by Selina Rosen
"And there's that missing ship," Jackson reminded them. "It might have been hijacked by the new Alliance and landed on the planet during a pulse. We'd be none the wiser. That ship could be here right now."
"He's right. Certainly those are all sound theories," Stratton said, the tone and dismissive quality of her voice led him to believe that she had a theory of her own and was basically dismissing theirs.
They were talking about the mechanics of the mission because most of them didn't really want to think about what they were really doing. Someone had defended these people, and now they were trying to find out who and get rid of them so that the Reliance could go right on raping them.
Stratton started trying to patch into command on the station to update the Captain on their progress. Instead of getting a channel out, Stratton wound up getting one in and the communicator started giving them the news of the day from the station. "Damned magnetic pulses," Stratton said trying to readjust.
"No wait, I want to hear the news," Bradley said appealingly and the others mumbled their agreement. News broadcasts however boring and repetitive were high entertainment on the station. Right now Bradley mostly wanted to know what was going on with the investigations.
It was the same old crap, except for detailed information on the repairs and when they expected to be up and fully functional again. They were saying it would take less than a week.
"Two at the very least," Bradley said.
The radio announcement droned on, till it came to the end. "And finally today twenty-three people were arrested and charged with conspiracy in connection with the recent sabotage of the transport bay and station. At the head of the conspiracy was corporal Harker number ZX5568723, who after one hour of questioning confessed to the crime and has been spaced for his part in it . . .."
"No!" Bradley yelled. He was at a complete loss, momentarily unable to even pull one clear thought out of his mind. Then he felt the pain of loss and an anger that was almost tangible and was building by the second. He didn't even notice that the ship had lurched violently to one side.
Hank said something, but he didn't really hear it, and then Stratton screamed something at Hank, which he also didn't comprehend. Then she was talking to him, but he was in a tunnel – a cone in which nothing and no one else existed. He could see Harker floating lifeless in space, could feel his pain, and suddenly he was hollering something without even being aware of doing so. He must have been unintelligible, because the next thing he heard was Stratton's voice asking gently.
"What, Sergeant?"
He knew then what he had said and he looked at her. "I said turn the ship around; we're going back," he ordered.
"Why?" Hank asked.
"Because we're going to tell those poor stupid fucks that the gold is killing them, that's why." It was Stratton who said it. Bradley stared at her dumbfounded for a minute and then nodded his head in agreement.
"Man, you can't do that shit," Hank said. He looked at Stratton. "Who's in charge here, lieutenant? You or this toilet cleaner?"
"I'm in charge," Stratton said and turned the ship around.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Hank half screamed half laughed. "Have you all lost your tiny little minds? This is mutiny. The punishment for mutiny is death."
"Apparently the punishment for saying anything they don't like is death, and we've all done that," Stratton said. Bradley was surprised to see that she seemed almost as mad as he was.
"You . . . I won't let you two soft spots do this. You're endangering all of our lives. You have no right to do this."
There was a familiar popping noise accompanied by a strange whiff of ozone, and then the sound of something large hitting the floor of the ship with enough force to make it lurch.
Bradley turned quickly to see Hank laying on the floor with a nice little burned mark right between his eyes. Bradley looked up at Decker who was standing with his laser rifle in hand. The green light on the butt of it was glowing showing that it had just been fired and was now powering back up.
"He . . . He was starting to pull his weapon," Decker said by way of an explanation.
"He's the least of our problems," Stratton said. She turned to look at Bradley. "A dead crew man we can explain away easily, but if we actually go against the Reliance . . . Well, they'll kill us all. We go to the Capital and tell that primitive King that it's the gold that is killing them, if we warn them about what the Reliance is really doing here, there won't be any going back. Right now we can kick what's left of Hank out the hatch, let him splat on the ground for the local varmints to eat, and tell command he went AWOL. But if we go back to the Capital and talk to the natives, there won't be any going back to the Reliance. We'll be as good as dead."
"And if we go back we may be as good as dead anyway," Jackson said. "They picked up twenty-three people on that ship and accused them of conspiracy with the New Alliance. I don't think any of them are spies . . ."
"I know Harker wasn't," Bradley said. "He died because Briggs needed someone to blame, and dead men don't have any chance of proving you're wrong about them. This man was my friend, my best friend. I knew him. He was no traitor. He was a good man – a hard worker." He sniffed and dried the tears off his face quickly. "Briggs sent us down here in the hopes that we'd find out what he needs to know and get killed doing it. Between you and me, I think that if we do exactly what we're supposed to do here and go back up there and report to him, there's a good chance that he'll treat us just like he treated Harker."
"I'd rather die planet side than be spaced," Decker said. "And I sure as hell don't want to be party to what's going on here. I said that from the get go"
The three men looked at Stratton. She suddenly seemed interested only in the view out her windshield.
"Well, it's up to you," Bradley prompted when he got tired of waiting for her answer.
She turned to face him and said. "I'm flying towards the Capital, aren't I?"
Chapter Ten
David had been asleep for days, so he guessed there was no mystery as to why he woke up before the others. He nodded to Poley as he walked past him at the door, and Poley nodded back.
Once outside the shuttle David made his way towards a clump of bushes that looked like they needed watering. It wasn't cold, just that nice cool he associated with an early spring morning. He sighed with instant gratification as he relieved himself. A disgruntled and now wet lizard about the size of a small cat climbed out of the bush, and David jumped. It glared at David then moved slowly away.
"Sorry, Dude," David said to the offended lizard and finished pissing. He had just fixed himself into his pants when he noticed that the sun was starting to come up. It wasn't all red and gold and orange like the sun of Earth. More purple and blue and grayish. It was only then that it finally dawned on him; he had flown across the vastness of space and was now standing on another world with a different sun, a different sky, different plants and different wild life. He walked a few feet away from where he had wet this strange new world and bent down and grabbed a hand full of dirt. It felt exactly the same as Earth dirt. He was a little shocked to realize he didn't feel more excited than he did. In a way it was a little disappointing. He wanted to be full of awe and wonder, like a child who had found something new, like Topaz. Instead he found that he was like Levits and RJ – basically oblivious to the wonder all around him.
Just another planet. No big deal.
They at least had an excuse; both of them had been on countless space runs and had been on countless planets. For them doing a mission on a strange planet was old hat, but it was a completely new experience for him, and yet try as he might he didn't feel any joy, no awe, no sense of wonder.
It was different. So what?
He was clear across space, and yet he couldn't get the vision of Alsterace burning out of his mind, nor could he remove the stench of death from his nostrils. He supposed things could happen to you that were so horrible that they leached any ability for happiness from
your soul. How could you ever be happy when you had endured so much pain? How could you trust anyone or anything when your own heart had lied to you? When the one person you had loved and trusted above all others had betrayed you and left you to bear the shame for their actions, it was hard to get worked up about something as mundane as a different sunrise. When you had taken a weapon and killed the only woman you had ever loved because she was a treacherous bitch, it was hard to enjoy anything at all.
He turned and started towards the fire pit. He'd put some wood on the fire if there were still live coals. Fire was the same here, too. Fire he decided must be the same everywhere. He stirred the ashes and found some live coals deep down. He stacked some of the smaller pieces on the fire and decided to go look for some more deadfall. As he turned to walk into the brush he saw RJ and Levits curled up in each other's arms asleep under the skiff. That was something he was sure he was never going to get used to. He stopped and watched them.
They looked content peaceful. He hadn't seen either of them look like that even in sleep since before Alsterace was attacked. They had each lost the loves of their lives that night, and the damage to their psyches had been complete. Kirsty had deserved to die, and that didn't stop him from missing her, wanting her. Neither Whitey nor Sandra had deserved their fates; he could only imagine the hell that Levits and RJ had lived in over the last two years. Now they had found each other and this union was helping both of them to heal.
I have to be happy for her. She and I were never meant to be; if we had been it would have happened for us a long time ago. I don't love her. I never have. While she once loved me, there is no way she would ever love me again, not now. Not after what I did.
He walked quickly away into the brush. The place was filthy with lizards, but deadfall was a little harder to find. The largest trees in this so called "forest," weren't even at tall as he was, and they were sparse. Mostly the land was covered in small bushes and cane type plants.
Seemingly from out of nowhere Janad appeared. She smiled when he jumped out of his skin after being startled by her.
"Looking for wood?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered.
"On the ground?" she asked giving him a curious look.
"Yes," he said.
She shrugged in a way that said she was never going to understand these humans. She went over to one of the bushes which still looked very much alive and had limbs of about three inches in diameter. She broke it off at ground level and started to break it into pieces. He remembered that she was stronger than him, but tried it anyway and found that it broke very easily. It was fibrous inside.
"The buche'feu plant breaks up easily but burns very long. Longer than most wood. Wood is hard to come by, but the forest is filthy with this stuff," she explained.
David nodded and broke off another limb. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that," he said. For answer she just laughed at him. He shook his head and continued to work. After awhile they had a pile that she informed him would be more than enough for the day, and they headed back to camp.
As they walked up RJ was walking into camp with a huge reptile on a stick.
"Janad, is this one eatable?" she yelled.
Janad nodded her head excitedly. "Yes! Very good."
"Great, more lizard," David muttered. He dropped his bundle of wood and found a rock to sit on.
Janad took the lizard from RJ and ran off. He guessed to clean and dress it.
RJ sat down beside him on the rock. "Feeling better?" she asked looking up at the sun that was rising quickly into the sky.
"Yeah, still feel like I've put on fifty pounds. I suppose that's why they're so much stronger than we are," David said.
RJ nodded silently.
"So . . . when were you going to tell me about you and Levits?"
"What's to tell?" RJ asked. "I don't feel like I have to make an announcement to anyone about who I am or am not sleeping with. Do you truly believe I have been celibate these last two plus years? I don't care who you're bedding, why should you care who I'm sleeping with?"
"Do you love him?" David asked.
"He loves me, and it has been my experience that when someone loves me I will love them eventually," RJ said. "I care very deeply for him; he saved my life. We share a common past."
"You don't always act like you like him a lot, and he certainly doesn't act like he loves you," David said matter-of-factly.
"Just because he doesn't kiss my ass – or me his –doesn't mean that we don't care for one another," RJ said simply.
"RJ, love isn't supposed to be work, it's supposed to just happen," David insisted.
"Love is always work, and nothing worth having ever just happens. I can't believe that after all you have been through you still don't get it." RJ got up and threw some more wood on the fire. "Nothing is ever as easy or as difficult as you make it out to be, David Grant. People have chemistry. If people have chemistry and they also care for one another, then it becomes love. You demand something that comes from nowhere and knocks you on your ass, but nothing is that easy. You demand that someone love you unconditionally; that they be always filled with passion and desire for you. Nothing is that difficult."
"Why is that difficult?" David asked.
"Because, in order to have that kind of love you would have to give that kind of love, and that's a hell of a lot of work." She sighed deeply as if finding his lack of comprehension tiring in the extreme. "I just want to enjoy him. Why does our relationship have to grow into anything more than it is now if we are both happy with the way things are? I refuse to plan out where our relationship will go. To dictate to myself how I should or should not feel. Can't you see that by doing that you are just sitting yourself up to be disappointed? This isn't some battle that needs careful analysis and planning. Even if it was, it would be my battle and not yours. Worry about your own empty, haunted life, and leave mine alone." RJ left then walking into the brush leaving David with his thoughts.
He carefully went over everything that RJ had just said twice and still had to admit that he didn't really know what she meant.
* * *
Topaz was gushing about the sunrise, the plants, the bugs, the lizards and some small fur-bearing creature he had caught a glimpse of running through the brush.
"Don't you have any birds?" Topaz asked the three natives.
"Birds," Taleed said the strange word and shook his head. "I don't know that word."
The other two shrugged.
"Animals covered in feathers that fly in the air like a . . . a space ship," Topaz explained.
"We have lizards that have feathers," Janad said and rubbed her stomach. "Very good to eat."
"You have flying animals on your world?" Taleed asked in excitement.
"Yes, many. And there used to be many more," Topaz said. "Over hunting, pollution and pesticides . . ."
"OK. I hate to interrupt Grandpa's story hour," Levits started, "but what's next? Are we just going to sit here camping until the Reliance finds us, or do you actually have a plan, RJ?"
"Sitting here till the Reliance finds us was my plan," RJ said leaning forward from where she was sitting on a rock and tearing off a hunk of the not-quite-done lizard. She sat back down munching on the piece of meat. "I figure they have to come looking for us sooner or later. To do that, they are going to have to come down here. To get down here, they are going to have to bring a ship. They come after us, we kill them and take their ship."
"Good plan," Levits said approvingly.
"Unless they kill us," Taleed said, not understanding their cavalier attitude. They were not simple minded like his people. They knew that the Reliance had weapons that were every bit as powerful as their own. They knew they weren't gods and therefore could be killed. "Surely you don't expect the seven of us to stand up to the might of the Reliance."
To his surprise the four aliens just laughed at him. The older one looked at him, and said as way of explanation said, "Fighting windmills is what
we do best."
"What is a windmill?" Taleed asked him.
"A huge monster with four rotating arms, beady eyes and sharp pointy teeth," Topaz said.
"You have those on your planet?" Taleed asked, his eyes wide.
"Oh, yes, thousands of them," Topaz assured him.
RJ rose to her feet and stretched. "Consider us giant killers. We have fought the Reliance before many times, and we have only really lost once. The Reliance isn't likely to throw anything at us that we can't handle. Their downfall is their size; the Reliance is too big and too well organized to think on their feet. Besides, I said I wasn't a god. I never said I was human." She turned and walked off into the brush without another word, as if some destiny awaited her just beyond the line of their sight.