Priestess of the Eggstone (11 page)

I went into my ship, now standing alone and silent on the cracked concrete.

Jerimon stared suspiciously at the airlock for a minute after it slid closed behind me.

I stepped around him, heading for the cockpit. We had to take off before Grant Lowell changed his mind. Or I gave in to his deceptive promise of safety.

“How come they aren’t arresting us?” Jerimon demanded as I sat down.

“Because they aren’t.”

“Why not?” His blue eyes were cold and hard. “You work for him, don’t you? You’ve been with the Patrol the whole time.”

I flipped switches harder than necessary, working through preflight. “No, I don’t. He keeps asking and I keep refusing. Are you going to help me or not?”

“I heard them talking about you after they locked me up. I spent the night in jail until Commander Lowell showed up. They were going to arrest you. They pulled up your file. That’s when the questions started. Your file is locked so tight they couldn’t get anything other than your name, planet of origin, and current ship status. Security clearance ten.”

“I’ll give you what explanations I can after we lift off.”

“You’ll give them to me now.”

“I’m not going to wait for Commander Lowell to change his mind. Either help me or sit down and shut up.” I switched on the engines and called the control tower.

Jerimon grudgingly slid into his chair, his mouth set in a tight frown.

I ignored him. I hadn’t gotten him attacked and poisoned by eight foot lizards. I’d only gotten us tangled in a Patrol investigation. I should be the one angry. He had no right to accuse me of messing up his life. He’d done a fairly good job of that before he met me.

The ship shuddered on lift off, wobbling unevenly as the maglev drive kicked in. The engine hiccupped a few times until the air worked out of the tubing. It settled down into a mostly even rumble. I double checked the nav computer. I had my doubts about whether the course I’d entered would really get us to Nevira. I mentally crossed my fingers and trusted to blind luck. I didn’t see that we had much choice.

Jerimon didn’t say a word all the way to the jump point. We hit the target acceleration; space showed clear.

I checked the nav computer one last time before I engaged the hyperdrive. The ship rattled as it punched through the interface. I held my breath until the yellow warning lights for the hyperdrive reluctantly turned green. One stubborn light flickered yellow, nothing serious but I’d have to keep an eye on the coolant valves.

Jerimon shut down the sublight engines, slamming the switches to their stops. “We’re here. Talk.”

“Just one minute, Jerimon. I don’t know why you are so mad at me. What have I done to you? Do I have to remind you that you put the Sessimoniss on my tail? You want to see my scars?”

He flinched. “Dace, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t give him a chance to finish. “I don’t see why my personal file should matter. It’s classified because I accidentally landed in a very messy Patrol investigation. I’m not supposed to talk about it. That’s where I met Commander Lowell. I don’t work for him or anyone else in the Patrol. If I did, they sure as blazes would have put a decent cover story in my file, not some big blank under restriction. And what difference would it make if I did work for them?”

“You used me.”

“You didn’t use me?”

We glared at each other for a moment.

Jerimon was the one who backed down. He looked away, running his hands through his hair. “What do we do now? Is Belliff or the Patrol going to chase us? We are technically stealing the ship.”

“After the money I spent fixing it, it should be half ours.”

“We stole the money, too.”

I grinned, a nasty grin that showed my teeth. “We deserved it. We were just paying ourselves a danger bonus.”

“Do you have any conscience, Dace? Didn’t anyone teach you about rules and laws?”

“Yes, the rule of self-preservation. I’m trying to save my hide.”

“Don’t you ever look beyond that? What about the higher law?”

“Why didn’t you turn me in on Tebros? You knew I stole the gems from Belliff. You’re helping me steal the ship now. You are just as guilty as I am. Do you only claim moral high ground when it’s convenient?”

“I was taught to respect the law.”

“I respect laws, even when I twist them a little. You’re going to bring religion into this now, aren’t you?”

“It’s what our government is based on. The higher law of God, respect for authority and other people.”

“Your government, maybe. Not where I was raised.”

“How much different can it be? I was raised in space. My parents were gypsies,” he admitted, looking shamed.

“At least you had parents. I was raised in an orphanage on Tivor.” I expected that comment to explain a lot of things, but apparently Jerimon was one of the six people in the entire Empire who hadn’t heard of Tivor.

“What difference would that make? You still had good adult role models who should have taught you moral principles.” His voice trailed off as I stared at him.

I could see the orphanage director in my mind. Miss Hadley was only a good role model if you were fanatic about oral hygiene. “I was beaten and bullied and treated like trash until I was old enough to fight back. The planet is a dictatorship, a harsh one, where the only people with any privilege at all are the ones ruthless enough to buy it or kill for it. The only law worth anything on Tivor is the rule of do it to others before they can do it to you. You seriously never heard about the food riots?”

“That was Tivor?” He looked shocked.

The food riots were the bloodiest, most ruthless suppression by a government to happen in three hundred years. There were many times I wished the Patrol hadn’t exercised its noninterference policy so strictly on Tivor. My life might just have been a lot different and a lot nicer if they had interfered.

“I went to the Academy because I fought for it. My father was Patrol. I never met him. He died when I was sixteen, leaving me a big pile of money.” I stared at the control panel, my arms wrapped around me like a shield. “How did we ever get into this argument, anyway?”

“I asked what we were going to do when we reach Nevira.” Jerimon sounded a lot nicer for some reason.

“We’ll figure it out when we get there. I’m going to go kick those valves. Let me know when the lights go green. If they do.”

The rest of the trip to Nevira was uneventful, at least compared to the trip to Tebros. The engine gave us a few scary hours. The nav computer kept asking if we really wanted to proceed with our course as plotted. We hit yes each time. It seemed to take forever. It really only took five days.

Jerimon and I continued to argue. He wanted us to go our separate ways on Nevira. He convinced himself the Sessimoniss would leave me alone and only follow him. I tried to tell him what I’d seen and heard about the Venturer, the ship he was on when he found the Eggstone. He tried to convince me that it was just pirates, a coincidence.

I couldn’t figure out how the Sessimoniss kept finding Jerimon. As far as I knew, there wasn’t a reliable way to track ships through hyperspace. Yet, somehow, the Sessimoniss trailed him to Viya. I caught a single glimpse of a ship that might be theirs as we left Tebros. They were hunting him, and me by extension.

What kind of rock could the Eggstone possibly be? I toyed with the idea of having Jerimon find a similar rock and making a substitute. It was just a rock, it shouldn’t be that hard to replace. Jerimon thought the idea was stupid. He insisted the Sessimoniss would know the difference immediately.

By the time we approached Nevira, we still hadn’t reached an agreement.

Nevira was a frontier world, uncivilized by the standards of most of the Empire. The capital city, a sprawling glob of plascrete buildings that looked like a tumble of blocks, lay scattered across a tall mesa. A flat plain covered in fields, white with winter snows, stretched for miles, leaving the city mesa standing like a lone sentinel keeping watch.

Wind howled around the ship as we landed, shoving us off course time and again. I shivered as I pushed us back on course, wishing I had a winter coat tucked away somewhere. I’d never thought of buying one. I regretted it now. Jerimon didn’t have anything either. We shut down the ship and listened to the wind scraping ice over the hull.

“How far away is your sister?” I asked after a long moment.

“She works in one of the bars.”

“She’s a navigator and she’s working in a bar. Why do I get the impression she isn’t any good?”

“She’s one of the best,” Jerimon said defensively.

“Then why is she working in a bar on a frigid planet like this?”

“Summer isn’t bad. Rather pleasant, actually.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I don’t know why, I never asked her.”

We both listened to wind and ice for a long moment, trying to put off the inevitable opening of the airlock door. The suits we wore didn’t have internal heaters.

“What time of day is it out there?” I finally asked.

“Looked like afternoon when we landed, although I couldn’t tell through the snow.” Jerimon picked at the edge of the control panel. “Maybe the weather will be better in the morning.”

“And maybe it won’t. What’s the name of the bar?”

“Are we going right now?”

“You have other plans?”

“Let’s go.”

I followed him to the airlock, already shivering in anticipation of the icy wind. The door slid open and we squeezed into the small space. I stood closer to him than I had since he kissed me in the cargo bay. He studied the control panel with fixed interest, ignoring me even though I was almost on his toes. I wanted to say something to break the brittle tension between us but I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t find the words. The door opened all too soon, but not soon enough. A blast of freezing wind scoured out the warm air. I shivered, tucking my hands into my armpits. Jerimon walked into the stinging snow. I muttered about the cold as I followed.

My hands were numb and my face was frozen solid by the time we reached the portside perimeter of buildings. It was the usual mix of bars with lurid neon signs, hotels advertising rates and room accommodations, businesses that dealt in things spacers needed, junk yards and repair docks, and government offices. I didn’t see any sign of a Patrol compound.

Jerimon stopped in the lee of a sagging wooden building. I huddled near him, teeth chattering. I’d only been in snow a few times in my life. I didn’t see any charm in the brutal cold of white stuff flung in my face.

“Over there,” Jerimon said over the wind’s incessant moaning. He pointed, then trudged through the drifts.

We finally reached a more subdued bar. No flashing signs boasting of nude waitresses or dancers or screaming ads for all-you-can-drink parties hung over the door, just a dimly sputtering sign that flashed “Bar” in faded yellow letters. Jerimon pushed open the heavy door.

The door swung shut on my heels. I soaked in the blissful warmth. The smell of stale drinks and old cooking grease was familiar the galaxy over. Jerimon talked briefly with the barkeep, before heading for the back room. A woman stepped from the shadows, swiping lethargic circles of water on the floor with a ragged mop. I hoped desperately that the sagging woman was not his sister. She slopped water across the floor without really caring where it went. She was not the kind of person I wanted to trust with my life and my ship.

Jerimon patted her arm, passing her for a back doorway.

The bar had only a few customers on that frozen, late afternoon. I took a step farther into the room.

“Well, if it ain’t Wonder Girl!” The voice was thick, slurred with drink, but I still recognized it. I wished I hadn’t.

“Nice to see you, too, Luagin.” I leaned against the counter, facing the corner by the entry. Luagin had been in my class at the Academy. He was hopelessly incompetent for anything but running automated freighters, barely managing to qualify for a pilot’s license. He’d run to fat even though it had only been a year since we graduated. His piggy little eyes stared across the room. The other three men at his table looked like sloppy copies of him.

“What are you doing out here, Dace, out in the armpit of the Empire? Lost all your daddy’s money in a card game?” His voice was laced with malice.

I turned my back. He wasn’t worth my attention.

“I’m talking to you, Dace.”

“I’m not listening, Luagin.”

“Too good for us solid working folks, is that it? Just slumming down here with your pretty boy, showing him how the other half lives?” He swayed drunkenly, itching to pick a fight. His companions sniggered, egging him on. “How much do you have to pay him to keep your bunk warm?” He continued with ever cruder remarks that made his companions laugh all the harder.

His comments stung. I marched across the room, then leaned heavily on his table.

“Now you’ve made her mad, Luagin.” One of his friends laughed.

“Must be true.” His other friend sniggered.

“At least I’m not a fat, pig ore shoveler with diseased turnips for brains,” I said mildly.

“Take it back.” Luagin shoved the table to one side then stood. He cracked the knuckles in his ham-sized fists.

“No.” I’d wanted to beat the lard out of him ever since our first class together at the Academy. I’d suffered in silence then because I couldn’t afford the penalties for fighting. No such restrictions were valid here.

He growled as he rounded the table. He swung one massive fist. I easily ducked. He was so drunk he could barely stand. I stepped to one side as he windmilled his arm past my face.

“I’m going to paste your sneering face all over the floor!” Luagin tottered, circling toward me again. He cocked his fist, swinging wildly.

I ducked to the side. He crashed into a table instead of me. Wood splinters showered across the room. I aimed a kick at his fat behind.

“Get out, both of you,” the barkeep said in a voice that promised more than mere pain for any who ignored it. “Nobody comes in here and breaks up my bar. Nobody.”

Luagin squealed with rage as he shook off the broken table parts. He charged again. I sidestepped, but by some lucky coincidence, he swung the same way. His fist clipped the side of my head and sent me reeling into the bar. I got a close up view of the barkeep’s shirt front as I collapsed over the polished length of counter. Luagin roared and turned ponderously to come at me again.