Chains of Redemption (10 page)

She stopped suddenly and sat straight up. She looked at him coldly then. "So . . . Now all that remains for me to do is to get off this rock, and you can help me do that, too."

"How so?" he asked cautiously.

She picked the dead man up off the floor and stuck him on the examining table, his empty eye socket purposely turned away from the camera. She found some clean gauze and wrapped it back around her own head before she started talking, "This man died of some unknown virus. Something so bad that he didn't show any symptoms at all till ten minutes before he died. The diagnostic program has failed to identify the virus."

"The planet would be quarantined," the doctor thought out loud. "No ships could land till the virus could be identified and a cure found. The ship would have to recall everyone who'd been in contact with it since it landed, and we'd be forced to go to Vero station to go through testing and decontamination," he finished, showing his understanding of at least part of her plan. "But why would you want to go there? It's just a medical station, one that deals with the most highly contagious diseases in the galaxy at that. No one in their right mind willingly goes to Vero Station." She just smiled, and he suddenly knew. "You can't get sick."

"And because no one would willingly go there, no one will ever guess that anyone would hijack a ship to go there," she said.

"They won't let you leave the station till the whole ship has been decontaminated and we've all gone through quarantine," he said, thinking he'd found the glitch in her plan.

She laughed out loud at him and just shook her head. "I'm not one of those idiot bad guys that find it necessary to tell some unimportant idiot do-gooder my entire plan. All you need to know is that you'd better make damn sure that they believe you when I fix that freaking camera. All you need to worry about is that you and Herster there do the performances of your life, because if you fail . . . I'll kill you and every other Argy on this ship, and I'll do what I want to do anyway. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf, you know, not just kill the innocent and declare them collateral damage, but if you make me . . . Well, I don't have to get vulgar, do I?"

He shook his head no. He had no doubt that she could and would do exactly what she said if they forced her hand. She was . . . Well, the gods only knew what she was, and she was crazy enough to do almost anything if it meant that in the end she had what she wanted. He wondered if she was even sure of what that was.

Mickey looked at the city that had all but sprung up overnight.

The Beta 4 humanoids, or "Fourers" as they had taken to calling them, had not only rebuilt the city, but they had rebuilt the docks.

When Mickey had sent some of his people who had once made a living fishing the oceans around Alsterase to teach the Fourers to fish, they had at first been more than a little reluctant. Even though they were running out of food options, as they were running out of goats.

The Fourers had been afraid of the ocean. Afraid to the point that they wouldn't walk into it, much less consider getting into a boat that was going to float on top of it.

"Why are they so afraid of the water?" Mickey had asked Gerald when the Fourers flatly refused to be coaxed onto the boats.

"Not water," Gerald explained, "they are afraid of the ocean. In fact, when you first put them here they thought you meant to kill them. It was only when they realized that you lived in the middle of it that they began to understand that the ocean wasn't going to swallow them whole. The oceans of our world are places of death. They are, in fact, places so violent that most of us had never even seen one till we came here. There are constant storms, hurricanes, winds so strong they change the land daily, and you will sometimes find strange fish four hundred miles from the shore lying in the middle of what is usually a desert."

Mickey nodded. "Tell them that this ocean is not like that. In fact this ocean is named . . ." It took him a minute to remember the old name that Topaz had told him, and then he wasn't sure he got it right. "The Pacifist. It's called that because it is a mostly peaceful ocean. They only have to watch out for the undertows, and the fishermen will show them how to do that. Tell them I promise that if they learn the proper way to do things on the ocean, it's safe."

Gerald told them everything Mickey said and they seemed to believe him. They boarded the boats, each with their own interpreter.

Now after just a year, not only were they fishing and feeding themselves but they were shipping fish inland as well. They had taken all that they knew about hunting and used it to fish.

For a while everything had been going so smoothly that Mickey had all but forgotten RJ's warning about the Reliance. She had said that it was only a matter of time till they tried to take back what they had lost.

He had naïvely thought that when they had foiled their plot by turning the Fourers against the very Reliance it had been sent here to serve, they had succeeded in proving that any attempt at aggression would meet such failure. He should have known better.

The real problem was that RJ hadn't lived to make it to Deakard. She hadn't enlisted the help of the Argy in their fight against the Reliance, and with the Argy-Reliance war being in a temporary lull the Reliance had more than enough manpower to send troops and weapons to Earth. Mickey knew RJ would have seen the offensive strike coming and would have made plans to avert it. Mickey hadn't been aware they were in trouble till the Reliance had pounded the small town of Redenoak, just over the border in the Northeast quarter of New Freedom.

It was a return to the old days of Reliance brutality. They had bombarded the town and killed every living thing. The military base and new hospital they had just built had been pounded completely level, and then the Reliance troops had retreated. By the time the reinforcements arrived there was nothing to do but bulldoze up the piles of debris and bodies and set the whole thing on fire. Before the flames could die down the Reliance hit again, and though they were ready this time, it was all the New Alliance could do to hold its ground.

They couldn't go on long like this. They hadn't even repaired all the damage created by the war. People were just starting to get their lives back, learning how to live in a free society. How to work together for common goals without fighting like children. The liberated work units of New Freedom were just beginning to taste the fruits of their victory. Their bellies were just beginning to know what it was like to be full. They had just gotten decent healthcare. There were schools, factories, hospitals and opportunities. They were just learning what it was like to have hope. Hope that the future had something wonderful to offer.

War was going to tear down everything they had built up.

And then everything that RJ, and Levits, Poley and Topaz had lived and died for would truly be lost.

There was only one choice and that was to keep fighting. But while they were fighting, factories and schools didn't get built, and inevitably some of what had been built would be lost.

Worst of all, men and women would die. People who had just begun to learn the joys of freedom would die to protect it.

Hope would be lost, the people would be easily filled with a more familiar emotion—despair, and then everything would fall apart.

And for what? So that the Reliance could keep power over everything. For what reason? Why did they have to have it all? Why did they have to have any of it? They were a nameless and faceless entity, a corporation whose sole purpose seemed to be to enslave humankind and make it miserable.

Earth wasn't the only place there was a problem with newborn Reliance aggression. David had contacted him just two days ago. The Reliance had attacked Pam Station. The station crew had been forced to make a decision and make it quickly. So, after doing as much damage as possible to the attacking Reliance fleet, the crew of the station had evacuated to the planet's surface, rigging the station with explosives and blowing it up as the last of the crew landed on Beta 4. Pam Station's explosive demise had taken out what remained of the Reliance fleet, but it could hardly be called a victory.

It was a huge loss to all of them. The New Alliance had been using the ships they had confiscated with the station and had used the space station to smuggle goods to and from Beta 4. Without the space station, and with the strong gravitational pull of the planet to contend with, this trade route was dead. This would hurt the New Alliance both on Earth and on Beta 4. The jumpgate was still intact, but it looked like that might actually be more a problem than a solution, as it allowed Reliance ships to come and go from their space at will.

It seemed that without her presence they were swiftly losing all that RJ had gained for them.

Mickey wondered if the Reliance would now attack Beta 4 as they were attacking Earth. If they did, how could the Fourers and the few New Alliance troops stationed there hope to stand against the might of the Reliance with a fistful of ships they didn't have enough fuel for, and mostly primitive weapons?

"Well?" Stratton asked David expectantly.

David shrugged and shook his head as he paced in front of Taleed's throne. He didn't know what she expected of him; after all, she was the one with all the military experience. "I don't know. Maybe."

"
Maybe
he says," the young king bellowed, throwing his mechanical hands around, making broad circles above his head, and showing his obvious state of panic. "Maybe! We can't run the kingdom on maybes. Yes or no?"

"I'm not a freaking fortune teller!" David yelled back. "I don't know whether we should destroy the jumpgate or not. If we do we cut off the Reliance's route here, at least until they can construct a new one, but we also cut off our route to Earth. I don't have any information that you don't have. I have no way of knowing whether the Reliance will attack the planet's surface or not. Why do you expect me to know any more than you do?" he demanded of Taleed, and then without giving him time to answer David turned on Bradley and Stratton. "And you two! If any of us could second-guess what the Reliance might do next, I would think it would be you. After all, you were in the Reliance military, I never was. RJ made the plans, she did the strategy, all I ever did was talk, and follow. The one time I decided to lead a group of men into battle all but a handful were killed for their trouble.

"We were all more or less sure they wouldn't attack the station because it was so well armored and armed that it would cost them too much to take it. But we all watched as you blasted one ship after another from the sky and they just kept coming. They didn't really seem to give a damn."

"We forgot just how little human life means to the Reliance," Bradley said. He turned from looking out the huge cracked window that adorned the throne room to face the others. "They didn't use big expensive ships. They brought in a carrier, parked it out of our weapon range, and then just kept launching one assault after another. Jak-10s are what they call "throwaway" ships. Nothing but flying death traps really. Like wrapping yourself in aluminum foil and lighting your ass on fire. But they can carry a big-assed missile, and they come at you by the dozens. Trying to drop them before they get to you is like trying to wade through water without getting wet."

Janad walked into the throne room looking as hugely and uncomfortably pregnant as she was. She smiled at David as she took the closest seat she could find. "How we lost the station is immaterial. Find out
why
we lost the station, and you'll know why they suddenly decided it was worth it to lose so many ships, no matter how inexpensive they were, and so many men. Even when life is cheap, it's not free. If we knew why they attacked the station now, we'd know whether or not they mean to attack the planet's surface."

"She's right," Taleed said, apparently understanding her logic even when David and the other Earthers didn't. Taleed saw the puzzled looks on their faces and explained slowly, so that they might understand. "RJ said they wouldn't attack because it wasn't worth losing many ships for a space station in bad repair, in service to a planet which would no longer trade with the Reliance. We must have seemed like, as she said, more trouble than we were worth. So . . . Why are we now suddenly worth the trouble? If it's a trouble caused by the station but not by the planet, the planet may not be a target at all." He fell silent, obviously trying to answer his own question.

"They might have found out about the trade going on between us and Earth. Since they attacked New Freedom, our supplying the bastards with anything might have been a threat to them," David suggested. "In which case they might destroy the jumpgate themselves."

Stratton took in a deep breath and let it out so quickly that everyone heard her. They all turned to look at her expectantly. "They see us as a potential military base, a potential army. Weapons could be built and stored here. Fleets of ships could be anchored on the moons. We became a target because they see us as a potential threat."

"As they well should," Taleed said in a strongly testosterone-filled voice.

David smiled, but mostly ignored the young king. "So they took out the station—or at least got us to take it out ourselves—successfully keeping us from sending troops to Earth, or to keep the New Alliance from sending ships and weapons here. Either way, now that the supply line has been shut down the planet, if not the jumpgate, should be safe."