Squishy eats like a former prisoner, hunched over her food, one arm circling it. She claims it comes from eating rapidly with others on military vessels. Since I’ve never served, I don’t know. I do know that Karl, who had also been military, had eaten the same way.
Still I find it a disconcerting habit. I keep the gravity at Earth normal on the Business, so eating is never an issue. I lean my chair against the galley’s wall, hold my bowl against my stomach, and eat slowly. I will have my piece of cornbread for dessert.
I don’t know how to approach her about her work. Finally, I just decide to be honest.
“I’m having second thoughts,” I say.
“I knew you would.” She doesn’t look up at me. She keeps her bowl close to her chest, the spoon scraping against the bowl’s sides. “What part worries you? Or are we just going to abandon the whole idea?”
Her moods have fluctuated since she got on board the ship. Some of it I understood: She got instantly homesick for Vallevu and her life there. But some of it I did not. Every time she goes into the cabin we set aside for her research, she stops at the door, as if she is the one having second thoughts, not me. Sometimes she comes out calm, and sometimes she emerges furious.
Once she left the cabin in tears.
“We’re not going to abandon the whole idea,” I say. No matter how many qualms I have, I cannot stomach the idea of the Empire having stealth tech. “I just need to know what you’re doing.”
“You’re having second thoughts about me, then,” she says, setting her bowl aside. It’s completely clean, as if no soup has been inside it at all.
She’s making me defensive. I forgot how good she is at that. “No, not exactly,” I say, and then realize I lost control of the conversation the moment I said “second thoughts.”
So I decide to try another tack.
“When you said you need to experiment, I thought I understood. Then you said that you can’t do it on Longbow, and I got concerned. And when you mentioned that the skip might blow up—”
“You’ve never built a bomb,” she says.
That’s true enough. I’ve never built anything large, and certainly not anything large and destructive.
“No, I haven’t,” I say. “Before I went to see you, I figured I would simply buy one for this project.”
My language is so clean, as if I’m discussing a dive or a new piece of equipment.
“If we were facing a regular ship, you could have done that,” she says. “But we’re not. The very thing that brought you to me is why I need to be as far from Longbow as I can and work.”
“Obviously, I don’t understand,” I say.
She gets up and cuts herself a large piece of cornbread. She doesn’t put it on a plate, but instead cups it in one hand, using the other to break pieces off of it.
“I have to make sure the bomb works,” she says, “not just in theory, but in practice.”
I let out a small breath. Whatever I had expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “That’s not possible,” I say. “We don’t have any real stealth tech.”
“I know,” she says. “And if my research determines that we can use a conventional explosive, then I won’t need to work on the skip. But if we can’t, then I’m going to need to see how certain types of matter interact with each other.”
I grab her bowl and place it in the washer. I add mine to that, then cut myself a large piece of cornbread, place it on a plate, and grab a fork. I start some coffee, less because I want it than because I want the time to think about what she just said.
“I thought you can’t replicate stealth tech,” I say.
“We did some bottle experiments,” she says. “They didn’t work, but we didn’t know as much as I do now. I want to try one of those, and see what happens.”
“No,” I say.
“No?” She sounds shocked.
“You’re not doing any kind of experimentation. The only time you detonate anything is when we get to the Dignity Vessel.”
“I thought you said I can’t go in.”
“You can’t. You’ll teach me what to do,” I say.
She shakes her head. That very movement makes me angry.
“You’re not replicating stealth tech in even the smallest way inside my skip,” I say. “You’re not experimenting with anything. You and I are going to decide on the most effective possible bomb and we are going to use it. Once. On that vessel. There will be no test run. There will be no experimenting.”
Her cheeks are red. “But it might not work,” she says.
“That’s the risk we’re taking. You’re here to figure out what we need.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she says.
“Not,” I continue, “as a scientist. As a diver, an adventurer, and a human being who wants this stuff out of our lives.”
“If that Dignity Vessel is on a base somewhere,” she says, “then we could take out hundreds of innocent lives.”
“It’s not on a base,” I say.
She pauses, pieces of cornbread dripping from one hand into the other. She looks like a little girl, making a mess because she doesn’t know how to properly eat that particular food.
“It’s not?” she asks. “How are they working on it, then?”
“I’m not sure they are yet,” I say. “All I know is that they’ve set up a guard.”
“That’s it?”
I shrug. I’ve sent Mikk and part of the team to check it out from a distance. They were on that mission while I came to Naha to see Squishy.
“I’ll know when we get back,” I say.
I told Mikk not to get too close. If he got caught, he could say he was traveling nearby and had no idea there was something important in that part of space. He was going to treat it as if he were taking a bunch of people on a tourist dive (not that my team would ever be tourists) and let the Empire think he was just a bit ignorant.
I hope it worked.
“See why I’m not too worried about blowing up the ship?” I ask. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’d have to test—”
“No,” I say. “You can read about Dignity Vessels. I gave you the numbers for the component parts. You know what the ship is made of. We destroy it, and most likely, we’ll destroy the stealth tech.”
“Most likely,” she says, and takes a bite of cornbread.
I am simply repeating her argument back to her, but now she doesn’t sound convinced.
“You were worried,” she says, “that we’d create an even larger stealth tech field, even with the ship gone. Aren’t you still worried about that?”
Of course I am. I’d be foolish not to worry about it. “Of course I’m still worried about it, Squishy,” I say.
“If I do a bottle experiment, I might figure out—”
“No,” I say. “First of all, you could die. Second, you could open a rift near Longbow. And third, if we do create something nasty, we’ll start rumors and warn people away from that part of space.”
“If we survive,” she says.
I nod. “If we survive.”
~ * ~
THIRTY-TWO
I am relieved to see Longbow. I am even more relieved to find that Mikk and the team have returned from their mission to the Dignity Vessel intact. Their little ruse worked.
We meet in a small restaurant that I have rented for the evening. The proprietor has set out a full meal for us—meats, cheeses, breads, fruits and vegetables grown in one of Longbow’s hydroponic gardens—and he has left us alone. That too is by my request. He’ll return in two hours, serve desserts, and then usher us outside.
I don’t mind. It’s the privacy I’m after, not the food.
The team is already waiting for me. They’re milling around the long table in the middle of the restaurant. Everything here is done to look authentically Old Earth—wooden tables, wooden floors, wooden walls, big thick wooden signs, and a wooden bar off to one side.
None of the wood is r
eal, of course, and I have no way to judge if any restaurant on Old Earth ever looked like this. But it has always felt authentic to me.
The food sits in the center of the long table on thick white plates. The same spread appears on both sides of the table, so things don’t have to be passed very far.
Most everyone already holds a plate, loaded with a different variety of snacks. Full glasses of various liquids sit near different spots on the table where people have already staked their claim.
There are only two spots left, one at the head of the table and the other to the right of the head.
Apparently Squishy and I have assigned seating. I glance at Mikk. He smiles at me. He’s done this. He has really stepped into a leadership role since Karl died, and I appreciate it.
Mikk sets his glass to the left of the head of the table. Then he puts his plate down. Everyone else comes to the table as well.
Odette takes the foot. Her presence surprises me. She was so angry after we dropped my father and Riya Trekov off the Business that I thought she wouldn’t work with me again.
As we all thread to the table, there’s only one person I don’t recognize. She’s too thin. Her hair is so short I can’t tell its color.
It’s not until she stops beside me that I realize who I’m looking at.
Turtle.
“Turtle,” I say, and hug her. She feels brittle. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
She hugs me briefly, then steps back. She looks to my side, her gaze finding Squishy.
“I contacted her,” Squishy says. “Just before we left Vallevu.”
“I couldn’t believe I heard from you.” Turtle tentatively touches Squishy’s arm. “Thanks for letting me know about Karl.”
Squishy moves away ever so delicately.
“You told her in a communication?” I ask. I can’t believe the insensitivity of that. Karl and Turtle were friends. I figure that such news is always better told in person.
“I told her to meet us here and to find some of your divers,” Squishy says to me. “They’d let her know what happened.”
Turtle gives Squishy another longing look, and then steps back. “I’m so sorry about Karl,” Turtle says to me. “It sounds awful.”
I remember the feel of him in my suited arms. How I could close my arms around him and gently tug him backwards, getting no resistance at all. How, in that moment, I knew that the Karl was gone, even though his body remained.
“It’s probably worse because Karl would be alive if it weren’t for her dad,” Mikk says. “If Boss hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed the bastard. Hell, I’m still not sure we shouldn’t.”
I give Mikk a sideways look—a silent “not now.”
He shrugs.
Turtle stays close to my side. She’s still peering at Squishy.
“You look different,” Turtle says to Squishy.
“Boss says I’m nicer now,” Squishy says. Then she smiles. “I’ll work on fixing that.”
Mikk smiles, but no one else does. Instead, we go to the table. I sit at the head, as I’m expected to do.
I look around the table. No one is missing. Roderick sits between Bria and Jennifer. Hurst looks tiny next to Davida and Tamaz. Turtle actually looks like she belongs.
Only Squishy seems out of place.
There is also one empty chair, and I’m not sure if that’s accidental or by design. The chair is even kicked out a little and turned at an angle, just like Karl would have done if he were actually sitting there.
My heart twists. To cover that sudden surge of emotion, I wave at Odette, who, at the other side of the table, seems impossibly far away. She actually smiles at me, and waves back.
I make the introductions. I tell my most recent team that Turtle and Squishy dived the Dignity Vessel with me, and they’re familiar with it. I also tell them that Squishy won’t be diving it this time.
“She’s our medic,” I say. “She’s also in charge of destroying the damn thing.”
“How can she destroy it if she doesn’t dive?” Mikk asks.
I glance at Squishy. I don’t know how much of her past she wants me to tell them.
She tilts her chair slightly. “I’m former military,” she says. “I worked in the stealth tech program. Boss thinks I can blow the ship up.”
“Do you think so?” Hurst asks.
“Boss won’t let me test my equipment,” Squishy says as if this were a democracy, as if she can convince the others to vote for her way of doing things.
“You would want to test an explosion?” Davida asks. I can hear the horror in her voice. “Where would you do that?”
“On one of the skips,” Squishy says. “It would be controlled—”
“If it were going to happen,” I say. “Which it’s not. Squishy is going to figure out exactly what components we need and how much we need. Then I’m going to take it into the wreck.”
“That wreck is big,” Mikk says. “You can’t dive it alone.”
“I’m going to,” I say.
He shakes his head. Apparently he thinks this is a democracy too. “It’s too dangerous. I think a team can safely go in there with you—”
“You haven’t been inside,” I say. “It’s better if I go by myself.”
“I’ve been inside,” Turtle says softly. “I never went into the cockpit, though, where we lost Junior. That’s where the stealth tech is. I think if you stay away from that part of the ship, you’ll be fine. I mean, I’m okay, and so is Squishy. Nothing harmed us while we were there.”
Everyone is watching her, looking more than a little confused.
She gives a small shrug. “I’m just trying to say that I think Mikk’s right. It’s better if a team goes in, just in case there’s a problem.”
I feel a thin band of anger start in my stomach. “I know what I want to do here,” I say, “and it doesn’t involve any other divers.”
“Maybe you should hear us out first,” Mikk says. “You don’t know what you’re facing.”
“I know what’s inside that ship,” I say, and realize I sound as stubborn as Squishy did when I was talking to her on Vallevu. “You haven’t been inside. Have you?”
I ask that last with an edge in my voice. He was under strict instructions not to dive the wreck. If he didn’t follow those instructions, I will not bring him along on the new trip.
“No, I haven’t been inside,” he says, “but you haven’t asked what we’ve found.”
I lean back slightly. I’m not used to Mikk talking back to me. Give him control of his own mission and he believes he’s in charge.
But he’s also right. I need to know what happened when he went to the Dignity Vessel, and I need to know before we make actual plans. Everything could change depending on what he saw.
“You’re right,” I say. “We shouldn’t be arguing procedure until we have all of the information.”
Squishy and Turtle both look at me, with matching stunned expressions on their faces. Apparently they’ve never heard me utter that sentence before.
Mikk doesn’t notice their response, although Odette does. She grins, apparently understanding what they’re thinking.
“We left just after you did,” Mikk says. “I rented a ship—I figured it would give us more verisimilitude—and I took Jennifer and Hurst with me.”
He took the younger-looking members of the crew. They were good choices if Mikk didn’t plan on diving. It would seem to a stranger boarding the ship that everyone on board was naive and new to diving.
“We brought rented equipment and stashed ours in the cargo hold, figuring no one would ever look for it, not with the rented stuff sitting out. Then we charted half a dozen courses, and began each one of them, veering off course every time. Hurst got us ‘lost’ so that it really looked like we had no idea where we were going.”
“I was beginning to think we didn’t,” Jennifer says.
Everyone laughs, but I don’t think she meant it as a joke. I think she had go
tten nervous.
“The Dignity Vessel is a long way from nowhere,” I say.
Mikk nods. “I think that’s why they’re not too worried about it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He holds up his hand. “Let me explain,” he says.
They drifted in, like a group that’s tired and not sure where it’s supposed to be. They let the rented ship—called The Seeker—drift once they got close.
The one thing The Seeker did have was an excellent scanning system. Hurst used it to see what was in the vicinity. They located three military-class vessels, none of them warships. Two were quick maneuvering skips, and one was a command vessel. They formed a loose circle around one point in space.
The active vessels made it impossible for Mikk or Hurst to lock in on the Dignity Vessel’s signal, the thing that drew me to it so long ago, but they surmised it was there, just by the way the other ships surrounded it.
“There were only three ships,” Squishy says, interrupting the narrative. “And one of them was a command vessel?”
Mikk nods. He doesn’t seem irritated by the interruption.
I would have been.
“That’s not a lot of firepower,” Squishy says. “A determined someone could come into that area with the right equipment and drag that Dignity Vessel out of there.”
“It doesn’t sound possible to me,” I say.
“It is.” Odette speaks from the other side of the table. “There’s an easy maneuver to make the odds in your favor. But I want to hear what else Mikk found.”
She sounds a little annoyed. I’m getting a sense she’s not fond of Squishy. They’ve both been around diving a long time, so it’s possible they’ve met before and have a history.
It can also be that Squishy’s abrasive nature has already rubbed Odette the wrong way.
“We had to get a lot closer to see if the Dignity Vessel was actually there,” Mikk continues. “We drifted The Seeker in, as if we weren’t paying attention.”
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