Chains of Freedom

by Selina Rosen

  Sikes bit his lip to stop the trembling. He knew now that he was fighting something the likes of which he had never fought before. These two fanatics were fighting for a cause. How could men who fought for a paycheck and the dubious glory of plastic medals match their spirit?

  Sikes was a Reliance man. He had a Reliance wife and two lovely Reliance children. All his loyalty belonged to the Reliance. After all, he had been raised Elite. He knew in his heart that the Reliance protected and nurtured the people it served. But he couldn't help but respect the people he hunted. They fought with a fervor that he didn't have now, and probably never had possessed.

  The thought of a rebel Elite intrigued him. He knew he had never had the inclination. He really couldn't conceive of any Elite rebelling. Elites had it made in the Reliance. They got the best of everything.

  He did know one thing. For whatever reason, she had to believe that she was right. Just like Sikes knew he was right. After all, that was the way wars got started, and this was war.

  "Damn! I missed!" RJ stopped, and David tried to catch his breath. "They must have figured out what I did, and started to follow the trail to one side." She thought about it for a second, then grinned. "OK, assholes, try this." She took more charges out of her pocket and planted one on either side of the trail, taking care not to disturb the ground too much. After all, she didn't want the infrared to detect that they had done any more than walk by.

  "I can't . . . believe it! You're actually . . . enjoying . . . all of this!" David gasped, exhausted. RJ grabbed his hand and started to drag him along. "I . . . don't know . . . if I can . . . go on," David said between gasps.

  "Of course you can," RJ said. "You have to. That was the last of the charges."

  "Great! No cycle . . . no charges . . . What do . . . we do . . . now?" he puffed. This had all ceased to be fun for him about two miles back.

  "Now we improvise, David," she said simply. "Now we use our heads."

  Sikes got on the comlink again. This time, Kirk was facing him, and he decided that this was worse.

  "Well?"

  "I've lost another man, and yet another needs medical attention. Two bikes were destroyed," Sikes informed her. He didn't know how he managed to sound so cool with his heart stuck somewhere in his throat. The wounded man was screaming in the background.

  "What happened this time?" Jessica demanded.

  "She must have figured out what we were doing. The second charge missed us—it was on the trail, we weren't. She set charges on both sides of the trail this time."

  "Imbecile! You should have known that she would change her tactics to match yours. She's obviously timing you. Change your pace. Set no patterns. Go back and forth, on and off the trail. That should throw her off. If she had mines, she'd have used them by now. I will not tolerate failure, Sikes."

  "Yes, of course, Senator." This time, it was Sikes that cut the link. He looked at the smoldering remains of the bikes and the rider.

  "You, ride with him."

  The man did as ordered, in spite of his barely functional leg.

  "What can you do to me, Senator?" Sikes mumbled. "If we fail, there won't be any of us left to punish."

  Sikes was following the other bike, so it was that bike's driver who screamed out in pain. Not Sikes.

  The lead bike fell. Sikes stopped short and jumped off, laser in hand. He scanned the area, but saw nothing. The man held his upper arm. It was a nasty wound, and the blood flowed freely. Sikes helped him to bind the wound then he looked at the trap.

  The limb of a small tree had been sharpened into a spear. The top of the tree had been tied down, and a rope wrapped half way around the base of another tree. The rope was then stretched across their trail at chest height, and carefully placed on the small limb of another tree. Crude, but obviously effective. The secondary was lucky. If he'd been any further away, the spear would have struck him in the head. Any closer, and it would have hit him with enough force to penetrate a limb or his body cavity.

  Sikes once again called the Senator. This time, he was in no mood for pleasantries. "I've got good news and bad news." Was that hysteria in his voice? He couldn't be sure, and he didn't really care.

  "What do you mean?" Kirk asked.

  "The good news is that she's out of charges. The bad news is that she doesn't need them." Sikes moved his arm in an arc, so that Jessica could see the trap. "So, tell me how I plan for that. I don't have enough men to go on."

  This attitude did not please Jessica. "They are only two people on foot in the dark . . ."

  "And I am the only one in this troop that isn't badly wounded. We can't go on. If you send us on, you send us to our deaths, Kirk."

  "If you come back here without their heads, Sikes, I will kill you myself. Now quit wasting time. Don't you realize that you are giving her time to set another trap?"

  Sikes moved out. This time he took the lead. He moved cautiously, slowly. He was resigned that he was riding to his death. He had no doubt now. That was why he had felt strangely from the first. That was the reason for his dread. He was going to die. It's true, he thought, foresight is real. Too bad I'll be dead before I can tell anyone.

  She'd set another trap. This one took even less time. They really couldn't afford to rest, but David's labored breathing told her that they must. She was tired, and she knew that this meant that David must be on the brink of total collapse. The fact that he had held up this long was a credit to his strength and his force of will.

  The Reliance would be deploying more troops. At any moment, their running could shove them right into another patrol. These men were just the dogs sent in to tire them out. To bark until the others were in position, and then point the way.

  Plans formed in her mind, and were discarded. She needed to know more about the situation to make any real plans. If she had had time to fiddle with the computer, she could figure out what they were sending in. She would have been able to call up maps and try to figure out where they were in relation to the troops, but that could take as much as thirty minutes. That was thirty minutes they didn't have. She was running out of tricks, and they were running out of time.

  Sikes barely saw the rope in time to stop. If he hadn't been looking so carefully, he wouldn't have seen it at all. This time, the rope was just inches above the ground. Sikes got off the bike. He picked up a rock, slung it at the rope and watched in horror as the area he would have occupied burst into flame. The stench of battery acid bit his nostrils, his eyes teared, and he retreated to a safer distance, coughing. It was clear, now. She was a devil. This trap was the worst thing Sikes had encountered in all his years with the Reliance. Apparently, she had rigged a tree as before. Instead of a spear, however, she'd attached the opened battery in the improvised catapult. When the rope was tripped, the highly volatile acid was slung over the target area.

  Sikes was old enough to remember a time when batteries contained a much more stable acid, but like everything else, the Reliance had been forced to start using a cheaper and less stable alternative. This stuff was less efficient in some ways, but much more lethal. Instant combustion—what a horrible death!

  Slowly, it dawned on Sikes that this trap was even more subtle. The recent drought made the forest a tinderbox. Already the fire raged out of control. In a few hours, it would successfully block the deployment of troops from the east, and that was where the roads were. He got on his bike quickly and passed the flames before he, too, was blocked off. Sikes called Jessica on the move. "She's set the forest on fire," he reported calmly."You'd better send in some extinguisher planes, or we'll be completely cut off."

  "Immediately. Just get after her," Jessica ordered.

  Damn it, they were going to fart around and let her get away! She quickly checked her map. She already had troops deployed in the area. A quick check of wind direction and velocity told a story she didn't like.

  "Damn!" She checked again to be sure. "They're heading right into the fire." She got on her communicator. "Captai
n Fry, the rebels have started a fire and it's headed your way."

  "We see it, Senator," the Captain said. "I think we can beat it and join Sikes."

  "No, you don't have time. If you don't retreat, you will be stuck in that box canyon. You have to go west," Jessica ordered urgently.

  Captain Fry beat his wrist communicator against a tree. "What's that, Senator? Can't hear you." He hit it again, "We've got a bad link—must be the fire."

  "Damn it, man . . ."

  "You're fading, Senator," Captain Fry hit his wrist unit hard enough to break it. He looked up at the secondary soldier who stood beside him.

  "Oh, dear! My wrist com seems to have broken." He nudged the man, and said jokingly, "Give a woman a title, and she right away thinks she knows everything. Come on, let's go give Sikes a hand."

  The extinguisher planes didn't arrive in time to save Captain Fry and his troop. Seventeen soldiers burned to death in the box canyon. Death by fire was terrible. Terrible to hear, terrible to see, but the most terrible thing of all was the smell.

  It was an even more terrible thing to live through.

  Alexi pulled himself through the flames. How he had escaped with no more than the equivalent of a bad sunburn was nothing short of a miracle. His sleeve was on fire. He stopped, dropped and rolled, then jumped up and ran again. He couldn't stop long. To stop was to die.

  The smoke made him cough, and his brain was a blur. Too much horror. Dead, all dead. He'd been with some of those people since he'd made it to third class. They hadn't died like soldiers. They hadn't died in battle. They had died screaming like terrified children as the flames engulfed them.

  He'd worked hard to make it to third class. He'd seen quite a bit of action. But none of his experience or training had prepared him for this.

  Alexi was ambitious. He wanted to make it to Elite, then on to governor—maybe even Senator. It was a wild dream, a dream of power. He'd worked hard.

  Then he'd almost died in a fire.

  Till now, he had never seen how intangible his dream was. Now he realized the absurdity of it. He'd been third class for six years. He'd been passed over for promotion to Elite twelve times.

  Who was he kidding? He was forty-five years old. At his age, if he hadn't been promoted to Elite, it wasn't likely that he would be. Hell, they hadn't even offered him a wife yet. Governor Alexi, Senator Alexi, what a fool he'd been.

  He'd seen how the high-rankers lived. They had everything a man could dream of. He had nothing. He had busted his hump for the Reliance, and they sent him to die. No reward in that. And if he'd died, who would have cared? Who would even notice?

  Well, 1-Z-2678-11 bit the big one today.

  Anyone to claim his ashes?

  No.

  No? What a shame.

  Yes, what a waste. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to reduce a body to ash?

  Oh, this one was mostly done when it got here.

  No one to claim the ashes?

  That's right.

  Well, then put him with the others on the public gardens.

  "No!" Alexi screamed out loud and doubled his pace. He wasn't going to die in this damned fire and become fertilizer. He wasn't going to die a nobody.

  RJ and David came to a river. The water ran hard and fast. RJ stepped in and David followed. At this point, he was too exhausted to do anything but follow dumbly. The current was strong, and the rocks were slippery, but worst of all, the water was frigid.

  "The infrared won't be able to track us in the water," RJ told David, though for once he didn't ask.

  The water got deep, up to David's waist. The current was strong, and David no longer had the strength to fight it. He collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

  David had been holding on to her for the past three hours, so she felt his grip on to her chain loosen. She turned just in time to see David go under. She didn't think; she just dove in after him. It wasn't easy, but she caught hold of him and pulled his head out of the water. He was OK, or at least he was still breathing. She wrestled him out onto the bank, caught her breath, and pulled her laser. She looked at it in a defeated sort of way, and poured the water out of it. It would be useless till it dried. She was sure she didn't have time to strip, dry and reassemble it now. She quickly checked the case to make sure it hadn't leaked. It would be the shits to have gone through all this for nothing. The case was tight, and the computer was dry.

  She was exhausted; running on empty. No wonder David had collapsed. She couldn't afford the luxury of rest right now, however. That meant only one thing. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the leather pouch and extracted one of the pills. She swallowed it dry. As always, the effect was almost immediate. She took a deep breath; she'd be good for hours now. She began to replace the pills, but stopped. Smiling wickedly, she dumped one into her palm, replaced the cap and carefully stowed the pills in her kit. The she took a cup from the pack and filled it with water into which she crushed the pill. Using the knife from her kit, she cut several three-foot lengths of straight limbs from a nearby tree. Sharpening each stick, she dipped the sharpened end into the Pronuses solution and set them carefully aside to dry briefly. She poured the remaining solution over the sharpened spearheads for good measure, then tossed the cup across the river. She packed up quickly, tossed the pack over one shoulder, David over the other, picked up the spears and started off again.

  "They went into the river. The infrared won't . . ." Sikes found himself on the defensive again.

  "I don't want your excuses, Sikes." Jessica had lost any sign of patience hours ago. "All I asked was that you not lose them, and now you tell me some story about the water. Find them. Now!"

  "Yes, Senator," Sikes grated out. Transmission ended.

  "Captain, look!" The man pointed to something on the trail ahead of them.

  They stopped beside the cup. A quick scan showed that the rebels had crossed the river at this point. Somehow, Sikes didn't share the secondary's enthusiasm. The people they hunted didn't make mistakes; she'd left the cup for a reason. Still, they crossed the river, leaving the man with the wounded leg behind. There was only one set of footprints on the other side, but the depth showed that one was no doubt carrying the other.

  "One of them must be wounded," the secondary said.

  "Or just exhausted. Remember that they have been on foot all night," Sikes said. "Come on, we should be able to catch them easily now."

  They had traveled only a minute or two when the screaming started. They ran back, weapons pulled. But when they arrived it was obvious that the wounded man hadn't died of any direct attack. Even from across the river, they could see that the man's face was bubbled and misshapen. Sikes saw the cup in the man's hand. Only one thing could do that. Sikes looked away.

  "God damn her! Is there nothing she can't get her hands on?" Sikes cursed.

  "What happened to him?" the secondary asked, sickened.

  "Pronuses poisoning. She must have laced the cup with it," Sikes said.

  "Pronuses! But only freaks have Pronuses!" Obviously, the man was now terrified.

  "Don't be a fool, man. Only Elites wear Elite boots, but she's got a pair of those, too. Come on. Let's go before the trail gets cold."

  RJ found a clump of brush and put David into it. She covered him with leaves, partly to keep him warm, and partly to hide him. It was time to get rid of the dogs. They were following her footprints. If that told them where to find her, it also told her where to find them. She walked back down her own trail then crawled into a tree with her spears to wait.

  Sikes stopped. He held up a hand, and the secondary stopped, too. He could feel it. She was watching him. The spear hurled through the air to land with a pounding thud in the secondary's chest. Death came so instantly that he didn't have a chance to scream. He fell backwards, his body arched once, and then he was still. The boiling of his flesh told Sikes that such a direct hit was unnecessary.

  "Go ahead! Kill me! I can't see you, I can't stop you! Go ahe
ad!" Sikes screamed. He spread his arms wide."Come on, kill me! But at least have the guts to show your face."

  RJ was never one to deny a man his last wish. She jumped down from the tree.

  Sikes' reaction to her appearance wasn't quite what she'd expected.

  He stared at her in horror and confusion, mouthing words he couldn't get out. His reason, already stretched tightly, snapped.

  RJ raised the spear.

  "How? Why?" Sikes gasped.

  "The answer to 'how' is easy," she smiled broadly. "I'm a freak. 'Why?' Because I want to topple the Reliance. Is that all? May I kill you now?" Actually, she didn't wait for his answer.