Boneyards, page 16
Instead, she had relocated the meetings shortly after she arrived to a private beach, complete with tiled patio, an outdoor kitchen (staffed by the hotel), and some kind of roll-out roof in case one of the island's sudden rainstorms struck without notice.
Squishy arranged the tables and chairs herself, guaranteeing a privacy even when the hotel staff served the meals. Squishy had forbidden drinks on all but the last night. She wanted her team awake as they got their final instructions.
The hotel was set up for these kinds of meetings, which surprised her. What surprised her more was the fact that she could order surveillance equipment to go with the meeting. She did order a surveillance package, one that not only kept silent track of her team members, but also made sure no one kept track of her.
She didn't want anyone smuggling in recording devices or sending information back to Boss at Lost Souls. Nor did she want someone selling the information to the Empire.
She had handpicked her team carefully. She had followed all of their work for more than a year. But more than that, she had followed their attitudes.
Most everyone who worked for Lost Souls, at least in the beginning, had started out in the Empire. They had come to Lost Souls because of their dissatisfaction with the Empire, and Squishy made sure that the dissatisfaction was deep.
Boss also made sure that no one who worked for Lost Souls was some kind of imperial spy, and Squishy wasn't sure how Boss did that. All Squishy knew was that in Lost Souls' early years, a handful of people were summarily fired because they had too much contact with the Empire.
Squishy herself had had an interview with Boss's purity squad. In fact, Squishy had an interview every six months or so, when someone new came on board.
Squishy still got her military pension from the Empire. The pension went directly to her accounts in Vallevu, and the money went to her family there. Or the people she called her family. She kept care of them, even though she hadn't seen them in years.
She got notification through a variety of different sources, going through place to place, through addresses real and fictitious, to eventually get to her. None of it the Empire could trace—or at least, it couldn't trace any of it after the information left the Empire proper—but the purity squad worried.
Finally Squishy had given them permission to check the routes and to reroute some of her information if the addresses got compromised. She didn't want the Empire anywhere near her either, and she was glad that the purity squad was helping her keep track.
She used the purity squad to her advantage. And she made sure the purity squad helped her with her potential team members as well.
But she had to keep her own eye on the purity squad. Squishy had planned half a dozen retreats for various scientists this past year, and she had three more retreats in her future.
This was the only retreat with her mission team. All of the rest were ruses, so that this retreat seemed ordinary.
It didn't feel ordinary.
Some of that was the venue. The soft ocean breezes, the hot, almost sticky air, the white sand reflecting the sunlight, and the pale blue ocean made her feel like she had entered some kind of dream.
She hadn't thought she would be the kind of woman to find a place like this beautiful, but she did. She wished she had planned all of her retreats on Topabano. But she had gotten it into her head that she should change venues all of the time, and she had.
So far, though, Topabano was the best.
The retreat had worked well so far. She had five teams of two. Each team would go to a different backup site within the Empire. It had taken a lot of research to discover where the Empire maintained its information on stealth tech.
The backup sites were often attached to other research stations. Her team members had to figure out a way in, and then figure out how to destroy the right material without destroying all of it.
She also wanted her teams to get out before anyone knew that something was wrong.
It had taken several planning sessions, most in captured moments with each individual team, to figure out how to get into those backup sites, how to get out, and how to target the right information. Each team had a different assignment, and none of the other teams knew what that assignment was.
That way, if someone got caught, the only person they could implicate for certain was Squishy herself.
She adjusted the linens on the table, made sure the settings were proper, and that a sheer drape enclosed the lunch area. She didn't want anyone on her team distracted by the ocean or by some kind of bird on the beach. She wanted their full attention.
Today was the day of the final speech, the one she had learned from Boss. The “this is a dangerous mission and we could all die” speech. The “you can quit now if you're afraid” speech.
She had learned how important it all was, and how necessary it was to give the team members the illusion of choice. Most of them were too deep into the process to quit, and even though she had told them that this mission could cost them everything, she wasn't sure most of them understood that.
She left the enclosed area to check on the meal. Grilled meats garnished with island fruits, fish for those who preferred something a bit lighter, a salad, and a few dishes native to Ral. Already everything smelled marvelous. The staff waited, keeping its distance.
Squishy nodded at them, not even hiding her nervousness. She had debated for a long time as to whether she would bring her teams together at all. She didn't want them knowing each other's missions, and she wasn't sure she wanted them to know who the other team members were.
Then she realized that they would all rendezvous to get out of the Empire, and if they didn't know who was going to show up, then they might panic when they saw a familiar face, even if that face was from Lost Souls.
She moved to the edge of the patio, where she could see the entrance to the private beach. Her team was starting down the steps: four men and six women, all in loose, white clothing purchased here, all laughing as if this truly was a vacation.
Later in the day it would become one. She gave them their last night free.
She waited for them, patting her pocket as she did. She had actually written down the rendezvous coordinates. She would give the coordinates to one team member and ask that member to commit the coordinates to memory. Then she would take the paper back and destroy it herself.
She had paired scientists with security personnel. The scientists all had eidetic memories. The security personnel were brilliant at systems. Most knew how to get in and out of anywhere. Most had served in one special forces team or another, either with the Empire or somewhere in the Nine Planets.
She didn't worry about loyalty. It was too late for that.
She worried that someone would die on this mission.
The laughter stopped as the teams came down the hill and saw her face. She was serious.
They had to be serious now too.
As they passed her, heading to the tables set out for the spectacular meal, she realized she didn't need to give the speech for them.
They had known the moment they decided to work for her on the side that they were taking risks. They understood the dangers.
Just like she had understood the dangers whenever she went diving with Boss all those years ago.
Still, Boss had given the speech, and Squishy had found it annoying. Particularly when everyone on the dive had gone with Boss on a previous trip.
For the first time, Squishy understood what Boss had been doing.
She had been talking to herself.
She had discussed the plan. Now saying it out loud, knowing that someone could die, might make her change her mind.
Squishy's heart pounded.
She wasn't going to change her mind.
Unless someone talked her out of it.
And she wasn't sure anyone could.
Squishy sat alone in the cockpit of the Dane. She had done this to herself.
Boss had warned her.
Squishy herself had warned her team, and, in warning them, had warned herself.
This was not unexpected. And yet, oddly, it was.
She took a deep breath. Quint had thrown her off. Quint and his news about Cloris. Quint and his cuts.
She wiped a hand over her face, and as she did, she realized she didn't regret what she had done. She had meant to destroy the Empire's stealth-tech research, and she had done so.
Or at least, she had done her part. She hoped her team had done theirs. She would never know now.
But she had to assume that they had completed the task. She had to operate on that.
Those who had survived—and, if things had gone according to plan, that should have been all of them (considering they should have left their bases and research stations before anyone knew what they had done)—would have gone to the rendezvous point.
According to her timeline, they should have realized she wasn't going to arrive, and they should have left by now.
But had she been in charge of them, she would have waited—a few hours, an afternoon, maybe an entire day—before following that order.
So if they had stayed for a day, they were still there. They were just considering leaving.
She needed to prevent their capture. Because she knew where they were going—they were going to the Nine Planets—but she didn't know how they would get there.
And if it was standard procedure for bases in the Empire to put tracers in the travel logs of all foreign ships passing through Empire space, then those ships could be traced. But only if someone knew they needed to be traced.
So she needed to buy even more time. She couldn't tell anyone in the Empire about that rendezvous point until the ships had a good chance of getting out of the Empire. A few days, maybe a week.
She needed to plan for a week.
She sighed. Her hands were shaking. She glanced around the cockpit, her gaze resting on those places where Quint had left tracers. She wasn't going to pull the rest, if there were any more. She wasn't going to take any more tracers out of her control panel either.
She would chart a new course, heading toward the Nine Planets, and she would be dodgy about it, as if she were trying to lose someone following her.
Instead, she wanted them to follow her. That way, she could keep them from her team.
That was the first part of the plan.
The second—she had to decide what she would do. Boss had been right: Squishy wasn't the type to sacrifice herself for an idea. She wouldn't die first. But she might die down the road.
Still, she would give up information—and that might not be bad.
The Empire had to know it was on the wrong track. She could feed them information about stealth research without mentioning the anacapa for months, and that would direct the research in a direction that didn't cause hundreds of deaths, but also wouldn't compromise the Lost Souls research.
She had to die before giving up the anacapa. Or she had to escape. Or figure out a way to manipulate the Empire away from that information.
She would have to give that part some thought.
She stood, and as she headed to the galley for her long-delayed meal, she froze. She hadn't considered one other piece of this mess:
Boss.
When Boss found out that Squishy had destroyed the research base and hadn't come to the rendezvous, Boss would try to find her. Boss might not do anything more than figure out what happened to Squishy's ship.
But Boss was unpredictable, and she had been putting anacapa drives in smaller ships.
She might come for Squishy, and that would play right into the Empire's hand.
Boss would deliver a working anacapa drive right to them.
Squishy had to stop that. But she had to do it in a way that wouldn't lead them directly to Boss.
So Squishy couldn't just send a message to Lost Souls.
She needed help. She needed someone she could trust.
She needed Turtle.
We arrive at the nearest starbase nearly a day later. This trip is turning out to be much longer than I expected—than any of our team expected. Nerves are frayed, partly because of the length of the trip, and partly because of the things we've discovered. Or haven't discovered, as the case may be.
I research the base before we get there, and learn it doesn't call itself a base at all. It calls itself a resort, and it acts like one: we have to pay fees just to reserve a berth for the ship. Then we have to pay fees to disembark. We must choose our level of service, and because we're going to be asking a lot of questions, I choose the top tier, spendy as it is.
The resort itself, so far as I can tell, is unaffiliated with any nearby planet or any particular group. From the documentation and the history of the place available in the public records, the resort has been around for about seventy years.
A partnership with a corporate name bought the place for its location about eighty years ago. The partnership, called the Azzelia Corporation, used an existing starbase as its foundation and redesigned everything, taking its time, making everything “perfect” or so its literature says. The resort is now called, quite simply, Azzelia. I have no idea what that word means, if it means anything.
I've gone to resort bases before in the Empire, mostly to pick up repeat clients on the way to a tourist dive. On those trips, I deliberately never left the docking bay. I have always assumed these places are not for me, even though I've never had direct experience with them.
I do know, from dealing with high-end clients of my own in the past, that you get what you pay for in these places, and the more money you have, the fewer questions the staff asks of you.
I am supposed to submit financials, which I do under one of the aliases Lost Souls usually uses when we're in the Empire. I make a point, as I submit them, to mention that this is just one of my holdings. I also let the staff at the resort know that if there are any troubles, they must come to me.
The Two is included in those financials (as it is in many of my aliases), so that it looks like part of that particular business. I made sure I changed all the registration information in our systems long before we ever charted a path to the resort.
Since many of us are wanted throughout the Empire, I've learned to be cautious—even though we're as far from the Empire as most of us have ever been.
Docking is easy. These resorts make it possible for arrogant rich people to do the tricky maneuvers even if they have very little piloting experience. I learned on one of my earliest dive missions involving the superrich that it's better to follow the resort's automated docking glide path than it is to try to chart one on my own.
The resort's systems weave into mine, and generally leave tracers. I always turn that information back onto the resort (and starbases) themselves. I leave the tracers in, but disable their permanent implantation. Then when I leave, I make sure that my own tracers follow the same path back into the resort's (or starbase's) systems, so that I can find any information I need quickly.
Sometimes it pays to be paranoid. I have gleaned a lot of information that way, often without the starbase knowing I've even hacked into their systems.
Although, technically, I'm not sure it is hacking. They opened the channel—the computer dialogue if you will—between us, and I'm simply continuing the conversation.
I'm alone in the cockpit, doing the last of the work. Everyone else is waiting to disembark. I've already told them our plans. We're going to be here for two days. We need the rest and the break from each other. Since it's costing us a fortune just to visit this resort, I've decided to give the tense team a minivacation. We can't afford private rooms for all of them, so they can share. Some of us—me, Stone, Coop, and Yash—will have our own rooms, primarily because I need the privacy.
I've instructed everyone to do as much research on the sector as possible. Some individuals have specific tasks, things they should find. Others should do some general work. No one is supposed to call attention to themselves.
Except me, of course. I'll be asking some of the tougher questions. But I've done this many times before, and unless there are rules and regulations or things I don't know about, I should be just fine.
We're going to have a touch-base meeting twenty-four hours from now, and then we'll reassemble on the ship itself. I don't want to have long meetings, exchanging information, on the resort. High-end places can afford high-end security, and high-end security often means that surveillance exists in places we would normally expect privacy.
I don't want us to have any conversations about who we are or what we're doing while we're on this station. And I've let everyone know that.
I finish setting up the ship's privacy protocols and let myself out of the cockpit. As I walk toward the airlock, Coop joins me.
“Have you looked at this place?” he asks.
“Not beyond the specs.” I grab my overnight kit from its place beside the door. “Why?”
“It's unreal,” he says. “There are swimming pools here.”
I shrug. I've heard of stranger things in high-end resorts. “Have you gotten off the ship then?”
“Not yet,” he says. “I was waiting for you.”
I don't look at him. I pretend that I haven't heard that last. I'll deal with that in a few minutes.
Instead, I say, “Is everyone else gone?”
“Like kids stepping into a dreamland,” he says. “Each one was met by some kind of personal guard.”
“It's a butler,” I say. “It was in the specs. We all have our own personal guide if we want one.”
“I don't want one,” he says tightly.
“Then you can tell your personal guide when we get off the ship to leave you alone.”
He catches my arm, then clearly remembers the fight we had the day before and lets his hand fall. He doesn't apologize, though. Coop rarely apologizes, which I rather like about him.
“This place is really expensive, isn't it?” he asks.
“It's not the priciest place I've seen,” I say, going for nonchalance. But, I add mentally, it's close.
“Let me pay for this,” he says.
