Priestess of the Eggstone Read Online Free

chair arms, I was going to fall out of the chair any moment. My head spun and I had to concentrate to find words. “Part of the arrangement was Belliff paying the docking fees. Why are they bothering me to pay them?”
    “They have been paid.” She snapped off the unit. I slowly slid from the chair. Jerimon caught me just before my face hit the control panel.
    He dragged me over to the bunk.
    “Don’t pay for anything, except food,” I managed to say through the multicolored haze that tried to suck my brain away. Jerimon’s face loomed over me, his blue eyes bright. “Belliff is supposed to pay everything else. Am I dying?”
    “You’re getting better.” He tugged at the bandages on my shoulder.
    I didn’t object. I had no energy to care. My eyes slid shut.
    I slept through takeoff and the jump into hyperspace. When I regained consciousness, the engines vibrated gently through the cabin walls. I made it to the facilities without having to catch myself.
    Jerimon was sitting at the galley table when I came out, rolling a drink container from hand to hand. He looked tired. I collapsed into the chair across from him. He didn’t look up from the drink container.
    “Is there anything to eat?” I was suddenly starving.
    Jerimon punched buttons on the dispenser. We sat without speaking, waiting for the machine. We both jumped when it beeped, loud in the strained silence. Jerimon slid the tray onto the table. “How are you feeling?” He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
    “Better. Do you want to explain?”
    “We’re on our way to Viya with another delivery.”
    “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”
    He flinched and took a deep breath.
    “The truth, Jerimon. Now. Spill it.”
    He sighed and ran his hand through his black hair. “I was hired as a pilot for a group of xenobiologists. They wanted to explore old ruins on the frontier where some Sshoria artifacts were found. They spent hours debating whether the ruins were human in origin or not. I was interested so I listened to their arguments. That’s the only reason I know about any of it. When we landed, I didn’t have much to do so I explored. On the last world, I don’t even remember its name, I found buildings that were almost completely intact.
    “I found a stone about the size of an egg and shaped like one, just lying on a table in one room. It was black, smooth and glossy. I thought it would make a good souvenir. It was just a rock, nothing important.” He crumpled the cup. “The ship started following us three days after we left the planet. They showed up wherever we went, almost as if they were tracking us through hyperspace. They kept their distance, made the captain very nervous. Then they started harassing us, demanding that we return what we had stolen.”
    He stopped talking, fidgeting with the dispenser knobs instead.
    “Go on.”
    “They were Sessimoniss, not human. The xeno experts thought it proved the ruins were not human. The captain and everyone else assumed the Sessimoniss wanted artifacts that had been excavated, jewelry and bones and such. They offered to return them. The Sessimoniss called them garbage and kept insisting we had stolen something very important to them.
    “When they called it the Eggstone I realized they were talking about the rock I’d taken. By that time, they were shooting. The captain got stubborn and went to report the whole mess to the Patrol. When we landed, my contract was up for renewal. Nobody thought anything about me leaving. I walked out and signed up on a temporary pilot job.”
    “Why didn’t you just give the stone back?”
    He shrugged. “I really don’t know. I figured they wouldn’t bother me anymore. I thought if I took enough jobs I could lose them. I just couldn’t seem to make myself give it up.”
    “So where is it now?”
    “I sold it, five planets ago. They were trying to kill me, hunting me down and showing up when I least expected them. I found some guy who dealt with stolen