Chains of Redemption Read online

  Chains of Redemption

  by

  Selina Rosen

  Table of Contents

  Book Three of the Chains Trilogy

  Chains of Redemption

  Selina Rosen

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Chains of Redemption: Copyright ©2004 Selina Rosen.

  A Baen Ebook

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  Cover art by Charles Keegan

  ISBN 10: 1-5922-2000-2

  ISBN 13: 978-1-5922-2000-7

  First ebook, March 2008

  Electronic version by WebWrights

  www.webwrights.com

  Chapter One

  RJ had been prepared for instant retaliation. It was the reason she had immediately left Beta 4 space and headed once again for the Argy home world of Deakard. She had hoped that the speed of their departure coupled with their destination would throw the Reliance off. It had apparently worked at first. They'd traveled in hyperspace for two weeks without detecting any other ships. They'd made initial contact with the Argy and they seemed anxious to meet with them and discuss some sort of alliance.

  It looked like they were going to make it to Deakard this time without a hitch.

  Of course one of the problems with riding the hyperspacial spaceways was that there were just so many directions you could go. Apparently the Reliance had kept searching till they'd figured out which way RJ and her crew had gone, and then they'd sent ships in pursuit.

  "Someone up there does not want us to get to Deakard," Topaz said with a nervous laugh as he looked over RJ's shoulder at the screens, which clearly showed that they had three fully loaded cruisers and one carrier closing on them fast. "Maybe they aren't after us. Maybe they don't even see us. After all, we are headed for Deakard, maybe they're just out here looking for Argy ships."

  "Yeah . . . and maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt!" Levits screamed from where he sat at the ship's controls.

  "It's immaterial either way," RJ said. "Even if they weren't actually looking for us, they've found us now, and you can bet your sweet ass they aren't going to just turn around and go home or scoot around us."

  "You think I have a sweet ass?" Topaz asked with a smile.

  "Oh, don't even start your crazy assed shit now, old man!" Levits hissed.

  "Can we go any faster? Can we outrun them?" Topaz asked.

  "How freaking stupid do you think I am?" Levits yelled back. "I jacked the speed up to maximum the minute the ship warned us about the bastards. This is it. We're in a freaking troop carrier; they're in fully loaded cruisers. We might be able to lose the carrier, but not those cruisers. We can't outrun them, and we sure as hell can't outgun them. We're screwed!"

  RJ ran her hands down her face and flopped into her seat with a sigh. "We've got hundreds of uniforms and enough food to literally feed a battalion, but no real speed and minimal weapons."

  "Well, I think you'd better come up with something a little more productive than slinging bad clothing and K-rations at them. What do we do, RJ?" Levits asked. "Come on, we're going to be in range in less than four clicks."

  "You're the freaking pilot!" RJ bellowed. "What do you think we should do?"

  "Don't make me say it," Levits said. "It's dangerous, and completely insane."

  "As dangerous as three fully loaded cruisers and a carrier loaded with fighters?" RJ asked. "You said it yourself, we can't outrun them, and we sure as hell can't outgun them in a firefight, even with me in control of the weapons."

  "You have a point." Levits started making the necessary corrections to their navigational system, and the ship immediately started sounding the warning siren, although it was hard to say whether it was doing this because they were now in range of the closest cruiser's weapons or because of what Levits was doing. "Damn! We're in range!"

  "Then so are they." RJ moved to the weapons console and sat down as they took a hit that rocked the whole ship. "Damn! That was a Mega Cannon 5000. You better get us out of here quick, Levits. Our shields won't hold."

  Topaz laughed and said in an accent neither of them had ever heard before, "The shields won't hold, Captain, she's gonna blow!"

  They ignored him, because after all, he was completely insane.

  RJ locked on target and fired, gratified to see the cruiser she had targeted lurch under impact. Of course their shields were stronger, and she wasn't likely to even pierce their hull before they totally obliterated their ship. For generations scientists had argued that you couldn't have a battle in Hyperspace; in that moment RJ wished they had been right. Simple fact was—in all things—when push came to shove you couldn't really know what was or was not possible until someone had tried it. Battles had been fought in hyperspace as long as RJ could remember.

  They took another hit. "Dammit, Levits! Sometime this week!" RJ ordered.

  "Quit screaming at me, I'm going as fast as I can. Screaming at me isn't helping. Freaking bitch." He mumbled the last part as he worked the console in front of him. "You don't understand. The ship's computer has been expressly programmed not to do what we're trying to make her do."

  Topaz saw Poley sit down in his chair and put his belt on, a testament to the peril that they were obviously all in. Topaz quickly ran to a seat and belted himself in, too. "Just where the hell are we going?"

  "Out of hyperspace into real space," Poley answered.

  "Don't you need a gate for that—a destination, some knowledge of where you are in relation to where you'll be?"

  "Yes, that would be nice," RJ said.

  "I think I'd rather take our chances with the Reliance if we happen to be voting now." As Topaz spoke, the ship took another hit—this one worse than the first two. "On second thought . . . Levits, get us the hell out of here!"

  "Hold onto your seats," Levits said, strapping himself in. He looked over at RJ."RJ?"

  "Yes!" she said turning to face him, her face a mask of barely disguised rage.

  "I love you," he said.

  "I love you, too," she answered.

  "Oh my God! We're all going to die!" Topaz screamed, grabbing the arms of his chair in a death grip.

  The ship's engines whined, the lights dimmed, then they were seemingly spit into real space, and all was still.

  Topaz ran his hands over his body, checking his package twice just to be sure. He looked up at Poley and smiled. "I'm alive! I'm alive!"

  "Oh joy," Levits said sarcastically. He looked at RJ and smiled. She smiled back.

  "What's to stop them from following us?" Topaz asked.

  "They can jump out of the hyperspace stream, but they wouldn't likely wind up in this part of space," Poley answered.

  Topaz unbuckled himself and stood up, rubbing his hands on his pants and walking to the viewport as the blast door was opening. "So . . . where are we?"

  "We could be damn near anywhere. See, when you're in hyperspace you basically aren't anywhere till you get to a jumpgate. What happens when you jump from nowhere to somewhere with no destination? You could wind up anywhere," RJ said as she unbuckled herself, stood up and walked towards the navigational console, stopping along the way just long enough to kiss the top of Levits' head. "Or we could be nowhere," she said, sitting at the navigational console.

  "Say what?" Topaz asked.

  "Exactly," RJ said, and started working the console in front of her.

  Levits was watching her. He didn't like the look on her face. "What's wrong, where are we? Deep in Reliance territory? Close to a base? What?"

  RJ lo
oked out the viewscreen and frowned. She rubbed her hand down her face.

  "What?" Topaz and Levits both demanded.

  She sighed as she read the screen in front of her. "No data, location unknown."

  "What!" they demanded.

  "It would appear that we have flown into uncharted space. The ship's computer has no idea where we are, and neither do I."

  "Cool!" Topaz said rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "We are boldly going where no man has gone before."

  "Cool! Cool!" Levits damn near gave himself whiplash trying to jump out of his seat without unbuckling. He undid the buckle and jumped to his feet, although the motion had lost all its impact by then. "Don't you know what this means, old man? We aren't going to Argy! In a few more months we won't be going anywhere because we'll be out of fuel. The scoops will only give us so much energy—not enough to sustain a ship this large without additional fuel, and since we are in uncharted space I don't know where we might find any! Uncharted, as in without charts. And I don't see any big flashing signs that say 'Fun, Food and Fuel, Humans Welcome,' do you? If we don't find a planet with a breathable atmosphere and edible food, or run into a radiation storm, our ship will run out of fuel, we'll run out of food, we'll run out of air, and we'll all, even you old man, die in the vacuum of space!!!"

  "I won't die," Poley assured them.

  "That's very comforting, thank you Poley!" Levits screamed. "The robot will survive. How nice."

  "No, because I would miss all of you," he said.

  "We'll find a planet. That's all. We'll keep searching till the ship finds something familiar," RJ said. "We might not be all that far from charted space. It could just be that we're looking at it from an angle that the ship's computer doesn't recognize."

  "Not that far! RJ, we're talking about light years. The best this ship can do without a jumpgate, out of hyperspace, is warp one. At that speed even if the fuel and food would last we would all likely be dust before we reached a habitable destination." He saw Poley start to speak and pointed a finger at him. "All right, I'd be dust before we found anything close to an Earth-type planet. Do you have any idea what the odds are?" Before Poley could pop off with a mathematical answer, Levits glared at him. "Don't you dare spit out a number, Tin Pants," he said shaking his finger at him. "First our food supply's going to run out, and then our fuel supply's going to be exhausted. Won't that be fun, old man?"

  "You're always so negative, Levits. It's not healthy. You're starting to get frown lines," Topaz said.

  Frown lines or not, Levits was right, there was little reason for optimism. RJ got up from the navigational console. "Poley, come over here and chart this section of space. Find us a suitable planet. See if you can find our space, you know, where we belong."

  Poley nodded, unbuckled himself, got up and walked to the console. "Do you want to know the number?" he whispered in her ear.

  "Not really, Poley, but thank you," RJ said with a smile.

  Poley nodded and sat down at the console. His fingers flew across the keys too fast for the human eye to actually see.

  "We got away from the Reliance, Levits," RJ said, addressing the worried look on his face. "At the very worst, we have bought ourselves a little more time. Let's not waste that."

  He nodded, forcing a smile. She took his hand and they left the bridge together.

  Topaz watched them go and then flopped in the pilot's chair.

  "Poley, try to find us a planet with female humanoids with compatible genitalia, would ya?" Topaz ordered.

  "Now that makes the odds even worse," Poley said with a smile.

  "Poley, was that a joke?" Topaz asked.

  "Yes, but it is also the truth. The likelihood of finding an Earth-type planet is bad enough. When you add the probability of humanoid life forms, it comes out as . . ."

  "No number, Poley, please." Topaz sighed. A few minutes later they heard RJ's cry of ecstasy as it echoed down the corridors to the bridge. "Damn, what's it been, like five minutes? Why couldn't I have ever met a girl like that?"

  "Because you didn't hang out in the right bars?"

  "Two jokes in one day, Poley!" Topaz said, more than a little surprised. "Is that some sort of record?"

  "I have noticed that you all tend to make jokes when you are nervous. This situation has made me nervous, so I am trying to relieve the tension by bringing a little levity to our conversation."

  "It doesn't really work if you tell us that's why you're doing it. In fact, I can't think of many things more frightening than a situation that makes a robot nervous." Topaz frowned, then RJ made another ship shaking sound, and the extreme urgency of their predicament was temporarily lost on Topaz. "Could you at the very least find us a planet with pretty animals?" He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and moved to close the bridge door.

  The Reliance Admiral looked at the screen. "Where the hell did she go?"

  "She jumped hyperspace, sir."

  "Can she do that and live?" he asked.

  The lieutenant shrugged. "I don't think we know, sir."

  "What the hell is that?" the Admiral screamed, seeing dozens of blips covering the screen.

  "It's an Argy battle fleet coming in fast."

  "They must have detected the weapons fire," he said thinking out loud. "Full retreat. Remain at all battle stations and prepare for attack," the Admiral ordered.

  Turning the ships around to make a retreat had turned out to be a big mistake. There hadn't been time to put enough distance between them and the Argy battle fleet, and they had wound up "facing" them with the afts of their ships, which were never as well armed or armored. In the battle that ensued they lost all but the carrier he was on, and they had basically continued to move even when the other ships had stood their ground and fought. It was protocol. The cruisers fought the battle, the carrier stayed at a safe distance, and its fighters unloaded and went in for the kill.

  It didn't matter; the Admiral knew it would be his head if he reported what had really happened. That they'd lost all three battle cruisers and their crews, fourteen fighters and their pilots, and had failed to take out the rebel leader and her crew would be considered inexcusable.

  "All right, boys, listen up," he said addressing the personnel on the bridge. "The only ones who know what actually happened out here are you and me. Now RJ and her people are gone, one way or the other, and we did that, but you know the brass." No one thought it was a good idea to point out that he was the brass. "They're only going to see that we let her get away, and that an Argy battle fleet kicked our asses and took out three of our ships. So . . . this is what actually happened today . . ."

  Chapter Two

  Jessica Kirk had lost track of time. She'd done it on purpose, which she knew meant that she knew exactly how much time had passed, but she was at least pretending not to. She sat on a rock in the mine and watched the others work, not because she was physically tired, but just because she was fed up.

  Of all the places she might have found to hide out, she had to end up on Pete.

  Pete was a mineral rich agricultural planet deep within Argy held territory. A human named Pete originally discovered the planet, but the Argys had killed the human colonists and claimed the world as their own. After ten years of war it had become theirs by right of conquest. They had put their own colonists on the planet, and now had a nice thriving community of work drones.

  Maybe the Reliance had realized just what a shit hole Pete actually was and had lost on purpose, though Jessica personally doubted it. For all that it was a horrible place for beings of any kind to live, it created a lot of product. When you peeled away all the other layers, that's what it always came down to with both the Argy and the Reliance hierarchy—product. Product equaled profits, and profits equaled power.

  Pete had proved to have too bad a climate for "important" Argys to live there, so they sent the "unimportant" people to colonize it. They promised them free housing and some land of their own, a chance to b
etter their lives. Idiots had flocked to the planet looking for some freedom, only to find that they had traded one sort of slavery for another, and in most cases if they were on Pete they had actually traded down.

  Jessica had learned long ago that in most cases the term "colonists" was just a nice way of saying "slave laborers" and/or "cannon fodder".

  These people worked all day either in mines or tending crops or livestock. Anything they needed that had to be manufactured, like cooking utensils, farm implements, picks, shovels, and medicine, they could only buy from the Argy government store. If they needed medical attention they had to go to an Argy hospital. The government always seemed to be able to work it so that no matter how much product the people brought them, they never made quite enough money to pay off their debt, so that there was no way for them to actually better their lot in life. They could never quit working; they couldn't even afford to slow down.