Chains of Redemption (23 page)

Only those in the few bunkers that had survived intact had lived to propagate.

And the Ocupods. The oceans had been barely damaged in the meteor shower. The subsequent darkness, the drop in ocean temperatures, the continental shifts, earthquakes and volcanoes erupting hadn't affected the Ocupods much. They had been designed to see and work in the ocean's depths, in the darkness, and the cold. Even eruptions and quakes occurred in the ocean with much greater frequency that on the landmasses, so they were able to cope. In the years that followed the destruction wrought by the meteor the Ocupods thrived. And there was something the Abornie scientists hadn't taken into account when they created these underwater slaves; the original animal had a communal intelligence.

The Ocupods started to make their own civilization under the ocean's surface, not that any of the Abornie had actually seen it. After the attacks began, some of the Abornie speculated that without the work that the Abornie kept them busy with, the Ocupods had become motivated to create a culture of their own.

When the dust cleared and sun could actually touch the planet's surface again, the ice finally melted. The genetically engineered plants came out of their deep slumber and once again started growing to cover the surface of the planet. Life on the surface once again became possible, and the remnants of the Abornie people came up out of their bunkers and started to rebuild. They reintroduced to the planet's surface the animals they had kept alive with them underground, and they immediately started to thrive.

The Ocupods somehow detected machinery on the surface, no doubt because the Abornie DNA had given them a heightened sense of touch, and being as big as they were they could feel vibrations, maybe even feel sonic wavelengths. They put on the suits the Abornie had made for them and went to the surface to check it out. They saw the activity, and no doubt having some race memory, or maybe even a language of their own, deduced that the Abornie would once again overpopulate the surface, pollute the ocean the Ocupods lived in, and force them to work.

So they attacked.

And they had continued to attack every time the Abornie tried to use any sort of technology ever since that time. Any machine they came across they tore apart. They had deduced, of course, that as long as there was no such technology, the Abornie couldn't invade their world and enslave them. As long as they could force the Abornie to live a primitive existence they would never be a threat.

"Well?" Topaz asked, seeing the look on her face.

"The Ocupods, as much as it pains me to say it, are only trying to protect themselves from falling under Abornie rule again. They're simpleminded creatures and most probably don't even know why they continue to stop the Abornie every time they start any sort of machine. It's probably become an instinct for them. They detect any sort of high tech activity and they attack out of fear," RJ said thoughtfully.

"So why attack the village?"

"Because our transmitter was in the pack."

"All right, better question," Levits said as he walked into the room. "Why didn't they, and why haven't they attacked the ship? The Abornie have been here for two weeks, and nothing."

RJ looked thoughtful, she shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe they can't figure out what we are, and whether we're an enemy or not. Maybe they're just flat afraid, and maybe they're smarter than we think and they're checking us out even as we speak, preparing to make an attack. Look at it this way; these are most probably not the only Abornie on the planet. No doubt there are pockets of Abornie all across the surface of this rather large moon. The same would be true of the Ocupods. They could all be coming here in the water, forming such a large group that they can't help but win. That's what I'd be doing if I had thousands of followers and a communal intelligence. The chicken shit equipment on this ship doesn't seem to be able to monitor underwater activity, so they could be grouping underwater and we'd have no way of knowing."

"I'll take what's hidden behind door number two, Marty," Topaz said. "I like door number two." He got up and took off for no apparent reason. Levits sat in the chair Topaz had vacated.

"If they don't like technology . . . Well, on this world, on most worlds actually, you don't get much more high-tech than an interstellar space ship," Levits said. "So if I were the slimy, tentacled bastards, I'd want to take this fucker out."

RJ nodded. "But they'd want to make sure that we couldn't retaliate, because they know we can kill them easily. Since they have a communal brain they'd all know exactly what we did and how." She fell silent again, looking thoughtful.

"All right, what are you thinking?"

"I'm wondering if they have missiles."

"Do they have missiles?" RJ asked the leader, Taral, in his own language.

"Yes," he answered.

"Well?" both Topaz and Levits demanded. Neither of them had even come close to mastering the most rudimentary words of the Abornie language. In fact, Topaz had gone so far as to say that when they spoke it sounded like gargling snot to him.

"He said yes," RJ informed them. She started to ask him another question, but Topaz jumped out of his seat and yelled, "Beautiful! Fucking beautiful!"

"Is he going to hurt me?" Taral asked, holding up his hands as if to shield himself from Topaz.

"No, he's just crazy," RJ explained. Then she turned to Topaz and said in the Reliance tongue. "Sit down and shut up, or leave. You aren't helping."

Topaz grumbled something that not even RJ could make out, then flopped back into his chair.

RJ smiled, momentarily amused because the sound Topaz had made sounded a whole lot like gargling snot. She sobered and looked at Taral again. "How big are their missiles?"

"What?" He obviously didn't understand her question.

"How much damage do they do?"

"You saw," he said, and made a loud noise and spread his hands to imitate the blasting apart of an object.

"That's not a missile," RJ said shaking her head. "That was just a plasma cannon." Well, she'd thought she knew their language pretty well until she was trying to explain something they might not even have words for.

"Well?" Topaz and Levits asked again.

"He thinks the plasma cannon is a missile," RJ said.

"Then they don't have missiles," Levits said in a relieved tone.

"No one said that." She flipped on the monitor on the wall and ran her fingers over the keyboard. A picture of a missile appeared, and then it flew through the air and blew up a mock ship. It was a training film. She turned to Taral. "Do they have something like that?"

Taral's eyes were large. "No," he said. "Nothing like that, but with something like that we could kill them."

RJ sighed, relieved but still troubled.

"What?" Levits and Topaz demanded.

"The Ocupods don't have missiles." She was speaking in the Reliance tongue. "This bloodthirsty bastard wants us to get him some missiles to blow them up."

"We don't have any missiles, just some lasers and the plasma cannons on the ship and on the skiff, and probably not nearly enough power to run them for long enough to fight a huge battalion of those horrid metal spider things," Levits said.

"I'm sure we could find the power, and build better weapons, given time. That's hardly the problem." RJ was upset, and she didn't try to hide it.

"What would the real problem be then, RJ? Those really creepy things could be grouping in the thousands to attack us even now. You said so yourself." Levits remained a bit confused by RJ's demeanor.

"Those really creepy things are the only thing that has kept the Abornie from going right back to destroying this planet. In all the books that I've read since I've been here,
their
books in
their
words, nowhere did they show any remorse over what they had done to their world. Nowhere did they take responsibility for what the Ocupods have become. It's as if they totally fail to realize that their actions and the actions of their ancestors are directly related to their lot in life today.

"I'm afraid that if we take away their only enemy they will go right back to doing what caused the problems of their world in the first place. It's the first real moral dilemma I've come across in battle since the day I decided I wasn't going to kill unarmed civilians and turned on the Reliance."

"We have to live here, RJ," Levits reminded. "Those things, they don't think or feel the way that we do, you said so yourself." He seemed to be hell-bent on reminding her of everything she'd said as if she had somehow forgotten, which RJ found more than a little annoying. "The Abornie . . . they're like us. They deserve to have something better than a minimal life, living in the jungles like primitives. Being hunted down and killed anytime they try to better their lives. The Ocupods are evil. You only have to look at them to know that." Levits shot Topaz a heated look, no doubt blaming him for RJ's dilemma.

"The Abornie created that evil, maybe they deserve to live under its rule," RJ said.

"I can't even believe you're suggesting that. You, who fought for human freedom. You, who put freedom above all else." Levits stood up and started pacing. "Do I even have to remind you that if we don't find compatible energy of some kind that we have no chance of leaving this planet? And then there's the added problem of finding our own space. The fate of these people—and let's call them people because that's what they are to us—is the same as ours. Whatever happens to them is ultimately going to happen to us. True, the slimy tentacled creeps haven't attacked the ship yet, but eventually you know that they will. Even if they don't, what happens the first time we try to do something on the surface? Go looking for an energy source . . . if we find one, what are they going to do then?"

"If they attack the ship, what are the chances that they'd be able to get in? The solar cells seem to be running at full efficiency here. Our power cells are charged . . . at least enough to run our weapons. If we fired in short, well-targeted bursts we could probably hold back a massive attack," RJ said. "I'm sure our shields would hold."

"I can't believe that there's something to fight and you don't want to fight it!" Levits turned on Topaz and trumpeted accusingly, "This is all your fault, old man, you put this crap into her head."

Topaz laughed. "Oh yes, because of course I've always had such sway with her."

"Why is everyone yelling?" Taral asked, holding his hands over his ears.

"What did he say?" Levits and Topaz asked RJ.

"He said if you spent as much time learning his language as you did bitching at me and each other maybe you wouldn't have to ask so many stupid questions," RJ said with a crooked grin.

"We don't all have genetically superior brains," Levits said hotly.

"Or even sufficient ones," Topaz said, looking at Levits with meaning.

"That's it. I'm kicking your ass, old man," Levits jumped up and punched Topaz, who fell out of his chair and got up swinging. Soon the two men were rolling around on the floor.

"What's wrong?" Taral asked, getting out of his chair and moving away from the fight and towards the door.

"Two men of the same race can't get along, and yet I think I can make some sort of truce between two different species," RJ said in his language as she rose from her chair and physically pulled the two men apart. She held them each at arm's length. "That's enough!" she yelled at them.

They grumbled, but each went back to his chair.

RJ glared at Levits. "This isn't our world, what right do we have to meddle here? Maybe the Abornie deserve the life they have . . ."

"And maybe the work units deserved the life they had under the Reliance. I don't really see what the difference is between this and that," Levits said, wiping some blood from his lip.

"As much as it pains me to say this, he's right, RJ. Like it or not, this is our world now. The Abornie made mistakes, similar to the ones humans made. They created a monster to help them out of a problem, and now the monster controls them. Perhaps we can free the Abornie and keep them from falling into the same traps as their ancestors. We could tell them what they did wrong, how to advance without destroying their planet. Maybe we really can keep history from repeating itself."

"You were the one who kept saying that maybe the Ocupods weren't the bad guys, that maybe these people were, and you were right. Don't you get it? They don't understand that what they did was wrong. They want to return to a time when they overran the planet like rats. When they polluted the water and the air, and abused every other lifeform on this world. They didn't learn from their mistakes, and if we remove the problem their carelessness caused then they'll never learn . . ."

"RJ, these Abornie never lived in that world. They didn't sin against the planet. They didn't create those things in the ocean. They didn't pollute their world. Maybe they have no remorse because they didn't do anything wrong. You want to punish them for mistakes made by people who died hundreds of years ago," Levits said, in an unusually (for him) calm voice. "The only thing that Taral here and the others are guilty of is trying to make a little better life for themselves. Just trying to live. Maybe it didn't start out that way, but those things are now the aggressors, and I think your first instincts were right. They're slimy and icky and they need to be destroyed." He took a breath before continuing. "The Abornie built these genetically engineered freaks to serve them, and now they are causing problems. It's time for them to go."