Jewel Read online

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” she said, hoping her answer sounded cool and heroic without giving anything serious away about her true background.

  During her years in school, Jewel had been exposed to every job on a starship as part of her education—just enough time spent at each station to familiarize her with their basic functions. In a family that bought and sold starships, not to mention the people who made them work, and just about everything else anyone could conceivably want to purchase, it was considered important to have a personal understanding of the tasks you hired other people to perform for you. Now that training might conceivably have an even more practical use—if she could remember enough to take advantage of the lessons.

  The Euripides systems were older than the ones on the ship she had trained on, but it wasn’t particularly difficult to operate—even with her bioware deactivated.

  She took a few moments to analyze the data beginning to appear on her screens and then reported to Erik. “We’re in no immediate danger of crashing into anything. That tiny speck up ahead of us is the system’s star. It looks odd. I think it reads like a white dwarf except that it’s too large—much bigger than I would expect it to be.”

  “So it’s not a white dwarf,” Erik said.

  Jewel shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t fully understand these readings.”

  She very briefly considered reactivating the bioware implanted in her temple and seeing if its vast memory storage held an explanation for what she was observing, but she discarded the notion immediately. First off, while the reboot wasn’t difficult, it wasn’t something she could do on a whim. Second, since there was no immediate probability of a collision, there was no genuine urgency—and thus no genuine need. Besides, while the program might help her with its encyclopedic knowledge concerning just about everything in the known galaxy, it would also rat her out to her parents or their agents at the very first opportunity. That was the reason she’d deactivated it in the first place and the reason she’d never be able to use it again. So why was she wasting time thinking about it? Sure life was harder without the bioware but she’d proven in the last nine months that she could get along without it like normal people do.

  Jewel painstakingly punched some more keys, drawing up data on the rest of the star system, which she displayed on the second screen. “Looks like there are three planets still orbiting out there—the inner ones were presumably consumed during the red giant stage. I won’t swear there aren’t more in the outskirts. If they aren’t radiating very strongly, these crappy old sensors probably wouldn’t pick them up.”

  She hit a few more keys and began to refine her readings. “I don’t see any asteroid belts, but it looks like there are the remains of a planetary nebula stretching pretty far out into the system now. Don’t know what else that could be.”

  “Any sign of human settlements?” Erik asked. He staggered over behind her and balanced himself by putting his hands on her shoulders. The contact made her shiver and remember the feel of his lips on hers and his fingers caressing her breast through her gi. “We weren’t counting on an extra slide space translation,” Erik reminded her, “and our fuel supply is pretty low.”

  Jewel thought about how to access that sort of information then tentatively tried to call the data up on her terminal. Her results were less than conclusive. “I’m not sure. Satellites are pretty small right? Would we pick them up on the passive sensors?”

  “Not if they aren’t transmitting. Which reminds me, does the navigational computer have any idea where we are?”

  She hit some more keys. “It’s an unexplored system slightly off our plotted route to Arch.”

  “Off our route?” he clarified, glancing back at the captain, still crumpled and unconscious on the floor.

  “That’s what I said,” Jewel confirmed.

  Beside her, Peron groaned again, as if unconsciously trying to remind everyone that he, in addition to the captain, was responsible for the navigational error that had brought them here.

  She shook her head in disgust. Unfortunately, basic incompetence was an all too common problem out here on the Fringe. Hopefully this error wouldn’t prove too costly.

  Then she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. “Wait a minute, what do we have here?” Her fingers stuttered across the keyboard trying to figure out how to get the terminal to help her interpret what she was seeing.

  “What is it?” Erik asked. One of his hands slipped casually off her shoulder halfway down to her breast as he leaned over to get a better look at her tiny screen. His fingers weren’t actually doing anything, but Jewel found them intensely distracting just the same. Her nipple began to swell as her body remembered his caresses. Heat blossomed between her legs. She hoped Erik couldn’t tell how his presence was affecting her. She didn’t want to lose his respect.

  At her station behind them, Everson finally reached the ship’s doctor and began requesting he bring medical help to the bridge.

  Jewel tried to push such concerns out of her mind and concentrate on her instruments, but Erik’s fingers dangling so close to her bosom continued to distract her. “I think it’s—no that’s too weird…”

  Erik leaned closer, she could smell his breath—not his most attractive feature considering they had all just vomited—but intensely intimate nonetheless. His fingers slipped lower, almost innocently, as if he wasn’t aware that he was touching her virgin flesh and setting her skin on fire.

  “What is it?” he asked. Then he straightened up, pulling his hand away, suddenly all business. “Oh, I see. That is unusual, isn’t it?”

  “What is it?” Everson asked, breaking off her conversation with the doctor. That sort of interruption wouldn’t be tolerated on a military vessel, but the Euripides was only a rundown freighter.

  Erik pointed at the data on Jewel’s screen even though Everson wasn’t close enough to read it. “Looks like this star is a white dwarf after all, but it seems to have something mighty large orbiting around it.”

  “It’s a gas giant, only two million miles out,” Jewel announced. “I’d say it’s roughly eleven times the diameter of the star. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those moons circling the planet?”

  “How did a gas giant get so close to the star?” Everson asked.

  Erik shrugged. “It’s not all that common, but sometimes the gravity pulls them in.”

  “Hold a minute,” Everson said, putting one hand up to silence the exec while the other touched the audio plug in her ear. “We’re being challenged—a standard navigation buoy from the…”

  Her voice trailed off and she looked up at the exec again. “It’s a Ymirian signal, Sir.”

  Erik nearly leapt across the bridge to stand beside her, leaning close as if he could hear the message from her audio plug. “Ymirian? Not Armenite?”

  “It’s Ymirian, all right,” Everson confirmed, excitement making her speak more rapidly. “I feel like I’m listening to a piece of history. You just don’t find these anywhere anymore.”

  Jewel frowned, confused by the exchange, and decided she wanted to know what they were talking about more than she wanted to appear cool, experienced and knowledgeable. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “What’s Ymir?”

  Erik glanced over at her for a moment. “It’s my home world,” he finally said. “The Armenites occupied it twenty years ago.”

  Jewel felt a flood of guilt. Her fiancé, Kole Delling, was an Armenite. And her family had an extensive business relationship with his people—not that Erik could know that. Their fortune, and the fortunes of much of the Cartel Worlds, depended on the crazy militant bastards. She didn’t know what she should say to Erik, so she settled for, “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” the exec replied before returning his attention to Everson. “Is it a live transmission or a recorded message?”

  “Recorded, Sir,” Everson responded without any hesitation. “It’s already repeating itself—standard query for an inbound
starship. How should I reply?”

  Erik didn’t answer her directly. “Where’s it coming from?” he asked.

  “Now that it’s talking to us,” Jewel announced, “I’ve found it on my screens. It looks like it’s roughly twenty-four million miles away—standard outer system buoy, I’d say.”

  She turned to look at Erik, admiring his strength and the force of his personality. He was exactly what she’d expected to find out here on the Fringe—a romantic figure running roughshod over a barely competent, disorderly crew. He was probably a former naval officer, and now she knew he hadn’t ended up out here due to incompetence or unacceptable vices like so many of the others. No, he’d lost his navy and his home world to the Armenites—just one of the dozen or so worlds those monsters had gobbled up over the past century. Now he looked as if he’d seen a ghost—even paler than he’d been when he’d finished puking up his guts after the crash translation. Maybe the possibility of finding a still-independent colony of his home world was the equivalent of running into a friend he thought long dead.

  Jewel wanted to get up and go to him, but knew that his professional demeanor couldn’t accept the act of kindness. So she caught his eye and waited for him to nod acknowledgement of her words.

  “Thank you, Jewel, any idea where that buoy is reporting back to?”

  She shrugged. That wasn’t something their instruments were going to tell them—at least not with her operating them. “The most likely place is one of those planets in the outer system,” she said. “But…” Something about the inner planet bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  “But what?” Erik asked her.

  “Give me a moment,” Jewel said. She turned back to her control panel and pulled up a view of the solar system again. The Euripides wasn’t a colony ship. It wasn’t an explorer. It wasn’t really anything more than a dilapidated cargo hauler with one of its bays turned into a makeshift passenger compartment for miners who hadn’t wanted to renew their tours at Thimble. But she could still answer some very basic astronomical questions about the system.

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Beside her, Mustafa Peron sat up and rubbed at the dried blood and vomit on his jaw. “I feel terrible,” he informed them. His broken nose made his voice sound strange.

  “The buoy is still querying us, Sir,” Everson reminded the exec.

  “Give them our ship’s name and identification number, tell them we’ve arrived due to navigation error, that we’re shaken up and need some time to assess ourselves.”

  Everson immediately began to relay the message.

  “What happened?” Peron asked.

  “You screwed up and we crash translated into an unknown star system,” Erik told him.

  “I screwed up?” Peron protested, defensive anger filling his voice.

  “You’re the navigator, aren’t you?” the exec asked. “Now shut up before you further disgrace yourself.”

  More data began to appear on Jewel’s screen. “This is interesting,” she said. “That gas giant in tight orbit around the white dwarf is actually in the system’s blue zone—those moons are potentially habitable.”

  Peron rolled over on to his hands and knees, then paused and waited, probably for his head to stop spinning.

  “Can you see any sign of habitation?” Erik asked.

  “Not from this distance,” Jewel told him.

  “Well let’s move in closer then.”

  Jewel spread her hands apologetically. “I’m sorry, Erik, er, Sir,” she said, “but while I could probably figure out how to do that, I’m not trained to plot courses.”

  Peron clambered to his feet beside her. “That’s right, I am. Now get the hell out of my seat!”

  Erik immediately strode over beside them and clapped a decidedly unfriendly hand upon Peron’s shoulder. “You know something, Mustafa? When someone’s just spent the last twenty minutes covering your post in a crisis you created, you damn well better be polite. One more word out of line and I’ll kick your sorry ass all the way back to engineering!”

  Peron twisted around to stare at Erik, but apparently didn’t like something he saw in the exec’s eyes.

  He backed down.

  “You’re right, Mr. Exec,” he said. With exaggerated courtesy he bowed to Jewel. “May I please have the honor of taking my own seat?”

  Jewel couldn’t help scowling as she gave it to him.

  Chapter Two

  The next nine hours were grueling ones. There had been no fatalities, thankfully, but with three broken bones among the crew and seven among their motley assortment of passengers, there had been plenty of people in need of medical attention. And those numbers ignored the wide assortment of concussions, contusions and lacerations that the passengers and crew had accumulated during the moments immediately following the Euripides’ crash translation back to N-space.

  All in all, the physical damage to the biologicals on board had been less than it might have been. It wasn’t clear that that was the case with the physical systems of the Euripides. A slide drive was a delicate device—more susceptible to problems of wear and tear than a conventional in-system propulsion engine and the ship’s engineer, Ana Yang, was unwilling to certify the drive safe for sliding without taking the time for an extensive systems check.

  Then there was the question of fuel—a matter Jewel had brought to Captain Kiara’s attention in writing before they left Thimble. The captain had protected her margins this whole tour—and maybe her whole career for all Jewel knew—by avoiding unnecessary expenses like the traditional reserves of expensive slide fuel. The base source of that fuel, the mineral armenium, was one of the rarest substances in the galaxy. The result was that while they did have enough fuel to get them back out of this system, they didn’t have enough to make it all the way to their destination. That meant that the captain’s efforts to save money were going to cost the captain and the owners of the ship big-time—and cut into everyone’s bonuses.

  All of which ultimately explained why Captain Kiara approved the course Erik had laid into the gas giant in the center of the solar system. They still hadn’t heard a living peep out of the Ymirians who had set up the buoys—just the initial automated message demanding they identify themselves—but it had seemed the best bet for finding anyone in the locality who could help them refuel. If you were going to colonize a system, it just made sense that you did so around a planet in the blue zone. Liquid water was an essential building block for human life and while it was certainly possible you’d find it resulting from volcanic activity further out in the system, the odds were greater in the habitable zone near the sun.

  Jewel didn’t know what had happened after that as Captain Kiara had finally taken notice of the fact that she was on the bridge and pointedly asked her to help the steward calm and care for their often rowdy passengers. Unfortunately for Jewel, the steward, one Vega Costa, who also happened to be Jewel’s roommate, was poorly suited to her job. She just didn’t seem to like people very much and had very little patience with them. Perhaps her attitude flowed naturally from a lifetime in customer service employment, but it certainly didn’t help calm things down when the steward was even touchier and more irritable than the civilization-starved men and women she was supposed to be serving.

  So it was Jewel who put out the figurative fires, triaging passenger injuries for Dr. Brüning, calming tempers and diverting fights. And it was Jewel who organized the miners to clean their own compartments and get their vomit-smeared clothes into the ship’s laundry. All fairly simple tasks if the primary person stirring up trouble hadn’t been the ship’s officer responsible for keeping the passengers calm and happy.

  Drained and tired when she reached the room she shared with Vega, Jewel’s temper flared when she found the woman already sleeping in her bunk, following a shift rotation that everyone else on board had instinctively suspended after the accident that had landed them in this mess.

  Jewel sl
ipped quietly across their small quarters and into the lavatory stall where, for the first time since she and Erik had started vomiting in the exercise chamber, she was able to examine herself in a mirror. Vomit, both hers and Erik’s if she remembered properly, stained her white gi in a frankly disgusting manner. The worst part wasn’t that she’d been walking around like this for nearly ten hours. No, she corrected herself, the worst was that she’d gotten so used to the puke she’d been cleaning all over the ship that she’d reached the point where she couldn’t smell it on herself anymore.

  Jewel untied her brown belt and stuffed it in the laundry chute. Her no longer white gi quickly followed. Then she shucked her undergarments and examined herself again. She’d never been particularly happy with her features. Her parents had been adjusting her body with cosmetic surgery for as long as she could remember. As a result, her nose was thinner than it should be. Her chin narrowed to slightly too fine a point. Her collarbone had been shaved to accentuate her neck. Her hormones had been adjusted early on so that her breasts were full and large.

  Similar procedures had kept her waist very narrow, her hips broad, and her legs long and slender. By the standards of her people on Luxor, she was exquisitely beautiful, but Jewel had never liked her appearance. It felt sculpted to her, artificial, her parents’ dream of the daughter they wished they had had, rather than the one that had actually been born to them. The one bright spot in Jewel’s appearance was that her skin had begun to slip back into its natural mocha from the creamier tones her parents had bought for her. She couldn’t have stopped the process if she had wanted to—bleaching treatments were expensive—but she had to admit she wanted to see the way she’d look with the colors the stars had intended for her.