Jewel (13 page)

Her fingers lightly traced the deft lines of his abdomen,
just above his groin. His skin was smooth and hard, but even in sleep he had
some idea what she was doing to him. He squirmed and rolled onto his side away
from her.

She remembered their first time in the shower and how she’d
been afraid that the sound of their lovemaking would wake Vega.

Vega? How long did she have until her roommate would return?
The surge of fear she felt when thinking of these things spoiled her mood. She
checked the clock and found she had less than two hours until Vega was off her
shift and might return here. She needed to move quickly if she were to have
enough time to do what she needed before then.

Getting out of bed, she slipped into the shower for less
than her allotted three minutes of water ration. She just needed enough time to
quickly clean her body and get out again. Then she dressed and went to Erik,
touching him gently on the shoulder. “Hey, time to get up. Vega will be back
soon.”

Erik groaned sleepily, then rolled over, suddenly awake,
alert and momentarily confused by his surroundings. “Jewel?”

She smiled at him. “Hi, remember me? Your…” Her voice
trailed off as she tried to figure out what to call herself. She wanted to be
Erik’s girlfriend, but it sounded so juvenile to her. She wanted to be more
mature for him. “Your lover?”

Erik sat up and pulled her against him. “As if it were
possible to forget you.”

His lips met hers, warm and delightful.

Jewel kissed him back and then pulled away. “I think you’d
better get dressed and get out of here,” she said. “I really don’t want Vega to
find us together. I don’t want to do anything that will feed the rumor mill
about us until this trip is over and we’re ready to run away together.”

Erik reluctantly let her go. “I guess I can see why you’d
feel that way, although it seems to me that who we sleep with is nobody’s
business but our own.”

Jewel had thought about having this discussion with Erik
several times and she had an answer ready for him. For all practical purposes,
she needed to end their relationship for the period of time that her bioware
was going to be active again. She couldn’t let the spy she was going to wake in
her head have any idea that she’d fallen in love with a man on the Fringe.
Fortunately, the unpleasant dynamic involving Erik’s old lovers gave her a
plausible reason to put some distance between the two of them.

“This is an important project that the captain has set for
us,” Jewel reminded Erik. “And it also has the potential to be quite dangerous.
There are two groups of colonists who have disappeared down there and I don’t
want to add anyone on our crew to the list of the dead.”

Erik instantly grew more serious. “I agree with you.
Frankly, I think what we’re doing is even more dangerous than you’re suggesting
because the risk will only increase if we’re successful in leaving this system
with the ore. The Armenites will stop at nothing to maintain their stranglehold
on the supply of armenium and they’re going to respond forcefully when they
find out that someone else has discovered armenium deposits. I wouldn’t be
surprised if war results from all of this and if every member of our crew ends
up with an Armenite bounty on his or her head.”

None of that would surprise Jewel either, but she hadn’t
expected Erik to worry about those things. Perhaps she should have. Armenites
had to be a continuing concern for him too.

“I agree with you,” she assured him, “but if you think this
is so dangerous—”

“Why didn’t I argue against the mission with the captain?”
Erik finished for her. He began to tick his reasons off on his fingers. “First,
I’ve been with the captain long enough to know that nothing is going to
dissuade her from pursuing a profit. Second, I really hate the Armenites, and
if we can find a mine down there and get it into the hands of a foreign power
like the League or the Confederacy, that would be a serious blow to the
Armenite Hegemony. And finally, I want to know what happened to my countrymen
and those answers are down on the surface of this moon. If I’m going to learn
their fate, I have to go down there to discover it.”

Jewel could understand all those reasons. She was glad,
strangely enough, that making a fortune wasn’t what was motivating Erik. She
opened her mouth to comment, but Erik caught hold of her and pulled her down on
the mattress against his naked body. “What I can’t figure out is why you’re so
against it,” he said. “Even if you’re not a Cartelite like Brüning says—and I
don’t see how you could be, despite those things on your face—why don’t you
want to be wealthy? If there really is a mine down there it could put you on
the road to claiming all those riches your parents were after.”

Jewel squirmed free of Erik so that she could sit up beside
him instead of lying in his arms. She couldn’t afford for him to pull her back
into another round of lovemaking. She needed to reactivate her bioware and set
it to work covering her trail in the
Euripides
’ systems, and since the
captain was sending them to the surface of the moon soon, this might be her
last chance to do that. She really needed to wrap up this conversation so she’d
have time to complete the task, but she also wanted to address Erik’s question.

“Because there are about ten thousand things that could go
wrong down there,” she told him, “and so many people are already dead. I don’t
want to add any to that list. I just don’t see that money is worth dying over.”
That last statement was practically the antithesis of Cartelite philosophy, but
Jewel really believed it. She didn’t want people dying to make her rich. If
death was what she sought she could have committed suicide rather than try to
escape into hiding on the Fringe.

Erik nodded. “What you’re saying makes sense to me too. I’m
more than a little concerned about the risks of this venture. I may want
revenge on the Armenites but not at the price of another crew.”

Jewel saw her opening and pushed forward with her plan.
“Then I hope you’ll understand why we can’t carry on like this on the world’s
surface.” She gestured with her hand toward his distractingly naked body and
the mussed sheets of the bed. “We’re going to have to be extremely professional
while we’re down on that world, not only so that we stay focused and don’t make
any stupid mistakes that endanger people, but so that we don’t make any of your
ex-lovers even more jealous. They can’t start making mistakes because they
can’t concentrate on the job they have to do.”

Erik started to protest, but Jewel cut him off. “I’m really
serious about this. We’re on the cusp of starting a great life together. I
don’t want to blow it before we get going for the sake of a quick cuddle or a
little flirting. If you can’t keep it together for the few days we’ll be down
on the surface, how can I count on you when we’re running across the Fringe
together?”

Rather than pick up his protest again, Erik seemed to
consider Jewel’s argument.

She pressed forward with her case. “I think being perceived
as your girlfriend also weakens me with the crew—not just with the captain and
Ana, but with all the enlisted personnel too. It’s hard for them to respect me
when they think of me as your latest bedmate. I’m an officer on this vessel.
It’s important to me that I act like one.”

Erik sighed. His expression made clear his unhappiness with
her position. “I don’t think that a few kisses will really undercut you,
especially if no one knows they’re happening.”

The spy in her head would know, and that was enough. “They
will know, Erik. Something like this can’t be kept secret. It’s just going to
be for a few days. Then we’ll be back up here and sailing to another port and
we can figure out what’s acceptable again.”

He still didn’t give in. “I don’t think I can just cut off
what I’m feeling for you.”

“I’m not asking you to cut it off,” Jewel told him. “I need
you to control yourself, put your executive officer hat firmly on your head and
support me in this. It’s only going to be a couple of days. We go down to the
surface, find the stockpiles of armenium, and get them transported back to the
ship. Then we can start planning our life after the
Euripides
.”

He still looked uncertain to her.

She touched his forearm. It felt strange doing so. He was
still completely naked after all. His penis stirred when she touched his arm.

She ignored all that. “Please, Erik, do this for me?”

He sighed. “All right, I can see the point you’re making and
while I don’t like it…I agree.”

A great weight lifted off Jewel’s shoulders. “Thank you.”

Erik scooped her into his arms again. “But don’t think that
means you’re getting out of here without making love to me again.”

He playfully wrestled her onto the bed and started kissing
her again.

“Mr. Gunnarson,” Everson’s voice helpfully interrupted them
through the com system. “Please report to the captain’s briefing room.”

“Void!” Erik cursed as he sat up again. “It’s almost like
the damn woman is watching us.”

Jewel wondered about that, but she’d already searched her
quarters and hadn’t found any cameras. It was probably just a coincidence that
the captain kept looking for Erik when he was with her. “It’s all right,” she
told her lover. “It’s just a couple of days and then we can have each other all
we want.”

Erik gave her another quick kiss and started to get dressed.

Jewel sat back down and recovered the narrow wand from the
case in the bottom drawer of her desk. She tested the device by depressing a
tiny stud on the base of the tool and watched the sparks flicker at the end of
the wire for approximately three seconds. As a six-year-old, completely by
accident, she’d discovered that the bioware her parents had installed in her
temple was susceptible to strong electric charges. That was the same occasion
that she learned that the human body also found electricity basically
incompatible with its continued healthy functioning. Jewel had required bed
rest and medications to get on her feet again. Her bioware, however, had
required a factory reset and the reloading of six days worth of data storage
and program updates. The reset had been carried out with a tool just like this,
and Jewel was about to discover if she could accomplish the same thing without
a specialist surgeon or technician doing the work for her.

She took a deep breath, still uncertain that she should be
doing this, but Dr, Gunther Brüning posed a clear and present danger to her
freedom and well-being in the here and now. If she didn’t deal with him,
controlling her reactivated bioware would be the least of her problems.
Besides, she had rigged the desk lamp to electrocute her if she touched its
base so she had a way to shut the bioware down again before they reached a
populated star system with ongoing interstellar commerce.

As long as Jewel remained in the isolated Valkyrie system,
the immediate damage that her bioware could do to her would be contained.
Interstellar communications were dependent upon the starships that traveled
between solar systems. Since the only starship present in Valkyrie was the
Euripides
,
the bioware would have no way of sending communications out to her parents or
their agents to report on Jewel’s location until they reached a new star
system. She would shut it down again before that happened.

Jewel examined her temple in the mirror set in the lid of
her tool case, ignoring for once the too thin nose to look at the jewels she’d
been hiding from the world for most of the past year. There were three of them
surgically implanted in her flesh—three organically grown chips that looked
extraordinarily similar to diamonds. The first, positioned highest on her face,
had been given to her as an infant. The middle one had been implanted on her
ninth birthday. The last had been given to her when she’d turned twenty-one.
Had she not fled, she’d have received a fourth on the day she turned thirty—a
symbolic recognition of her nominal legal independence. Her parents, arrogant
divas that they were, had each had an additional jewel implanted, as did most
people of their class and position. The extra jewel was used mostly in dealing
with the galaxy outside the Cartels, but Jewel had always suspected that its
real function was in publicly proclaiming just how wealthy the elites really
were. At some ten million solars a chip, they were better than a power yacht at
proclaiming a wearer’s status.

While she reminisced, Jewel set the tip of the needle at the
base of her original jewel and slid it quickly into her flesh. A drop of
crimson appeared on her skin but she didn’t actually feel any pain until she
began to root around for the extraordinarily tiny indentation that covered the
reset cavity. A doctor was supposed to do this with the assistance of advanced
imaging technology, but Jewel didn’t have access to that.

The crimson drop became a thin streak leaking down her
cheek.

The needle struck a tiny groove in the jewel and locked into
what she hoped was the proper position. If she aligned her instrument
correctly, this jewel would allow her to reset all three. She extended the hair-thin
wire and depressed the stud.

Her teeth immediately ground together as an electric current
coursed through her body. She was damn lucky she hadn’t bitten her tongue off.
Perhaps she’d been medicated the first time because she hadn’t remembered it feeling
like this at all.

Good morning, Luxora
, her chip said to her.
Are
you ready to explore my new upgrades?

The safety shut-off clamped down on the electrical charge in
her wand, letting Jewel think again.

Warning!
the chip announced.
My systems have been
compromised! Our GPS location has been altered. Initiating—

Emergency lockdown!
Jewel thought at the thing.
No
outgoing communications or contact without my express permission!

Luxora
, the chip spoke back to her in an almost
condescending tone.
You know you do not have the authority to override my
security protocols until you reach your majority.

Agreed
, Jewel said,
but don’t you think you should
familiarize yourself with my security concerns before you go shouting alarms
all over the Fringe?

The Fringe?
the chip repeated.
What are we doing
on the Fringe, Luxora?

You don’t remember our mission?
Jewel asked. It was
not easy misleading bioware. Since the chip was wired into her brain, it would
be able to determine if she were lying to it just as it could monitor her
emotional state. But she and her peers were experts at misleading without
actually lying. It was a skill considered essential in the world of commerce.

I have suffered a system interruption. My software has
been reset to the factory specifications established upon their installation on
your twenty-first birthday. All subsequent data has been lost until it is
reloaded from our monthly systems backup.

Which was exactly what Jewel had been hoping the software
would say.
Oh, that’s just great!
she said.
My parents didn’t speak
to me directly about this trip. How are we going to figure out what to do if
you don’t even remember why we came out here?

The bioware seemed to hesitate over its response. Jewel had
no doubt that the hesitation was a calculation designed to make the software
appear more human. After all, its processing speed was far faster than the
human brain.
Perhaps if you explain our current circumstances I will be able
to advise you on a proper course of action.

Everything seemed to be going according to Jewel’s plan. She
had prepared a story and she gave it to the bioware now.
I am working as
purser aboard the Fringe freighter, Euripides. We have made an unscheduled stop
in the Valkyrie System where we have discovered an apparently abandoned Ymirian
settlement. The settlement was engaged in armenium mining before the Armenite
invasion of Ymir. The captain and crew of this vessel intend to harvest the
already mined ore and possibly to reopen the armenium mine.

Your participation in this venture risks violating the
contract between your family and the Armenite House of Delling.

That is a mid-to-long term threat
, Jewel informed the
chip. She hoped that it would interpret any anxiety it was detecting as concern
over her situation.
I have a more pressing short-term concern.

Which is?

My identity as a Cartelite has been exposed and at least
one member of the crew has privately threatened me. I believe there will be an
effort to coerce me to sell this armenium ore, not to our own family or even the
Armenites, but to third parties wishing to break the Aremenite/Cartel monopoly.

It is imperative that we prevent competitors from gaining
a foothold in the aremenium market
, the chip informed her.

I concur with that assessment
, Jewel told the system.
And she meant it too. Erik was correct to suggest that the Armenites would
likely go to war over this system and Jewel didn’t want to be responsible for
that happening—not with only one new source of armenium at stake. She didn’t
believe that a single planet-sized moon was going to resolve the armenium
problem in the galaxy.
Now here’s what I want you to do.

Jewel painstakingly detailed orders for her bioware to
penetrate all the computer systems on board the
Euripides
, Brynhild
Station,
Genesis
and any other computers they found in the Valkyrie
System and search those computers for any and all information regarding
armenium, the mining of armenium, the transportation of armenium and the sale
of armenium. Basically if armnenium was referenced in the text, Jewel wanted to
know about it.

She also set her bioware to searching out information on the
fate of the two sets of colonists—specifically she wanted to know why none of
them were around anymore. Third, and most important, she wanted all the files
on Gunther Brüning downloaded and a virus put in place that would purge all
personnel files and all related documents from the ship and any associated
system just before they entered a new star system. They would doubtless figure
out she had done it, but it would certainly make it harder for Brüning to sell
her out to the Cartels or the Armenites.

Are there any further instructions, Luxora?

Jewel sighed.
Only to call me Jewel. I really hate that
name, Luxora.

For the first time since Jewel rebooted her bioware, a
kernel of the software’s old personality resurfaced. The persona was designed
to make the software more appealing to a typical child of the Cartel elites,
but Jewel had been anything but typical growing up. She’d always understood
that the bioware was a thing—a tool of her parents—not the trusted companion it
had initially pretended to be.

I have a name too, Luxora.

Of course you do. It’s Spy. I gave it to you myself,
remember?

Your mother named me Sapphire
, the chip reminded her.

So let her call you that!
Jewel told the thing.
Now
get to work.