Boneyards (22 page)

“You're really just as evil as they say, aren't you?” the woman snapped. “You don't care about people at all.”

Then she stomped out of the gazebo, making so much noise as she left that Squishy could track her progress through the crunching of leaves and the breaking of branches.

She couldn't reason with that woman, just like she hadn't been able to reason with the others before her. If Squishy didn't care about people, she wouldn't've even tried.

But she hoped that at least one survivor would listen to her, and get on with their life, rather than hope forever that their lost loved one would return.

No one had even given that any thought. What if Squishy was wrong? What if they did return, miraculously, on the ground here in Vallevu? Would they have lived all of those missing years? Or would they have been in a true stasis, the same person they had been when they left?

Their families wouldn't be the same. Nothing would be the same.

It wasn't some nice fantasy.

The best-case scenario was the true one: that everyone who had been in that wing of the military base that day had died. There were no ghosts; there was no cloak; there was nothing left.

Except this useless yearning for what had been—a world that would never ever return.

Squishy wished she could make people understand that. She knew they never would.

And she also knew that she would never stop trying.

S
quishy had to wait to send the messages to Vallevu until she tracked down Turtle, and that had taken more time than Squishy wanted. For days, she feared she wouldn't find Turtle in time.

Squishy had completely lost track of her. Turtle had quit Boss's employ when they returned from that first Dignity Vessel debacle. Boss had lost track of Turtle as well.

Maybe not lost track so much as didn't keep track. Even though the three of them had been friends, that last dive had been fraught. It had caused Turtle and Squishy's breakup, and it had led to a serious rift with Boss as well.

If Boss hadn't approached Squishy all those years later, that relationship would still be severed.

But Boss had needed Squishy. Apparently, Boss had never needed Turtle.

No one had needed Turtle. She had just slipped away as if she had never been. No diving companies had records of her, no resorts or space stations or starbases had any knowledge of a woman named Turtle in their midst.

It had taken Squishy two full days to remember Turtle's real name, because Squishy had only heard it once, and even that hadn't helped—not entirely. At first, Squishy believed that she had remembered it wrong, because it was so hard to track Turtle down.

But eventually, she did find Turtle. And it had been oddly easy. Because Turtle had returned home. She hadn't done anything after leaving Boss. Turtle had recovered her old name and moved back to the place she had been happy to flee.

It had taken Squishy a long time to figure that out because she hadn't believed that the woman she knew would go back home.

Maybe Turtle wasn't the woman she knew any longer. Maybe that fight on the
Business
had changed Turtle as much as it had changed Squishy.

Turning points were like that. They carved into everyone. A single decision, a single action, changing the future forever.

Or making that future inevitable.

Squishy wasn't sure which had happened here.

But she knew she had had a huge part in it. She could have stayed with Boss and Turtle and the rest of the team. Maybe if Squishy had stayed, she would have prevented yet another death.

Maybe. Or maybe she would have caused one.

There was no way to know, and no way to ever figure it out.

TWELVE YEARS EARLIER

S
he had been sick to her stomach for three days. She had a headache that wouldn't go away. Her shoulders were so tight that they felt like rocks.

Squishy should have left the moment she figured out that Boss had taken the crew to dive a Dignity Vessel. Or maybe she should have left the moment she realized that Boss didn't believe her when it came to crew safety.

Hell, Turtle didn't even believe her, and Turtle was supposed to be in love with her. The fight they'd had about that—well, it made Squishy's headache worse just thinking about it.

Yet she remained on Boss's ship,
Nobody's Business
, acting as medic now, while the rest of the team enthusiastically dove into that wreck. They believed they had found some kind of holy grail. Boss in particular seemed unrecognizable.

For the very first time since Squishy had met her, Boss seemed more interested in a thing than in her people. Or maybe, Boss just didn't understand the risks.

Squishy hadn't. Not even after losing Professor Dane all those years ago. Squishy had actually thought she could control those risks, just like Boss thought so right now.

Maybe that was why Squishy stayed. It wasn't because she wanted to say
I told you so
; she didn't. She wanted this to go well. It wasn't because anyone would need her services.

If stealth tech struck, it would most likely kill quickly and efficiently and no medic would be able to stop it.

She thought she owed it to Boss and the team, and more importantly, she owed it to herself. Maybe something minor would happen, and Boss would understand the error of her ways.

Then Boss would blow the ship like Squishy had asked her to. Damn the consequences.

Although Boss's discussion of the consequences—maybe it would cause some kind of rift in space, maybe it would make things worse—were exactly the things stealth-tech scientists had discussed for years. Things Squishy had discussed for years, before she ran away from the tech forever.

So she stayed on the
Business
, haunting it like a ghost. She wandered through the halls, twisting her hands against each other every single time Boss took a skip to the Dignity Vessel.

This time, both Squishy and Turtle remained, not that it mattered. She and Turtle had stopped talking to each other days ago. They had stopped sleeping together once Squishy figured out what the Dignity Vessel was. And they had stopped being civil to each other right at that point.

Turtle had taken Boss's side. Turtle somehow believed that Squishy had gone quietly nuts while she was working for the imperial military, at least on the topic of stealth tech.

And maybe she had. She certainly was much too intense. She had gone from protesting to screaming in the space of an hour once she had seen the Dignity Vessel.

And she had felt betrayed by the fact that Boss had even brought them all here, as if Boss could know about stealth tech.

Yet there was so much about stealth tech that Squishy couldn't tell anyone. She had agreed to confidentiality protocols all along in her career. Even worse, she had agreed to several as a condition for leaving the military with a full pension.

Legally, she couldn't tell anyone about the tech. She had already told Boss too much.

And it hadn't been enough to stop this damn mission.

She was in the
Business
's cockpit, monitoring the communications array, even though she should have been in her cabin. Turtle was on backup duty, not Squishy. Turtle was the one who was supposed to fly out the second skip should the first skip get disabled.

But, even though Squishy was trying to avoid Turtle, she couldn't stay away, not when there was a mission. Not when people she knew were getting dangerously close to malfunctioning stealth tech.

She paced the
Business
's cockpit as if it were the size of an exercise room. Twice, Turtle had told her to stop moving around so much, and twice Squishy had ignored her.

Then Boss's voice came through the comm. “Turtle,” Boss said, sounding odd, “find Squishy for me.”

“She's right here,” Turtle said, and moved away from the comm.

Squishy's heart started to pound. Her mouth was dry. She walked to the communications control panel.

“What?” she asked, even though she knew.

She knew.

“Things have gone bad here,” Boss said. “It sounds like Junior isn't moving. Jypé doesn't want to leave him, and I can't communicate with them.”

Because the stealth field interfered with communications. Squishy had been to that Dignity Vessel; she knew. The person on the skip could hear what was going on in the Dignity Vessel, but couldn't contact the divers inside.

“I'm thinking of going in after Jypé,” Boss said, and suddenly Squishy understood why Boss had contacted her. Boss had just admitted she planned to violate her own procedure.

If divers ran into trouble on a dive, trouble bad enough to kill another diver, then the worst thing the rest of the team could do was go inside and get caught in the same trap. The divers had to get themselves out.

That was Boss's rule. She knew it, but she was alone there, and she needed help enforcing it.

Squishy had to swallow to keep the nausea at bay. Boss was asking her for help. Boss, who had refused to listen to her. If Boss had listened, this wouldn't have happened.

Whatever this was.

“You need to get back here,” Squishy said. “As fast as you can.”

“Jypé's still in the Dignity Vessel,” Boss said. “He's alive.”

Squishy swore and looked at Turtle.

“I think he'll make it,” Boss said. “But he's going to need assistance.”

“He has to get to you,” Squishy said. “He has to be able to get to you on his own. Right now, you don't have enough information. You need to have the survivor come to you.”

She deliberately did not use Jypé's name. If she thought of him as a person, then she would be sick. Dammit. The inexperienced father-and-son team. The ones who brightened everything on this ship. Of course it would have to be them.

Because the universe was cruel that way.

“He'll need my help getting here,” Boss said.

“No,” Squishy said. “Think it through, Boss. There's no sense passing midway, is there?”

Meaning that Boss might not use the same route Jypé did, and they might miss each other. But that wasn't what Squishy was most worried about. When Boss got excited, she used too much oxygen. She got the gids.

She was already excited, maybe even panicked. She wouldn't bring enough oxygen, and then they'd have three dead instead of two.

Because Squishy knew Jypé wouldn't survive. How could he? His son was trapped in the field. Either Junior had vanished, or worse, he had mummified. Rapidly. And eventually his body would disappear as well.

If Jypé was a typical parent—and why wouldn't he be?—he would do everything he could to save his son. That Jypé was talking to Boss, saying he needed help getting out, meant he realized he couldn't save Junior.

And that meant Jypé had probably wasted all of his oxygen.

Boss couldn't go in there.

But Squishy was here, in the
Business.
She couldn't get to Boss in time to prevent her from going in. And she couldn't push too hard.

“Boss, look, we'll be right there,” Squishy said, as if that were possible, as if she could actually get to Boss in time. “You wait for us. Okay? You
wait
.”

“Get here fast,” Boss said. She sounded furious. The last word was cut off because Boss shut down the comm.

But Squishy took heart in that anger. Boss had heard her. Boss hadn't liked what Squishy had to say, but Boss had heard her.

“Let's go,” Squishy said to Turtle.

Turtle had already notified Karl so someone would monitor the
Business.
They were leaving now.

Turtle gave Squishy a cold glance, and Squishy had to look away. Why would Turtle blame Squishy for this? Squishy had tried to prevent it.

“If you had been there,” Turtle said.

“Shut up,” Squishy said. “Just shut up.”

She didn't want to think about what they were heading into. She didn't want to have one or two or three more deaths on her shoulders. Deaths she could have prevented by insisting they leave, by forcing them to leave.

By turning them in to the Empire.

Her breath caught. She could notify the Empire of the Dignity Vessel, let them claim it. They were always willing to take unusual technologies, and they even paid a finder's fee.

Not that she wanted blood money.

But that meant that the Empire had a stake in these technologies and would get here quickly.

She wished she had thought of this earlier.

It would have ruptured her relationship with Boss, but this was already rupturing her relationship with Boss. They would never be friends again—not the kind of friends they had been, the friends who trusted each other through everything.

No one would ever trust Squishy again.

Once they rescued Boss and Jypé—if they could rescue Boss and Jypé—everyone would see Squishy's actions as a great betrayal.

And maybe it was.

But it was a betrayal she should have made earlier, a betrayal that would have saved Junior's life.

She was almost in tears by the time she got to the skip. But tears wouldn't do her any good. She had to be a medic. She had to be strong.

She had to end this farce once and for all.