Jewel

by Veronica Tower

  “Well you could start by sending my people,” Strongheart said, “and whatever equipment my number two tells you we need.”

  Jewel watched as he ticked the items off on his fingers.

  “And we could use your engineer, of course. If we’re going to use these boats, we’re going to have to get them out of the boathouses and make certain they’re in proper working order.”

  He stopped and flashed a big grin at Erik, Jester, Falco and the others. “And finally, what we need more than anything else, is for you to find the location of those two platforms so we know where to start diving for them.”

  Chapter Ten

  Four local days later, Jewel rode across the storm-roughened waters of the North Sea in the company of Strongheart and his twenty-five miners. They hadn’t been easy days, especially with Erik maneuvering to get her alone to steal a few kisses, despite his promises to act more professionally than that. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t love to indulge him, but with Spy active in her head again she simply could not afford to flirt with the man. So she’d thrown herself into her work to avoid being alone with Erik and accidentally impressed Captain Kiara enough that she’d been given the new responsibility of chaperoning the miners. She still wasn’t exactly certain how she’d drawn the short straw and she certainly wasn’t happy about it. As purser she was clearly a ship’s officer, but how that qualified her to be in charge of a mining salvage operation was way beyond her.

  As much as she tried to, Jewel couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad was just over the horizon, and it wasn’t just the storm clouds and the snow setting off her nerves. Two sets of colonists had disappeared on this moon and she didn’t want to add herself and the crew of the Euripides to the death count.

  To make things even more difficult, Ana Yang was with her on the boat. Jewel had been getting along with the woman a little more cordially since the armenium had been discovered but that really wasn’t saying very much. Ana was still furious over Erik leaving her for Jewel, and was clearly not ready to give up on the executive officer. Strangely enough, Ana’s jealousy had worked in Jewel’s favor in Snója, helping her to keep Erik at arm’s length. It would only take one kiss from the exec to turn the spy in her head completely against her. Actually having sex with Erik would provide Spy with undeniable proof that Jewel was off her parents’ metaphorical reservation and running her own game. Jewel really didn’t want to deal with the bioware under those circumstances.

  Beside the launch, Jester drove one of the two speedboats, looking like he was actually enjoying himself. The boats were called Hunin and Munin, after the ravens of the Norse god, Odin, and they were fast enough that Jester could literally have driven circles around the larger boat if he had wanted to.

  The boat Jewel rode on had the almost unpronounceable name of Tanngrinir, which was apparently a goat that pulled the chariot of the Norse god, Thor. Goat-driven chariots didn’t sound all that sexy to Jewel, but maybe they had been considered to be the power-starships of their century.

  Erik, over his own vehement protests, had remained at Snója to keep the base camp operating and to organize the transportation of any recovered armenium from the launch to the shore and from there to the Genesis where it would wait for the Euripides to return from its jaunt around the solar system collecting space buoys.

  That last was yet another thing that bothered Jewel about this operation. Removing space buoys—without replacing them, of course—violated the laws of every planet she had ever heard of. She’d argued unsuccessfully that taking down the buoys served no legitimate purpose. If the Aremenites ever did find Valkyrie and recognized the true value of the system, nothing was going to stop them from claiming the moon. But as with so many other matters since arriving in this system, she’d lost that argument too. Captain Kiara was convinced that if any other starship stumbled upon this system and reported they had discovered a former Ymirian colony, the Armenites would certainly arrive in force to claim it, cutting off all of their future profits.

  * * * * *

  “How are we doing, Strongheart?” Jewel asked later that afternoon.

  The squat man gave her a thumbs-up through the falling snow instead of answering through the all-environment suit’s intercom. He and nine of his men were geared up and ready to dive to the first of the wrecked platforms. Jewel couldn’t help but feel this was a mistake, but she’d given up arguing about it, concentrating instead on sifting through the data Spy had found for her. It was, as she had already noted, voluminous to the say the least, and she’d grown sick of reading through it days ago.

  “Anything you need from me?” she asked.

  “Just that you make sure the ship is still here when we come up again,” Strongheart laughed.

  He certainly seemed confident. Ana and he had personally checked each and every all-environment suit. They looked more like patchwork quilts to Jewel then underwater survival gear, but they were apparently good to go.

  Strongheart moved to the back of the launch and hoisted himself up on the rail.

  Jewel shivered in her heavy parka, glad that it was water resistant and pushing most of the spray away. “Your heaters are working? You’ve double checked your air supply?”

  She could see Strongheart’s expression through the faceplate of the suit. His constant good humor was beginning to fray with annoyance. “Why, Ms. Aurora, I’m beginning to think you’ve become interested in me. Should Mr. Gunnarson be alarmed?”

  What did that comment mean? Spy asked her.

  Be quiet, Jewel sub-vocalized. He’s teasing me.

  To Strongheart, Jewel tried to laugh off her nervousness. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I keep reading about what happened to the Ymirians. And remember, there was a whole other group of colonists who disappeared before them. Money isn’t worth dying for.”

  “Oh, I quite disagree, Ms. Aurora,” Strongheart said with one of his patented big smiles. “Money is the only thing worth dying for!”

  Without another word, he tipped himself backward and disappeared beneath the angry gray waves.

  * * * * *

  An hour later, Jewel still couldn’t stop herself from pacing. How are they doing, Spy?

  Are you certain you would not like me to lower your blood pressure? the bioware asked. I am far more effective than any sedative a doctor could prescribe.

  I’m certain you are, Jewel thought to herself, but instead she said, Would you please just answer the question?

  Mr. Strongheart has reached the estimated depth of the station. I am monitoring his progress through the cameras on his suit.

  A murky image appeared in Jewel’s eye—generated by Spy stimulating her optic nerve. This resulted in a form of double vision that could best be cleared up by Jewel closing her eyes.

  She didn’t do that.

  I thought I told you not to mess with my body chemistry, she told Spy.

  I am attempting to fulfill your instructions to update you on the progress of the divers, Spy replied.

  Maybe. Or maybe Spy was just trying to get her hooked on the technology again? Jewel wondered.

  She considered making the program terminate the visual effect, but decided she really did prefer to see what was happening.

  Carry on.

  Two hours later, Strongheart’s voice came through his suit’s com unit with an unexpected discovery. “There are air pockets left in the mining platform.”

  Jewel felt just as amazed as he sounded.

  “How is that possible?” she asked. “Everything we’ve read in the colony logs suggests the sea here is very hard on non-metallic substances. That’s why the platform sank in the first place. Why didn’t the sea finish the job after pulling the platform down?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Strongheart said, “but it’s a real bonus for us. We can bring down a couple of generators, heat up some of these rooms, maybe even pump out some more water. This will give us a space we can rest and eat in and recharge the oxygen and power in our
suits.”

  Jewel found herself shaking her head. “I think that’s extraordinarily dangerous,” she told the miner. “At the very least we need to figure out why the corrosion stopped before we start trusting you and your men’s lives to that thing.”

  “It’s probably a matter of depth,” Strongheart argued. “Whatever causes the corrosion is only operative at surface level. If it’s even here in the depths it becomes inert—inactive.”

  “That hypothesis doesn’t fit the facts,” Jewel warned him. “Most of the accidents outside the sinking of the two floating platforms occurred while the men were physically mining the armenium. That happened even lower than you are now. Depth is no protection.”

  “Well, we’ll be careful,” Strongheart promised.

  Jewel didn’t find comfort in his words.

  * * * * *

  “Hey, stranger!” Erik waved to Jewel from one of the little boats they were using to ferry the armenium ore back and forth to Snója. It wasn’t a particularly efficient way to move the ore. The little boats were better for passengers than they were for cargo. But the crew of the Euripides was making good with what they had at hand. As for the land to orbital leg of the journey they would do as the Ymirians clearly had before them and fall back on the Meteorite they’d found parked on Genesis. They hadn’t accumulated a lot of ore yet, but it was early in the recovery operation.

  Jewel waved back at Erik, slightly disturbed at how excited she felt to see him after more than a week apart. She took a deep breath trying to calm her body, knowing that Spy would detect the physical signs of her attraction and correctly interpret them. She would have to keep Erik at an arm’s distance. Putting him off would hurt him, but Spy was going to freak out if she ever genuinely suspected that Jewel and the executive officer were lovers.

  Erik tied the little boat to the launch while Jester held it steady in the rough water. It was snowing, of course. When hadn’t it snowed since they’d landed on this moon? But as storms went, this was a light one for the region, and Erik had no difficulty scrambling up the ladder and opening his arms to give Jewel a hug.

  She sidestepped him. As much as she really would enjoy feeling his strong arms around her, it simply couldn’t happen under the circumstances. And if Spy weren’t enough of a problem, they had Ana Yang on the boat with them. Right or wrong, a warm physical greeting was just asking for trouble. So as much as Jewel wanted to, she simply couldn’t give Erik the hug and kiss they both wanted.

  Erik looked hurt, but he didn’t question her evasion. “How’s it going down there? I decided it was time I came out and saw the center of operations in person.”

  They began to walk together toward the back of the ship where Ana was trying once again to get the starboard winch back up and running. The winches were absolutely necessary if they were to haul the ore-filled cargo containers up to the surface. Each one pulled a mile long cable up to the surface, dragging loaded cargo containers behind it.

  “If you want the genuine center of operations, you have to go down to Jörmungadr II with Strongheart,” Jewel told him. “Up here it’s mostly a matter of stacking up the ore while we wait for your boat, or waiting for Ana to get the winches running again.”

  Ana looked up at her with angry eyes, but Jewel didn’t give the woman a chance to vent her temper. “I’m not blaming you, Ana. The problem is obviously the corrosion I’ve been reading about in the old colony records.”

  “Well, why don’t you read up a solution to the problem?” Ana snarled. “At first this crap was just eating up the lubricants, but now it’s into the internal engine parts. It’s a goddamn mess trying to clean it all out. I’ve gone through three sets of gloves in the past hour and I’m starting to worry about my fingers.”

  “It’s eating through your gloves that fast?” Erik asked. His concern was evident and Jewel felt a flash of jealousy over it. Not that it made any sense. Worrying that Ana might be burned by some sort of corrosive agent was only human—not a sign that he wanted to get back in her bed.

  “It’s starting to,” Ana said. “I’m not going to take a chance of this crap getting on my skin. I’m double gloved as it is, but still, I only have two hands.” She turned her attention back to Jewel. “So what about it? Have you found what’s causing this in all those colony records you’ve been reading?”

  The wind kicked ocean spray over all of them, painfully reminding Jewel why she didn’t like this moon. “No,” she told them. “It hasn’t. The Ymirians obviously didn’t know why this was happening. They ran chemical analyses, and the seawater has some strange trace elements in it, together with all the strange sorts of xeno-fauna you expect to find on a foreign world. But they found nothing to explain why the corrosion was occurring.”

  Off the port side of the ship a humongous whale-analogue surfaced briefly and sprayed the three of them.

  “Wow!” Erik said as the beast dived beneath the waves again. “That’s a big one. Is there any record of the colonists going fishing for those?”

  “They tried,” Jewel told him, “but the problem is those trace elements in the water. You can hunt those monsters for sport but you can’t eat them. In fact, they didn’t find anything native that they could eat on this world, although to be fair, the Ymirians didn’t come here to farm, they came to mine armenium.”

  Jewel was surprised by the reaction her simple observation drew from both Ana and Erik.

  “What did you say?” Erik asked.

  “They knew the armenium was here when they arrived?” Yang asked.

  Jewel realized she’d spoken carelessly and reworded her statement. “I didn’t mean to say they knew about the armenium in advance. But they came to mine. That much is certain.”

  Both Erik and Ana seemed to find that plausible, but on reflection Jewel honestly wasn’t certain that she hadn’t spoken the truth the first time. The Ymirians had brought a lot of deep-sea mining equipment with them and she’d seen no evidence in their records thus far that they had surveyed the planet before bringing in the heavy equipment.

  Spy? she asked. Do you know why the Ymirians picked this world to mine and what they were initially looking for?

  Your initial supposition was correct, Luxora, the bioware informed her. The Ymirian miners arrived hoping to find armenium. Would you like me to show you or read you the documentary evidence?

  “It’s really a shame,” Erik said. “A thousand people trying to make a better life for themselves—some of them even bringing their families—and it all ends in ashes.”

  Then how did they pick this star system? Jewel asked.

  There was an unusually long pause on the part of her bioware.

  Spy?

  I’m searching for the requested information, Spy told her, but am finding no results for my query. There are several firewalls I have not penetrated yet. Perhaps the data is contained behind one of them.

  Find it! Jewel ordered. That information could be more important than everything else we’ve found in this system. If the Ymirians figured out a way to predict which planets had raw armenium deposits…

  The information would also be more dangerous than anything else we’ve found in this system, Spy observed. The Armenites would do anything to keep that secret from getting into foreign hands.

  “Do you think Strongheart would object to me going down and taking a look around?” Erik asked.

  “What?” Distracted as she was by her conversation with Spy, Jewel wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly.

  Ana, apparently, was under no such misapprehension. “Have you gone absolutely insane, Erik? Or do you just feel the need to show off for your younger girlfriend?”

  Ana’s statement immediately set off alarms in Spy’s programming. Why does the engineer think you are the executive officer’s girlfriend? Miner Strongheart also implied an inappropriate relationship exists between you and the executive officer.

  Oh, for Stars’ sake, Spy, isn’t it obvious? Erik is sweet on me and Ana is jealou
s, Jewel thought back in completely true sentiments. Without waiting for Spy to respond again, she threw herself back into the human conversation, skipping over Ana’s distraction to the more important issue. “Why would you even ask that, Erik? Have you ever been down on a deep-water dive before?”

  “No,” Erik said. “That’s part of the reason I’d like to do it. Have you?”

  “Yes,” Jewel confirmed, “when I was twenty standards old. Believe me, these are not the conditions you want to undertake a sightseeing tour in. It’s damn dangerous under the best of circumstances, and Strongheart’s people are working hard down there.”

  Erik did not appear convinced. With typical alpha male machismo, the reference to danger seemed to encourage, rather than discourage. “Maybe I could help. They’re not really mining—just scooping up ore and filling cargo containers.”

  The manual method was a particularly slow and inefficient way of harvesting the ore. The mining platforms had sucked the material up through a great tube, depositing the ore into a vast hold from which they had run it through a series of filters before pouring it into the cargo containers they had found on the Genesis. Unfortunately, with the platforms at the bottom of the sea they didn’t have that capability anymore.

  “This isn’t a job for amateurs,” Jewel insisted. “Working that deep—there’s no light that you don’t bring with you, and despite your suit, you can feel the water pressing in all around you. It’s not like in space. It’s a very claustrophobic experience.”

  Jewel didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, but one of her friends on the trip had. Nefta had started to lose her mind about half way down to the ocean floor and her bioware had had to sedate her and return her, via her suit controls, to the surface. It had not been pretty and Spy had responded by trying to sedate Jewel as well—which had triggered Jewel’s own psychoses surrounding losing control.

  Warning! Spy blurted. Fatality in the Jörmungadr facility!