Page 1 of The Captain's Bounty
CHAPTER ONE
The heatof the desert sun burned her back and shoulders as Lissa Blackwood heaved another shovelful of sand and stone into the waiting bucket and took another stab at the ground of this archeological pit. The bucket was nearly full, soon to be raised for her small crew to sift through, sorting out any finds to be documented. At least, that was the plan, if she ever found anything.
When. When she found something. Because it was here. Right here, on the painfully ordinary mining moon that orbited the painfully ordinary planet of Cutirut. Somewhere beneath her feet, so close, she could feel the thrill of imminent discovery humming through her bones, was the greatest archeological find not only of this solar system, not only of the quadrant, but of all time. She’d been digging around this site for years, just as her father had done for decades before her, but this time, she knew she’d find it.
No one shared her confidence, not even her crew. Hers, ha. They came with Dex, the watchdog Corporate assigned to her under the thin disguise of ‘foreman’. It rankled, but she’d had no choice. Her father’s contacts vanished with his death, and any other goodwill she’d had in GIASS dried up when her brother’scrimes were made public, which meant it didn’t matter what she found. She could pull God Himself out of this hole, halo shining and hand outstretched, and GIASS would stick Him in some unmarked crate at the back of a dusty warehouse just because Lissa had found Him.
Maybe they thought, without a dig license, she’d slink away and let the name of Blackwood fade into obscurity. If so, they’d underestimated her. The scandal of her brother’s crimes had only thrown fuel on the fire to prove her father’s life’s work and restore the honor of the family name. If that meant crawling to Corporate for her funding and equipment, so be it. Corporate didn’t need GIASS’s permission to dig on a moon they owned, and as long as proper archeological protocol was followed and documented, GIASS would be forced to acknowledge it, and her. All she had to do was make a deal with the Devil.
“Ready to call it a day?”
And put up with the Devil’s foreman, Lissa amended silently. Aloud, still digging, she said, “It’s barely past noon. The day’s just getting started.”
“So’s this heatwave,” Dex countered. “Is all this sand worth dying for?”
“It’s what’s under the sand that matters,” she informed him.
“What, more sand?”
“Isn’t it about time you did some work?”
“I am. I’m making sure you don’t die of stubbornness and sunstroke.”
“Well, go do it somewhere else!”
“Look, lady?—”
“Lissa!” she snapped and instantly regretted it. Ms. Blackwood or Ma’am, but not Lissa. They were not friends.
“Look, Lissa. This is a junk moon and everyone knows it. It had, what? Fifty years of habitation before Corporate did the math and realized it cost more to get the equipment out herethan the mineral deposits were worth. And there’s never even been a camp out here! You’re not going to find anything, not even a cigarette butt!”
“I’m not looking for cigarettes,” Lissa muttered acidly. “Or minerals.”
He sighed. “You’d be better off if you were. That’s the only reason Corporate’s letting you dig, you know. Surface scans of this sector showed the regolith is nothing but junk sand. Digging drones brought back samples of the underlying rock and it’s nothing but aluminum, iron and clays—no different from millions of other junk moons. They’re hoping having some human eyes on site might turn over some surprise pocket of astatine or lutetium. You know. Something actually worth something.”
“Just because you don’t understand the value of an archeological discovery, doesn’t mean it’s worthless,” Lissa declared.
She hadn’t meant to say it so hotly, or so loudly. Dex did not reply, but someone beyond him called out, “That’s funny, coming from a Blackwood,”
Lissa scrubbed a sun-bronzed arm across her sweaty forehead, shoving back all the tickling short wisps of blonde hair that had escaped her ponytail. Leaning on her shovel, she poured the last precious drops of hot, stale water over her parched lips and glared at the empty bottle while her emotions churned.
Their family had been archaeologists and scholars for centuries. Ever since space faring became the reality that necessitated its inception, at least one Blackwood family member had sat somewhere on the board of the Guild of Intergalactic Archeologists, Scholars and Scientists. Her father had led six GIASS-licensed and -funded expeditions in his lifetime. She, herself, had led two. Her brother, Martin, althoughan expert researcher and authenticator, had not led any, preferring the laboratory to the field. “I’m more of an idea man,” he liked to say. Unfortunately, his ‘ideas’ were all about how to steal, smuggle and sell off artifacts, and if he’d stuck to doing that, he might still be living the high life on Ganymede instead of growing gray in a Corporate prison. However, his next great idea had been forging artifacts, so that he could sell them over and over, but as it turned out, he was not as good a fabricator as he thought he was.
Eight years ago, he’d been caught, but the fallout of the scandal was still falling. His specialty was authentication, after all, and he’d been forging those right along with the artifacts. And to avoid the suspicion that came with using his own name too often, he happily forged signatures, too. Her grandfather’s. Her father’s. Hers.
Their once prestigious name was now infamous. Every award ever given them had been stripped. Every expedition she had ever taken part in and almost half of her father’s were all blacklisted. Every piece every Blackwood had ever donated to every museum they had benefacted was immediately removed from exhibition.
She couldn’t get a dig license now to save her life. She couldn’t mount an expedition, much less lead one. She was a pariah in her field. They all were, and she was glad neither her grandfather nor her father had lived to see all credibility stripped from the hard, honest work they had poured all the years of their lives into.
She’d had to see it though, and as much as she’d struggled to undo her brother’s damage, she was still carrying the family shame. She had nothing left, nothing but this pit and a few more days to prove her father’s theories.
“You all right?” Dex asked quietly.
She could have taken any amount of mockery—and had, for eight long years—but pity brought her temper right to the boiling point. “Oh, go away!” she snapped. “I’m sure Corporate is expecting another report on my expenses from their favorite watchdog.”
Dex didn’t answer that either, but at least he left.
He wouldn’t go far—he was too good a foreman, much as she resented him—but the distance gave her a little room to breathe and regret her loss of temper.
