Prisoner

by Gilbert M. Stack

  She resolved to keep fighting to improve their lot. “So that’s your stick,” she told Farl. “What about your carrot? We were also discussing paying these people a share of the Valkyrie System armenium.”

  The justiciar general’s face grew completely impassive. The dark swirls on his face appeared to cast his eyes into shadow making him nearly impossible to read. “As I indicated earlier, I am going to present this idea to the Council of Elders. It bears closer consideration. But even if the Council adopts it, it is too late to apply the concept to Valkyrie.”

  Jewel bit down on the anger boiling inside her, striving to learn more before she gave into her temper and started shouting. “May I ask why?”

  Farl cocked his head to the side, studying her closely. “Because the Hegemony does not purchase the same goods twice.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jewel told him. “What would you be purchasing again in the Valkyrie System?”

  “Is it truly possible you don’t know?” Farl asked her. “Surely you don’t believe your father’s absurd story.”

  On the periphery of her vision, Jewel saw Nefer Reneb’s eyes momentarily widen, as if the woman had just enjoyed a moment of divine revelation. Unfortunately, Jewel’s brain was moving more slowly than the negotiator’s. “I’m sorry, Justiciar General, but I truly don’t understand. What does my father have to do with this?”

  Farl leaned closer to Jewel, watching her intently. “Thirty years ago, your father sold the Hegemony information proving the Ymirians were opening an armenium mine.”

  Jewel gasped in horror.

  “He didn’t have the coordinates of the star system where the mine was actually located, but he had ore samples that came from no known armenium deposit, and he had copies of his communications with the Ymirian conglomerate that approached him about helping them set up refineries and distribution networks.”

  “No, no, no,” Jewel insisted. “Papa wouldn’t do that! He saved all of those children. He’s a hero! He wouldn’t…”

  With each passing moment, new dimensions of the horror Farl had just revealed to her opened up within Jewel’s mind. Her father really wasn’t a hero. He was the man directly responsible for the Armenite conquest of Ymir. All of those thousands of deaths fell squarely upon his shoulders. The devastation of Erik’s life was all her father’s fault as was the occupation of his home world.

  “Empyreal children are a rare and precious blessing,” the justiciar general informed her in a not unkind voice. “There has never been a time when eighteen of them were brought together on a single ship.”

  “Oh, Stars,” Jewel whispered, turning to Nefer. “Betrayal and secret deals—Papa is a better Cartelite than anyone ever realized.”

  Nefer reached forward and touched Jewel’s hand in what she doubtless intended to be a comforting gesture. “I’m sorry, Jewel. I know you wanted to believe your father was more noble than most of us. Strangely enough, I wanted to believe that too.”

  “All of our money,” Jewel whispered. “It’s built on blood…”

  “Nothing your father did ultimately affected the fate of Ymir,” Farl informed her. “He only speeded up the timetable. The moment the Hegemony became aware that Ymir was involved in mining our armenium, we would have invaded to stop the desecration.”

  “It wasn’t your armenium!” Jewel shouted.

  Farl did not match her temper. “Yes, it is,” he reiterated. “It’s in our blood. You’ll understand that soon. It’s in the blood. Perhaps after your marriage Lieutenant Delling will be able to help you see this. Perhaps this explains why…”

  He broke off when Jewel started shouting over him. “Marriage? You think I’m still going to marry one of you?”

  Whatever warmth Nefer may have been feeling for Jewel instantly cooled. “Why wouldn’t you? Has anything you learned here today altered what you knew of the Armenites? The only part of history that has changed today is our understanding of your father’s role in it.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing!” Nefer snapped. “Backing out of this marriage now causes untold pain for billions of people. It’s not just the value of our stock that will suffer, or the destitution of hundreds of thousands of loyal Khaba employees who will lose their livelihood if this deal falls through. We’re talking about an end to the current economic boom and the onset of a galactic wide recession. Markets are already fearful because of the childish games the Armenites are currently playing with our fuel supplies and we’ve had reserves to cushion that shock. If you destroy the contract between Khaba and Delling it will literally be years before the economy rights itself again. So get your head out of your pampered self-centered little ass and face the universe like the woman you’ve been arguing we should treat you as. You’re marrying Kole Delling because it’s the right thing to do—because deep in your heart you want to be the hero you always thought your father was. Forget the fortune we’re paying you for doing it. Get on your white horse and save a few billion livelihoods!”

  Jewel stormed to her feet again and shook her finger at Nefer. “If you think you can bully—”

  She stopped, her mouth hanging open.

  She didn’t want to admit it but Nefer was right. Sickening as her father’s act was, Jewel could do nothing personally to rectify it. All she could do by taking a moral stand was ensure that other people suffered horribly.

  She sank down onto the edge of the bed again. “Let’s get the wedding over with. I’m tired of talking about it.”

  If Nefer had smiled, Jewel might have slugged her, but the older woman only nodded.

  “I’ll have our agreement drawn up for your signature,” Farl told her.

  Jewel wasn’t really listening to him.

  “Perhaps we should give you some time to yourself,” Nefer suggested. She rose beside the justiciar general.

  “Would you…would you please send Erik to me?” Jewel asked. Tears were falling down her face but there was nothing she could do about that now. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell him yet, but I…I need to talk to him. I need to convince him to accept your offer. And I need, I’d like…I need to resolve the issue before Kole arrives…”

  A small cowardly part of her soul whispered that it would be easier not to see Erik again. There was no reason she should have to face him. Why not just abandon her old crewmates to their fates. After all, she was the one who’d argued against mining the armenium. They were the ones responsible for their fates.

  But Jewel wasn’t a Cartelite like her father was. Perhaps she wasn’t a true Cartelite at all because she couldn’t live with herself if she abandoned Jester, Ana and Meg. And she’d never be able to look herself in the mirror if Erik didn’t hear this from her own mouth.

  “I’ll make the arrangements,” Farl promised her.

  Then he and Nefer walked out of the room leaving Jewel alone with her tears and dark thoughts.

  Chapter Ten

  She Had to Tell Him the Truth

  “Hi,” Erik greeted Jewel almost shyly from the door to the small quarters that the Armenite’s had assigned to her. The room was actually much smaller than the closet of Jewel’s room in the summer cottage her parents owned on the island of Aegeas in the Twilight Sea back home. At one point in her youth she would have thrown a temper tantrum over such sparse accommodations, but when she’d decided to rebel against his parents’ designs for her she’d known there would need to be sacrifices on her part and this room really wasn’t any worse than the one she’d shared with Vega on the Euripides.

  “Hi, yourself,” Jewel returned the greeting. She got off the bunk and shook her head at Erik’s escort—a lieutenant this time—when he started to follow the prisoner into her room. The officer hesitated before stepping back, closing the door behind him.

  Erik slipped his arms around Jewel and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Bad news, hunh,” he told her.

  “It’s not good,” she prevaricated.

  “Figure
d that,” Erik said. “They’re Armenites after all. Are you going to marry that guy?”

  “Kole?” Jewel asked. She looked up at him. Forced herself to meet his beautiful blue eyes so he would know she was absolutely serious in her answer. “Yes, I am. I’ve been going to marry him my entire life. I was fooling myself when I thought otherwise. Life would have been beautiful with you, but we got caught and well, there’s simply too much at stake for me to be selfish about this.”

  Erik didn’t say anything. He just pulled her lithe body a little more tightly against his and seemed content to stand like that.

  It felt good. She loved the feel of Erik’s arms around her but she couldn’t afford to get too relaxed and forget her purpose here. She stepped back away from her boyfriend and took his large hand between her tiny ones. “I’ve managed to work out a deal that will keep you and the others away from a firing squad and out of prison.”

  Erik tried to muster a smile, but he simply looked too exhausted to pull it off. “That sounds promising.”

  Jewel shook her head. “You won’t like it. I don’t like it either.” Looking at him now with no hope brightening his eyes, she was fairly certain he would turn her down whatever deal she relayed to him. She couldn’t let him give up.

  Erik tried to muster some good humor. “Don’t worry about it. There’s always the firing squad.”

  Jewel’s shoulders collapsed. “That isn’t funny.” Tears welled up in her eyes. She knew she should just tell him but she couldn’t think of the words. The Armenites were going to break this man and she didn’t know how to keep it from happening. If it weren’t for Jester, Ana, Meg and the others, she might have simply refuse to tell him and let him keep his pride.

  Erik caressed her face, coaxing her to look up into his eyes again. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

  Jewel really didn’t want to do that, but what other choice did she have? “There’s a significant precondition that you need to keep in your mind. This is an all or nothing deal—either all seven of you accept it or all seven of you suffer the consequences.”

  “What does that mean?” There were lines in Erik’s face that she’d never noticed before and dark smudges beneath his eyes that showed how tired he must be.

  “It’s a plea bargain,” Jewel explained, “in exchange for prosecuting you for your alleged crimes.”

  Erik wasn’t too exhausted to show some resentment. “What crimes?”

  Jewel shrugged. She knew he knew these answers. They’d discussed it before when she had met him with the others. “Piracy is the big one, but basically it all comes down to the armenium. The Armenites believe they have a right to control all of it and what we did challenged that notion. They aren’t going to let that stand.”

  Her news clearly did not surprise him. “So what is it that they want?”

  “They want you—all seven of you—to take the oath of loyalty and become citizens of the Hegemony.”

  “Not in a million years!” Erik snapped.

  “Erik.”

  He grabbed her by both shoulders. “These people ravaged my home world, murdered my friends, conquered my country and—”

  “Erik!” Jewel snapped back at him. “Listen to me. It’s worse than this.”

  Stunned, Erik let go of her and took a step back. “Worse? What could possibly be worse?”

  It was so hard to look him in the face as she answered, but Jewel stiffened her backbone and did just that. “After the oath, they will remand you into the custody of my soon-to-be-husband, Kole Delling, to live out the rest of your lives as thetes.”

  Erik clearly knew precisely what thetes were. “Never!” he hissed the word between clenched teeth.

  “You have to,” Jewel pleaded.

  “I do not!”

  “Then they’re going to kill you,” Jewel reminded him.

  “Then I’ll die!” Erik shouted back at her.

  She believed him. He’d rather die than do this thing. It was the betrayal of his whole adult life. He’d never agree to serve the people who had stolen his home world from him. But Jewel couldn’t let him do the honorable thing. Not only could she not bear to see him killed, she couldn’t let him drag Jester, Meg and the others down with him.

  She mustered the cruelest argument she could think of. “Okay then, so you don’t care about yourself, but do you care about what happens to Jester? No? How about Meg Falco? Or Ana Yang? Ana was your lover. She still loves you. Are you going to let the Armenites kill her because you’re too proud to save their lives? The crew is depending on you. You’re their executive officer. Are you going to let the Armenites kill them too?”

  “That’s not fair, Jewel,” Erik complained.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Jewel agreed. “But it’s still true. Ana and the others are depending on you.”

  “Well maybe they put their faith in the wrong man,” Erik shouted, “because I am never going to swear loyalty to those bastards.”

  Jewel couldn’t afford to give him a smidgeon of comfort. She kept her voice sickeningly calm and reasonable, hoping the cool rational tones would cut through Erik’s rage and make him see there was nothing else that he could do. “Then all our surviving crewmates are going to die with you.”

  Erik’s face screwed up with rage, he balled his hand into a fist and punched the wall as hard as he could. Bones cracked and blood spurted.

  “Erik!” Jewel shouted as she grabbed his hand to examine it.

  He shook her off, getting droplets of blood on her gray jumpsuit. “I can’t do this, Jewel,” he sobbed. “I can’t betray my people and join the Armenites.”

  Jewel felt tears leaking out of her eyes as well. “I know you don’t want to, but you don’t have any choice. And if they do kill you, isn’t that a victory for them too?”

  Erik didn’t say anything. He just stood there with his hand slowly dripping blood on to the floor. His pale flesh was already swelling into nasty bruises, but he gave no sign of the pain it must be causing him. The agony in his soul outweighed mundane physical ailments.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to marry one of these monsters,” he whispered. “Stars, how did those bastards catch us here in Arch? It’s a Confederate system. Don’t they have any backbone?”

  “Arch?” Jewel asked. Erik’s simple little error surprised her. Arch was the system Jewel had wanted them to go to. It was the gateway to the Confederacy and their best chance to get help that would have held off the Armenites. Erik hadn’t done as Jewel wanted. He’d programmed the vessel for the much closer Prescott System which boasted only a small Confederate naval base and an at best mid-sized star port. “What are you talking about, Erik? We’re in Prescott, not Arch.”

  Erik looked as surprised by Jewel’s assertion as she felt by his. “If we are, then the Armenites brought us here after capturing us. There’s no other way it could have happened. I programmed the Genesis for Prescott myself. Brüning about went nova over it—seventy-two years in transit as opposed to eight—he couldn’t stand the thought. But I knew we’d never escape the Armenites in Prescott. It’s not even Confederacy territory. There was no chance they’d raise a fuss against Armenite warships there.”

  “But we really are in Prescott,” Jewel insisted.

  Erik cradled his damaged hand against his chest and stared at her. His eyes were still leaking tears but he wasn’t actually crying anymore. “How is that possible?” he asked her. “I programmed the course myself and nobody else on the ship could have done that and even if they could, they had no chance. Ana and I put everyone in their sleep capsules ourselves. As ship’s engineer, she was the last one to go down, but she wouldn’t have changed it, she agreed with my course.”

  A terrible idea occurred to Jewel and she stumbled backward until she ran into her bed and sat down. “You all went into sleep capsules?”

  “Of course,” Erik said. “It was a seventy-two-year journey. Even if there was enough food, you’d go crazy if you stayed awake for all of that.”<
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  Jewel’s hand guiltily rose to her temple, but fortunately Erik didn’t understand her gesture. Oh Spy, she silently whispered to the deactivated bioware. How could you? All of this—everything—it’s all your fault…

  But that wasn’t true, was it? Jewel was the one who had reactivated the bioware even though she wasn’t certain she could control it. Jewel was also the person who chose not to let anyone know that the chaperone program was active again in her head. Erik could have tried to shut it off if she’d trusted him with the knowledge. Instead, they’d put her body to sleep without recognizing that the near-artificial-intelligence that comprised her bioware was active and capable of controlling all of the computers on the Genesis even from a cold sleep capsule.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jewel whispered, but Erik still didn’t understand what she’d done to him.

  He wasn’t done confessing yet. “The Armenites must have caught us far enough out of the system that the computer hadn’t awakened us yet. I’d plotted a midcourse correction into our flight. I didn’t think they could figure out where we’d come out until we were much deeper in the system. It’s my fault that they captured us,” Erik confessed.

  “Oh no it isn’t,” Jewel whispered but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the full truth. She couldn’t risk the hatred he’d feel when he learned what she had done to him. He’d figure it out eventually anyway, once he found out what the actual date was, but right now—no she couldn’t do that. The knowledge would push him the rest of the way over the edge, and he’d take everyone down with him.

  Erik groaned in pain. “And now you’ve got to marry this guy. If I’d just been a little smarter, we’d have gotten away.”

  Jewel got up and put her arms around him, careful not to crush the damaged hand that he still cradled against his chest. “It’s not your fault, Erik. I could never blame you for this. Please don’t…” She had to tell him the truth but she just couldn’t.