Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

“—and no one ever taught me about stealth tech. It’s the stuff of legends and kid’s tales.”

“It was banned.” Squishy’s voice is soft, but has power. “It was banned five hundred years ago, and every few generations, we try to revive it or modify it or improve it. Doesn’t work.”

“What doesn’t work?” Junior asks.

The tension is rising. I can’t let it get too far out of control, but I want to hear what Squishy has to say.

“The tech shadows the ships, makes them impossible to see, even with the naked eye,” Squishy says.

“Bullshit,” Turtle says. “Stealth just masks instruments, makes it impossible to read the ships on equipment. That’s all.”

Squishy turns, lets her arms drop. “You know all about this now? Did you spend three years studying stealth? Did you spend two years of post-doc trying to recreate it?”

Turtle is staring at her like she’s never seen her before. “Of course not.”

“You have?” Karl asks.

Squishy nods. “Why do you think I find things? Why do you think I like finding things that are lost?”

Junior shakes his head. I’m not following the connection either.

“Why?” Jypé asks. Apparently he’s not following it as well.

“Because,” Squishy says, “I’ve accidentally lost so many things.”

“Things?” Karl’s voice is low. His face seems pale in the lounge’s dim lighting.

“Ships, people, materiel. You name it, I lost it trying to make it invisible to sensors. Trying to recreate the tech you just found on that ship.”

My breath catches. “How do you know it’s there?”

“We’ve been looking at it from the beginning,” Squishy says. “That damn probe is stuck like half my experiments got stuck, between one dimension and another. There’s only one way in and no way out. And the last thing you want—the very last thing—is for one of us to get stuck like that.”

“I don’t believe it.” Turtle says with such force that I know she and Squishy have been having this argument from the moment we first saw the wreck.

“Believe it.” Squishy says that to me, not Turtle. “Believe it with all that you are. Get us out of here, and if you’re truly humane, blow that wreck up, so no one else can find it.”

“Blow it up?” Junior whispers.

The action is so opposite anything I know that I feel a surge of anger. We don’t blow up the past. We may search it, loot it, and try to understand it, but we don’t destroy it.

“Get rid of it.” Squishy’s eyes are filled with tears. She’s looking at me, speaking only to me. “Boss, please. It’s the only sane thing to do.”

Sane or not, I’m torn.

If Squishy’s right, then I have a dual dilemma: the technology is lost, new research on it banned, even though the military keeps conducting research anyway trying, if I’m understanding Squishy right, to rediscover something we knew thousands of years before.

Which makes this wreck so very valuable that I could more than retire with the money we’d get for selling it. I would—we would—be rich for the rest of our very long lives.

Is the tech dangerous because the experiments to rediscover it are dangerous? Or is it dangerous because there’s something inherent about it that makes it unfeasible now and forever?

Karl is right: to do this properly, we have to go back and research Dignity Vessels, stealth tech, and the last few thousand years.

But Turtle’s also right: we’ll take a huge chance of losing the wreck if we do that. We’ll be like countless other divers who sit around bars throughout this sector and bemoan the treasures they lost because they didn’t guard them well enough.

We can’t leave. We can’t even let Squishy leave. We have to stay until we make a decision.

Until I make a decision.

On my own.

First, I look up Squishy’s records. Not her dive histories, not her arrest records, not her disease manifolds—the stuff any dive captain would examine—but her personal history, who she is, what she’s done, who she’s become.

I haven’t done that on any of my crew before. I’ve always thought it an invasion of privacy. All we need to know, I’d say to other dive captains, is whether they can handle the equipment, whether they’ll steal from their team members, and if their health is good enough to handle the rigors.

And I believed it until now, until I found myself digging through layers of personal history that are threaded into the databases filling the Business’s onboard computer.

Fortunately for me and my nervous stomach, the more sensitive databases are linked only to me—no one else even knows they exist (although anyone with brains would guess that they do)—and even if someone finds the databases, no one can access them without my codes, my retinal scan, and, in many cases, a sample of my DNA.

Still, I’m skittish as I work this—sound off, screen on dim. I’m in the cockpit, which is my domain, and I have the doors to the main cabin locked. I feel like everyone on the Business knows I’m betraying Squishy. And I feel like they all hate me for it.

Squishy’s real name is Rosealma Quintinia. She was born forty years ago in a multinational cargo vessel called The Bounty . Her parents insisted she spend half her day in artificial gravity so she wouldn’t develop spacer’s limbs—truncated, fragile—and she didn’t. But she gained a grace that enabled her to go from zero-G to Earth Normal and back again without much transition at all, a skill few ever gain.

Her family wanted her to cargo, maybe even pirate, but she rebelled. She had a scientific mind, and without asking anyone’s permission, took the boards—scoring a perfect 100, something no cargo monkey had ever done before.

A hundred schools all over the known systems wanted her. They offered her room, board, and tuition, but only one offered her all expenses paid both coming and going from the school, covering the only cost that really mattered to a spacer’s kid—the cost of travel.

She went, of course, and vanished into the system, only to emerge twelve years later—too thin, too poor, and too bitter to ever be considered a success. She signed on with a cargo vessel as a medic, and soon became one of its best and most fearless divers.

She met Turtle in a bar, and they became lovers. Turtle showed her that private divers make more money, and brought her to me.

And that was when our partnership began.

I sigh, rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, and lean my head against the screen.

Much as I regret it, it’s time for questions now.

Of course, she’s waiting for me.

She’s brought down the privacy wall in the room she initially shared with Turtle, making their rift permanent. Her bed is covered with folded clothes. Her personal trunk is open at the foot. She’s already packed her nightclothes and underwear inside.

“You’re leaving?” I ask.

“I can’t stay. I don’t believe in the mission. You’ve preached forever the importance of unity, and I believe you, Boss. I’m going to jeopardize everything.”

“You’re acting like I’ve already made a decision about the future of this mission.”

“Haven’t you?” She sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded primly in her lap, her back straight. Her bearing is military—something I’ve always seen, but never really noticed until now.

“Tell me about stealth tech,” I say.

She raises her chin slightly. “It’s classified.”

“That’s fucking obvious.”

She glances at me, clearly startled. “You tried to research it?”

I nod. I tried to research it when I was researching Dignity Vessels. I tried again from the Business . I couldn’t find much, but I didn’t have to tell her that.