Chains of Redemption (11 page)

"But we can't bet on it," Stratton said. "What if their motive is nothing more complicated than they aren't busy fighting the Argy right now so they might as well tackle the New Alliance while they have the extra time, ships and manpower? It's just the kind of stupid shit they would do. In any case, I don't think it would do for us to drop our guard."

"But what's our guard?" Janad asked. "We need more weapons, better weapons, if we have to fight the Reliance here. Where are we going to get them if we destroy the jumpgate?"

"She's right. Spears, arrows and rock hammers aren't going to stop a full-fledged Reliance assault fleet," Bradley said.

"I was thinking about that ship in the mountain," Janad said.

"Ship in the mountain?" Bradley asked.

"Yes, of course!" David said excitedly. He walked over and kissed Janad on the top of her head. "The Argy ship. It had that horrible weapon we used on the GSHs. Who knows what else it might have?"

"And we've got the few skiffs and small ships we brought from the station, and some hand-held laser rifles and blasters as well," Stratton said.

"But no power packs," Bradley reminded them. "The only ships we have that are large enough to do the flight between here and Earth had to land on the surface, and there isn't enough fuel if we used all the fuel cells from all the ships for even one to lift off this planet. These ships were all forced into battle, and firing the guns uses up the fuel cells fast. Hell, all but one of them wouldn't be flight worthy without major repairs."

"But they could send supplies to us through the jumpgate. Meet us on one of our moons. We have plenty of power to run the skiffs," Stratton said excitedly.

"We were using our ships, remember, and they're all here stranded here with us. They'd have to steal a ship first, and it sounds like they have their own problems," Bradley reminded.

"Still, if we close the jumpgate we shut down any hope of aid from that sector," Stratton said. "If the Reliance is hell-bent on using it to bring ships here to attack us, blowing the gate will only slow them down. You know as well as I do that they could construct a new and better fortified gate in two weeks—tops."

Bradley nodded in silent agreement.

"You and your maintenance crew can build anything. Isn't that what you're always bragging about?" David said. "We have geothermal power running out our asses."

"And don't think that doesn't smart," Janad said.

David ignored her. "We could fix up that old Argy ship. All you have to do is find a way to convert geothermal power into something we can use to power the ships and the weapons."

"All right. Not that it's going to be as easy as you're making it sound, but let's say it's possible and we can do that. I still don't understand what you expect me to do with some old ship, maybe not in much better shape than this one. One that's grown into the side of a mountain no less," Bradley said.

"This one fired its gun when we most needed it to," Taleed reminded.

"That's right," David said. "Let's say we could take some of the stuff you brought with you . . ."

"'Stuff' being a technical term," Bradley said with a smile, though it was obvious that he was starting to get as excited about the possibilities as David.

David mostly ignored the ribbing and went on. "The ship is already up a mountain. Let's say we could turn it into an early warning station of sorts. I'm sure it's got equipment that could be made to tell us when and if ships are coming in. It could be made to sound some sort of an alarm to warn us. Why couldn't we take what it's got, add some other stuff and maybe make a powerful laser cannon? One that could knock an invasion fleet from the sky."

Bradley laughed, "And while we're at it, why not just put a giant force field over the entire planet?"

"You know what I mean, Bradley, do the best with what we have," David said.

"That is what we in maintenance are best at, but you have to realize that such a project could take months, maybe even years," Bradley said.

"Then we tackle the simple stuff first," David said. "Shifting the power units to the least damaged ships. We dig barracks and build fortifications . . ."

"And we will train all our people, even as our people have always been trained for war." Taleed stood up from his throne. "We will train our bodies and hope they will not be forced to do battle. We will dig barracks and make fortifications and hope we don't have to dwell in them. We will build weapons and hope we don't have to use them. We will prepare in every way that we can prepare, and we will wait and hope."

David stood by the open window soaking in the cool night breeze and looking up at the small blue moon that was almost blotted out by the much larger white moon it shared the night sky with. Sometimes it was still hard to believe that he wasn't on Earth.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that he was the same farm work unit who'd been sent to a prison work camp for trying to get people to revolt against the Reliance. It seemed like one day he was digging potatoes under the Reliance foreman's watchful eye, and the next he was here on this alien world, and everything in the middle was just a blur. Those days in between had been fast and furious, not like his life before, or even like his life now. Life in those days had been life on the edge, where any wrong move, any glitch in judgment had meant life or death for someone.

His life on Beta 4 had been calm, a time of quiet reflection. Learning to deal with the demons of his past, with his loss, and learning how to move forward. He had forgotten the horror of the Reliance because till a few days ago they had seemed like only a distant bad memory, but now they were back, and . . .

RJ had said they would be. That they'd come to reclaim all that the New Alliance had taken. She'd headed for Argy to try and stop that, but . . . he swallowed a lump in his throat.

My God, it still hurts so much when I think about her. My breath hurts my throat. For so long she was the air I breathed. It's like my lungs don't want to function without her. And yet even with this loss,
he looked over his shoulder at the woman who lay in his bed,
I have never been happier. It doesn't seem to go together, this great sadness with this great joy. It's like I'm empty and I'm full at the same time. But now it could all change. I've been in war before. I've been in war with my friends and comrades, but never with my wife and my child.

"David, why don't you come to bed?" Janad pleaded. "There is nothing. Nothing at all that can be done that we aren't doing. If they are coming, they will come whether you are watching for them or not."

"I wasn't watching for them." He walked away from the window, over to the bed and climbed in. He reached over the top of her and turned off the light. "I was just thinking." He curled around her back and wrapped his arms around her.

"What were you thinking about, or need I ask?"

"RJ would know what to do, Janad," David said sadly.

"Maybe you know what to do. Maybe Taleed does. Everyone just acts, David. They do the best they can. She wasn't always right. No one's always right. If she was always right, if she had always known what to do, they'd be alive right now."

"I thought . . ." David's voice died in his throat.

"What?" Janad coxed.

"I thought our child would be born in a different world than I was. That he'd be free, and now . . ."

"And now his future is uncertain. Everyone's future is uncertain at their birth, David. He may very well grow up in a free world. If you had grown up in a free world, where would you be now? You don't know, but you do know this, you never would have met me. You wouldn't be here on this world now, and you never would have known RJ. She's gone now, but if you had been born in a free world you never would have met her in the first place. Knowing her, meeting her was the defining moment in your life, as meeting you was the defining moment in mine."

When the ship docked at Vero station, Jessica knew she was home free. As was to be expected, she, the doctor and the nurse were treated as the highly contagious individuals they had pretended to be. They were attended to by men in HAZMAT suits and moved into large plastic bubbles which they were ordered to zip themselves into. The bubbles were then filled with air and they were told to walk to the highest-level quarantine area.

Jessica had a moment of amusement when she remembered one of her underlings back at Capitol having a similar device for his hamster to exercise in. She could remember seeing the little ball with the creature inside rolling around the halls. At the time she had wondered why he would bother to have something so useless that took care and feeding. Now she knew. The animal had been something he could lavish affection on that the Reliance hadn't picked for him. Something that it couldn't control. For him, watching the antics of the hamster had been watching something that was free, even if it was living in a cage.

She wondered how stupid she must look rolling down the hall in her ball, "getting her exercise." She smiled. Maybe some greater being somewhere was enjoying watching her now as she had secretly enjoyed watching the hamster in the ball. She had twice ordered the young officer to put his pet away when she had been caught looking, because she felt silly. Now she wished she had taken the time to tell him how much she had enjoyed watching the creature's antics.

Simple things, simple kindnesses, made the difference between being on the outside and being on the inside. When you were nice to people, they were nice to you, not because they had to be but because they wanted to be.

She supposed it would have absolutely killed their father to teach all of his children this simple lesson.

Jessica hadn't had much practice being nice.

She was reminded of that when they were all told that they could take off the bubble in the quarantine room, and the nurse glared at her. No doubt because Jessica had caused her this ultimate humiliation for a healthcare worker.

She'd like to be able to tell her that she'd make it up to her later, but why add insult to injury by lying? So Jessica just looked at the woman and shrugged helplessly.

The real problem was her newfound rule, not to kill people unless they deserved it or were better off dead. She could have just taken the ship at any time in flight, but to do that she would have had to kill most everyone on board. Her newly acquired conscience told her that would be wrong.

Besides, killing an entire ship full of Argys wouldn't have helped her get where she ultimately wanted to go.

So she waited till her two prisoners were sound asleep and then she very carefully dismantled the alarm on the door. She wasn't too worried about other detecting devices in the station since she wasn't actually contaminated, but the alarm on the door was geared to go off as soon as the airlock was broken. Once she had successfully disconnected the alarm she opened the door, closed it behind her, and took off at a brisk pace down the hall.

By the time the doctor and nurse woke up and had time to tell their story, she'd be long gone.

If everything went as planned.

She easily found a computer that was only too happy to give her the station layout. Her first stop was the laundry, where they carefully sterilized every item of clothing that came to the station. She grabbed a general's uniform and traded out.

In this uniform, she could go damn near anywhere without being questioned. Not that at this hour of the night there were many people around to question her. She went down to the dock and right into the computer room. The two techs there stood up.

"At ease," she said. They gave her a funny look, so she guessed she'd used the wrong Argy words, but they sat down anyway without any suspicion.

She accessed the computer and found what she needed. A ship that had already been decontaminated, that was currently empty awaiting its quarantined crew. It was a smaller ship, and one that she should be able to pilot on her own. It also probably wouldn't be missed for awhile, since its captain and crew were scheduled to be in quarantine for the next three weeks.

"I'll be taking the Yaberly out. I've been released from quarantine and my admiral has just ordered me back to base."

"What of a crew?" one of the techs asked curiously.

Jessica didn't miss a beat, just laughed. "You boys think I can't handle my own ship? My crew are all still in quarantine, and you know how it is—when the admiral calls, you listen."

Of course they did, that's why they didn't argue with the "general" further. They didn't dare argue with the uniform. It was a military thing, and if Jessica understood nothing else she understood the military mind. You didn't salute or take orders from the person; you saluted and took orders from the little insignia attached to their uniforms. Her uniform said she was a general, so therefore they treated her like a general, which meant they didn't question her or try to detain her in any way.

The planet Deakard loomed before her, big and dark with red channels all over it. It was ugly and alien-looking to her, though it had been her biological mother's planet of origin. She wondered momentarily if their mother had even known that she had twelve children. She wondered briefly just how many of those twelve were still alive . . . if RJ still was. She shoved it out of her mind as something that, like so many other things, just didn't matter because there were no real answers, only more questions.