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Jewels woke up slowly, in an unfamiliar place. The air was cool - ‘air-conditioned’ cool not ‘barely climate-regulated arctic settlement’ cool – and had the vaguely chemical taste of a regularly sterilized environment. She was lying on crisp, firm bedding, and there was something attached to her arm.
“… bringing the patient out of it now Mister Hannigan. Preliminary CSF and connectome analysis indicates she’s got a bad emotional crash coming: probably the onset of PTSD, considering, but you should be able to have a productive conversation without her melting down. We’ve got her on some powerful next-gen mood-regulators – just came out of trials a couple of months ago.”
Huh. Now that she thought about it – and her rapidly sharpening awareness was lining up a smorgasbord of things that needed thinking about – Jewels did feel remarkably calm. She had had terrible dreams: the death of worlds and the death of those who she held most dear all running together into a surreal shadow-play dance of soul-crushing emotional agony and primal, atavistic, nigh-religious terror. However, even now, as she realized that at least one of those things had actually happened, remembered where she had been, what had become of her partners and what she had found entombed within the depths of the frozen moon, a cold twinge behind her sternum was the only reaction she could muster. Everything felt strangely sharp, crystalline. Her emotions were there, but she couldn’t connect with them, like they were screaming behind a wall made of glass.
Jewels opened her eyes. The room was a small and dimly lit by overhead sodium lamps, with walls painted a placid ocean-blue. She was lying in a double bed with crisp white sheet that rustled when she moved, and there was an intravenous drip attached to her right arm, the other end of the tube terminating in a grey flat-screen console built into the wall which included a variety of slots and sockets. There was glass-fronted cabinet in one corner containing a selection of labeled orange bottles on little metal shelves, a sliding, windowless door built into one wall, and a potted plant in the corner producing little yellow flowers.
There were three other people in the room. One of them, a bald and utterly forgettable man draped in a white labcoat who looked to be in his early sixties, was just now stepping back from the console in the wall to take up a position by the door. The other two were seated beside her bed in folding metal chairs. Both wore expensive suits – one all black, save for his crisply pressed shirt, and the other in navy with a maroon tie. The first was a slim white guy who moved with practiced elegance and had a face like the world’s most approachable hatchet; He had a tablet on his lap, resting in the crook of his crossed knees, and studied her from beneath slicked-back black hair. The other was powerfully built, totally hairless, and had bright green skin that shimmered with moisture. His fingers were over-articulated with too many knuckles, and his yellow, slit-pupiled eyes took up almost half his face. He resembled nothing so much as a frog, if frogs dressed in ten-thousand credit tailored suits and regularly competed on the heavyweight boxing circuit.
The thin man spoke first.
“Ah, Miss Jewels. I see you’re finally with us. Are you comfortable? Can we get you anything ?”
Jewels stared at him. After several seconds of uncomfortable silence she said, “I could use a glass of water?”
The overbuilt amphibian reached down, and plucked something off the floor, handing it to her. Jewels adjusted herself, sitting up as much as she could without disrupting her IV– and coming to the abrupt realization in the process that the extent of her clothing was a sea-green medical gown. The object turned out to be a bottled water. Unscrewing the cap, she drank half of it in one go.
When she was finished, the thin man continued. “All set, then? Good. I apologize for the lack of formality, but there doesn’t seem to be any surname on file for you, and this conference was thrown together in a bit of a hurry. We are in a private sickbay on board the Hub. My name is Raphael Hannigan, esquire, and this is my colleague Lygblyg F’lp’sl’p’p, also esquire. In case you don’t know, that means we are attorneys. He is here on behalf of the estate of your former employer, Tedrick Koenigsburg-Heath; as per the instructions of the man’s living will, he is representing your interests in the matters we are here to discuss. I am here on behalf of the Kaalakiota Corporation’s strategic asset acquisitions department. Do you understand all of that?”
Jewels absorbed the information, slotting it into her developing picture of her new circumstances.
“So that golden fuckhead did kill Ted. That’s probably on me. I guess when these drugs wear off I’m going to have to deal with that, too,” she said, noting with mild interest that not all of her emotions were deadened; She could still feel profound exasperation, and in that spirit she took a miniscule but emphatic sip from her water-bottle.
The attorneys looked at each-other. Turning his attention back to Jewels, Lygblyg spoke for the first time. His voice, surprisingly high-pitched, burbled like a stream in springtime.
“We don’t know about any ‘golden fuckhead’. Mister Koenigsburg-Heath, of the Opealon Koenigsburg-Heaths, is currently believed to be have been slain when Fortress-Polity 428A was over-run by Xenomorphs. Our Mister Hannigan himself had to be restored from cortical backup after discovering this firsthand. However, it is not the circumstances of your employer’s death that concern us today. It’s what he did shortly before that – and the legal contingencies that have arisen as a result.”
Jewels stared. The FP had been over-run by Xenomorphs? Okay. That was fine. It wouldn’t be fine later – oh lordy would it not be fine at all - but at the moment it seemed almost logical. It answered questions, filled in blanks. She hadn’t been able to raise anyone on the rig’s transmitter because everyone – everyone – was dead. At least half of them probably had it coming for one reason or another, but even so, it was a lot.
Jewels didn’t want to think about that – it wasn’t something she could do anything about, so with no emotional component dwelling on it made no sense. Instead, she refocused her attention on other things.
“You’re talking about the mineral-rights to that terrible thing in the cave,” she said.
Hannigan’s eyebrows lifted a fraction in mild surprise. Somewhere nearby, a climate-control system began to whine.
“Not precisely,” he said. “It’s a bit of a grey area, but we have been able to determine that in spite of its… biological nature, you do, as per the wording of your contract and the mineral-rights claim filed by your departed employer, currently have ownership of the object in question.”
Hannigan paused adjusted his tie, and poked at the screen of his tablet. “I will be frank with you, Miss Jewels. Under normal circumstances, you would not be here: Our prospecting team would have, strategically, failed to retrieve you. This is a fraught time on the Hub, and you are inconvenient. However, as my colleague has made abundantly clear, should anything happen to you the claim will not be abrogated, but rather default to mister Koenigsburg-Heath’s estranged family on Opealon. That is an outcome the Corporation would like to avoid.”
Jewels looked at the water-bottle. The plastic felt cool against her fingers, the sheets crisp beneath her forearms. She wanted to take another drink just to escape from this conversation for a second, but wasn’t actually thirsty anymore.
“Look,” she said, without lifting her gaze. “I appreciate you pulling me out of that cave. I appreciate you patching me up, and pumping me full of ignore-the-bad-shit drugs. I think if I’d woken up with my momentum gone and the pressure off, and immediately had to deal with, well, what I’m dealing with, I might have done something… silly. So thanks. But can you please get to the fucking point?”
Lygblyg made a croaking noise that might have been suppressed laughter and sat up a little straighter. “Of course, Miss Jewels. Mister Hannigan has an offer for you – two offers, actually. I advise you, in my de-facto capacity as your attorney, to reject the first one until he is willing to make a far more generous bid. The potential strategic defense applications alone…well. That is beyond the purview of this conversation. The second offer, however, if you feel up to it, may yield long-term benefits; a foot in the door, so to speak. Mister Hannigan?”
Hannigan leaned forward. “Miss Jewels: Subtracting the cost of your treatment at this facility, including the quite expensive mood-regulating drugs you were just given, in exchange for all rights, claims, and privileges relating to the find in question, the Kaalakiota Corporation is willing to offer you –“
The man’s voice buzzed in Jewels’ ears as he droned on. She wasn’t shocked – couldn’t be shocked, at the moment. But even so, the number he’d just quoted her couldn’t possibly have been right. It wasn’t fuck-you money, but it was certainly real-people money; enough for her to stop crawling around in psychosis-inducing caves for a living. Enough to go elsewhere, maybe start a business, or at least invest in one. Enough to have a life.
She couldn’t really see the point in that now, though. For the past few years, all she had really wanted was to go somewhere warm with Flipper and Krade. Starting a business, investing, that had been all Krade. Jewels had dreamed of living by the water, and having silly romantic small-town adventures with the people who understood her best, maybe learning how to fish on a planet where that wouldn't entail cutting through twenty meters of ice. Now, alone, the prospect of doing it tasted like poison.
There had been another plan once, when she was first starting out, before she met her boys, or at least the feeling of a plan – but it had had more to do with proving something than with achieving an actual outcome.
Alternatively, this offer would be enough money to go home, to Cevanti - to pursue a drug-addled memory of a picture and a voice, and maybe find out just what it was these corporate assholes were buying from her, what they wanted to fuck with – and what it was she’d set loose. Enough to chase a distraction - a series of tasks, one after the other, to spin her psychological dynamo so that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to function without being doped to the gills until... well, until she could figure out who she had become, and how that person could survive. She certainly wasn't the same person she'd been a week ago.
Her chest twinged again. The console on the wall beeped softly and the man in the labcoat frowned, returning to the console and tapping at an icon, scrolling through the resulting text.
“Fuck it, “ Jewels said. “Where do I sign?”
“… bringing the patient out of it now Mister Hannigan. Preliminary CSF and connectome analysis indicates she’s got a bad emotional crash coming: probably the onset of PTSD, considering, but you should be able to have a productive conversation without her melting down. We’ve got her on some powerful next-gen mood-regulators – just came out of trials a couple of months ago.”
Huh. Now that she thought about it – and her rapidly sharpening awareness was lining up a smorgasbord of things that needed thinking about – Jewels did feel remarkably calm. She had had terrible dreams: the death of worlds and the death of those who she held most dear all running together into a surreal shadow-play dance of soul-crushing emotional agony and primal, atavistic, nigh-religious terror. However, even now, as she realized that at least one of those things had actually happened, remembered where she had been, what had become of her partners and what she had found entombed within the depths of the frozen moon, a cold twinge behind her sternum was the only reaction she could muster. Everything felt strangely sharp, crystalline. Her emotions were there, but she couldn’t connect with them, like they were screaming behind a wall made of glass.
Jewels opened her eyes. The room was a small and dimly lit by overhead sodium lamps, with walls painted a placid ocean-blue. She was lying in a double bed with crisp white sheet that rustled when she moved, and there was an intravenous drip attached to her right arm, the other end of the tube terminating in a grey flat-screen console built into the wall which included a variety of slots and sockets. There was glass-fronted cabinet in one corner containing a selection of labeled orange bottles on little metal shelves, a sliding, windowless door built into one wall, and a potted plant in the corner producing little yellow flowers.
There were three other people in the room. One of them, a bald and utterly forgettable man draped in a white labcoat who looked to be in his early sixties, was just now stepping back from the console in the wall to take up a position by the door. The other two were seated beside her bed in folding metal chairs. Both wore expensive suits – one all black, save for his crisply pressed shirt, and the other in navy with a maroon tie. The first was a slim white guy who moved with practiced elegance and had a face like the world’s most approachable hatchet; He had a tablet on his lap, resting in the crook of his crossed knees, and studied her from beneath slicked-back black hair. The other was powerfully built, totally hairless, and had bright green skin that shimmered with moisture. His fingers were over-articulated with too many knuckles, and his yellow, slit-pupiled eyes took up almost half his face. He resembled nothing so much as a frog, if frogs dressed in ten-thousand credit tailored suits and regularly competed on the heavyweight boxing circuit.
The thin man spoke first.
“Ah, Miss Jewels. I see you’re finally with us. Are you comfortable? Can we get you anything ?”
Jewels stared at him. After several seconds of uncomfortable silence she said, “I could use a glass of water?”
The overbuilt amphibian reached down, and plucked something off the floor, handing it to her. Jewels adjusted herself, sitting up as much as she could without disrupting her IV– and coming to the abrupt realization in the process that the extent of her clothing was a sea-green medical gown. The object turned out to be a bottled water. Unscrewing the cap, she drank half of it in one go.
When she was finished, the thin man continued. “All set, then? Good. I apologize for the lack of formality, but there doesn’t seem to be any surname on file for you, and this conference was thrown together in a bit of a hurry. We are in a private sickbay on board the Hub. My name is Raphael Hannigan, esquire, and this is my colleague Lygblyg F’lp’sl’p’p, also esquire. In case you don’t know, that means we are attorneys. He is here on behalf of the estate of your former employer, Tedrick Koenigsburg-Heath; as per the instructions of the man’s living will, he is representing your interests in the matters we are here to discuss. I am here on behalf of the Kaalakiota Corporation’s strategic asset acquisitions department. Do you understand all of that?”
Jewels absorbed the information, slotting it into her developing picture of her new circumstances.
“So that golden fuckhead did kill Ted. That’s probably on me. I guess when these drugs wear off I’m going to have to deal with that, too,” she said, noting with mild interest that not all of her emotions were deadened; She could still feel profound exasperation, and in that spirit she took a miniscule but emphatic sip from her water-bottle.
The attorneys looked at each-other. Turning his attention back to Jewels, Lygblyg spoke for the first time. His voice, surprisingly high-pitched, burbled like a stream in springtime.
“We don’t know about any ‘golden fuckhead’. Mister Koenigsburg-Heath, of the Opealon Koenigsburg-Heaths, is currently believed to be have been slain when Fortress-Polity 428A was over-run by Xenomorphs. Our Mister Hannigan himself had to be restored from cortical backup after discovering this firsthand. However, it is not the circumstances of your employer’s death that concern us today. It’s what he did shortly before that – and the legal contingencies that have arisen as a result.”
Jewels stared. The FP had been over-run by Xenomorphs? Okay. That was fine. It wouldn’t be fine later – oh lordy would it not be fine at all - but at the moment it seemed almost logical. It answered questions, filled in blanks. She hadn’t been able to raise anyone on the rig’s transmitter because everyone – everyone – was dead. At least half of them probably had it coming for one reason or another, but even so, it was a lot.
Jewels didn’t want to think about that – it wasn’t something she could do anything about, so with no emotional component dwelling on it made no sense. Instead, she refocused her attention on other things.
“You’re talking about the mineral-rights to that terrible thing in the cave,” she said.
Hannigan’s eyebrows lifted a fraction in mild surprise. Somewhere nearby, a climate-control system began to whine.
“Not precisely,” he said. “It’s a bit of a grey area, but we have been able to determine that in spite of its… biological nature, you do, as per the wording of your contract and the mineral-rights claim filed by your departed employer, currently have ownership of the object in question.”
Hannigan paused adjusted his tie, and poked at the screen of his tablet. “I will be frank with you, Miss Jewels. Under normal circumstances, you would not be here: Our prospecting team would have, strategically, failed to retrieve you. This is a fraught time on the Hub, and you are inconvenient. However, as my colleague has made abundantly clear, should anything happen to you the claim will not be abrogated, but rather default to mister Koenigsburg-Heath’s estranged family on Opealon. That is an outcome the Corporation would like to avoid.”
Jewels looked at the water-bottle. The plastic felt cool against her fingers, the sheets crisp beneath her forearms. She wanted to take another drink just to escape from this conversation for a second, but wasn’t actually thirsty anymore.
“Look,” she said, without lifting her gaze. “I appreciate you pulling me out of that cave. I appreciate you patching me up, and pumping me full of ignore-the-bad-shit drugs. I think if I’d woken up with my momentum gone and the pressure off, and immediately had to deal with, well, what I’m dealing with, I might have done something… silly. So thanks. But can you please get to the fucking point?”
Lygblyg made a croaking noise that might have been suppressed laughter and sat up a little straighter. “Of course, Miss Jewels. Mister Hannigan has an offer for you – two offers, actually. I advise you, in my de-facto capacity as your attorney, to reject the first one until he is willing to make a far more generous bid. The potential strategic defense applications alone…well. That is beyond the purview of this conversation. The second offer, however, if you feel up to it, may yield long-term benefits; a foot in the door, so to speak. Mister Hannigan?”
Hannigan leaned forward. “Miss Jewels: Subtracting the cost of your treatment at this facility, including the quite expensive mood-regulating drugs you were just given, in exchange for all rights, claims, and privileges relating to the find in question, the Kaalakiota Corporation is willing to offer you –“
The man’s voice buzzed in Jewels’ ears as he droned on. She wasn’t shocked – couldn’t be shocked, at the moment. But even so, the number he’d just quoted her couldn’t possibly have been right. It wasn’t fuck-you money, but it was certainly real-people money; enough for her to stop crawling around in psychosis-inducing caves for a living. Enough to go elsewhere, maybe start a business, or at least invest in one. Enough to have a life.
She couldn’t really see the point in that now, though. For the past few years, all she had really wanted was to go somewhere warm with Flipper and Krade. Starting a business, investing, that had been all Krade. Jewels had dreamed of living by the water, and having silly romantic small-town adventures with the people who understood her best, maybe learning how to fish on a planet where that wouldn't entail cutting through twenty meters of ice. Now, alone, the prospect of doing it tasted like poison.
There had been another plan once, when she was first starting out, before she met her boys, or at least the feeling of a plan – but it had had more to do with proving something than with achieving an actual outcome.
Alternatively, this offer would be enough money to go home, to Cevanti - to pursue a drug-addled memory of a picture and a voice, and maybe find out just what it was these corporate assholes were buying from her, what they wanted to fuck with – and what it was she’d set loose. Enough to chase a distraction - a series of tasks, one after the other, to spin her psychological dynamo so that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to function without being doped to the gills until... well, until she could figure out who she had become, and how that person could survive. She certainly wasn't the same person she'd been a week ago.
Her chest twinged again. The console on the wall beeped softly and the man in the labcoat frowned, returning to the console and tapping at an icon, scrolling through the resulting text.
“Fuck it, “ Jewels said. “Where do I sign?”
This has been prologue: Quest starts now
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