Jewel

by Veronica Tower

  Fatality? Jewel gasped in her mind. At least she hoped it had been in her mind.

  “What’s wrong?” Erik asked her. “Your skin just blanched. Are you all right?”

  Void! Void! Void! She did not want even Erik to know that her bioware was operating again. Find out what’s happening, she ordered Spy. To Erik and Ana she said, “I don’t know, I feel weak all of a sudden.”

  To add verisimilitude to her story, she staggered a step and reached out to grab Ana for support. No one would believe she’d do that without good cause.

  Erik came up and steadied her with a hand on her elbow.

  Faceplate seals have blown on Miner Intrepid Strongheart’s helmet, Spy reported. Seawater has penetrated his environment suit. All vital signs save brainwave activity are null.

  “Stars above,” Jewel whispered. She’d spoken audibly this time, but the shock of the news was too great. She couldn’t adequately censor herself. Please don’t tell me that was Glorious Strongheart’s son, she told Sapphire.

  Negative. The deceased miner is Glorious Strongheart’s younger brother.

  Oh, no.

  Instructions not understood.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Erik suggested. “Is there any pain? How is your chest?”

  Jewel’s com-link buzzed. “Tanngrisnir, this is Jörmungandr II. We have a medical emergency. Please have Dr. Brüning standing by.”

  Jewel lifted the com unit to her mouth while Erik got on his own to call back to Snója. “Understood, Jörmungandr II, we’re summoning Dr. Brüning now.” She felt like an ass because she knew it was too late, but she asked the expected question anyway. “What is the emergency? Is there anything else we can do, Jörmungandr II?”

  There was a long moment of hesitation. “You might try praying, Ms. Aurora. Because I don’t think anything else can help Intrepid now.”

  * * * * *

  It took three hours to get Intrepid Strongheart back to the surface, but Spy reported he’d been irrevocably dead in seventeen minutes. The cold water had numbed his body sufficiently to provide a slight extra margin of survival time for the brain, but the miners hadn’t been able to maneuver him to the still working winch quickly enough to make a difference. Nobody could last three hours without oxygen.

  Glorious had accompanied the body to the surface and was talking now about his brother, although it wasn’t clear if he was actually talking to anyone else. Dawil Kwon had brought out Dr. Brüning in the fast boat, Huninn, but the physician hadn’t spent more than a minute examining the dead man. After the most cursory of appraisals he’d pronounced Intrepid dead and returned to Huninn to wait for his ride back to Snója.

  “He was a good man, a canny miner,” Glorious muttered. “Departed in the deep the way he would have wanted.”

  The stout, squat man had his helmet off and was leaning over the back rail, staring into the dark, rolling waters.

  Jewel stepped up behind him and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Strongheart,” she said. “Is there anything we can do to help you now? Are there services you’d like performed?”

  Glorious shook his head, not rejecting the idea but looking as if he were trying to clear his thoughts. “First off, we’re going to need more new seals,” he said. “I’d prefer to work on the suits down in the air pockets—at least for basic maintenance. The less time we can spend moving up and down from the surface, the more time we have to gather ore.”

  His words shocked Jewel, and she wasn’t the only one.

  “You’re not going to keep mining, are you?” Ana asked. “It’s only been a week and your brother is dead. How many more people are you going to lose if you keep going down there?”

  Ana’s arguments made no impact on Glorious. “We can’t stop now,” he told them. “There’s ore spilled out all over the ocean floor down there—easily recovered. Besides, Intrepid wouldn’t want us to quit. He’d want us to keep at it—expanding his share. He’s got a family to provide for, you know.”

  “But the seals—” Jewel started to say.

  “Oh, we’ll have to be a bit more careful, but have you any genuine idea how valuable that armenium is? And my crew and I are now the only men outside of the Armenite Hegemony with any experience at all in mining it.”

  Jewel didn’t agree that picking rocks up off the ocean floor was the same thing as mining, but that certainly wasn’t going to convince Glorious to change his mind.

  He obviously sensed her uncertainty. “Besides,” he cajoled her, “it will be at least another three weeks before Captain Kiara returns with the Euripides from picking up all of those space buoys. You don’t want us to stop before then, do you?”

  Actually Jewel really did, but she was smart enough to realize she wasn’t going to get her way. She hoped that Glorious wouldn’t have cause to regret this decision, but she knew in her heart that he would.

  She wandered away from Glorious, back to the warmth of the main cabin. Erik was there, talking to the captain on the Euripides. Time lag. Com-link messages were limited to the speed of light, which meant that there was a lot of delay between each side of the conversation, which let Erik turn to her without being rude to the captain.

  “Hey, stranger, how are you holding up? You were hit really hard by Intrepid’s death, weren’t you?”

  Jewel shrugged and sank into the other seat in the cabin. “I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I even really knew the man. But it’s…” She hesitated, wondering if Erik would understand. “It was all so unnecessary. I mean, we knew this was going to happen. We know it’s going to happen again. Why are those guys down there? All the money in the world isn’t worth what they’re risking.”

  Erik listened to her very seriously and didn’t stop looking when she stopped talking.

  “What?” Jewel asked him. “What is it?”

  The captain’s voice crackled over the com unit. “If he doesn’t want a funeral service, then let him get back to work. I don’t understand the problem. Kiara out.”

  Erik looked at the com unit in his hand for a moment, then lifted it to his mouth and said, “Understood. Gunnarson out.”

  He put down the com unit and returned his attention to Jewel. He stared at her.

  She embarrassed herself by beginning to squirm uncomfortably. “You’re doing it again,” she told him. “What is it?”

  Erik shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t actually matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “It doesn’t matter which story is true. I like you. I’d support you either way. I’m just trying to understand why Intrepid’s death bothers you so much.”

  “And I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jewel told him. “Why doesn’t Intrepid’s death bother you?”

  “Oh it does,” Erik assured her. “I’m completely with you on this one. I think we reached too far in this system and that Intrepid’s death is indefensible. If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t have tried to mine the armenium at all. I’d have slipped the location of this moon to the Ymirian Government in Exile and let them use it as they see fit.

  “But you I can’t figure out. If you’re who you say you are—a young woman caught up in her parents’ scheme to become a Cartelite—then using Intrepid to help you get what you want shouldn’t bother you at all. And if you’re who Brüning says you are—a genuine Cartelite in your own right—then one poor miner—or a thousand of them—should matter even less. So why do you keep arguing that we should stop trying to increase our fortunes and worry about the human cost?”

  Embarrassment colored Jewel’s cheeks—a problem that might have been less noticeable if her parents had left her with her natural skin tone. “Is that what you really think of the Cartelites?”

  “It’s what everyone thinks of them,” Erik assured her. “They’re greedy, capitalist industrialists who care more about a single solar than they do about a roomful of impoverished schoolchildren.”

  Jewel’s embarrassment
turned to shame. The worst part was that she couldn’t even argue that Erik was exaggerating. She’d had far too many peers who felt exactly as Erik said they did. Still, she had to say something. “I guess that proves that I’m not a Cartelite then, because I don’t think money is worth dying over.”

  “I know, you said that before,” Erik reminded her. “What I’m trying to figure out is do you feel that way because you’ve always had so much money you’ve never had to worry about it? Or is it because you’ve always had so little you learned to do without it?”

  He stood up. “You don’t have to answer that. It doesn’t really matter to me either way. I’m just enjoying trying to figure you out.”

  He picked up his cold-weather coat and brushed at something on the front of it.

  The whole front of the garment sloughed off. “What in the Void?”

  Jewel sprang to her feet and ran over to figure out what had happened. The winter weather gear consisted of five layers of a tough synthetic compound that trapped heat against the body, moisture outside, and still let the wearer’s skin breathe. The top three layers of Erik’s coat had fallen to the floor in a mess that looked little like cloth anymore. The fourth layer was coming apart almost as they watched. “How did this happen?” she asked.

  In sudden recognition of her own potential danger, Jewel looked down at her own coat and found the outer layer of her garment crumbling away. The damage wasn’t nearly as far along as that in Erik’s coat, but it was happening just the same.

  She looked back at Erik. “How?” she asked him.

  The expression on his face made it obvious he had no idea.

  * * * * *

  Four days later Jewel listened in while Strongheart reported to Ana. “We’ve sprung another leak in Jörmungandr II, but I think we’ve got it under control again.”

  He might have been reporting on the food packet he’d opened for breakfast for all the concern or tension Jewel could detect in his voice. She didn’t understand how he could be so calm about all of this. She realized Strongheart was a professional, but he’d lost his brother and two other men in the past four days, and all of the signs indicated that their underwater habitat wasn’t going to last much longer. Yet here he was, calmly discussing patching another leak with less enthusiasm than he might contemplate the next vid he planned to see. “Could he be taking something?” Jewel wondered out loud.

  Affirmative, Spy confirmed her suspicions even though Jewel had not intended the question as a query for information. Head Miner Glorious Strongheart is taking higher than recommended doses of Calmattacks.

  That wasn’t good. Calmattacks was a heavy-duty tranquilizer prescribed for severe anxiety. It was supposed to be safe for people to go about their regular business, but those studies were certainly not done at depths a mile below sea level and in these sorts of circumstances. And the other miners? Are they also taking it?

  Affirmative.

  This just kept getting worse and worse. What about my other research query? Have you found any documentation on why the Ymirians chose this world and what they thought they would find here?

  Not at this time, Spy admitted. My search is progressing but has been hampered by bad atmospheric conditions that have obstructed my long distance connections to both Snója base and the Brynhild in orbit.

  Ana finally got Strongheart to stop talking long enough for her to ask a question. “Why would this be happening now? The air pockets have been in that mining platform down there for close to twenty years. Why are they suddenly losing their integrity now?”

  “Well, we are stressing the ecosystem, so to speak,” Strongheart reminded her. “Just moving around down here does that, but we’re also pumping more air into the platform and of course it may be settling just a little as we move the ore out from beneath it.”

  “Settling?” Jewel interrupted. “You haven’t mentioned that before.”

  “Oh, well, I thought it was obvious,” Strongheart said. “We’re literally removing tons of ore from the platform and the ocean floor immediately around it. Of course that’s going to affect the distribution of weight and the support for the wreck.”

  “So let me make certain I understand what you’re saying. The salvage work you’re engaged in is progressively making the mining platform you’re working in less safe.” She looked at Ana. “Doesn’t that strike anyone else as insane?”

  Strongheart laughed. “That’s one way to look at it, but don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  Jewel no longer believed him.

  * * * * *

  “Void!” Falco shouted three days later. “Help me, Arico! I’m losing it!”

  Jewel rushed out of the ship’s cabin to see Meg Falco struggling valiantly to stop a five-hundred-pound cargo container from slipping back over the edge of the Tanngrisnir and into the sea. Arico had his hands on the other side of the container but didn’t appear to be having much impact on the sliding container of ore.

  “Pull, Arico! Pull!” Falco yelled at him. She’d gotten serious now that so much money was on the line. She still complained about everything but she’d discovered a work ethic that was actually impressive. It just went to prove what the Cartelites had always known—greed was a powerful motivator. Give someone a chance to truly profit and they’ll work their rear ends off for you.

  Jewel ran across the deck to throw her own muscles into the fray, trying to keep the container full of raw armenium from falling back into the sea. She gripped the unit by the straps on the side and heaved backward. For a moment, she arrested the container’s progress, but then it started sliding not back into the ocean, but across the rear gunnel toward Arico and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Well, almost nothing…

  “Adrenalin!” she gasped.

  Spy immediately took action, stimulating the production of adrenaline in Jewel’s glands. She pulled harder on the straps and the container stopped moving long enough for Arico to scramble out from behind it.

  Falco shifted her grip and together she and Jewel pulled the storage container all the way onto the deck.

  “Whew!” Jewel breathed out a huge sigh of relief as she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That was a close one.”

  “Good job, Aurora,” Falco told her. “You came in to help in the nick of time.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jewel said. “I think I almost got Arico crushed.”

  Arico was crouched over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. When he heard his name he looked up at them and grinned. “It looked bad for a moment there,” he agreed, “but it all worked out for the best.”

  “Hey, Aurora,” Falco said. “It looks like you cut your hands on those straps. You must have really jerked that container hard.”

  Jewel looked down at her hands and found they were both bleeding from long, thin cuts where the strap had bitten into them.

  Next to the Tanngrisnir a humongous whale-analogue surfaced and sprayed them all through its blowhole.

  “You’d better get that looked at,” Falco said. “Arico can help you. I’ve got to lower this winch line again.”

  Jewel let Arico help her back toward the cabin. The wounds were beginning to burn, but Spy helpfully cut down on the pain while she shrugged out of her jacket in the heat of the main office and Arico bound her hands with gauze. He wasn’t very good at it so it took a while. “How’s that?” he finally asked, stepping back to let her examine his work.

  “I don’t think Dr. Brüning has to worry about you honing in on his job,” Jewel told him.

  Arico just laughed and picked up his jacket. “He can keep—”

  The outer layer of his jacket sloughed off and fell to the floor.

  Arico and Jewel stood staring at the mess on the floor before Jewel turned to look at her own jacket—the new one—which was also dissolving.

  Arico dropped his jacket and backed away from it. “Why does this keep happening?”

  “I don’t kno
w,” Jewel told him, “but we’re going to run out of winter clothing if we don’t figure it out fast.”

  * * * * *

  Several days later, Jewel, Jester and Falco were maneuvering another container filled with raw armenium onto the deck of the fast transport, Hunin. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jester shouted at her, “the exec sends his love.”

  Spy immediately reacted to the spacer’s statement. Why would the Executive Officer send such a message? You are engaged to be married to—

  Shut up, Spy! Jewel snapped at her. To Jester she shouted, “Stop making trouble, Jester! You know he didn’t say that. Kindly keep your nose out of my love life.”

  Your love life? Spy queried. The bioware managed to sound suspiciously like Jewel’s mother as she framed the question. Have you violated the terms of your engagement to Kole Delling? The repercussions—

  Jewel had to cut this line of questioning off hard. She absently rubbed at the bandaged cut beneath her glove on her left hand. It burned and it wasn’t healing very well despite Spy’s help. Haven’t you paid any attention to the personal interactions of this crew since you came back on line? This is Jester I’m talking to. He’s the ship’s joker. Would you stop acting paranoid and let me manage my personnel?

  Spy was getting more and more difficult to handle. Fortunately, Jewel wouldn’t need it much longer. It had already altered Dr. Brüning’s records. Rather than preparing to purge them as Jewel had first ordered, the bioware had subtly altered the ship’s data to disguise Jewel’s identity and make his scans of her bioware look like poor fakes. Once they reboarded the Euripides Jewel would shut the chips back down by touching her sabotaged lamp and overloading the system with an electrical surge. It was risky, but not so risky as leaving the program in operation. She couldn’t have it screaming for help as soon as they reached a civilized star system.

  Falco shoved the final cargo unit over to Jester, preventing the spacer from continuing to tease Jewel. He struggled under the burden for a moment before fitting it into its place on the deck of the Huninn. The miners were sending the ore up now faster than the members of Euripides’ crew were able to ferry it back to shore. It would have been nice if Captain Kiara had left them with more hands to do the work, but the real problem was the limited number of transports available to them. They were only able to ship four containers a trip, which left a growing amount of ore on the dancing deck of the Tanngrisnir—yet another problem to deal with before the next major storm.