“Figuring out stealth tech.”
She sounds almost fanatical. There’s a light in her eye I haven’t seen before.
“I don’t want to figure out stealth tech,” I say to her. “I want to prevent my father and the Empire from figuring it out. It’s dangerous.”
“I know,” she says softly.
“I want to destroy it,” I say.
“You’ve told me that,” she says.
“Yes, I have,” I say, “but you don’t seem to understand. I want to destroy it. By myself. At no risk to anyone else.”
This time, she heard me. She looks at me, a slight frown creasing her forehead. “If that’s the case, why did you come to me?”
“Remember our conversation about the Dignity Vessel?” I ask. “Remember how you asked me to blow up the ship?”
“Yes,” she says. “You wouldn’t.”
“For a variety of reasons. I wasn’t going to because I wanted that ship. I loved the mystery of it, the history in it. I loved how challenging it was, and I found it beautiful. I didn’t want to destroy it. I wanted to explore it.”
“I know,” she says, crossing her arms.
“But I asked you a question about destroying the Dignity Vessel, remember? I asked you what would happen if we bombed it. Would we do some kind of damage? Open a rift in that dimensional field that the ship traveled in? Would we leave the stealth tech intact while destroying the ship?”
“I told you it didn’t matter,” she says.
“But it does,” I say. “Because ships do travel through there. And the last thing we want is for them to go into some kind of weird anomaly that we created.”
She stares at me. “And that’s somehow worse than the Empire getting stealth tech? Tell me how.”
She’s seeing something I’m not. “People will die,” I say.
“Do you know how many people will die when the Empire fully develops its stealth tech? The Colonnade Wars aren’t really over. They’re in hiatus. The Empire still believes the rebels are traitors. It’ll attack the Nine Planets Alliance, and it’ll be impossible to defeat. That’s why the Empire wants this. You know it’s important. You called it the holy grail of military technology, and you’re right.”
It’s my turn to stand. I know some of what she’s saying, but there’s a recklessness to her words, a recklessness born of deep conviction. She believes it’s wrong, so we can take any measure to destroy stealth tech, damn the consequences.
If dealing with stealth tech has taught me anything, it has taught me this: Actions have consequences. And some of those consequences can be prevented with thought and preparation.
I say, as calmly as I can, “I came to you, Squishy, because you understand stealth tech—”
“No one understands stealth tech,” she says.
I clear my throat, irritated. I have to take two deep breaths before I can continue.
“I came to you because you know more about stealth tech than I do—-”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she says.
“Do you want to hear me out or not?” I snap.
She looks startled. No matter what has happened between us over all these years, I have rarely lost my temper at her.
“I’m sorry.” She uncrosses her arms and threads her fingers together. She adopts a posture of someone who is trying hard to listen, and while I don’t doubt her sincerity, I do doubt her ability to hear me.
She’s fanatical about stealth tech, just like I was fanatical about that Dignity Vessel.
“You understand the science of stealth tech,” I say.
She’s about to object, but I hold up one hand.
“Or,” I add, “you understand more of it than I do, and probably more than I ever will. I don’t have a scientific mind. I’m suited toward history and exploration, not contemplation.”
She moves slightly. I sense impatience, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I want a real, scientific examination of what can happen if we destroy that Dignity Vessel. I want to know the best case and the worst case, and everything you can think of in-between. I want to know if we’re going to unleash something awful into the universe. I want to know if we’re going to do what we’re trying to prevent the Empire from doing.”
She waits. I nod, indicating that I’m done, at least for the moment.
“What about the Room?” she asks.
“What about it?” I ask.
“Do you want to destroy that too?”
“Yes,” I say. “But I think we have to pick our targets correctly. Right now, scientists are working on that Dignity Vessel. Anyone can go into the ship. It’s just one small area that keeps them out. So the study is easier. But I know no one is working the Room yet. It’s still too dangerous.”
“You said they can create that marker,” she says. “Soon they’ll have scientists inside of it.”
“I don’t know if that’s a lie or not,” I say. “Riya Trekov told me that, and I got the impression that finding the genetic marker and making one that works is still in the experimental stages. Think about it, Squishy. Would you go into that Room knowing how many people died in there, just because someone promises you that the untested marker they’ve given you might work?”
“You went in with a lot less.”
I turn away from her. She’s right, of course. I had gone in with a lot less. But I had no desire to come out.
I haven’t told her that part.
“So did Karl,” she adds.
“I can’t speak for Karl,” I say. Then I realize how harsh that sounds. “When you put it in those terms, however, it does seem out of character for him. He was always cautious. I have to think he thought everything through.”
“Everything except the fact that the device might not work.”
I shake my head. “We talked about that. We knew going into the Room might be suicide.”
“I can understand why you would want to do it,” she says. “Your mother died in there. You probably felt guilty about that, figured you might deserve to die.”
I don’t move. She’s close, but not as close as she thinks. Because I wasn’t feeling guilty about my mother. I was thinking of Jypé and Junior and the other divers I’d lost over the years.
My failures over the years.
My failures. Not my parents’ failures or things that had happened to me as a child. But the things that I had done wrong.
“But Karl didn’t have that dark side to his personality,” Squishy says. “At his core, Karl was an optimist.”
I wouldn’t have called him that, but we each have our perceptions. And Squishy’s perceptions of me are closer than I like to think. So maybe she is close with Karl too.
“He was also an adventurer,” I say. “That’s his job. And as cautious as he was, he was cautious in the context of a job that could have killed him every time he put on that suit.”
She pauses. “True enough,” she says after a long moment.
“Most scientists aren’t risk takers. They—”
“That’s not true,” she says.
“But it is,” I say.
“Scientists take risks every day,” she says over me. “That’s what their experiments are. Daily risks.”
“In a controlled environment. With data that can be quantified and measured and moved forward. Every scientist I know hates it when something unexpected happens. You hated it, Squishy. That was one of the reasons you left the military program.”
Her face flattens. She gets that expression she had when I first saw her in Vallevu—protected, guarded.
Angry.
“No scientist is going to go to an uncontrolled environment like the Room—an environment none of us completely understands—and run experiments. That could compromise the experiments. You know that, Squishy.”
She stares at me.
“But scientists like you,” I say, “scientists who are also adventurers would go into the Dignity Vessel. People without the marker have gon
e into that ship and come out alive. They can send probes into it, maybe some kind of countermeasures. They can work with that level of stealth tech, but not the fully functional level of stealth tech.”
She doesn’t move for the longest time. Finally she glances at the image she has frozen. It’s just a corner of the Room, and it looks hazy because—well, I’m not sure why. Because something was happening to Karl’s equipment, maybe, or because the equipment couldn’t capture everything the human eye could see.
“You’re taking a lot of risk based on some supposition,” she says after a moment.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“What if you’re wrong? What if you destroy the Dignity Vessel and leave the Room intact, and the Dignity Vessel isn’t what they were interested in? What if the Room is?”
She has a good point. She always makes good points.
But there’s only so much I can do. And even though I’m an adventurer, there’s only so much I’m willing to risk.
At least at first.
“If we can successfully destroy the Dignity Vessel,” I say, “then we can consider destroying the Room. Let’s do this methodically. Let’s see what a small explosion will do before we contemplate a larger one.”
“We?” she asks.
“Me,” I say, “using some technology you’ve designed for me.”
“You want me to build a bomb?” She looks around the room we’re standing in. Her office, in a doctor’s quarters. She has spent the last several years saving lives. Now I want her to make something that might take them.
“Yes,” I say. “Haven’t I been clear?”
“Not that clear,” she mutters. “You haven’t been that clear at all.”
~ * ~
TWENTY-NINE
S
quishy shuts off the images from Karl’s suit. Then she sinks into a nearby chair. She suddenly looks tired.
I’m not sure what she thought I wanted. It’s clear how involved she is in her life here. The children, the medical practice, the lovely house. It’s all something that radiates contentment.
Although Squishy doesn’t radiate contentment at the moment.
“Obviously we haven’t been communicating,” she says softly. “Tell me again why you’re here.”
I grab a nearby chair and sit down. “Before you left the Business, you insisted that we destroy the Dignity Vessel. I got the sense that you knew how to do it. I just wasn’t willing to listen.”
She nods.
“So now, I’m willing to listen. I’m going to destroy that damn ship, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m afraid if I do it wrong, I’ll make things worse. Or maybe I’ll just blow another hole in the hull and it won’t hurt the stealth tech at all. That piece will stay intact.”
She isn’t looking at me. She nods again, as if she understands what I’m saying.
“What I want from you,” I say, “what I’m hoping you can give me, is a foolproof way to destroy that ship.”
“Without destroying whoever takes the bomb inside,” she says.
I shake my head. “I’m taking it in. Alone. If I die, I die. But I don’t want to take a bomb in and die in vain. Do you understand now?”
She doesn’t say anything. She extends her hands and studies them as if she’s never seen them before, as if they belong to someone else. She’s hunched into herself, and I have the sense that I’ve disappointed her yet again.
“What did you think I came for?” I ask.
She shakes her head slightly.
“Squishy,” I say, “what did you think I was asking?”
“I want to destroy it,” she says after a moment. “I deserve to destroy it. After all, it nearly destroyed me.”
I can say nothing to that. Squishy doesn’t look destroyed to me. She looks like a successful woman, a pillar in her community. People love her here. I’ve discovered that in my few days in Vallevu. They love her and they don’t understand why I am here.
I’m beginning to wonder that myself.
I leave her because we have reached an impasse. She won’t help me destroy the ship if she can’t place the charges. And I’m going to be the only one who places the bomb.
Too many other people have died in my place. Some of the early divers I’ve lost, I lost because we didn’t know how to properly run a dive. I can cope with that. We made mistakes, and any one of us could have died.
A few others died because of their own stupidity. I don’t blame myself for that either. I’m not responsible for every stupid act someone pulls.
But Jypé and Junior died for my greed, because I thought I knew best. I didn’t investigate enough. If anyone should have died in that wreck, it was me.
Only, as I later discovered, I couldn’t have died there. I was the only one on board who could have investigated stealth tech, and I was the one who didn’t dive that wreck enough to get to the tech first. I could have survived the tech. I could have pulled the debris away from the field and found the probe. I would have seen the danger, and warned the others away.
No one would have died.
I blame myself for their deaths, for not giving them enough information about the dive, and for not listening to Squishy.
But that’s not the death that bothers me. Karl bothers me. He died in my place, doing my job. Granted, we had discussed the dangers, and we both thought we understood them. But Karl had no chance of surviving the Room. Even without knowing the information my father and Riya Trekov kept secret, we knew that I had a chance of survival because I had survived the Room before.
I don’t know how to tell Squishy about these things. I can’t let her go into that cockpit. I can’t let her plant any bombs. She would be going in my place, no matter how much she says she deserves it, and I can’t let her do that.
I can’t let someone else die in my place.
Too many have died already.
I pace my hotel room, trying to think of a way to get Squishy to work with me instead of trying to take over the mission. The hotel room itself is uncomfortable, partly because it’s on land.
I’ve had several nightmares here, each worse than the last. First I see my mother drift. Then I hear the music for hours, and I wake to silence, clutching my ears. Finally, I dream repeatedly of Karl, his voice slowing as he realizes that he’s trapped and we’ll never find him, even though he’s only a few meters away.
In my nights here, I switch between the bed and the couch. The bed is soft and covered with blankets. It looks inviting. After I found Squishy, I napped here and forced myself awake as the first nightmare came on.
So I moved the half dozen pillows to the couch in the front room of the suite and slept there, thinking I wouldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep soundly. I dreamt more in that half sleep than I would have in a full sleep, so I moved back to the bed again.
The room itself has a view of the mountains and the sky. I can program everything from thousands of plays and holovids and readings that play on the wall across from the bed to the bed itself. I can make it softer or firmer, raise it up or let it flatten against the floor. I can even change its length and width—within the confines of the room, of course.
But the one thing I can’t program is the environment. Sure, I can change the temperature and the humidity. But I can’t change the gravity, and I can’t make the room feel like it’s on a ship, hurtling through space. If I could do that—if I could make the room feel like it’s traveling far from here—I would be able to sleep.
Being in the room only adds to my frustration. I leave, heading to the restaurant across the street.
The hotel has its own restaurant, but it’s like restaurants in a thousand other places, with a generic menu designed to appeal to people from all over the system. The restaurant across the street has local cuisine, using local ingredients, and I have fallen in love with one of the omelets, made with homegrown tomatoes and mint. I don’t recognize the cheese placed on top, but it adds a tang that only accents the mint.
> The restaurant never closes. On my first night in the hotel, I came here after fighting the nightmares and ordered the best meal in the house, letting the chef decide what that was. He asked me what I needed, and I said comfort food, and somehow he figured out the kind of meal that soothed me.
From then on, I was hooked on the place. I’ve come often enough to become known as Rosealma’s friend. No one here calls her Squishy, and I’m careful not to. I don’t want to explain how she got the nickname.
Diving into the Wreck - [Diving Universe 01] Page 22
