” he says. “But my ship, probably a few generations from now, can hook up with the Fleet.”

I've told Stone this before. She thinks it's fantasy. But—again, making a lot of assumptions—
if
the Fleet still exists,
if
its mission hasn't changed,
if
it has followed the prescribed trajectory for another five thousand years, then the
Ivoire
can eventually find the Fleet. The
anacapa
cuts both time and distance of the search. Going through foldspace will put the
Ivoire
within range, provided all those other things (and probably a dozen more I don't know) actually line up.

Personally, I think this is as impossible as using the
anacapa
to send the
Ivoire
back to its own time, but I haven't said anything to Coop. He needs his own dream to follow, and I think that dream has kept him alive until now. I spoke to his first officer, Dix Pompiono, before Dix's suicide. Dix was quite clear on his belief that it was impossible for the
Ivoire
to hook up with the Fleet.

That didn't kill Dix, though. The loss of his world killed him. The loss of his friends and family and lover was something he expected, given his job. But the loss of everything familiar, and of the possibility of hooking up with the Fleet he had known—that upset him the most.

Coop seems to believe that the Fleet is the Fleet is the Fleet.

I keep thinking about the differences that five thousand years have brought to an existing language. I can't imagine the differences five thousand years would bring to a still-existing community of ships.

But I have learned that some arguments are futile. And if Coop believes he can get his grandchildren back to the Fleet and if that belief keeps him going, who am I to question it?

Stone, however, has none of those qualms.

“You do realize you're being ridiculous,” she says to him.

“I also realize that your people thought my
anacapa
drive was a simple cloak,” he says.

Her cheeks color. Unlike a lot of people on the receiving end of one of Coop's sideways insults, Stone understood that he had just called her stupid without uttering the word.

“Tell me again why I'm helping you,” she says.

“Because you're as curious as I am,” he says.

She smiles just a little. Then she looks at the opening he just crawled through. “Boss, I think we need a team of about one hundred if we're going to do this dig right and get the information as quickly as the captain here wants it. I—”

“No,” Coop says. But he's not speaking to her. He's speaking to me.

“No?” I say.

He nods. “I got the information I wanted. Something happened here. I want to go on to Sector Base Y.”

“But we don't have any real answers,” Stone says.

This time, he does look at her. “I have all the answers I need. Something horrible happened here. You figure out what that was if you want. I'm not looking for the details. I'm trying to track the Fleet, and this place won't help me.”

“You know where Sector Base Y is?” I ask. It had taken him months to find Sector Base W, mostly on missions with a small team from his own ship.

“I do,” he says. “I was hoping we could get our answers without going the extra distance.”

“How far is that?” Mikk asks.

“It's about the same distance between sector bases,” Yash says. “So as far as we are from Sector Base V.”

Sector Base V is well inside the Enterran Empire. Mikk blanches. The distance is huge.

“We have an
anacapa
on
Nobody's Business Two
,” Coop says. “We can do this.”

Stone turns ostentatiously and looks at the destroyed base. “I think there's a lot to learn from this place, Boss.”

“I agree,” I say. “But this is Coop's mission. He asked us to run it, not decide where we're going. We can always come back here.”

Stone sighs. “I hope you're right,” she says.

“G
o, go, go,
go
!” Squishy waved her arms, shouting as she did.

She stood in the mouth of the corridor and watched as scientist after scientist fled the research station, running directly toward the ships.

The corridors were narrow, the lights on bright, the environmental system on full. It would have been cold in the corridors if it wasn't for the panicked bodies hurrying past her. The sharp tang of fear rose off them, and she heard more than one person grunt.

“Go, go, go!” She continued shouting and waving her arms, but she had to struggle to be heard over the emergency sirens.

An automated voice, androgynous and much too calm, repeated the same instructions every thirty seconds:
Emergency evacuation under way. Proceed to your designated evac area. If that evac area is sealed off, proceed to your secondary evac area. Do not finish your work. Do not bring your work. Once life tags move out of an area, that area will seal off. If sealed inside, no one will rescue you. Do not double back. Go directly to your designated evac area. The station will shut down entirely in…fifteen…minutes.

Only the remaining time changed. Squishy's heart was pounding. Her palms were damp, and she kept running her fingertips over them.

“Hurry!” she said, pushing one of the scientists forward, almost causing him to trip. “Get the hell out of here!”

Another ran by her, clutching a jar. She stopped him, took the jar, and set it down.

He reached for it. “My life's work—”

“Had better be backed up off site,” she said, even though she knew it wasn't. The off-site backups were the first thing destroyed, nearly three hours before. “Get out of here.
Now!
”

He gave the jar one last look, then scurried away. She glanced at the jar too, saw it pulsating, hating it and wanting to kick it over. But she didn't.

She stood against the wall, moving the teams forward, getting them out. No one was going to die this day.

A woman clutched at her. “My family—”

“Will find you. They've been notified of the evac,” Squishy said, even though she had no idea if that was true.

“Are they far enough away?” the woman asked, still clutching at Squishy.

What made these people so damn clingy? She didn't remember scientists being clingy before.

“They are,” Squishy said, “but you're not.”

She pushed at the woman, and the woman stumbled, then started to run, letting her panic take over. They'd had drills here: Squishy had made sure of that when she arrived, but apparently no one had thought about what the drills actually implied.

And this was no drill.

Her ears ached from the sirens. Then the stupid automated voice started up again.

Emergency evacuation under way. Proceed to your designated evac area
….

She tuned it out, counting the scientists as they passed. There was no way she could count a thousand people, not that all of them would run past her anyway. But she was keeping track. Numbers always helped her keep track.

Her heart raced, as if it were running along with everyone else.

Quint stumbled out of the side corridor, his face bloody, his shirt torn. He reached her and she flinched.

“We have to evacuate,” he said, grabbing her.

“I'm going to go,” she said. “I want to make sure everyone's out.”

“They're out,” he said. “Let's go.”

She shook her head. “You go. I'll catch up.”

“Rosealma, we're not doing this again,” he said.

“Yes, we are,” she said. “Get out
now
.”

“I'm not leaving you,” he said

“Oh, for God's sake,” she said. “Get
out
.”

And she shoved him. He lost his balance, his feet hitting the jar. It skittered across the floor, and she looked at it, wondering what would happen if the damn thing shattered.

He saw her. “Do we need that?”

“Aren't you listening?” she said. “You're supposed to leave everything behind.”

“You didn't make the rules,” he snapped.

She pointed up, even though she wasn't sure if the automated voice came from “up” or if it came from some other direction. It did rather feel like the Voice of God.

“Those aren't my rules,” she said. “They're the station's. Now, hurry. I'll be right behind you.”

“Promise me you won't do anything stupid, Rosealma,” he said.

“When have I done anything stupid?” she asked, sounding calmer than she felt. Sometimes she thought that everything she had done was stupid. Hell, she knew that everything she had ever done was stupid. That was why she was here, to make up for the stupid, and it wasn't coming out so well.

“Rosealma—”

“
Go
,” she said.

He gave her an odd look and then hurried, half running, half walking down the corridor. Twice he glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected her to follow.

She didn't.

The corridor was emptying out. No one had run past in at least a minute. The damn sirens sounded even louder in the emptiness.

Emergency evacuation under way. Proceed to your designated evac area
….

“Shut up,” she whispered, wishing she could shut the stupid voice down. But she didn't dare. She needed everyone off this station.

She needed everyone to live.

NINETEEN YEARS EARLIER

T
he mood on the skip was tense. The light was terrible. The tourist was lying next to the door, unconscious, blood covering his face. The three women running the dive stood near the control panel, looking down at him.

None of them wanted to help him. Rosealma knew that without consulting with the other two.

“He hasn't even gotten off the skip yet,” Turtle said. She was thin and looked strange in her environmental suit. She hadn't put on the helmet, and without it, she really did look like a turtle.

She had gotten the nickname long before Rosealma met her, but Rosealma understood why the first time she'd seen Turtle in her environmental suit with her tiny head sticking out of it.

“Just because they have money doesn't mean they have brains,” said the spacer-thin woman leading this little dive. She wouldn't tell anyone her name, insisting on being called Boss.

“Look,” Rosealma said, squatting beside the stupid tourist. “I have some equipment. Let me see what I can do.”

“We need to get him back.” Boss ran a hand through her short cap of chestnut hair. “He needs a medic.”

“I am a medic,” Rosealma snapped.

Turtle looked at her in surprise. The two of them had been sleeping together for six months, and Rosealma hadn't told Turtle about her background. Or, rather, Rosealma hadn't told Turtle much about her background, including her medical training and her various scientific degrees.

“Then get to it,” Boss said. “I don't think he'll appreciate getting an infection on top of losing the eye.”

“He's not going to lose the eye.” Rosealma grabbed the skip's medical kit from beside the control panel. Then she took her own tools from the bag she carried on every single trip.

“He's going to lose the eye,” Boss said stubbornly, and she didn't sound sympathetic.

Rosealma wasn't sympathetic either. The guy really was an idiot. He had a tiny knife and he had been gesturing with it, explaining to Boss how he would cut just a small bit of the historic wreck as a souvenir, and how it wouldn't hurt the wreck at all.

Boss had gotten angry and told him that if he was going to cut up the wreck, then she wouldn't take him to it. He had leaned toward her, shaking that little knife, blade up, and said,
I'm paying you, honey, to take me to that wreck, and if you don't put me on it, then I'm not paying for anything.

You already paid a deposit
, Boss had said.

I'll take it back.

Just try
, she had said, and smiled.

He had leaned toward her, waving that blade, and the skip had lurched just enough so that he had lost his footing. He had let out a little squeak and had fallen forward, the knife skittering out of his hand, leaving a tiny blood trail on the skip's floor.

Rosealma had glanced over her shoulder at the crucial moment. Turtle had been standing near the control panel, but she hadn't been touching it.

Or at least, she hadn't been touching it a moment after the skip lurched. What she'd been doing a second or two before the lurch no one would ever know.

“The idiot sliced through his own eyeball,” Boss said.

“I don't know why you let him come on board with a weapon,” Turtle said.

“I didn't,” Boss said. “The thing was small enough for him to conceal.”

“Doesn't matter,” Rosealma said. “If you move away, I can help him.”

“I almost wish you wouldn't,” Boss said.

“Then you'll get sued,” Rosealma said, although she didn't know if that was true.

She crouched over the stupid tourist, tilted his head back and cleaned the blood away from the eye. Then she used her handheld to magnify the eyeball.

Just like she thought. He had nicked it, making it bleed. Most of the blood came from the socket, not the eye itself.

She had an entire stash of lenses. Too many cases of laser blindness had made her cautious. The lenses would graft onto the eyeball and serve as a protection until the victim could get to a real medical facility.

Boss was watching. Turtle leaned over.

“Squishy,” Turtle said.

“What?” Rosealma asked.

“It looks squishy. Is it?”

Boss uttered a shaky laugh and looked at Turtle. “For a minute, I thought you were calling her Squishy.”

“Why not?” Rosealma muttered. “One name is the same as another.”

She worked on the eye—and noted that it was a little squishy—but she didn't tell them that. Then she patched him up, but she didn't give him anything that would wake him. He needed to heal, and they didn't need to listen to his bluster. He wasn't going to get to dive his precious little historic wreck, and Rosealma doubted he would get his deposit back, no matter how hard he protested.

Boss turned the skip around and headed back to her larger ship,
Nobody's Business.
For the rest of the trip, Turtle called Rosealma “Squishy,” and giggled.

The name stuck.