Free Jewel by Veronica Tower

Once they were in
position, he resealed the door and spoke to Erik through the intercom system.
“It’s all yours, Gunnarson. Good luck to you.”
    “Thanks, Manny,” Erik told him before beginning to unseal
the outer airlock. It was a heavy door and he had to strain to turn the wheel.
It occurred to Jewel that if Warrant had screwed up and failed to secure the
docking tunnel correctly, then the six of them were about to suffer a very
painful death.
    Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
    Erik swung open the outer lock and stepped through. “Hey,
Exec,” Jester called out. “Do you have a pistol stuffed in the back of your
pants or did you just shit yourself?”
    Erik didn’t answer him, just checked to make certain his gun
was secure in the waist of his pants and kept moving into the docking tunnel.
The tunnel was a zero gravity environment but the exec managed the floating
passage like a seasoned professional.
    Jester didn’t do so well. He was laughing too hard to keep
his balance and dark-skinned Dawil Kwon shoved him hard in the back to send him
sprawling face first down the tunnel toward Erik’s ass.
    Meg Falco flashed one of her few genuine smiles. “Thanks,
Dawil.”
    “No problem,” he told her just before shoving her after
Jester. “I can see you two are made for each other.”
    Falco squealed and floated after Jester.
    Jewel hung her head for a moment, embarrassed by the
unprofessional nature of the crew, then started down the docking tunnel, easily
handling the zero gravity. They played sports in zero g where she came from and
transiting to the station presented no problem. “Hello?” Erik called as he
entered the satellite ahead of them. It appeared to be a standard greeting area
just inside the airlock. “Permission to come aboard?”
    Brynhild was dark as a tomb on the station side of the
airlock and refrigerator cold.
    Jewel stepped into the airlock behind him. Her weight
returned to her as she left the docking tunnel. Jewel took out her flashlight.
“There’s power or else we wouldn’t have gravity. I wonder why there’s no
light.”
    “There’s probably an energy saving mode, which shuts them
down in the corridor if a certain amount of time passes without anyone walking
by,” Kwon volunteered.
    Jewel couldn’t help glancing at him in surprise.
    He smiled at her, as if he’d enjoyed confounding her
expectations. He had wide, flat features on skin darker than her own—evidently
his parents hadn’t been obsessed with sculpting him into something he wasn’t.
    “Then all we have to do—” Jewel started.
    “Is walk into the hall,” Erik finished for her as he acted
on the suggestion.
    Lights blinked on in the corridor cascading out from them as
far as the eye could see.
    Erik twisted back around to offer Kwon a serious look of
appraisal. “Good job, Dawil. You spend a lot of time on space stations?”
    “I grew up on one,” Kwon told him. “It was a couple of
centuries old with all kinds of sections tacked on—some of which people never
went to anymore. It didn’t make sense to heat and light them if people weren’t
around.”
    “Unfortunately, I think that’s going to apply to Brynhild
too,” Erik told him. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s still around.”
    Jewel knew how much this discovery had to disappoint Erik,
but she was impressed by how he covered his pain as he handed out assignments.
“Okay, let’s find out for sure what’s going on here. Jewel, you take Falco and
Jester and head spinward. I’ll take Kwon and Arico and head counter spin.”
    Very few space stations gained their gravity through spin
anymore, but the terminology had lingered.
    Jewel took a moment to size up her crew, strangely
disappointed that Erik was splitting the two of them up. She knew it made
sense—they were both officers. And she didn’t want to be alone with him and
inspire any more rumors, but she was disappointed just the same.
    Like Erik, she decided to press on as if nothing