I wish I had truly let them go.
I know my decision to destroy the Dignity Vessel, as high-minded as I make it sound, is about my father. I want him to pay. Not just for ignoring me, although there’s a part of me—the young part, the girl who stood at the top of those stairs—who does want him to pay for that.
No, what I really want him to pay for is my mother’s death.
And Karl’s.
~ * ~
THIRTY-FIVE
We approach the wreck in stealth mode: lights and communications array off, sensors on alert for the military ships around the Dignity Vessel. I’ve never traveled in a convoy before, but I am doing so now. In addition to the Business, we have rented The Seeker again, and one other ship, the Space King.
The Seeker is a compact vessel that has maneuverability and some sophisticated systems. The Space King is a pleasure ship, designed for short luxurious travel from one part of the system to the other.
Mikk and Jennifer pilot The Seeker. They have their rented dive equipment, plus some salvage supplies. Turtle, Davida, and Bria are on the Space King, in the finest clothing we can afford. Their diving equipment is in storage on the Business; I doubt they’ll have any use for it.
But they do have weapons.
We all do.
And I’ve insisted that we learn how to use them.
Hurst pilots the Business. When he and Odette escort me onto the Dignity Vessel, Roderick will pilot the ship. Tamaz and Squishy will remain on board with him. Tamaz’s only job is to guard Squishy—something Squishy does not know.
Nor does she know that I will not be using the bomb she’s developed. I’ve decided to use the more powerful explosive Odette acquired at great expense.
I’ve done some research myself, and while I don’t understand the fledgling science of ancient stealth tech (not that the Empire has let much information out about it), I do know a bit about explosives.
The Dignity Vessel is old and large. The metal hull, with its rivets and its dents, is fragile compared with modern ships. But its very size makes it difficult to destroy completely.
That, more than anything, made me decide to go with Odette’s explosive. Hers is designed to obliterate. Squishy’s is targeted to the cockpit, designed to destroy the stealth tech and little else.
We spoke of it briefly when she finished. Apparently I had an odd expression on my face when she talked about the device’s subtleties.
I thought you’d be pleased, Boss, she said. You don’t like destroying historic things.
I don’t. If I could think of a way to keep the Dignity Vessel intact, I would. But sometimes, you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Or, at least, this is what I tell myself.
As we approach, I can’t tell if what I’m feeling are understandable nerves, regrets, or a desire to abort the entire mission. I pilot, thinking that being hands-on will calm me.
It does give me a chance to reflect: I actually think about how I would feel if we turned around right now and headed back to Longbow.
I think I would be relieved in the short term.
The long term would depend on a few things. If the military and my father’s people solve the mysteries of stealth tech and change the balance of power in the sector, then I will regret not taking advantage of this moment.
If they never solve it, then I might be all right with the decision to turn around.
Although once again, my father would continue to make a profit off death—my mother’s and Karl’s.
Karl. He would stand beside me urging caution. But he would go into the Dignity Vessel at my side, like he did when we searched for Junior. Karl had no qualms about taking care of threats.
And if he had had all the proper information, he would have seen my father as a threat.
We pass a small area of space that I have secretly designated as the point of no return. My fingers don’t even hover over the navigation system. I pilot us forward as if I have no qualms at all.
We are not turning back.
The mission is about to begin.
We have set up the mission in three parts. We designed the first part to separate the military ships from the Dignity Vessel. The second part sends me and my team into the Dignity Vessel, and the third part gets us out of the area before the explosion.
Oddly enough, it’s the first part that makes me the most nervous.
Perhaps because I have no control over it at all.
When we reach the designated coordinates just past the point of no return, the Space King breaks away from our convoy. The Space King speeds away on a perpendicular course from us, its modern stealth mode still on.
When it reaches another designated set of coordinates, it will modulate its speed and shut off its stealth mode. It will also create an echo in its sensors. The echo will show a different route for the Space King, a leisurely one that comes from a resort-heavy area some distance from here.
As we were researching vehicles to rent, I learned that the Space King is a high-end luxury rental. In addition to all its amenities—cabins the size of apartments on Hector Prime and a galley stocked with the most expensive (and best) food from areas around Longbow—the Space King has one of the fastest engines ever designed as well as an array of defensive weapons.
Apparently, a ship like that attracts space pirates, and the owners of the Space King—a high-end luxury rental firm which caters to the wealthiest among us—want to make sure they don’t get sued by renters who get ambushed and can’t defend themselves.
We rented the Space King for its speed. The weapons are a luxury that we hope we won’t have to use.
The Space King zooms away from us, and I silently hope they’ll be all right. We’re basing our actions on Hurst’s memory of military tactics and Squishy’s occasional sarcastic opinion about things the military will and will not tolerate.
We travel for another hour before The Seeker breaks away. It will find the path it used a few weeks before, when it first investigated the Dignity Vessel. Mikk and Jennifer have loaded The Seeker with alcohol and sex aids. They’ve also added some broken rental diving equipment (which the dive shop gave us at no extra cost), and have scattered it through the cargo space so that it looks like there was a fight.
They are going to come back, pretending to be drunken adventurers. If asked, they will claim they got into a fight with Hurst—ostensibly about coming back to the Dignity Vessel, but really over relationships. Then just to prove him wrong, they’re going to ask the military to let them dive the old ship or at least inspect its exterior.
We actually made a security recording of part of the so-called fight that they had. Hurst, the ex-military member of their team, argues that the military won’t let them close. Mikk claims they will. He says they want the ship nearby because they need something to do, and he will provide that something.
We’re hoping that one military ship will approach The Seeker and the other will investigate the Space King. The Space King’s speed and ability to maneuver should draw the command vessel as well, when it becomes clear that it can outrun the smaller military ship.
We figure we need to keep all three ships busy for a few hours. We’re going to monitor the Dignity Vessel. When the first two ships leave, Odette, Hurst, and I will get into the skip. We’re going to fly in close and wait, in stealth mode, until the third ship leaves.
Then we’re going in.
~ * ~
THIRTY-SIX
We stay just outside of sensor range for two hours after the other ships have left us. Hurst worries that the military’s scans have improved since he left the service. Squishy says no one thinks about improving scans, but I rely on Hurst’s caution.
When our planned two-hour window is up, we move to the very edge of sensor range. We stay in stealth mode, and we scan the area around the Dignity Vessel.
And get a surprise.
There are only two military vessels, both small. We find no evidence of the command
ship.
“They’re doing that to fool us,” Hurst says. “Like they’re doing with the false Dignity Vessel radiation information.”
I concur, but I have no way to prove it without going closer. I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, not while our friends are drawing the smaller ships away.
We’re going to have to wait until we think it’s safe to go in, and then we’re going to have to do another scan.
An hour after we arrive, one of the military vessels flies off in the direction of the Space King. We’re huddled in the cockpit, staring at our sensor information as if it is a lifeline—which, for all we know, it is.
“Let’s hope they can give those bastards a run,” Roderick says, with uncharacteristic force.
I look at him. He still seems too young and green to me to have the experience he claims, but I’ve seen him pilot ships and I trust him.
Tamaz stands behind Squishy, watching the monitors, but also keeping an eye on her. I get the sense that he trusts her less than Odette does, and I wonder if someone (Odette herself?) has talked with him about Squishy.
Squishy radiates calm. She’s watching the proceedings as if she already knows the outcome. I wonder if this is how she doctors in Vallevu, pretending calm in a crisis, just to keep the others from panicking.
Odette sits in the copilot’s chair, even though I don’t let her touch the controls. Odette has never piloted anything larger than a skip, although she’s navigated ships the size of the Business on occasion. She has threaded her fingers together. She keeps looking at all the sensors, checking them one against the other as if they’re lying to her.
We all suppose that they are.
“I think you should run the readings again, Boss,” Hurst says. He’s standing just behind me, hovering the way I usually hate my crew members to hover. He clearly wants to handle the controls himself, and I won’t let him.
“I don’t want to do too many scans,” I say.
“I know,” he says, “but we registered that first ship leaving, and if we’re looking at a false scan of military vessels, we shouldn’t have gotten that reading.”
He has a point. We might be looking at things in real time after all.
I’m tempted to run the scan, but I’m not going to. I don’t want to give the second military vessel any excuse to stay in the area.
Of course, if there are only two, will they both leave their posts to go after stray ships?
I can only hope so.
“Boss,” he says, urging me.
I shake my head. “We’re going to wait,” I say. “I know it’s hard.”
I resist the urge to tell him to be patient. He knows he has to be patient. We all know it. And that’s the most difficult part of this early section of the mission.
Forty-five minutes after the first ship left, the second ship moves out of its little orbit of the Dignity Vessel. It comes toward us, making my heart skip a beat.
“I thought we’re in stealth,” Squishy snaps, sounding decidedly not calm.
“We are,” I say. “But they might have upgraded their scanning equipment like Hurst said before we left.”
“You should move this thing back out of scanning range then,” Odette says.
“First,” I say, “if they have upgraded their system, how do we know what scanning range is? And second, if they haven’t, I don’t want to give them a ghost.”
A ghost is a blip in their scanning systems, one that shows just a hint of a nearby ship, which is usually caused by movement. The ghosts are precisely one of the things that the military hates about current stealth tech (one of the things we all hate).
Since modern stealth tech only masks us on instruments, ships do better when they remain stationary. Especially ships with the lights and communications down, like the Business is right now.
We’re dark, and even if someone looks out a portal, they might not see us. We have a good chance of blending into our surroundings. If we move, we might catch someone’s eye.
We also might show up as a brief blip on the sensors—a bit of an energy signature or a slight blur of motion that shows up for a half second.
That half second might be enough to blow our cover.
We watch the military vessel bear down on us. My heart is pounding. I’m beginning to wonder at my own wisdom. Maybe I should have moved when Odette urged me to.
Behind me, I can hear Hurst’s ragged breathing. Odette has leaned forward, her hands still clutched so that she doesn’t touch the board. Roderick paces.
Only Tamaz and Squishy remain in place. Squishy is pretending at calm again, and Tamaz really seems calm. Or maybe he has found some deep place inside of himself where he goes when things get difficult.
At the last moment, the military vessel veers off. It heads on a path that should take it to The Seeker.
Roderick lets out a relieved whistle.
“That was closer than I like,” Odette says.
“Can we move now?” Squishy asks, once again her voice betraying her true emotional state—which is quite a bit more agitated than I realized.
I don’t answer her. Instead I move us forward—slowly—and I double my scans.
First, I search for energy signatures and ghosts. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the command ship is cloaked, just like we were. I get as close as I dare, but I’m not seeing anything.
I set up my own sensors to monitor the area around the Dignity Vessel. I want notification of the smallest anomaly.
“If we can’t find that command ship, are we going to abort?” Hurst asks.
I don’t know the answer to that. So I don’t say anything.
I do know that if we don’t go into the Dignity Vessel on this trip, we have blown our chance. Any way to get those military vessels away from the ship will have been barred from us—that is, if we don’t want an actual firefight.
At this moment, I wish we had strong weaponry. The weapons on the Space King are the most sophisticated that civilians can legally buy. Squishy tells me that they aren’t strong enough to destroy the Dignity Vessel. After some study, Odette concurs.
But I do some investigating on my own and realize that there’s nothing that we can shoot at the Dignity Vessel that will do the kind of damage that we want.
We can destroy part of its hull. We can open yet another section to space. We can even (probably) destroy the cockpit.
But I want that thing obliterated.
And to obliterate, we have to go in.
Of course, that doesn’t stop me from wishing we could just send a barrage of weapons from here, destroy the Vessel, and fly off as if we had no involvement at all.
I scan the Dignity Vessel. I expect to get the fake scan, the one that tells me there’s too much radiation.
But I don’t. I get a new image of the Dignity Vessel, which tells me that the military ships were the ones creating the false image, and they’re gone.
“I think we can go in,” I say.
“We have to hurry,” Squishy says.
I turn. This is precisely the kind of thinking that I don’t want on this mission.
“We’re going to do this right, Squishy. We’re following the plan we set up. We’re not going to hurry.”
She licks her lower lip, then nods. “I just meant that we need to act now.”
She’s eager. She wants this done as much as I do, maybe more. I can feel the depth of her desire to finish this mission.
“Stay calm,” I say to her. It’s a not-so-subtle dig at her posture and her fake manner.
She doesn’t snap at me like I expect her to. Instead, she nods once.
“All right, Boss,” she says. “Looks like we’re finally under way.”
~ * ~
THIRTY-SEVEN
I pilot the skip toward the wreck. Odette and Hurst are already partially suited up. They don’t know who is going to accompany me inside. I left that decision to the last minute, wanting to be flexible, and now I’m glad that I did.
As we come in, we aren’t in stealth. The skip really doesn’t have an effective stealth mode, and I don’t want to be blind.
No command vessel comes toward us. No one tries to communicate with us. There isn’t even an automated message to warn us away.
This tells me that Jennifer’s initial impression is correct. These soldiers guarding the wreck are waiting for something to happen. They’ve gone days, maybe weeks, maybe months, without seeing another ship.
The fact that two have shown up on the same afternoon doesn’t bother them, because they know that the chances of yet a third ship showing up are extremely remote.
The soldiers aren’t being vigilant, because the time they’ve spent out here has taught them that they don’t need to be.
So far, this is working in our favor.
“The command ship should have come after us by now,” Hurst says.
“I know,” I say.
I have placed the cockpit windows on clear. The Dignity Vessel looms ahead.
It looks bigger than I remember, and for a moment, I worry that it’s growing, like the station around the Room. So I run yet another scan, checking its size against the specs I logged years before.
I get the result I’m hoping for: The Dignity Vessel hasn’t changed.
Only my perception has.
My heart is pounding. If Squishy were here, she would warn me about the gids. I can hear Karl’s voice, telling me this dive will be too emotional for me.
For a moment, I consider sending Odette and Hurst in without me. Then I realize this dive will be emotional for them too—and they’ve never been inside a Dignity Vessel before. Even with a map, they won’t know exactly where they’re going.
Once inside, they might move wrong, and then what would happen? They might get stuck in the stealth field, just like Junior did.
No. If we’re going to do this, I need to dive the wreck.
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