Jewel (19 page)

Ana opened her mouth as if to make a quick retort, but
stopped and considered the question. “Maybe not,” she finally conceded, “but I
won’t be sleeping well either if the Armenites catch us.”

“Then I’d better get going,” Jewel said just before she
sealed her helmet.

She positioned herself on the top of the gunnel and prepared
to fall back into the waves. She was frightened—or maybe the proper term was
downright terrified—but one of the things that differentiated her from the rest
of her family was that she genuinely cared about people. Life could not simply
be about chasing profits. She’d always believed that, much to the annoyance of
her parents. Now was her chance to find out if she was the woman she wanted to
be or the little Cartelite hypocrite her parents had tried to raise.

But there was one more thing she had to do before she
dropped. She might find her parents disgusting. She might hope to never have
the opportunity to see them again. But she didn’t hate them. And she wasn’t
going to be responsible for costing the couple of hundred thousand people they
directly employed their livelihoods.

Sapphire
, she thought purposely using the name her
mother had given the bioware.
I know you can hear me, and I figure you’re
the bioware equivalent of angry, giving me the cold shoulder because you don’t
like my decisions. But I still have the right to give you orders and if you
don’t obey this one, I swear I will find a way to rip you out of my head and
stick you in an incinerator somewhere!

That would probably kill Jewel too, but that was still the
way she felt about this—and Spy could tell that she wasn’t lying.

I order you to wipe out all trace of the secret you
discovered in the Chief Engineer’s files so that no one else can ever learn it
the way you did. And then I want you to strictly quarantine the data in your
own system so that under no circumstances can you ever share it with anyone but
me.

She waited for her bioware to respond, but it maintained its
silence.

Jewel tried one more time.
If there’s money to be made
off this secret, then you know we can’t trust my parents’ judgment. They’re
just too greedy. Better we never tempt them.

Spy didn’t respond, which really disappointed Jewel. But
then, in the scheme of things, it probably didn’t matter. Not when Jewel was
about to free dive one mile beneath an alien ocean.

Ana finished checking her seals. “This suit really isn’t in
very good shape,” she told Jewel. “There’s a reason we downgraded it out of
active service. Try not to do anything too rough.”

That wasn’t the sort of warning Jewel wanted to hear right
now. But the clock was ticking and they didn’t really have time to try one of
the other suits. And besides, hadn’t Ana already told her this was the best of
the lot?

She started to lean back on the gunnel when she realized
this might be her very last chance to speak to Erik. She couldn’t pass that
opportunity. It didn’t really matter if Spy heard her now, it had already
figured out enough to try and sabotage her.

“Erik, are you there?”

He answered instantly, as if he’d been listening in on her
and Ana’s conversation. “I’m here, Jewel. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Jewel didn’t want to justify her decision again. “Can you
switch to a private channel? I’d like to ask you something.”

“Sure.” He gave her the frequency to switch to and she tuned
her com to the new channel. Hopefully Ana would respect their privacy and not
switch over so she could listen in.

“Look, Jewel,” Erik told her. “This dive isn’t a good idea.
Remember what you told me when I wanted to do this?”

Jewel did not want to have this conversation. “I have a
question for you, Erik. I need an honest answer. Can you do that for me?”

Behind her the water continued to crash against the side of
the boat. Ana’s predicted storm was coming in and she really needed to get on
with her rescue effort.

“Of course, Jewel. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Erik’s voice dropped in volume as if he understood the questions that were
coming and wanted to make certain only Jewel could hear him—not that such a
reaction made sense over the radio.

She wet her lips. Ridiculous as it seemed, Jewel was far
more nervous to ask this question than she was to dive to the sunken mining
platforms. “Erik, when you said I was special…that you’d run with me…did
you…mean it? Or did you just want to have sex with me?”

She held her breath and waited.

Erik didn’t keep her waiting. “Of course, I meant it. I love
you, Jewel.”

Jewel felt her heart start beating again. A tear welled in
her eye. “I love you too, Erik,” she whispered. Then she tucked her head and
slipped backward into the water.

* * * * *

It was dark beneath the waves—far darker than Jewel expected
based on her earlier experience with deep sea diving. That shouldn’t be possible.
It had been pitch black on her first journey except for the lights they brought
with them and the same was true now. So why did everything seem so much blacker
this time? Was it because she was alone, sinking down through the depths into
the unknown without a friend and only one of the winch lines to guide her? Or
was there something about this ocean that sucked the illumination out of her
lights?

Her suit seemed to creak around her—something she hoped was
merely her imagination and not the likely warning of her impending doom. She
tried to remember why she’d thought it was so important to come down again. The
miners were not her responsibility. She’d argued against them diving on this
wreck. She’d argued in favor of them breaking off their mission and returning
to the surface. So why did she feel she had to be the one to come find out if
any of them were still alive? Why did it bother her so much to think of them
swimming to surface only to find that Jewel, Ana and Falco had taken the boat
and run?

A clock on her helmet faceplate ticked away the seconds as
she fell. There were thrusters built into the suit that could have sped up her
journey but she couldn’t quite bring herself to use them. Sinking toward the
ocean floor was frightening. Shooting blindly down into the stygian darkness
was another level of terror all together.

Something very large swam past her and she wondered if this
was the whale-analogue she’d seen off the prow of the
Tanngrisnir
all
those times. It was a gargantuan creature and the thought of being alone in the
water with it terrified her. But frightening as that thought was, she almost
hoped it was the case—rather than discover she was swimming with something
truly sinister…

She fell farther, the heaters working overtime to keep her
warm, the air adjusting automatically to maintain the proper pressure and
composition to keep her alive.

She tried her com-link. “Strongheart? Can you hear me?”

There was no answer.

“How about you, Ana? Are we still in touch?”

“We hear you fine, Jewel,” Ana told her. “You’re about half
way down, and one hell of a lot of tougher than I ever thought when I first set
eyes on you.”

“I’m not feeling very tough now,” Jewel confessed. “I’m-I’m
wondering what I can do to help when I get down there.”

“That’s exactly the point I was trying to make to you,” Ana
said. “I guess it’s too late to worry about it now. At least we’ll know why
they stopped talking in another couple of minutes.”

The big whale-thing swam by again, close enough that Jewel’s
light revealed a massive eye the size of a human head above a mouth full of
very sharp teeth.

“Oh, Stars,” Jewel whispered.

“What is it?” Ana asked.

“That huge fish thing that we saw when Erik came out to the
Tanngrisnir
is swimming around down here with me.”

“Maybe,” Ana suggested, “you should consider aborting the
mission and returning to the surface.”

Jewel really wanted to do that. “How much farther is it?”

“You’ve less than a thousand feet to go,” Ana told her. “In
fact, it shouldn’t be much longer until you start seeing some of the lights of
the miners and the equipment they set up in the Jörmungadr II.”

Jewel scanned the darkness beneath her, eagerly searching
for some sign of human activity. A bead of sweat trickled its way down her
neck. At least she hoped it was sweat. It had to be sweat, didn’t it? If her
suit had sprung even a tiny leak, the pressure at these depths would push the
seawater in so fast that there wouldn’t be time to feel a trickle of anything.

She was having difficulty breathing—not because of any physical
problem—but because of the pure psychological pressure of knowing that nearly a
mile of ocean pressed down on top of her.

“Three hundred feet,” Ana announced.

Below her, Jewel could still perceive nothing but the inky
blackness beyond the range of her light. “Shouldn’t I be able to see them now?”
she asked Ana. Then she followed up with a plea to Spy.
Please answer me!
Shouldn’t I be able to see them now?

Spy didn’t speak to her, but Ana was far more kind. “I don’t
know anything about visual acuity at those depths. Maybe your own light is
blotting out your ability to see those of the miners.”

“You’re not suggesting I turn my own light off, are you?”
Jewel asked. At the periphery of the beam the whale-thing circled her again. It
was big enough, she believed, to literally swallow her whole. And while she
couldn’t see it most of the time anyway, the idea that she could not hope to
see it at all was too much for her to handle.

“One hundred and fifty feet,” Ana told her, before answering
Jewel’s question. “It might be the only way to locate them.”

“No,” Jewel decided. She wasn’t certain it was the right
decision but it was the only one she could make. She might be able to float to
the ground through a mile of water by herself, but she couldn’t do it in complete
darkness.

“One hundred feet,” Ana told her.

“Why can’t I see anything?” Jewel asked.

Then her light went out.

“Stars help me!” she begged before she realized that she
wasn’t exactly in total darkness.

“What’s wrong, Jewel?” Ana shouted.

“Stop yelling at me!” Jewel told her. “I’m still all right,
but my light isn’t penetrating very far anymore. It’s like the water got all
cloudy, or inky, or…”

In the diminished halo of her light source, Jewel saw the
telltale gleam of unrefined armenium floating in the water all around her.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “The water’s full of dirt? I think
the platform must have finished collapsing, or something.”

A red warning light flashed on in her helmet faceplate, but
without Spy’s help, Jewel couldn’t remember what it meant.

Suddenly Jewel’s bioware was back in her mind and screaming
at her.
Emergency, Jewel! Your suit is losing its environmental integrity.
Please take your suit controls off manual and let me bring you back to the
surface.

Jewel had never been the sort of person who panicked in bad
situations, but Spy’s evident fear nearly paralyzed her. “But, the miners,” she
said out loud.

“Jewel, I can’t hear you clearly anymore,” Ana said. “If the
water’s…dirt, it won’t…safe for you…mining…back to…out of there!”

Jewel couldn’t think properly. She moved her fingers,
searching for the switch to let Spy run her suit by remote. “But…”

Every moment you delay weakens my chances of rescuing
you!
Spy warned her.

“But—”

Freezing, muddy, saltwater burst into the suit all around Jewel,
filling her mouth as she screamed Spy’s name. Her finger clutched spastically
on the control opening her suit to remote control, but her brain could not
figure out if the button worked.

“Erik?” she gurgled, through a mouth full of dirty sea
water. She didn’t open her mouth again, but spoke through her closed lips. Her
faceplate blew out, not in, as the water filled her suit and pressed out again.

Her terror spiked.

She was going to die. She lost consciousness wondering why
she hadn’t just married Kole.

A bright light shocked Jewel back into semi-consciousness.
“What…where?” The pain that speaking ignited in her throat rolled out through
her body. Nerve endings from her fingertips to toes fired agonizingly, proving
she really was alive.

“It would appear that our purser is regaining
consciousness,” the oily voice of Gunther Brüning said. “Do you want—”

“Jewel,” Erik’s voice came very close to her ear. “You’re
going to be all right.”

She certainly didn’t feel all right and she couldn’t
remember why. Speaking made her feel like she was swallowing razor blades and
even so, her voice was slurred like she was drunk or half asleep.
“What…happened?”

“We’re on the
Genesis
now,” Erik told her, which
didn’t answer her question at all but it did trigger flashes of memory in her
skull. The dive, the water, the burning agony…

Then she remembered the reason she’d gone under the water to
begin with. “Miners?”

Erik hesitated. “We think they’re all dead, Jewel. None of
them made it back to the surface with you.”

Sorrow washed through her pain. Surely they couldn’t all be
dead.

“We think that the platform collapsed. That would explain
the cloud of armenium-laced silt you encountered.”

She reexperienced the pure terror of having the frigid
seawater invade her all-environment suit, forcing its way into her mouth just
before the horrendous burning had started.

“Hey, you’re shaking,” Erik told her. “It’s all over now.
You’re going to be okay.”

“That remains to be seen,” Dr. Brüning said.

“Doctor,” Erik warned.

“It’s the simple truth. Even if the Armenites don’t catch
us, her injuries—”

Jewel’s heart leapt in her chest.

An alarm sounded nearby.

“Void!” Erik hissed. “Does that mean what I think it does?”

“She’s becoming quite agitated,” Brüning observed with no
noticeable concern in his voice.

“Jewel,” Erik told her. “You’re going to be all right. You
made it back to the surface and I think we’re going to be able to outrun the
Armenites.”

Jewel needed answers. “What’s…wrong with me?”

Brüning reentered the conversation. “You’ve sustained a
significant amount of internal and external damage. There were corrosive agents
in the water. I can’t fix this. We’re going to have to freeze you.”

“N-no,” Jewel protested. She couldn’t be frozen. She had to
deactivate Spy. “Wait…no.” Jewel tried to grab hold of Erik but she couldn’t
lift her arm, just like she couldn’t open her eyes. “I can’t—”

“Do it, Brüning,” Erik said.

She heard the sound of equipment whirring followed by a
slight clanking sound, like a lid closing on a box.

“Erik!”

“It’s the only way, Jewel,” Erik told her. “And the rest of
us will be joining you soon. It’s seventy-two years to Arch by sublight drive,
but it will still feel like tomorrow when we arrive.”

The hiss of cold gas reached her ears, encircling her body,
entering her mouth and throat, stealing her consciousness as Erik stroked her
hair.