Jewel

by Veronica Tower

  “Purser Aurora is here to report on the state of the ship’s stores,” Captain Kiara explained. “We’re in a bit of a jam right now—not quite as serious as the Deck Officer has suggested—but it’s a jam just the same. The purser’s going to help us understand our consumable constraints.”

  Jewel considered the captain for a moment while she wondered if the meeting was being recorded. Captain Kiara observed her back with her unblinking eyes. In Jewel’s opinion, a person as lazy and barely competent as the captain appeared to be could only rise to the top by playing the political game very well, so she’d have to cover her ass in this meeting. There was no way she could trust the woman with the steel-gray hair and the off-color dermal bandage on her forehead, even if she hadn’t been angry about the identity of Jewel’s new lover.

  “We had a three percent reserve of fuel in the tanks when we left the mining colony at Thimble,” Jewel reminded them. “Now I’m not a navigator, but I don’t see how we can factor two more slide translations—plus the journey to Arch—on that limited a reserve. We’re going to have to find a closer port to slide to and resupply.”

  Everyone sighed.

  “There goes the bonuses,” Warrant complained.

  “The cost of Armenium in some backwater is going to be astronomical,” Ana observed. “How did you let us get in this position, Jewel?”

  Jewel knew Ana was attempting to stick her with responsibility for this disaster, but her observation actually permitted her to strengthen the record that it was someone else’s fault. “I attempted to requisition the standard twenty percent reserve,” she told the engineer, “but my request was overruled as prohibitively expensive.”

  All eyes turned toward Captain Kiara, who had to approve all major requisitions. Kiara seemed unfazed by Jewel’s statement. “That twenty percent reserve may be standard operating procedure in the League or in the Confederacy, but it’s not out here on the Fringe and you all know it. Cargo transport is about playing the odds. This time we crapped out. Now do you all want to waste time bemoaning a bad turn of fate or do we want to figure out how to get out of this mess with minimal losses?”

  “The fuel situation is not our only serious supply problem,” the Deck Officer noted. “I spoke with Dr. Brüning and he tells me our medical supplies were never intended to accommodate the large number of passengers we’re carrying this trip. We’re running short of all the basics and I seriously doubt that we have enough pharmaceuticals to get the whole human complement of the Euripides through two more translations.”

  “That’s correct,” Jewel agreed. “We didn’t factor an unplanned translation into our supply acquisitions. Food is going to be a problem too if we have to make additional stops to secure fuel and medical supplies.”

  “Of all the short-sighted incompetence,” Ana muttered.

  Unfortunately, Jewel agreed with her, she just hadn’t had the influence or authority to force a more responsible policy.

  “So how are we going to resolve this problem?” Erik asked.

  “Exactly the subject I’ve summoned you here to address,” the captain said. “If we can resolve these issues here in the Valkyrie System, it will minimize the costs by negating the need for additional extraneous slide translations. To that end, Mr. Peron has made some discoveries regarding the inhabitants of this system, which I’d like him to share with us.”

  Erik leaned forward with obvious interest. “Have we heard from them yet?”

  Captain Kiara shook her head. “Nothing since the automated buoy message, but…Mr. Peron?”

  “I have discovered what I believe to be a space station orbiting that gas giant two million miles out from the white dwarf. It’s actually circling one of the larger moons. It’s a planet-size mass about one hundred and ten percent of Earth-standard.”

  “While there is still no contact from the station inhabitants,” the captain cut in, “we’re hopeful that we can cut a deal with them to make up the current deficiencies in our stores and reserves. Ms. Aurora, it will fall to you to negotiate the exchange, of course.”

  Jewel nodded. “An isolated colony like this may be more interested in trading with us then simply selling goods for credits. I’ll draw up a list of items we can use for that purpose.”

  The captain agreed. “I’ll want that list on my terminal for my approval four hours before we dock with the station.”

  You can always count on the captain to stir herself when it comes time to pinch a penny, Jewel thought. Instead of voicing this opinion, she passed the baton to Peron. “And we’ll reach the station when?”

  “At our current fuel-conserving pace we’ll be docking in just under thirty-two hours.”

  The briefing continued, but Jewel only listened with half an ear. Her mind was already deep into her own task, itemizing the sorts of equipment the Euripides might be able to trade.

  Underneath the table, Erik’s foot reached out and touched hers.

  Jewel glared at him a moment before pointedly moving hers away.

  Chapter Four

  When Erik stepped out in the corridor in front of her, Jewel immediately turned around and started back the other direction.

  “Don’t do that, Jewel,” he pleaded. From the increasing frequency of his footsteps she figured he was running after her.

  The last thing Jewel wanted to do was talk to him. No, the last thing she wanted to do was to be seen talking to him, but Erik clearly didn’t care what she wanted right now. Just before he could grab her arm and force her to turn about, she sighed and pivoted to face him. “What is it, Mr. Gunnarson?”

  Erik’s face fell. “What is it? A day ago we were talking about you moving in with me and now you’re doing everything you can to avoid me—and we both know how difficult that is on a ship the size of the Euripides.”

  Hot rage filled Jewel, building off the soul-wrenching pain that had infused her since Ana had first turned on her yesterday. “A day ago I thought we had something special. Now I’ve found out that I’m just another girl in your black book—a virgin spacer to add to your list of conquests.” She’d waited a long time to give away her virginity and she felt really and truly stupid that the man she’d finally surrendered it to proved to be the Casanova of the space lanes. How could she have been so foolish? She may not like her parents, but when she’d risked their fortune she’d thought she was doing it for love, not to be that bastard’s latest girl. Kole Delling might not have been anxious to marry her before, but now he had legitimate grounds to call off the wedding, terminate the partnership between her cartel and his house and beggar the lot of them.

  “You were a virgin?” Erik asked. The idea seemed to surprise him. “I didn’t realize. I wish you’d told me. I’d have handled things differently.”

  Jewel harrumphed and tried to turn away, but Erik pulled her back around to face him. “But it ultimately wouldn’t have mattered. You’re not like any other woman I’ve been with, Jewel. There was nothing routine or casual about what we did yesterday, or about how I feel for you now. I won’t pretend I wasn’t attracted to Ana when we were together, but once I met you, I knew that what she and I shared wasn’t what I was looking for.”

  His answer only stoked the anger burning inside of Jewel. “But you thought what you had with Ana was real, didn’t you? Just like you thought it was real with Captain Kiara and the Stars alone know how many others before her.”

  Erik clearly would have preferred that the captain not be involved in this conversation. “Having a relationship with the captain was a mistake. I already told you I find powerful, capable women very attractive. I mistook that for something deeper than it was. Surely you can understand that? I was just searching for what I’ve finally found in you.”

  Spacer Alfonse Arico appeared at the far end of the corridor and stopped when he saw the two of them arguing. A grin twisted his lips from ear to ear and remained even after Erik turned on him. “Get out of here, Arico, or I’ll make you sorry.”

  “Yes, Si
r, Mr. Exec, Sir,” Arico said through his grin. He started moving again, but with glacial slowness.

  Erik turned around and grabbed Jewel’s wrist. “Come on. Let’s go finish this in my cabin where we can talk in private.”

  Jewel had no intention of going anywhere private with this man. “I’m not going to your cabin.” She pulled back hard, trying to get him to let go of her arm. She had to tug twice before he released her.

  Erik was breathing hard and his white face had flushed an unhealthy shade of red. “Look, Jewel, please. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Don’t throw it away because Ana lost her cool and went psycho on us.”

  “Psycho?” Jewel retorted. “Is that what you call it? The woman is obviously in love with you.”

  “And I’ve fallen in love with you,” Erik told her. He stepped up against her, grabbing her face in both hands and kissed her.

  Jewel shoved him away despite the treacherous wave of heat that flushed through her body. “What in the Stars do you think you’re doing?”

  Behind Erik, Alfonse Arico was still watching and grinning, adding further humiliation to Jewel’s rage.

  “I’m trying to show you I love you,” Erik told her. He stepped close against her again. “And trying to remind you that you have feelings for me too…”

  She shoved him away again. “What is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how impossible you’ve made my life on this ship? You’ve had relationships with the captain and the engineer. How am I supposed to work with both of them hating me?”

  “They’ll get over it,” Erik told her. “We have a right to see each other if we want to.” He stepped in to kiss her again. This time he was ready when Jewel tried to push him back. He blocked her feeble effort easily with a martial arts move and got his arms around her body and his lips on her mouth.

  She struggled for a moment, but her body betrayed her, reminding her of how good it had felt when Erik held her in the shower. She began to relax into Erik’s kiss, but then remembered Spacer Arico was still watching them and shoved Erik away, not as violently as the first time, but seriously just the same. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest and a frightening yet delicious heat roared between her thighs. Her face felt just as flushed as Erik’s looked.

  He stepped forward as if he planned to kiss her again.

  Jewel shook her head to clear her thoughts and thrust one arm out between them. “That’s enough of that,” she said. Her voice wasn’t nearly forceful enough, but it slowed him down a little. “I can’t talk now, I have to think and…” What was she doing before Erik interrupted her anyway? She remembered with sudden clarity. “And I have to get to the bridge.”

  Erik backed off a step, apparently satisfied that she’d stopped completely rejecting him.

  Pulling the tattered shreds of her dignity together, Jewel pushed past Erik, gaining confidence as she walked. She almost thought she’d escaped when the exec called out again from behind her. “Wait up, Jewel. I have to go there too!”

  * * * * *

  The bridge remained a mess forty-one hours after the crash translation that had dumped them in this star system. The vomit had been cleaned up and the personnel had showered and donned fresh uniforms, but the atmosphere was a second disaster waiting to happen. Part of the problem was mental—the crew was angry over its circumstances and the knowledge that their pay for this trip was going to be atrociously small at best. But the other part of the problem was physical—like everything else on the Euripides, the air filters needed replacing. While they were still technically viable if the ship’s crew carried out regularly scheduled maintenance cleaning, they’d long ago lost the ability to make the air they circulated smell fresh and clean. Taken together the atmosphere on the command deck was reminiscent of a terminally ill beast snapping at its handlers when they tried to bring it water.

  “What’s our status, Warrant?” Erik asked as he entered the bridge behind Jewel. He couldn’t even let a few minutes pass between their entrances. No, he had to emphasize the fact that the two of them were together—even though Jewel had just tried to make it clear that that wasn’t the case anymore.

  “Tried” being the operative word. Not kicking Erik in the balls when he kissed her in front of witnesses probably supported the still together argument pretty well.

  “Unchanged since our last update,” the Deck Officer told him. “We’ve received an automated message from Brynhild Station instructing us to assume a parking orbit, but no human has responded to any of our queries.”

  “I see,” Erik responded. There was an odd tone of disappointment in his voice that had nothing at all to do with their plummeting chances of fixing the Euripides’ problems.

  Behind him, Captain Kiara entered the bridge. The scuttlebutt had it that she hadn’t been here at all since those first minutes after entering the system, working from her cabin where the air smelled cleaner and leaving the day-to-day chores of operating the vessel to the exec and the deck officer. But now that she was here, she obviously intended to reassert her direct authority. Her eyes immediately picked out the odd element on her command deck. “What are you doing here, Aurora?”

  “I’m waiting to observe first contact,” Jewel told her. She kept her tone level, trying to display no sign of worry or tension. “If all goes according to your plan, I’ll be negotiating with someone on that station soon. The more I can learn about them, the better I can do my job.”

  Kiara considered that for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. Then she turned to Erik. “Mr. Exec, those are your people on that station. What’s going on here? Why won’t they talk to us?”

  “I don’t know,” Erik admitted, “but I think we have to consider the possibility that the station is deserted.”

  “What possibility?” Peron cut in. “It’s obvious no one is home.”

  Based on the captain’s slow and thoughtful nod, it was evident that she agreed with the navigator. Jewel didn’t like to see Peron get ahead in anything, so she voiced her own question. “What are the other possibilities, Erik—Mr. Gunnarson?”

  Erik raised an eyebrow at her formal address.

  “Well, Mr. Exec?” Kiara prompted him.

  Erik prevaricated. “It’s just speculation at this point.”

  “That’s all any of us can do right now,” the captain pointed out.

  “Well I’ve tried to put myself in the position of anyone who might be living on that station,” Erik said.

  Jewel figured that was the whole point of asking him. As the captain had said, they were his people, after all.

  “Go ahead,” the captain told him.

  Erik began to warm to his topic. “Assume, if you will, that they know the Armenites took over our home world twenty standards ago. Armen now claims all territory that once belonged to my people. That means that Armen now claims this star system. If you don’t wish to belong to the Armenite Hegemony you have two choices—you can abandon Valkyrie for non-Armenite space or you can…duck your head and try not to be noticed.”

  The captain was starting to get impatient with Erik. “So we’ve noticed them, what now?”

  “Well by appearing deserted, the inhabitants of this system could conceivably suck any visitor in close enough for them to deal with.”

  “And by deal with you mean?” the captain asked.

  “If I was on that station and I wanted to remain independent of the Hegemony then I would try to make myself look as harmless as possible until the visitors were close enough to blow out of the space lanes.”

  Everyone fell silent for a minute as they considered this.

  Finally, Jewel broke the silence. “I’m not certain that makes sense, Mr. Gunnarson. If the inhabitants of this system are that worried about the Armenites finding them, why didn’t they change their buoy signals so they wouldn’t identify Valkyrie as a Ymirian system?”

  Warrant stepped into the discussion. “Jewel’s making sense, Gunnarson. It’s certainly possible that they’re layi
ng low like you suggested. I can even see why you’d want to think that’s what’s happening. But Gunnarson, it’s been more than twenty standard years. Occam’s Razor says they’ve abandoned the station. We’ve had no sign whatsoever that anyone’s at home.”

  Captain Kiara shifted about in her seat. “Let’s be overly cautious for a moment and assume that the exec is right. Can we see any offensive capability?”

  Warrant shook his head. “No, we can’t. There are no obvious weapons. It’s a civilian station top to bottom. Honestly, the only thing unusual in the system apart from the station’s silence is an antique starship parked against it.”

  “A what?” Kiara asked. The captain looked as confused as Jewel felt.

  “It’s an antique starship—pre-slide drive,” Warrant explained.

  “Pre-slide drive?” the captain repeated. “You mean one of the old generational merchant vessels?”

  “No, it’s a colonizer,” Warrant clarified, “an honest to God, old-style colonizer.”

  In the days before the faster-than-light slide drive was invented, ships spanned the void between stars by cranking up to a significant fraction of the speed of light and spending dozens of standards making the voyage. Large extended families crewed these vessels, making their living trading between the gravity wells. The colonizers were variations on this theme—ships designed for one-way journeys out among the stars. The initial journeys might take decades or more as the colonists sought unsettled planets and at the end of the journey, the vessels themselves would be cannibalized for materials needed to establish the colony. This sort of venture had quickly died out after the introduction of the slide drive, but there had to be hundreds of old style colonizer ships still out there making their way toward star systems that as likely as not had already been settled by people with newer technology.