by Selina Rosen
"Prince!" the big man exclaimed from where he lay on the ground.
"They have no weapons," Taleed reported.
"All right. I guess you can get up," Topaz said grudgingly. "But don't try nothin' or I'll bore a hole right through ya."
They got up slowly.
The big one looked right at Taleed. "So, you kidnapped the Prince," he said.
"We didn't kidnap him," Topaz said in an agitated voice. "We found him."
"Actually he found us," Poley corrected.
"I was not kidnapped," Taleed said angrily. "Is that what they are saying? That I was kidnapped? I ran away, and they all know it. I run away all the time. Isn't that true, Haldeed?"
Haldeed sighed deeply and nodded his head.
"Is it true that you defected from the Reliance?" Topaz asked skeptically.
"Didn't you?" he asked.
"I asked first," Topaz said with a sly smile.
"Yes . . . None of us were very pleased with the whole tainted gold thing, and then our Captain started rounding up our crewmates on the ship and having them spaced for treason. There comes a point when you get tired of being a pawn in their game. I guess for us that time was when we were sent on a dangerous mission because the Captain was mad at us because we all said mean things about him. When he started spacing our friends for doing less than we had done . . . Well, we kind of entered the damned if you do, damned if you don't category. So here we are."
"How did you find us?" Topaz asked suspiciously.
"We went to the site where the transporter was sabotaged," the woman started. "When we realized you had fired your plasma cannon at least twice, we knew you couldn't have gotten far."
Topaz nodded; it made sense. Their story sounded plausible. You might not rock the boat to pull someone else in as long as you were safe inside, but if you knew there was a good chance you were going down anyway . . .
"I know this man," the Prince said pointing to the man who was one of his people. "He was a priest. The priests had him imprisoned for blasphemy."
"Yes, we met him in your father's prison," the big Reliance man said. "Why do you bother with this interrogation, though? We know that RJ is with you. Simply have her scan us to see if what we say is true."
"How do you know that?" Topaz asked curiously.
The man reached in his pocket, and both Poley and Topaz raised their weapons to point at him.
The man stopped temporarily. "I'm just going to take a picture from my pocket." He pulled it out slowly and draped it over the end of Topaz's weapon." Topaz reached out and took it. He looked at the picture and then handed it to Poley.
Poley looked at the picture and smiled. He held it up for Haldeed and Taleed to see. "It's a picture of my sister."
"Yes, Tin Pants, it's a picture of your sister," Topaz said with a sigh. "Where did you get it?" Topaz demanded.
"It was drawn by a priest in the village where you attacked the transporter. So where is she?" He asked from the sound in his voice, he didn't really want to see her.
"It just so happens she's not here at the present," Topaz said. He raised his wrist-com to his mouth. "RJ, this is Topaz, come back."
* * *
They had just reached a cave. RJ was getting ready to check it out to see if it opened into the ship when she suddenly changed directions, ran over to David and grabbed the binoculars from around his neck. She climbed up on a pile of rocks and looked down into the valley below.
"What the hell is it, RJ?" Levits asked.
RJ didn't answer. "Well I'll be damned," was all she said.
"What? What the freaking hell is going on?" Levits yelled up at her.
"Oh, it would just fucking figure! The minute I leave camp . . ." RJ cursed. "What . . . Well I'll be damned," she said again.
"God damn it, RJ! Tell us what is freaking going on." Levites demanded, losing what little patience he had.
"Shut up Levits!" RJ screamed back. "I don't know yet."
Her com-link squawked and she answered it. "I'm here, did I just see what I thought I saw? Come back."
"Four former Reliance personnel and a native priest – all defectors. What do you want me to do with them?" Topaz asked.
"Are they for real?" RJ asked.
"Now only you would know that for sure. They seem to be. One of them is wounded – they said in a prison break."
"Is their ship fully operational? As in get us the hell off this planet when the time comes?"
There was a pause, and then Topaz answered. "Yes, fully functional. So I'm asking you again, what do you want me to do?"
"See if there is anything you can do for their wounded man. Have Poley keep watch on them; don't let them have any weapons. As long as we're this close, I'm going to check this thing out. We'll be back as soon as we can. If they even bitch about dinner, shoot them. Don't take any chances. Over."
"Got you, RJ, be careful. Over."
"RJ . . . Damn it, what's going on?"
RJ hung the binoculars around her neck and started down the rock. When she got down to the others, she stood in front of Levits and asked, "How am I supposed to find out what's happening and answer you at the same time?"
Levits took a deep breath. He supposed there was some logic in that, but still. . . "I'm sorry. So . . . What the hell is happening?"
"Some defecting Reliance personnel have just landed a fully operational skiff in our camp site." She looked at David with meaning. "Now do you see what I was talking about? How can I be expected to make decent plans when things like this keep happening?"
David smiled.
"Well, what the hell are we waiting for?" Levits said. "We no longer need what might or might not be here, so let's get back down this mountain and get off this rock."
RJ, however, was completely ignoring him. Instead of heading down the mountain, she was stepping into the mouth of the cave, flicking on the illuminator on her com-link and looking around. "We're this close; we might as well see what is here. Who knows? We might find something useful."
"You just can't admit that you made us climb up this damned mountain for no good reason," Levits mumbled as they followed her into the cave.
"Well, there is that, too." RJ shown the light on what was obviously the open hatch of a ship. "Aren't you even a little curious about an ancient artifact that keeps sending out a beacon hundreds of years after everyone on it would have been dead?"
"Bitch loves to be right," Levits said looking back at David and Janad. He had just spent the last hour of their climb bitching that there was no ship, just some anomaly caused by bouncing sound waves caused by the accursed magnetic pulse. The same thing that was making it impossible for them to get a long-range message in or out.
They walked into the ship. It was cold and everything was covered in dust. It appeared to be as dead as a tomb.
"How did it get buried in the side of a mountain?" David asked curiously.
"From the way it looks I'd say it hit the mountain with enough force to send the top of the mountain crashing down to cover the ship. This mountain is made up of mostly soft igneous rock, so it wouldn't have been that hard to loosen enough rock to cover the ship. There were definitely survivors, though."
"How do you know that?" David asked.
"Well, besides what we have already talked about – the fact that there is little likelihood of this planet having produced humanoids – there's the open hatch and the cave."
"Huh?" David said not understanding the path of her logic.
"Someone had to open the door and dig out," Janad said to him.
Levits laughed. "Even the primitive is smarter that you are, David."
"They aren't primitives. Don't you get it, Levits? They are the product of two advanced fully developed races. Their brains are at least as complex as yours," RJ said. "Naive to our technology and culture, yes. Primitive? Absolutely not. Have you not noticed how quickly they assimilate our language? How quickly they learn even complex ideas? They are what the planet and some
deranged, handless black Frenchman have made them. They have found a way to survive on a planet on which most people would die. They have had their religion hammered into their head from infancy, and yet both Janad and Taleed have decided to go against everything they have ever been told to try and find the truth when what they were being told contradicted the facts. The average Reliance citizen isn't as intelligent as these people are. Remember that while the Reliance has been running breeding programs for generations, so have these people. The difference is that these people have worked on the old tried and true method of survival of the fittest, and that also means smartest. That's why they solve problems so quickly. If you take too long thinking in a battle, you wind up dead."
She stopped suddenly and shone the light on a panel. "Aha!" she said.
Levits looked at it as did the others. "So.. some alien language. I wasn't expecting Reliance. The ship is obviously not of Reliance design."
"That's not just any alien language," RJ said. "Do you know what it says?"
"Well of course I don't, smart ass." Levits answered.
"Well I do. It says Warning do not open interior hatch when air lock is open," RJ read. "It's Argy."
"I didn't know you knew Argy," Levits said.
"I learned Argy for the same reason that Janad and her people have been taught to speak Reliance. In case I needed it behind enemy lines," RJ explained. "Most of your special forces Elite speak Argy.
"Then this is an Argy ship," David said.
"Yes, it is," RJ confirmed.
"What does that mean?" Levits asked.
"That all these people are hybrids. Argy and human. If it wasn't for the obvious gene tampering that my father did and our difference in coloring, Janad and I would probably be very much the same."
Janad looked around the ship. "If the First Ones came in this ship that would explain why they were looking for salvation to come from the sky," she said.
RJ looked at Levits who looked dumbfounded. "See? Not a primitive." They had entered the flight deck. RJ dusted off the control panel, flipped a couple of switches, and a hum started. The ship started to pulsate, and then the lights all came on and the sounds of computers and fans running filled the air.
"Why would they completely abandon the ship?" Levits asked looking around. "It doesn't seem to even really be damaged. Hell, before all the plants grew over the site it was just covered with dirt and a few rocks. It probably could have flown right out. It doesn't make any sense. This ship is huge and seems to be fully operational. If nothing else, on a planet where metal is rare, why didn't they chop it into spear heads?"
"That's a very good question." RJ looked at the panels as if trying to find an answer there. "The ship would have been a symbol of home and of safety. It's not logical that they would just walk off and leave it. Like you said, if nothing else why not strip it for parts? A chair is a chair whether it's on the deck of a ship or in a tent."
"A ship that crashes doesn't seem very safe to me," Janad observed.
"She's got a point there," Levits said. "Still . . . There is still a viable power supply here. I would have thought they would have at the very least taped that. Lights, generators . . . it just doesn't make any sense," he said again. "It's like leaving a vehicle half way through a trip so you can walk the rest of the way."
RJ started to read the data that filled a screen. "Hey, I've activated the ships log . . . Well, would you look at this shit?"
"I am, just looks like trash to me. What's it actually say?" Levits asked.
"This was an Argy prison ship. Apparently this ship was hauling prisoners to be interred on this planet. They were coming here to serve life sentences. This was to be a prison colony."
"A way to give them a death sentence without looking bad to the general public," Levits said, no doubt thinking of the world outside the ship.
"Crap!" RJ exclaimed, moving to stop the text rolling in front of her so that she could make sure she had read it right, even though there was really no point in it.
"What?" Levits asked.
"These people had all committed the same crime," RJ said.
"What crime was that?" David inquired.
"They were all rogue telepaths," RJ said. She sat down hard in the chair in front of the screen, oblivious to the cloud of dust she sent into the air. They could all but see her mind calculating.
"That was their crime – that they were telepaths?" Levits asked.
"Among humans empaths are rare and telepaths are almost nonexistent. Among Argy's, empathy is the norm and telepathy is not uncommon. But no one – human or Argy – wants anyone around who knows their every thought. Knowing someone's every emotion can be unnerving enough, but on a world full of empaths it's a given. On Argy, telepaths were supposed to register and wear a special apparatus that keeps them from reading the minds of others. Mostly they work in the military sector. The people imprisoned on this ship were all caught using their telepathic abilities without authorization, so . . . " she lowered her voice then almost talking to herself. "A shipload of telepaths lands on a third class planet. For some reason they completely abandon the ship and everything in it forcing them to live a primitive life on the planet's surface. They breed and start a civilization. In just a few generations they forget all about technology. They only know of stories handed down from one generation to the next about how they came out of the sky. So demented, handless black French guy comes along, and what do they do? They all read his mind! They realize that he knows things they don't know, and they decide he is the god he believes himself to be. Feeling himself superior to the primitives he has encountered he breeds with as many as possible and puts in motion a breeding program that still exists today. So what happened to the telepathic/empathic gene? Did it get bred out or mutate? Janad appears to have at best minimal empathic abilities. The Prince certainly has no such gift, but what of the priests? What if they are priests because they are telepathic? What if they think they're talking to gods because they can read the thoughts of the King/God? There is only one thing that makes no sense at all . . . Why did they abandon the ship?"
When no one answered, RJ turned quickly around and found herself alone.
* * *
David hadn't realized that he was leaving the ship's bridge until he was lost in some long, dark seemingly endless hallway. "Hey! Guys, where are you?"
No answer.
"Janad, RJ, can you hear me? Hey! I'm lost in the ship!"
There was no sound except the echo of his own voice. He looked around quickly. Suddenly the light coming from his wrist-com seemed to be dimmer than it had been. He started back the way he thought he'd come, mumbling, "That asshole Levits is never going to let me live this one down."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move. He walked faster, not caring to find out what it was. Then he caught a glimpse of something again and started running. "RJ! Can you hear me, RJ?" He hit his wrist-com feeling like an idiot. "RJ, can you hear me? I'm lost in the ship!" There was nothing but static in reply. And then he clearly saw what was in the hall with him. It was a rat, a huge filthy rat. "It's just a rat, just a rat," he said. He hated rats. When he had been in the prison camp rats were everywhere. They would steal the food right out of your hand if you weren't careful. At night if you would finally fall to sleep they would come in and start chewing on you, literally trying to eat you while you slept. Then there was the vision he couldn't wash from his mind. Alsterace was still smoldering when he returned from what he had thought had been his ultimate horror. Dead, bloated and decaying bodies filled the air with a stench he was sure would never completely leave his nostrils, and rats, rats everywhere. Rats feasting on the dead. They were on top of and even inside the bodies, so many of them that the bodies appeared to be moving.
He had started running without even being aware of it. He forced himself to slow down. He was panicking. If he wasn't careful, he was just going to get more and more lost. He saw two more rats. "It's just a freaking rat," he r
eminded himself, then started screaming into his wrist com. "RJ! Damn it, RJ! Can you hear me!"
There was still nothing but static. "Damned magnetic pulse," he mumbled.
He heard something moving at the end of the hallway, and he moved towards it. Maybe it was RJ and the others. Suddenly the hall in front of him erupted in an ocean of rats coming right at him. He turned around and ran the other way until he reached a wall and came up short. He turned, grabbed his weapon and started firing.
* * *
Janad looked around her. She wasn't sure how she had come to be in this room, or even how or when she had been separated from the others. She shown her light around, trying to find a door, but there was none. How had she gotten in here if there wasn't a door? It didn't make sense. There had to be a hidden door. She started banging on the walls trying to find a hidden panel or a button. She wished she had a wrist communicator like the others. Without it her only option was to scream, and if she did that people would think she was scared, and she wasn't afraid. Not of being in a room with no doors and no windows. A room that seemed to be growing smaller by the minute.