Boneyards, page 24
I close up and step into the docking bay, which is much more elaborate than anything I had ever envisioned for a company I'm connected with. This section of the bay is built for smaller ships like the Two. We have other sections built large enough for Dignity Vessels, which are the largest ships I've come across outside of the imperial military fleet.
When I arrived here a few hours ago, I was relieved to be home, but when I step off the Two, I feel completely overwhelmed.
And it doesn't help to see Ilona Blake standing at the edge of the walkway, her signature electronic pad clutched to her chest.
Ilona runs this place, and does a much better job than I ever would. She also keeps me in the loop, which I rarely appreciate but do understand is necessary. She's slight and pretty enough that the men notice her as she walks past, before she stops and orders them about for the first time. She wears her long black hair the way she has worn it since I met her, tied behind her head and cascading down her back.
“I'm glad you're here,” she says, and I sigh inwardly.
When she uses that tone, it means there's a problem she can't deal with. Problems she can't deal with are usually vast.
“I don't suppose I can get dinner, take a shower, and maybe have a nap,” I say.
She doesn't even smile. That's what's changed about Ilona since she's taken over most of the duties connected with running Lost Souls. She hardly ever smiles anymore.
“Well,” she says, as if she's actually considering my request. “It's better if you answer at least one question first. Do you know someone named ‘Turtle’?”
She says the name as if it's somehow dirty. But she has my attention. I haven't heard that name in nearly ten years.
“Yes,” I say, sounding as startled as I feel.
“Then there's no time to shower,” she says. “Come with me.”
We take the back route to her office—not because it's shorter (it isn't) but because we want to avoid seeing other folks who work here, most of whom will want to know how the “adventure” went. I can only imagine what Coop and the rest of the team have gone through as they integrate themselves back into the life here at Lost Souls.
The back route is a series of corridors that I designed for my office in the beginning, so that I didn't ever have to talk to anyone. Ilona's office, which was once mine, is in an older part of this station, and the office itself is hard to get to, again because of me.
Initially, when I gave it to Ilona, she talked about moving the main offices elsewhere. Now she understands the value of privacy.
“This woman,” she says as we walk, “this Turtle, she says she has a message for you.”
“You sound skeptical of her,” I say. I'm intrigued by that. No one who met Turtle ever thought of her as anything but honest. I can understand people worrying about me or worrying about Squishy, but no one ever questioned Turtle.
“I looked her up as much as I could,” Ilona says. “She's invisible.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I can track her journey here from one space station away. Otherwise, she doesn't exist.”
I frown a little. “She didn't give you her real name.”
“She says I don't need it. She says you'll know her. The only reason I even let her into my part of the station is because she says she has news about Squishy.”
Now I'm confused. “Squishy? She's on vacation, I thought. Did she go see Turtle?”
“Why would she do that?” Ilona asks.
“Because she and Squishy were in a committed relationship for about seven years,” I say.
“I don't remember that,” Ilona says.
“Back when Squishy and I were dive partners,” I say with a smile.
Ilona grunts. And I realize that she keeps forgetting that Squishy and I have a long history that predates her.
“I would have stashed her somewhere until you got back,” Ilona says, “maybe even sent her to some hotel somewhere, except for one thing.”
Something in her tone catches me. “What?”
She stops walking. We're only a few meters from her office now, so she clearly doesn't want anyone to overhear this.
“Squishy apparently put a team together,” Ilona says quietly.
“A team for what?” I ask.
“To destroy the Empire's stealth-tech research.”
The breath leaves my body as if Ilona has punched me in the stomach. I put my hand against the wall behind me, but its smoothness doesn't hold me up. I lean on it and close my eyes.
Dammit, Squishy. Damn.
I open my eyes. Ilona is watching me, a slight frown creasing her forehead.
I take a deep, painful breath, and say, “I told her not to do that. A year ago, I told her it was silly.”
I also told her I wouldn't help. So not just damn Squishy. But damn me. I should have known that she wouldn't take no for an answer. She's always been that way.
“She's not capable of leading something like this,” I say.
“Ah, yeah,” Ilona says. “Half of her team made it back. The other half didn't.”
Now I'm cold. I suspect I know who her team was. A group of people had asked for more than six months off. Most of them were folks who had joined us early on, and I understood their need for a sabbatical. We do a lot of tough work here, and we expect a lot of our people. Sometimes a person just needs a break from all of that.
“What did the people who made it back say?” I ask.
“That they had a rendezvous site, and instructions on how to behave once they got there. They were supposed to leave within a few hours of arrival if no one else showed, but they waited a full day. Half the team didn't show—and Squishy didn't show.”
I take a deep breath.
“And now we have a message from Squishy, sent via Turtle,” I say. I'm confused by this. Why Turtle? I didn't even know they had been in contact all of these years.
“Yes,” Ilona says.
“And what's the message?” I ask.
“That's the point,” Ilona says. “She won't tell me. She says she'll only talk to you.”
We step into the side door of Ilona's office. At first, I don't see anyone sitting in the comfortable chair arrangement to the far side of the room. That's where I've always had the visitors sit, and where I assume Ilona does as well.
The office is large. Ilona's workspace is private: behind another door, and much smaller. She keeps all of the confidential information there. But this space has a desk and three separate seating arrangements, as well as a clear wall leading to a room that houses a large conference table.
Ilona seems to thrive here. The very size of the office defeated me.
Partly because I can't see anyone. Then Turtle stands up from the second seating arrangement on the far side of the main door.
At least, I think it's Turtle. I wouldn't recognize her if I passed her on the street. At first, I think it's because she looks old, but she doesn't. Not when I really look at her.
She has some features of the very old. She's thin to the point of gauntness. She's always been too thin, but now she seems skeletal. The bones of her face stand out in sharp relief, and her hair is so short that it's impossible to tell at first glance if she's male or female.
Her hair has turned completely white, and she's let it do so. She wears baggy clothing, which also makes her seem older, as if she had once worn this clothing on a much bigger self. But I remember Turtle from ten years ago. She never would have fit into that clothing.
She either borrowed it or she wears it as a costume.
Only her eyes are the same. They soften when they see me.
“Boss,” she says.
“Turtle.” I hurry across the room. She leans toward me as if she's going to hug me, then leans back, seeking permission.
She remembers me well.
I do hug her, carefully, startled that she feels as fragile as she looks.
As the hug breaks up (quickly), she says, “This is some place you've built.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It's not what I would have expected from myself back in the day.”
“You always put together things to get a job done,” she says. “I assume this is the same thing.”
I look at her, somewhat startled. I'd never thought of Lost Souls that way. But it's true. I did put this place together to get a job done, to figure out Dignity Vessels and stealth tech long before the Empire did.
And I achieved that. A bit accidentally because of the Ivoire, but I did achieve that.
No wonder I'd been feeling restless. This job is done.
“So,” I say, indicating that we should sit down on a nearby sofa, “you saw Squishy.”
“No,” Turtle says. Then she looks over my shoulder. She doesn't sit down. “I think we need to have this conversation somewhere private.”
“This is fine,” I say.
“I've got some things to look into,” Ilona says, and goes out the door we entered.
“I still think we should leave,” Turtle says. “This room looks too official.”
“It used to be my office,” I say. “We're fine.”
Her mouth thins. “I just don't want this recorded.”
I'm startled again. “These are my people, Turtle.”
“And I don't know any of them,” she says.
“Except Squishy,” I say. “I thought you had a message from her. So if you didn't see her, how did she contact you?”
“Through a hundred back channels,” Turtle says. “And believe me, I'm hard to find these days.”
“I know,” I say. “Ilona wanted to check you out before she let me know you were here. She couldn't find anything.”
Turtle glances at the door. “See? I think we should go somewhere else.”
“Relax,” I say. “Sit down. We're talking here. Why are you so paranoid? Is it Squishy's message?”
Turtle sits slowly, as if the couch is going to bite her when it touches her baggy pants. “I was supposed to figure out a way to send it to you, but I had no idea if your people would even give it to you. And it's important.”
She hands me a handheld, a small one with a design I don't recognize. On the screen is a written message from Squishy. In it, she apologizes for the way she treated Turtle. And then she mentions something that rings a bell, something that—
I look up at Turtle as heat flushes my face. “It's one of our codes,” I say.
She nods. “It took me a while to remember all of it.”
I stare at it. I remember it all now. We designed these things for risky dives in bad places, dives that could cause political problems, difficulties with governments, dives that could have put us at risk of attack from rogue gangs that roamed certain areas.
The messages generally weren't calls for help. They were advice, warnings, get-the-hell-out-of-here codes, designed to make certain no one else got hurt.
This was the strongest: I'm in trouble. I'll probably die here. Do not (repeat) Do not come after me.
Since the code mentions both me and Turtle, and Turtle had no idea where Squishy was before this message arrived, the code is directed to me.
And it was written as if Squishy expected someone else—not the two of us—to read it.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“It took some work,” Turtle says. “If you hadn't used an old alias on Vaycehn, I might never have found you.”
I had forgotten that the name I used there had been one devised in the last days of my diving business. Careless of me. Fortunately, I abandoned that name five years before.
“Still,” I say. “You—”
“Your ships came back from that mission to the Nine Planets Alliance,” Turtle says. “I tracked them using the Empire's own system. You do know they now track every ship that goes through their space.”
“I suspected as much,” I say.
“Once I got here, it took a while to find you, but I managed.” She wasn't going to tell me how.
“How come Ilona couldn't track you?” I ask.
“When I don't want to be found, I can't be found,” Turtle says mysteriously.
“Then how did Squishy find you?” I ask.
“Just like I found you,” Turtle says. “Sometimes old friends have access to information no one else does. She found me through some business I did in my own name years ago.”
I nod. That makes sense. “Do you know where she is?”
“The Empire has her,” Turtle says. “And she probably thinks they're going to kill her.”
“You don't?” I ask, interested in this new Turtle, the one who makes me seem like I'm not paranoid at all.
“I don't think they'll kill her,” Turtle says. “She's too valuable. Have you looked at this place? They want to know what you're doing. They'll pull information out of her brain for years.”
I bow my head. I warned Squishy about this. I said they'd try it, and she'd flippantly told me she'd die first.
But Squishy isn't that person. She won't kill herself for an idea. She's too pragmatic for that.
“You going to follow her orders?” Turtle asks, and I wonder if she uses the word “orders” on purpose. The old me would have bristled at that.
The new me knows that there are more risks here than I can contemplate. I can't afford to get angry over words.
“I have no idea what I'm going to do,” I say. “I need more information.”
“Like where they're holding her?” Turtle asks.
“Do you know?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “But I have a pretty good idea.”
“Here's what I know,” Turtle says, leaning into me, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands clasped and dangling in the air between us. She's speaking softly as if she still expects Ilona to overhear. “Squishy went into the Empire to destroy stealth tech.”
I stiffen. “Did she tell you this?”
Turtle glances around Ilona's office. We haven't been disturbed, and I doubt we will be. But I can't reassure her of that. I wonder what has made her so paranoid and am not sure how to ask in such a way that will get information from her.
“One of the major science labs exploded,” Turtle says. “It was completely destroyed. No one talks about the kind of research that was done there. Then in a handful of other stations, information got targeted and destroyed by some kind of virus or download or something—I'm not privy to what—before anyone figured out what was going on. In fact, the only way they knew that the backups had been destroyed was because of the explosion at the science lab on this research station.”
She's speaking so softly I have to strain to hear the words.
“There's one other lab,” she says. “It's on a base so top secret that it's on a need-to-know basis. If Squishy wanted to destroy their stealth-tech research, she failed. She had no idea that the bulk of the cutting-edge research is in this place.”
I'm still stuck on need-to-know. “Are you with the Empire now, Turtle? How did you get need-to-know information?”
She gives me a thin smile, then runs a hand through her hair. “I forget you're not in the Empire any longer. I'm not with the Empire. I'm not in the military. I'm working with an organization that feels the key to loosening the Empire's control is loosening its control on information.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“There's a lot of things no one living in the Empire has a clue about, things being done in their names. I leak that information.”
I can't quite reconcile that with the Turtle I knew. The Turtle I knew loved diving and adventure and—
Suddenly I understand. This is a different kind of risk.
“That's how you found me, then,” I say, “through some kind of information network.”
“It's not some kind of network,” Turtle says. “It's my network. I started looking into things after Squishy left. I didn't understand what she was talking about, and she got so mad at me that I just decided to investigate it. It didn't bring her back, but I understood more. And that's when I realized just how important information is, and how so few people have it, even when they need it.”
My heart hurts just a little. It's been twelve years since the breakup and Turtle is still in love with Squishy. So much so that she's come to me when she simply could have sent me some kind of message.
“You think they want me,” I say.
“The Empire believes you know more about this technology than they do,” Turtle says, “and they're willing to do anything short of invading the Nine Planets to get it.”
I nod. That's important information, but not as important as the other thing that Turtle has told me.
“You say there's a secret lab? One Squishy missed?”
“Yes,” she says.
“And you're certain of this?”
“Yes,” she says.
“And forgive me,” I say, “I have to ask this even though we're old friends. But you know the codes just as well as Squishy did, and if you're collecting information, then you probably learned that she was behind that bombing. So how do I know that you haven't come here from the Empire just to get me into imperial space?”
Her cheeks flush, but she doesn't protest the question. I think she understands it. “The message tells you not to come,” she says.
“But anyone who knows me would think I would disobey that order,” I say.
“Unless they were there the day we set these messages up. They are hard and fast, you said. And we don't violate them. If the person inside thinks it's too dangerous for us to go, we don't go.”
I did say that. I said a lot of things that I didn't always follow. But I remember that day now, and I remember how forceful I was. I actually believed what I said.
I believe it now, in theory.
But I have more information than Turtle does. I think I understand what Squishy is thinking. Squishy is worried that I'll bring a Dignity Vessel into the Empire to rescue her, and then the Empire will know that the Vessel functions, that we've solved the stealth-tech problem, and we're ahead of them in various research.
