Chains of Destruction Read online

  "Knowing the inevitability of history repeating itself. Knowing that ultimately nothing I do will change anything in the long scheme of things – how can I go on doing, anything?"

  Topaz sighed, mostly because having lived as long as he had, he knew that all she said was true. "Because we have to try, RJ. That's what intelligent beings do. They try to make things better, make them different. They try to change the ultimate outcome."

  "But they won't. No one can . . ."

  "You can't know that, RJ. Perhaps no corrupt man will ever come to power in the New Alliance, we will utterly defeat the Reliance, and we will change the course of history," Topaz said.

  RJ laughed then, though obviously not amused. "You forget what I am, old man. I know you don't believe what you just said any more than I do."

  "True enough. But I do believe it's our duty to confound destiny, and if you and I can't do that, RJ, who the hell can?" Topaz challenged with very real determination. "Governments get huge, the people rebel and knock them down and the process starts all over again. We are doing our part by knocking down the Reliance. It's our part in history to be the ones to temporarily knock down the oppressors so that our descendents can become the oppressors. We are important, and what we're doing is important. We have to think about the here and now; we can't think about the distant future."

  "How can you and I not think about the distant future? In all likelihood, barring some unbelievable disaster, we will still be around," RJ said looking at him for the first time.

  Topaz smiled at her and had no problem at all holding her gaze, although most people quickly looked away. He rested his hands on her shoulders. "Then you and I may be able to make sure that it doesn't all go to hell in a hand basket. So what are you brooding about?"

  RJ shrugged as Topaz removed his hands from her shoulders. "I . . . I don't know what's wrong with me, Topaz. I don't feel the way I used to feel about anything. I get confused; I never used to get confused. I find myself asking myself questions with no real answers. Some mornings when I wake up I don't want to get out of bed; I just want to lie there. I want time to stop and for me to be nowhere. I have no ambition to do anything. I've even gotten tired of looking for J-6. There was a time when I was consumed with revenge. When I wanted to see Jessica dead more than I wanted to live. Now, I think she's made a better hell for herself than I could ever make for her, and even if she hasn't I just don't care anymore. I know she's left the planet, and there is a good chance she and Right are on some third class planet right now drinking tea, ecstatically happy. And I just don't care. I want to. I want to be mad as hell. But I'm just not. Does any of that make any sense?"

  Topaz took a deep breath and held it a moment before he let it out. It made perfect sense to him, but how did you explain to a genetically superior humanoid who was capable of not only great feats of physical strength but was also an empath with an IQ that was so far off the charts it wasn't measurable, that she had suffered a nervous breakdown? That she was probably never going to feel like her old self again. He took the easy way out. "I think you're just still mourning your loss, RJ. It hasn't been that long since Whitey and the others died. I think you finally realized that killing Jessica Kirk isn't going to bring them back, and like you said, she's made her own hell."

  RJ looked back across the water at the bare land on the other side. "I hope you're right, Topaz. I don't know how much longer I can go on feeling nothing. Nothing at all."

  * * *

  New Freedom had been free for two years, its government was firmly established and was well on its way to running like a well-oiled machine. A machine that didn't need their constant attention and pampering.

  The inner circle was quickly becoming unnecessary.

  New Freedom had new leaders now, leaders that ran the country in as democratic a fashion as possible. It didn't need generals to run a war. They weren't at war. RJ was completely without direction and at least part of the reason was because there was really nothing that needed her personal attention. RJ was restless, and she was bored.

  The others were perfectly happy to wallow in their success and freedom. They relished the notion of living out their lives here in the free zone, but then most of them weren't going to live as long as she was, and therefore didn't become bored as easily.

  They also didn't seem to be worried about a simple truth that RJ was all too aware of. As long as the Reliance existed anywhere, in any form, it was only a matter of time till they came to reclaim zone 2-A. The Reliance was the embodiment of greed. They would never be happy with some; they had to have all. It was the reason they were constantly locking horns with the Argys; they didn't want to share.

  Of course neither did the Argys.

  RJ walked the wall of the ancient prison that now served as Capital for New Freedom. She looked out at where the city had once stood. Crews had bulldozed, burned and buried the debris. Now it was nothing but grass with a memorial to their fallen comrades where the building she had called home once stood. There were plans to start building businesses within the year, but for now there was nothing but plants and ghosts.

  It had once been one of the most flamboyant cities in a free empire. It had once been the golden city by the bay, San Francisco. RJ had never seen the city in its heyday; by the time RJ had first seen it, it had already fallen into decay and become known as Alsterase. It had become a hole for Reliance outcasts to hide in. Everyone from the deformed and the discontented to the criminal had found a home in Alsterace – the last freehold in a repressive society.

  It was here that they had started to build their army, and here that so many of their people had been killed. She'd almost died there, and her lover had. The scars on the outside of her body had healed, but the scars on the inside were still fresh and raw.

  Looking at the place where she had once been happy made her heart ache. Thinking of her loss made her hatred fester. It was a self-inflicted torture that she endured on a regular basis because it pleased her to feed her hate. Feeling the righteous anger burning inside her was sometimes the only way that she knew she was still alive. It seemed to be the only emotion she was capable of sustaining for more than a few moments.

  She could hear the roar coming from inside the building. No doubt yet another toast. Inside they celebrated two years of New Freedom. Out here she grieved for all that she had lost and wondered if she would ever feel like celebrating again.

  It was hard to feel like cheering when your heart felt empty and cold. When you longed to talk to a friend who wasn't there, or hold a lover who was long dead.

  She reached into her pocket and drew out a small resin cube. Embedded in the cube was Jessica Kirk's eye. The one RJ had knocked out with her chain when they had fought. She looked at the cube, and it looked back, and she felt strangely comforted.

  It was high time that she tried to get back to her old self, quit mopping around and letting one day follow the next. It was time for her to do something even if it was wrong

  * * *

  The party roared all around him, and it was pretty clear that it wasn't going to wrap up any time in the near future. The "President" was stoned out of his gourd.

  He slapped David on the ass, which was as high as he could reach, and screamed, "Come on, David, join the party!"

  David just glared at him. Mickey shrugged as if to say that was as much effort as he was going to waste on David, and then he stumbled back into the middle of the party.

  David wasn't in a party mood; of course he could scarcely remember the last time he was. There had been a time when he had been the life of the party, with a new girl every day.

  Those times were long gone, and these days even smiling was an effort for him. His guilt wouldn't allow him any happiness, and it didn't help that most of the people who surrounded him didn't think he deserved any, either.

  RJ had once told him that remembering everything was more a curse than a blessing. At the time he hadn't understood what she'd meant. Now he remembered thin
gs he couldn't forget no matter how hard he tried. How could he forget that it was through no small effort of his own that so many of his friends and comrades had died? He had trusted the wrong person and turned his back on RJ. They had all paid for his acts of ignorance and disloyalty. His sin of self-importance had been redeemed in the blood of the brave and the innocent.

  He had lived.

  Lived to feel the stares of his former friends boring into him like daggers filled with hate and loathing. Lived to see Alsterase on fire and RJ broken, battered and barely alive. She had healed, but there was something missing. The spark of humanity she had carefully cultivated had withered and died, and RJ had returned to the cold, calculating military bitch she had been when he first ran into her in the forest on the day of their fateful meeting. All business, all drive, with little patience or time for things she considered frivolous.

  The only difference, in fact, seemed to be that RJ no longer possessed any sense of self-preservation. She would jump into a situation without being sure she could jump back out again. She just didn't seem to care what happened to her, or anyone else for that matter. She had become self-destructive, and God pity the fool that got caught in the fallout.

  How could he forget what he had done when seeing her and what she had become was a constant reminder of the biggest mistake he had ever made? When he knew that she had neither forgotten nor forgiven. RJ now tolerated him; he had no delusions that she now harbored any warm feelings for him whatsoever. Levits was now clearly her right hand man, and while they fought and argued constantly, it was clear that if it could be said that she actually felt real affection for anyone living, it was for Levits. Topaz had become her confidant; the only one she ever really talked to, and they shared something the rest of them couldn't really understand – immortality. Her "brother" Poley took care of whatever other emotional attachments she needed.

  There was no room for him in her life, and nowhere else for him to go.

  David noticed that RJ was conspicuously, but not surprisingly, absent from the festivities. He knew where to find her. He tried to sneak out without being noticed. Unfortunately the drunken "President" noticed him moving towards the door.

  "Where you going, David?" he asked in a slurred voice as David walked past him.

  David looked down at him. "I'm not really in a party mood, Mickey. I thought I'd go find RJ," David explained.

  Mickey looked around. Apparently he hadn't noticed that RJ was missing till David pointed it out.

  "Maybe it's better to leave sleeping dogs lie, David," Mickey said in a moment of sobriety.

  "Maybe," David shrugged and kept going.

  * * *

  Mickey watched David go with a frown.

  "Where's David off to?" Topaz asked. Mickey jumped a little. "Sorry, Mr. President," Topaz said, a hint of laughter in his voice.

  "It's all right; I was just thinking," Mickey said. "David went to find RJ. He said he wasn't in a party mood. I guess she wasn't, either," Mickey said sadly.

  "They'll find their way back, Mickey," Topaz said in a comforting tone.

  "How, Topaz? When? It's been years. RJ takes no joy in anything, and David can't forgive himself until RJ's happy. I used to believe that time healed all wounds, but I'm beginning to think that not even RJ has that much time," Mickey said.

  Topaz thought he was awfully insightful for a drunken midget. "Enough already! No need for us all to be maudlin. It's a party, back to the celebration." Topaz shoved Mickey in the direction of the party and then went off in search of a woman who was easy. He didn't have to look very hard.

  * * *

  David walked out on the wall and joined RJ in looking at the mainland. If she had been pacing it wouldn't have been so bad. Pacing meant she was thinking. The fact that she was just standing and staring meant she was wallowing in her grief, and his guilt was immediately intensified.

  He had been standing there quite awhile when she said without looking at him, "I've made up my mind about something."

  David held his breath. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear. Finally he asked, "About what?"

  "I can't stay here anymore. It's time I make my next move."

  "You have searched the entire planet looking for Jessica . . ." David started.

  "I've given up on that . . . At least for the moment. I have another plan in mind," RJ said thoughtfully, almost as if she was talking to herself more than him.

  "What would that be?" David asked hardly daring to breathe.

  "Well, first I have to get up there," she said pointing upwards.

  "The moon?" David asked following the direction her finger indicated.

  "Yes," RJ said nodding her head. "It's really not all that hard. All I have to do is break into a Reliance shipping base and hijack their trans-mat station for a couple of minutes." She had that look in her eyes that she got just before she went into battle. She was almost happy, and this made David smile. "It's all so easy I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

  David was sure that there was nothing easy about it whatever it might be. He was just as sure that she could do it. But she wasn't going to do it alone. She wasn't the only one who was tired of sitting around and doing nothing.

  Chapter Two

  Janad looked around the ship at her fellow passengers. Passengers, ha! They were prisoners; that's what they were. These idiots may have bought the bill of goods the priests sold them, but Janad wasn't about to. She might not be all that bright, but she most certainly knew the difference between when she wanted to do something and when she was forced to do it.

  The priests crawled out of their temples and gave long speeches about civic duty and everyone doing their part. A few days later armed aliens marched into the village bearing gifts and started picking and choosing all the best warriors. They loaded them into a box from which they vanished, and when they reappeared they were on a man-made space station where they were poked, prodded and injected and herded into starships like common livestock. The aliens explained that they were being transferred to another planet to fight and die in another people's war – whether they liked it or not. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they weren't making an informed decision; they were slaves.

  The Reliance had traded goods with her planet for generations, and now they were trading for slaves. She hoped the priests had at least traded them for something that would help the people of her village and not just more baubles for them to horde in their temples

  Janad didn't want to be a slave. She didn't care that they called it civic duty or promised financial gain for her clan members back on her home planet; she'd wanted no part of it. She was a hunter, a warrior, and she wasn't used to confined places. She wasn't even really used to walls.

  They hadn't left them much choice. The aliens chose you, the priests blessed you, and you got into the box or they shot you with a weapon that spit light and bored right through your body. There was no escape, at least not realistically.

  They were the chosen, promised by the priests a destiny of greatness, and so they sat here in this ship waiting to land on a world they knew nothing about. About to be forced to fight a battle that wasn't theirs. To die on a strange world for the glory of an alien power.

  Look at the fools smiling and laughing. They're too stupid to realize the implications. So what if our planet isn't the most happening place in the galaxy? Who cares if we're always fighting amongst ourselves and we spend all the time we aren't fighting working? At least it's home. You just don't leave home without a fight.

  Of course her attitude had done nothing except get her shackled to the wall of the ship while the rest of the "passengers" were left to roam freely.

  Here he came again – the man she had taken to calling Shit-Head. She wished now that her mother hadn't forced her to learn the Reliance tongue in school. She was sure that it was one of the reasons she had been chosen as a slave. Besides, it meant that she could tell what the drooling bastard was saying.

  He walke
d over smiling and showing a mouth full of jagged teeth in his yellow head.

  "So, how's it going my little firebrand?"

  "I'm just fine, Shit-Head," she spat back.

  He laughed at her accent and the way she pronounced Reliance words. "You're a wild lot on Beta 4. Just what the Reliance needs to fight RJ and her band of rabble-rousers. Put them back in their place. You should relax a little. Don't you realize what you're being offered? You'll be a Reliance soldier with all the privileges that has to offer, and you don't even have to go through the ranks. It's quite an honor."

  "Go use your breath on some of those idiots. Don't waste your speech on me, Shit-Head. I know what we are to you, and I know what our reward will be," Janad said. "If you get in my face again, I'll bite your nose off."