Jewel

by Veronica Tower

  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.

  Chapter Nine

  “Feels like home!” Erik announced as he stepped off the Euripides’ landing shuttle in the fierce winds and driving snow of the tiny island in the northern sea. The temperature was about ten degrees below zero and the biting winds made it feel a thousand times worse than that, but Erik didn’t seem to mind as he looked around with the hood of his parka pulled back. He actually appeared to be enjoying himself.

  Jewel wasn’t.

  Her home planet, Luxor, had large swaths of tropical jungles that had been mostly cut down and even larger deserts. It was either hot and wet or hot and dry. You had to go to the small polar regions to find this sort of driving cold and that wasn’t the sort of place she and her family had visited that often.

  She stepped tentatively off the shuttle and shuddered against a blast of arctic wind. She’d thought the cold on the space station and the colonizer ship had been bad, but this wind made the frigid air down here a thousand times worse.

  Erik turned about and flashed a wide grin. “Isn’t this wonderful, Jewel?” He took a deep breath, basking in the chill.

  Jewel tried to sink deeper into her winter gear, hiding from the wind. “There’s nothing good about this cold,” she muttered, but Erik had already turned around. He practically bounced as he crossed the landing field.

  As she struggled through the wind after him and toward the first pre-fabricated dome in the small settlement, she decided that while she might not like Luxor very much, she really preferred hot to cold.

  Shall I raise your body temperature for you, Luxora? her bioware asked.

  No! Jewel insisted. You will not make any alteration to my body chemistry without my specific permission.

  But you’re shivering, Spy cajoled her. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you let me tweak your body temperature upward until you get indoors?

  Absolutely not, Jewel repeated. No messing with my body chemistry. Now, were you able to gather the data I requested?

  Of course, Spy reported. The program actually sounded insulted by the question. By what prioritization scheme would you like me to report on my findings?

  Ahead of Jewel, the miner, Glorious Strongheart, started burrowing into the drifts around the walls of the dome, searching for an entrance to the structure. It would have been easier if the drifts weren’t actually roof-high in many cases.

  Erik stopped admiring the weather and hurried to help the man. A half-dozen members of Euripides’ crew, including the four who had searched Brynhild Station with Erik and Jewel, hurried after him. Jewel was all in favor of hard work, but she didn’t intend to start digging in snow if she could help it.

  Is there power down here? she asked.

  Affirmative. Snója is powered by a still functioning nuclear reactor.

  Snója?

  That’s the Ymirian name for this facility, Spy explained. It means snow, aptly enough.

  Jewel wondered if the bioware were trying to be funny. Many of her friends had reported that their respective bioware packages showed great senses of humor, but Jewel had never noticed that trait in her own. Not that she had time to ponder the issue now. I assume there are comput
er terminals in this structure ahead of us?

  Yes, Sapphire confirmed. Would you like to see a schematic showing their locations?

  That won’t be necessary, Jewel told her. Just make certain that three or four are on and that they aren’t password protected so I can sit down at a terminal and have an excuse to find all the data you’re going to feed me.

  Ahead of her, Erik and Strongheart finally found the door to the structure, making it possible for them to finally get out of the wind, if not the cold.

  Sapphire appeared to read Jewel’s mind, something she wasn’t supposed to be able to do except in the narrow parameters of sub-vocalized instructions. Would you also like me to turn the heat on in the building?

  Jewel sighed. Would I like it? Yes. But it wouldn’t be smart so you better not. It’s going to be hard enough keeping you secret without having you start dropping clues like turning on and off the lights.

  * * * * *

  “Hey, this terminal is in power down mode,” Erik said. It had taken them more than four hours to get into the building and they were exploring now with flashlights. “Someone left it logged on and it’s still active after all these years.”

  He immediately sat down in front of the terminal and tried to access its software. “Hey, I’m really in,” he crowed. “What a stroke of luck. Let’s see what we can find out about this place.”

  His fingers punched the keyboard while Jewel wandered about preparing to discover another active terminal.

  Erik chuckled. “Oh that’s cute,” he told them. “They call this station Snow.”

  Jewel dutifully laughed like the rest of the people trying to warm up in the frigid building.

  “I’ve found a lighting and internal temperature control,” Strongheart told them. He manipulated the console and luminous panels on the ceiling eliminated the darkness. “Are there any objections to my seeing if the furnace still works?”

  “Be my guest,” Erik told him. “These computers are a big break. Maybe we’ll get lucky there too.”

  Jewel sat down in front of another terminal. Okay, she ordered, why don’t you start by putting a map of this colony up on the screen?

  The entire colony? Spy asked. Or just this settlement?

  This settlement, of course, but be sure to include the mine. That’s what they’re all interested in.

  There is no mine at the Snója settlement, Spy informed her.

  Oh, that’s just great, Jewel mentally hissed.

  Spy apparently missed her sarcasm. Yes, it is most fortunate. While your crewmates may be able to gather limited additional supplies of raw armenium stored on the far side of this settlement, it is unlikely that they have the ability to reach the actual mine.

  Which is where? Jewel asked.

  The map on her terminal screen shifted to include a section of the northern sea to the west of the island.

  The mine is situated forty-two miles off the west coast of Snója beneath approximately four-thousand, two-hundred and fourteen feet of water.

  That’s approximate, huh?

  This time the bioware might have caught her sarcasm. If you would prefer more accuracy—

  “What have you found here, Ms. Aurora?”

  Despite his bulk and atypical proportions, Glorious Strongheart moved like a cat. His sudden appearance behind Jewel completely startled her. “I, um, I just asked it to show me the mine,” she said.

  “And it brought you here?” Strongheart asked as he pointed at a tiny icon on the screen off the coast of Snója. He did not sound happy.

  Jewel considered playing dumb but her pride wouldn’t let her stomach it. “Yes,” she said.

  “Can you blow that image up for me?” he asked.

  Jewel picked up a terminal stylus from a place it had probably sat for two decades. It felt ice-cold beneath her fingers as she used it to expand the small space around the icon until it filled the entire screen.

  “That’s it,” Strongheart said. “They even named the spot. Hey Exec, what does the word ‘Surtheim’ mean to you?”

  Erik rose from his terminal and crossed the domed habitat so he could join Strongheart in looking over Jewel’s shoulder. “Surtheim was the home of Surt—the Fire Giant,” he told them.

  Strongheart pointed at the screen again. “Does that sound like a good place to find armenium?”

  * * * * *

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to look down from orbit and find something under a mile of seawater?” Peron asked via the com unit four hours later.

  “Just keep looking,” Captain Kiara told him. She was also on the bridge, her voice carrying to the crew on the moon’s surface through the open com-link. “Are you sure about this, Aurora?”

  Jewel was getting damned tired of everyone turning to her for their answers—especially since she thought what they were doing was fundamentally unwise. It had been a major mistake to let Strongheart catch her finding information in the settlement computers. “The mining platform is clearly listed in the Snója inventory,” she told everyone. “In fact, there were two platforms, Jörmungadr I and Jörmungadr II, but they lost one pretty early on in their time here.”

  “What’s that term mean?” Peron called out. “And why did these Ymirians have to make everything so hard to pronounce?”

  “It’s from another myth,” Erik said. “This one refers to the Midgard Serpent, a monster responsible for storms and tempests at sea.”

  “And you’re sure it sank somewhere near the mine?”

  Jewel stepped back in and picked up the story. “That’s what the records say. The first mining platform went down and they lost a lot of people on it. After that, they got a lot more careful about basic maintenance. Apparently the water is quite corrosive here—not acidic as far as I can tell—but hard on plastics, polymers, rubber and just about every sort of synthetic they brought down with them. I haven’t been able to find out yet if they knew what was causing the trouble, but it was something in the water, and maybe the snow.”

  “The snow?” Kiara repeated. “Are you telling me my shuttle may already be damaged?”

  Jewel sought out Erik’s eyes, wondering how to answer that.

  He shrugged unhelpfully in reply. “We haven’t been able to ascertain that yet, Captain,” he announced. “Do you want us to break off our search and return to the ship?”

  Jewel expected the captain to vehemently reject that idea, but she surprised Jewel. She actually considered Erik’s question for several seconds before responding. “No, I think withdrawal would be premature. Mr. Strongheart, are you telling me you think you and your people can mine the armenium, even under a mile of seawater?”

  Like the captain, Strongheart hesitated before answering. “Those wouldn’t be ideal conditions. If we still had a sea platform to operate off, I’d be more inclined to give you a blanket assurance. But, no, I’m not sure we could reopen their mine based on the equipment I’ve seen left down here so far.”

  That equipment included a large seagoing boat in dry dock together with two smaller, speedier looking craft. There was also a large stockpile of all-environment suits—each heavily patched—that could be used for underwater work and a wide array of tools that had quite satisfied Strongheart when he’d first looked them over.

  “So why are we spending time on this, Strongheart?” the captain asked. “If we can’t open the mine again, why are we looking for a sunken mining platform?”

  “Two sunken mining platforms,” Strongheart corrected her. “And as to that, the reason is quite simple. If Surtheim was like any of a half dozen underwater mines that I’ve worked on over the course of my career, then it had a significant stockpile of harvested ore sitting on the platforms at the time those structures sank. If we’re lucky, the Ymirians even dumped the raw armenium into sealed cargo containers for us like the ones they stored on the Genesis. So no, I don’t think it’s practical for us to try to open the mine again without a working platform, but if we can find the sunken Ymirian platfor
ms and dive to them, we could potentially recover several dozen tons of additional ore.”

  Jewel watched as the words “several dozen tons” sank into the minds of the crewmembers listening to Strongheart’s end of the conversation. It took a moment, but the frowns quickly turned into happy smiles again. Every last one of them was thinking about the millions of solars those tons of ore might earn them, and ignoring the intense dangers that recovering that ore would subject them to.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” she interrupted, “but are we forgetting that there is a reason these mining platforms sank? Or that the state of all of the equipment we found is at best sub-optimal? This is not the simple salvage mission that you and Mr. Strongheart appear to be discussing. It is very possible that lives will be lost if we pursue the course that Mr. Strongheart is proposing.”

  “Ms. Aurora is not a miner,” Strongheart reminded everyone. “We’re professionals. We know our trade and we understand the risks.”

  “I’ll bet the Ymirians thought the same thing,” Jewel argued, “and look at what happened to them.”

  Strongheart didn’t seem impressed. “You’re mixing fruits and vegetables. We don’t know what happened to the Ymirians.”

  “Yes, we do,” Jewel shot back. “They died out there, on the sea, trying to bring up this armenium.”

  Thanks to the information Spy had dug up for her, Jewel knew her assertion was mostly true. She was still working through the documentation, but out of a colony of some one thousand miners and support personnel they’d lost at least four hundred and twenty to water-related disasters in the mine—and that was before the last platform went down.

  She shook her head in disgust. She’d only just started reading about those dark days in the logs, but it was obvious now why the people on the station had committed suicide. They’d mobilized everyone they had for the relief effort and due to a series of catastrophic equipment failures, lost most of them too.

  “I think we have to operate on the assumption that the miners know their business,” the captain announced. “We’ll give your plan a try, Mr. Strongheart. What do you need from me?”