"Everyone is busy." Baldwin said. "This isn't what I was expecting. I thought conditions would be . . . more primitive!" He picked his words carefully. He didn't know how easy it might be to offend these people, and he didn't want to find out. Larita laughed.
"This is primitive!" She said. "Rico Town is an Outpost Town. They're put up as fast as they can be slapped together. They're stocked. Then they're defended. Except Rico Town has never been attacked. At least not yet."
"I don't think I understand." Baldwin said.
"Well, for us to expand, it means expanding into our neighboring tribe's territory." Larita explained. "Bali isn't thickly populated, not like the worlds my father talks about, with cities containing tens of millions of people all crowded together, but it is filled. There are no areas which are not claimed. So when we move into a new area, we are almost always attacked."
"But not this time?"
"Not yet."
"The large neighboring tribe?"
"Yup. They swept this area clean." Larita said. "A few survivors we picked up, men and women living like animals in the forest and hiding from the Dunaj, but most they killed. All but the women. They butchered the men and boy children. The Dunaj have a very ambitious Chieftain, but he's met his match. Once you've been here for a while, you'll see the difference in our approach. We absorb the tribes we encounter. It doesn't always happen immediately, but it does always happen. Simply, we're superior, we have technology, and we have a equality."
"Like the equality Jarlaxle showed!" Baldwin said sharply.
Larita only shrugged. "The man was a burden, and there was the blood debt to consider. When a blood debt is claimed, blood must flow, unless the person who has claimed it forgives it. I don't think that one would've forgiven you. By our laws he had the right to attempt to settle the debt in single combat. So unless you could have beaten him in single combat, Jarlaxle saved your life. In any case, if it had been my decision, he would've met his fate far sooner. The man was a shirker and a troublemaker, but my father does not like to lose people. You think my father hard? I think him too soft. If it had been up to me, the man would've been gone a long time ago, and by gone, I do not mean Banished."
"Your father murdered a man in cold blood on Sarvan." Baldwin said quietly. He could not but be aware of the crowd around him, who might not take kindly to his words. Larita did not seem offended.
"I know why my father was sent here. It is no secret. But the Federation has given the means by which he may be rejoined to them. You cannot but expect that he should work towards that goal! Look around you and see what he has achieved. I do not believe he is the same man that he was then. That was a long time ago." She waved her arms to encompass the town.
Baldwin could not deny it, but he could not condone such bloodthirsty, ruthless murder as he had seen committed, either. He wasn't sure he believed Larita when she said she would've done even worse. She did not look capable of such.
"The man could have been dealt with in some other way!"
"You jest! How?" Larita demanded, stopping to glare at him hotly. "By expelling him from our society? We are not the Federation! We have only Bali! If we expel him, we will only have to fight him again later, and possibly give him the opportunity to kill some of us. Are you truly that much of a fool!"
Baldwin felt the blood rush to his face. That such a young slip of a girl could so anger him! But her words held irrefutable logic. They could not foist their problems off on others as did the Federation. It angered him as much that she was right, he wrong, as that it was he and the people like him in the Federation that caused this in the first place. It wasn't these people's job to house and feed those whom the Federation were unwilling to do the same for, or risk the lives of their own people by allowing rogues to commingle freely in their communities, among their women and children. On their planet! Bali was their planet.
No such individuals would be allowed to roam freely upon Sarvan! That was why the man was here in the first place!
Yet he could still not bring himself to accept such wanton brutality. His whole being, who he was, what he stood for, rebelled against it. Feeling antagonistic, he said;
"The Tarovan aren't waiting to be attacked now!" The present fighting force, acting on the information the traitor Naram had provided, were moving directly to attack the Dunaj village, and were possibly already there.
'To rescue Rebecca.' Jarlaxle had said. That was rubbish and Baldwin knew it. Jarlaxle wanted Benefactor and the Dunaj were in the way.
And Jarlaxle was not a man to be thwarted. Baldwin could see much of the spoiled child still in the man, even after all this time. The earliest years of a child's life were not called the Formative Years for nothing, Baldwin thought. Strange how such a small period of time could determine so much. Stamp indelibly on a man the nature he would carry for the remainder of his life.
"We do what we must." Larita said after a moment. "You'll learn that. In time."
Baldwin did not comment that he did not expect to be here for an extended length of time. There were sure to be rescue attempts. A Senator must be too important a personage simply to abandon on a Prison Planet. He began to wonder however, how he would feel if those rescue attempts that were sure to come cost any of these people their lives!
He did not have the impression that Jarlaxle would hand him over willingly when the Federation arrived, and it was obvious that these people would charge hell with buckets of water if Jarlaxle demanded it of them. It could not be denied that Jarlaxle had raised them to a new level of civilization, and in the doing so, had earned their utmost allegiance.
There was no more talk between them for a while. They just walked. Baldwin seeing what there was to see. Walking was the only mode of transportation here.
The Federation could have given these poor bastards some horses, Baldwin supposed. It would take one hell of a long time to conquer a whole planet on foot, but he also supposed they were working on the problem, developing transportation of some kind, though at the moment he just didn't care enough to ask. He supposed they were working on a great many things, judging by Jarlaxle's drive and character.
When Larita brought them to a halt in front of a modestly large log and rock home, modestly large as compared to those he had seen previously, she spoke;
"This will be your new residence. I'll show you around."
The home was as beautifully constructed inside as out, he found when she led him inside. The furnishings were rough but solid, serviceable and even attractive. There were several rooms, a beautifully constructed fireplace, and woven blankets, pillows, towels, rugs and myriads of other odds and ends. No running water, but otherwise quite rustic.
"It's very nice." Baldwin said.
"It'll be very nice for us." Larita said. It took him a moment to catch the drift of what she had said.
"For us? You'll be staying to watch that I don't escape?"
"Escape?" Larita laughed. “Where would you go? No. The house is ours. You and I. You have no woman here, and a man needs a woman. I will be your woman."
Through a front window Baldwin could see that the Security detail had left and that the crowd which had followed them was dispersing. Now it was just the two of them together in their house.
"I have never been with a man." Larita said. "I hope I can please you." She stepped closer and reached her arms up to put them around Baldwin's neck, pulling her young body against his. Her lips reached for his own.
Chapter 34
The journey had been an agony. Her wrist throbbed like she was being scalded with a red hot poker every time her heart beat. Her hands were numb. Sweat poured into the chafe marks caused by the brutally tight rawhide bindings on her unbroken wrist. Her ribs hurt where the boots had been put to her. Four times he had kicked her before she agreed to cooperate. She was sure he would've kicked her to death if she had not. The beast carrying her had known instantly when she woke, and had thrown her unceremoniously to the ground. Rebecca had never been ki
cked so hard in her life. The man was very strong and very brutal.
"You will keep up." He had said pleasantly.
With her hands tied behind her back, there was little she could do but agree, and she had kept up. If she had not, the boots would've been back. She had kept up, the remainder of that day and all the next. Her face bore the scratches from the branches her captors seemed to enjoy allowing to spring back into her face as she ran along behind them, and that mostly she had been unable to avoid because her hands were tied behind her back.
It was not enjoyable to be a woman captive of a group of men such as these. The first time she had to relieve herself, her panties were cut from her and discarded, to accompanying smiles and humor among the men.
But she had not been raped. Not yet. It was a certainty she was prepared for, however. It was inevitable, of course. This was a male dominated society and a woman, especially a prisoner, would have no rights.
The look in Nago's eyes told her who it would be. Or who would be first. There was every chance it would be every man in the tribe. She looked him squarely in the eye whenever his glance happened to chance her way, which was often.
On the third morning of her captivity, they encountered the out-flung scouts of a larger party. It was the main body of Nago's fighting force, come looking for them, and the two groups were soon united.
The loss of so many of Nago's party, and the capture of the perpetrator, brought a mixed reaction.
"A woman!" One said to another near enough to be heard, a superstitious dread in his voice.
"A demoness." Hissed another.
"Kill her!" Echoed others. "Burn her!" "She's not human!"
"She's human all right." Nago said, snatching up her skirt to laughter. "Just a woman. No more. Her weapon gave her the edge. Without it she's nothing. I have it now. Am I then a God?"
Some might have thought it so, judging by their expressions, as Nago removed it from its holster and recklessly waved it around.
He had already made her disclose its operation. There was very little to it. It would have been a pointless gesture to refuse. A safety switch and an actuator stud. Even a child could have figured it out, and Nago was no child.
"There were many of these on the ship." An ugly scarred brute said, who did not seem superstitious in the least. To Rebecca he looked calculating, and quite intelligent. One of his eyes was sealed over with scar tissue and a ragged line ran down his cheek from there to his mouth, splitting the upper lip, which had not healed properly, and which was separated like a cleft palate. He looked like he had a temperament to match his looks, Rebecca decided.
"You don't say." Nago said. Nago clearly remembered seeing them himself.
"All the Outsiders carried them. In belts like that which you are wearing. They've all been moved to the village. There are other, larger ones, that might be the same." The man with the scars, Denarl said.
Rebecca had time to wish that she had turned off all the safety switches before leaving those weapons in the ship. That probably would've produced better results, and maybe she wouldn't be where she was now.
"That's very good." Nago said, considering Denarl for a moment that was too short for anyone to notice. Things could not have gone better, in fact, despite the men he had lost. What were a few men compared to the possession of this weapon, and the rest of those weapons now back at the village.
Denarl wanted his own. He wanted one badly, after hearing the story of the weapon's lethal effectiveness. How it had turned a woman into such an unstoppable force. He would not have suspected, in a million years, that she was of a line of evolutionary survivors much longer than his own, and that with the blaster, or without it, she was a force with which to be reckoned. She didn't look like much to Denarl.
"I think a demonstration is in order." Nago said with a grin. He was feeling buoyant. The weapon felt so right in his hand. Nago couldn't understand how the weapon could generate such tremendous force, but it didn't really matter, did it. He accepted it for what it was. It's operation was too simple to be confusing. There really could be no mistake. His thumb found the safety switch and clicked it off. The weapon gave an almost imperceptible half second whine, then lay quiescent in his hand, like a demon awaiting it's master's bidding, Nago thought with wry humor.
And maybe quite accurate, at that.
Nago pointed the weapon up into the air, aiming it as he had been told, and let his finger settle onto the little metal stud inside the trigger guard. All easily understood concepts.
The weapon roared and bucked in his hand, like a living thing. It spat a ball of yellow/white flame into the branches and leaves above, then exploded thunderously. Many of the men had shrunk back instantly in fear.
Denarl had not, Nago noticed, in a detached seeming sort of way. In a way that was not noticeable. That was not noticed..
Branches and leaves showered them from above, and one large branch cracked and leaned drunkenly but did not break off entirely, getting caught up in the branches around it. Nago clicked the safety back into the safe position and put the weapon back into its holster, on his own hip.
That though he wanted to keep firing it. Like a child with a new toy, he readily admitted to himself.
All of his men were moved in one manner or another. Many were obviously nervous, others casting reverent looks upon him. Some even appeared ready to bolt, needing only the slightest provocation to set them to stampeding. The superstitions of a lifetime had been shattered in one easy movement of his pointer finger. Lesser men might've thought themselves Gods!
Nago was not a lesser man. He was a man who knew his physical limitations. Fire weapon or no fire weapon, he was still a man with a man's limitations and bound by the rules of the physical plane.
"The Outsiders will want their weapons back. They'll come with even more powerful weapons. They'll kill us if they can." Nago said. "We must not be here when they come." They were not, in fact, far from the ship. They would fall under the first scrutiny.
No one dared question what Nago had brought down on them, but it was in many of their minds.
"What about Naram?" Zakin asked. The two were friends.
"He cannot find his own way?" Nago asked harshly.
"He may need help." Zakin said, threading the needle. Walking the fence. Nago was not one who liked to be questioned.
"If he needs help with that one, he does not deserve to be Sub-Chief. He must earn it. Or don't you think that's fair?" Nago asked. He would not chastise Zakin his insubordination. He was, in fact, feeling very charitable.
And there would be no more promotions without credit. A man would earn what he received, or he would not receive it. If they had thought him ruthless before, they were about to see a whole new side of him.
But for the moment he was still feeling charitable.
"Yes that's very fair." Zakin said, finally.
"Jorg was a fool." Nago said. "There will be no more such foolishness. I tire of the incompetency around me. Those who were killed were weak fools. Killed by a weak woman. Why must I always have to do everything myself?"
Zakin had no answer to that. Nago had been the one to capture her, after she had killed so many others who could hardly have been called incompetents. She had killed some of the tribe's best men. Zakin was not sure how Nago had done it, but the fact remained, that it had been Nago. There could be little to misunderstand about that. It had taken Nago himself to capture her.
And Naram should not have a problem. This Outsider man was an inept fool. That had been clear enough also.
"Naram will bring him back." Zakin said. He felt sure of it.
"Let's hope he does." Nago said, though of course he couldn't care less one way or the other. The lie came easily.
'I hope he doesn't!' Denarl thought to himself. He saw himself as Sub-Chief. And if Naram did return? Accidents could always happen. They happened all the time. He could hardly keep his eyes from the weapon on Nago's hip. Such power!
Nago did not
miss the intensity of Denarl's look.
Rebecca saw the schism there. Something to keep in mind. A wedge at the proper moment could precipitate change. A diversion while she escaped, maybe. The fool did not see how clearly Nago was aware. A pointed lack of interest.
Live by the sword, die by the sword, Rebecca thought.
How long could/would they keep her hands bound? Until they blackened and fell off? No. Nago saw himself possessing her. He would release her, and when he did!
Then she would enjoy herself!
He would use her. He would find her eager and pleasingly compliant. It might not happen right away, but he would eventually let his guard down. Then would she spill his guts. With no more remorse than the butcher who does it a hundred times a day.
Night. After dark. After he had sated himself with her. If he would actually be that foolish. The lust in his eyes said that he would.
Men and their lusts! It was their greatest weakness. Far better, for his sake, that he had killed her immediately, or used her and then killed her immediately after. While she was yet bound. In a way in which she could not retaliate. Would he unleash the Dragon? Could he really be that stupid?
She could only hope so. It was her only chance.
With her blaster back in hand, she would make all of these fools pay.
"We move." Nago said.
Rebecca needed no further encouragement. She'd had enough of Zakin's help. And the sooner they arrived, the sooner she would have her opportunity. She looked forward to it.
Chapter 35
What had been trees, brush, rock and soil, and probably more than a few animals, was now hardened slag. It had cooled to a smooth even texture that would have put a plas-steel finisher to shame. When they were debarked and standing away, Cavanagh sealed herself and lifted away without a sound.
"Good luck." Lan's communicator said. Captain Reed. "We'll be on 24-hour alert. Call for anything. That's why we’re here."
"Thanks." Lan said, then released the tiny button on the face of the device. A device which would certainly have to be discarded if things did not go as they hoped.
Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks Page 20