Chains of Redemption (20 page)

"No, I'd like to see if we can catch one of these slimy things alive and check it out." The machine fell over as if on cue, and the natives grabbed clubs, ran in, and beat on the globe till it burst and the creature inside died. "Or not."

"Hah!" Topaz screamed into her ear through his mouthpiece. "See? I was right! Slimy tentacled ocean-dwelling aliens."

"What about the others?" RJ asked, wanting to slap him for the temporary ringing in her ear.

"I was still right."

"If you say so. Levits, return to the ship."

"Are you sure? That could just be the first wave."

"They were the test," RJ said. "Now they know we can kill them, they'll have to process the data before they send more troops."

"You're thinking like a human, RJ, and those things aren't even humanoid, which of course proves that I was right, I'd like to remind you," Topaz said.

"In my experience all beings which wage wars do it in a similar fashion. All creatures that hunt, hunt in a similar fashion. If I'm wrong you can always come back and save me again, all the while singing out choruses of how right you were. I don't plan to stay here anyway. We'll meet you back at the ship."

"Okay," Levits said, and RJ watched as the ship flew away.

One of the natives walked up to her and yelled a bunch of stuff she couldn't understand. However she could feel that he was thankful, excited, and again there was the overriding emotional swell of hope. They had easily defeated these people's enemies, and so they had hope that they might finally overcome their oppressors.

The rest of the tribe rushed into the village and started hastily packing things. Here was the answer to why they hadn't chosen to rebuild in the city, why their village looked so temporary. They were nomadic. Not because they were following the feeding areas, but because they were always in hiding from their enemies.

RJ smiled. This wasn't so different from home after all.

She grabbed the one she assumed by his posture—and the fact that he seemed to be barking orders at the others—was their leader. He instinctively swung and struck her. She let him go and he jumped away, swinging his hand in the air.

"Sorry," she said, and assumed from his emotions and his posture that he returned the apology. "You," she indicated with a sweep of her hand him and all his people. "Follow." She walked away, then stopped, pointed in the direction she wanted to go and then at herself. "Me."

He nodded and hollered something to his people. They all stopped in their tracks and looked from him to her and back again. He spit something back, pointing at the creatures in the suits they had just killed. They all made a gesture with their right hand, placing it in front of them with palms up, which she assumed meant,
all right if you say so
.

"Poley!" she yelled and he ran over. "Take samples from the creatures, and make notes and images of the interior and exterior of the machines."

"RJ . . . You have photographic memory . . ."

"They aren't for me, they're for Topaz and Levits; and get our packs and all our gear. The less the enemy knows about us the better."

He nodded and went about the task. She would have liked to have taken one of the machines back to the ship, but was afraid that not even she and Poley would be able to drag one fast enough to avoid any aftershock guard the creatures might send. What she had told Levits and Topaz was true, but depending on what equipment the creatures might have, they might be able to assess damage and make plans much faster than, say, a Reliance crew.

The leader walked up beside her and indicated that his people were ready to follow. RJ held her hand out, palm upward, and took off walking. The others followed. Poley collected his samples and their gear and followed the last native.

There were a hundred and three of the natives in all. Since the ship had been a troop carrier there was plenty of room in the cargo bay for the natives' things, and plenty of room in the ship's quarters to house them.

They seemed impressed but not particularly in awe of any of the technology on the ship, so RJ assumed that they did, in fact, know their heritage. No doubt they had been forced to live the way they were because of the creatures.

Of course the million-dollar question was, where did the creatures come from? It was a sure bet this city hadn't been built by or for them.

She was learning the native's language quickly, because of what she was, but not quickly enough to suit her. So she grabbed the leader and took him to a viewscreen. She turned it on and he was excited but not shocked, thus confirming what she already believed to be true. They didn't have technology, but they knew what it was.

She programmed it for a picture of a man. "Man, human, him," she said pointing at the image.

The man nodded that he understood, and then gave her ten words for the male of their species.

One of the natives, a male, walked up to them and spit out some words. The leader nodded then looked at RJ. When he saw she was watching, he touched his mouth and then his belly.

RJ held her hand palm up and turned to Poley. "Poley, take some of the natives out of the ship with you and allow them to get food. Then take them to the kitchen and show them how to use the cooking appliances."

Poley nodded.

"RJ . . . Are you sure it's such a good idea to have these natives running amok on our ship?" Levits asked. "We know nothing about them."

"Like for instance RJ, how do we know who the bad guy really is?" Topaz asked in a harsh whisper.

"Are you agreeing with me?" Levits asked in mock surprise.

"Yes, go write it in your little calendar and put a gold star by it." Topaz turned away from him and glared at RJ. "How do you know that these people aren't the bad guys, and the guys in the suits aren't the good guys?"

"I don't really give a shit," RJ said, annoyed that they were taking time away from her language lesson. Until she learned their language she wasn't going to be able to learn everything she needed to know about this planet, these people, and their slimy ocean dwelling enemy.

"Are you serious?" Topaz asked in disbelief. "These people might have been the aggressors in this altercation. This attack might have been in retaliation."

"True, but those things are slimy and icky," RJ said in a coldly logical way.

"Speaking of which," Levits made a face, "were you planning on washing that shit off soon? You smell like six months of stale butt cheese."

"What does six months of stale butt cheese smell like?" RJ laughed.

"I'm guessing it smells the way you smell right now."

Topaz was outraged. "I . . . I can't believe you, either of you. Would you listen to what you said? You're going to condemn an entire race because it's ugly, different. Don't you even care how they feel, why they attacked?"

"No, I really don't. Now if you would both leave me alone so I could pick this man's language from his brain, then I could get a bath
and
find out whether or not we're aiding and abetting the bad guys a lot sooner."

"If nothing else, leaving you alone will get me further from the stench. If you need me, I'll be locked on the bridge in case the natives turn hostile," Levits said with a smile and walked off. Topaz just stood there with his arms crossed giving RJ a stern look.

"Isn't there something you've lost that you should go look for?" RJ asked with a crooked grin.

Topaz left apparently in a huff, mumbling, "Is there any real distinction between stale butt cheese and fresh butt cheese?" When he was no doubt half way down the hall he yelled out, "Don't think you've heard the end of this, RJ!"

She didn't really know whether he was talking about the whole alien thing or butt cheese, and she didn't really care; both were equally irrelevant to her at the moment.

It hadn't been a decision she had come to easily. Jessica had gone to the Argy first, offering them continued support on their front if they would stop their forward push against the Reliance. Which she guessed showed the extent of her hate and distrust of the Reliance, because she'd known the Argy were going to laugh in her face—which they did. Jessica decided right then and there that she'd make them damn sorry that they had.

As far as the Argy were concerned they had the forward momentum and they saw no reason to back off while they were winning. They told Jessica as much and even insinuated that when they'd beaten down the Reliance they'd be coming after the New Alliance. They might as well have just come right out and said it, because Jessica never had any doubt that they would.

The Reliance had asked for a personal meeting with her and a New Alliance delegation, stating that it would be detrimental to have a meeting over monitors as any signal might be picked up by the Argy.

This made sense to Jessica but smelled of a trap, so she picked the where—a space station in orbit around Seritompia—the when and the how. Her "delegation," much to the agitation of the Reliance delegation, consisted of Gerald, four other Fourers, and a fully loaded battle fleet, which came in slightly after her ship had docked at the space station.

The Reliance officials had threatened to call off the meeting, or worse yet call up their own battle fleet. In the huge, very loud argument that ensued between Jessica and the Reliance liaison, Jessica explained that she wasn't about to come into a pit full of vipers without some snake charmers. After several more minutes of screaming, the Reliance lackeys admitted they had no real recourse, and the summit meeting was called into session.

Not that the Reliance seemed to understand the real situation in the slightest. They mostly wanted to flex some political muscle and watch her cave in to all their demands under the guise of "saving humanity from the alien menace."

She wasn't into playing their game. She was far removed from her days as a desktop general. She was a battle general now, the kind that fought with her fists instead of her keyboard, and she found that she no longer had any patience at all for their vast store of bureaucratic bullshit.

"You wouldn't have called a temporary truce or asked for this summit if you truly thought you could defeat or even contain the Argy without us." Jessica all but spat on the Reliance Governor who sat across the huge conference table from her. His statement to the effect that if the New Alliance would surrender to them they could reunite the Reliance and defeat the Argy had been exactly what she expected of them, but still not what she wanted to hear.

"I had forgotten how completely arrogant and equally stupid is the Reliance indoctrinated brain. We will not
ever
go backwards. We will go
forward
. The Reliance will either become the New Alliance, or there will be no alliance between my people and yours. Your society is no better than what the Argys offer if they should win. They enslave the people; you enslave the people. There is no advantage for us in choosing you over them. We already have an agreement with them. Our proposal would bring hope back to the people of the Reliance. It would give freedom to all human kind. It would give the soldiers something worth fighting for."

The governor got to his feet. His added height didn't intimidate Jessica in the least, and she proved it by keeping her seat and looking disinterested as he started to bellow, even going so far as to yawn and pretend to be looking at her fingernails. "Your proposal is preposterous! How dare you assume that you know what is right for the whole of the Reliance? The Reliance has been in control for hundreds of years . . ."

"And humankind has been shackled for all that time," Jessica reminded. "The Reliance jerked freewill from the people and made the human race slaves to a handful of bureaucrats at the top . . . You people, actually. So is it any wonder that you would rather risk the total absorption of our race by the Argy than share your power and freedom with the masses? It's a lose, lose proposition for you. Either way people like you become extinct—just one more work unit trying to make its way in the great scheme of the cosmos. I imagine the thought that you might have to climb out of your lofty towers and come down here with the rest of us terrifies you."

"There must be freedom for all, the Elite and the work unit alike. All must profit from the society or it is flawed," Gerald added from where he sat on Jessica's right.

"And are there truly no problems on the two planets you currently hold?" the governor asked in a smug voice.

When she thought back on it later, she determined that
that
had been the moment she lost all pretense of patience with him and the whole lot. "Show me one of the many propaganda disks you've made showing how rough we in the New Alliance held territories have it, and I'll shove it up your ass," Jessica hissed out, and now she stood to
her
full height—which put her about four inches above the governor, so that she was looking down at him, which in her estimation was exactly as things should be. "The only problems we have are caused by the things the Reliance did, or are still doing. Morale in the Reliance, both among the work units and the military, is at an all-time low because everyone is fed up. In spite of the crap you keep feeding them about us, they still see us as a viable alternative to the way you're making them live, so what does that say about the Reliance? It's a relic, and its time—the time it never should have had in the first place—is over. Who knows what has made this generation different from past ones, but the people as a whole are finally past believing that their lives are as good as they could be, that they are better off than they should expect. They are finally looking around them and seeing that some people live in golden towers and eat caviar while others live in dung heaps and eat garbage. This generation wants more than a subsistence life and mates that have been picked for them by a computer. They want to be able to choose their own destinies."