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Right who was sitting at the table.
     
    "What got into you?" Right asked with a smile.
     
    "Today wasn't quite as crappy as most," Jessica answered.
     
     
     
    Jessica couldn't sleep that night. Not that she really needed to sleep every day, just that since she had been on Pete she'd gotten in the habit of sleeping eight to ten hours a day just because it helped to pass the time. Sleep had become a way to escape from reality. Even on the occasions when she woke from a nightmare she found that moment when she became aware of being awake, and then of where she was, to be the most difficult time of the day.
     
    Tonight a little glimmer of light was shining dimly on the horizon. There was hope, a chance for an escape from this hell. She had knowledge, and as she had learned long ago and had put in deep storage in the years since her undoing, knowledge was power.
     
    What to do with the knowledge she had? That was, indeed, the question.
     
    RJ might be dead, though Jessica personally doubted it, but she might be. If she had landed somewhere in charted space she would have more than likely been located by now. If she were even close there would have been some sort of communication. Someone would have caught her on a detection device somewhere and no doubt everyone was looking for her. The Argy, the Reliance, the New Alliance. If any of them had found or made contact with her, none of them had made record of it, and that was highly unlikely.
     
    Of course, in all likelihood none of them were even looking. After all, none of them really knew RJ. None of them understood how she thought and how she reacted quite the way Jessica did, and therein lay her chance at freedom from this world. Her chance at redemption.
     
    She walked out onto the porch and looked around her. The swamp gas was rising, making a green luminous haze over the stilted village of slaves. She needed more information, lots more. She needed to be able to watch for the signs that would mean RJ had returned to their space, because if it was possible, RJ would be back, and if she came back none of Jessica's plans would work, so she couldn't afford the luxury of getting her hopes up.
     
    Except that it had been so long since she'd had any real emotions at all that it felt good to hope, and plan, and dream.
     
    She had to get her hands on a computer, and not just any computer but one that she could modify to do exactly what she needed it to do. Unfortunately this meant taking something that was going to be missed, and that would mean house-to-house searches and questioning, so she had to have a damn good hiding place.
     
    She smiled as it came to her in a flash. How to get it, where to hide it, and how to modify it to do what she needed it to do. She was back on her game in a way that she hadn't been in a very long time, maybe ever.
     
     
     
    The next day when she was loading ore she once again brought in a load and used it as an opportunity to access the rest of the ship. It was easy. The GSH had been positioned outside the ship and the guards and foremen didn't really see the Argy slaves as individuals. To them they all looked the same. They supposedly watched them to make sure they didn't do things like steal from the ship or try to stow away. That they kept working, and didn't slack off. But the truth was they didn't really watch them at all. They didn't actually see them at all. The guards and foremen were like shepherds. They watched the sheep, but unless one turned purple or started flipping somersaults they weren't likely to notice one any more than the others.
     
    Then of course there was the other thing. The slaves never broke the rules because they were sure they were being watched, and the punishment for breaking the rules was harsh. They knew this because every once in a while a foreman or a guard claimed a worker had committed a grievous crime against the empire. The colonist in question would then be judged, found guilty, and beaten nearly to