Chains of Destruction (23 page)

"I'm sorry I'm late, I had to
 . . .
"

"It's all right, Bradley, don't sweat it." Stratton closed the hatches and started to power up the skiff. "Be a lot easier if we had a transporter planet side, but someone took care of that for us."

Bradley looked back at the others. There were only five of them going; that just didn't seem right. Five people alone with minimal armaments going to the surface of a planet full of obviously angry natives. A planet where there would be no other Reliance personnel, with natives who had not only gotten their hands on explosives but learned how to use them, and where communications were iffy at best

Stratton must have read his mind.

"Captain Briggs seemed to think that if we showed up in force the natives might become restless," she explained.

"Restless! Try armed and dangerous and just flat pissed off," Bradley said in shock. "What the hell does he expect us to do down there anyway?"

"Die," Stratton said in a whisper. "From what I understood talking to the others we've all said rather derogatory things of a personal nature about good ole Captain Briggs. Now while he can't court-martial us unless we say it to his face, try to incite a mutiny, or bad talk the Reliance, he can mark us
highly expendable
and send us on a near suicide mission."

"Great
 . . .
and I thought Harker was in some trouble because he had been arrested," Bradley mumbled. "You'd think the bastard would have more to do with his time than sit around viewing surveillance tapes."

"Harker?" Stratton said in surprise.

"You know him?" Bradley asked.

"Heard of him is all," she said quickly. "I know his name is familiar. I'm the security chief, and he certainly wasn't on any of my lists of possible suspects. Makes me wonder who Briggs is talking to concerning security."

"Could you put in a good word for him with the Captain? I know you said you're on his shit list, too, but
 . . .
"

"My saying something might actually hurt his case," she said. "Sorry
 . . .
Cheer up. I don't think even Briggs is going to do something as stupid as starting to space people over a suspicion, and our mission isn't nearly as dangerous as he thinks it is. All we're supposed to do is talk with the King, find out if he knows what might have happened, and then get his permission to investigate. Look and see if there is a suitable place for a grounded base on the surface.

"There are no telecommunications on the planet. All news is spread by runners, so it can take days for news to get to and from the most remote villages. There is a good chance that the King has no idea what has happened. In fact, there is a good chance that we will be walking into nothing but a very confused monarch who has no idea what we are even talking about when we explain to him that his people have attacked our transporter and our space station, etc," Stratton said. "The King and his priests speak our language, but they won't understand what we're talking about unless we keep things simple
 . . .
"

"And that would be where I come in, because I, of course, am a moron," Bradley said shaking his head.

Stratton laughed. "Actually I think it takes a pretty intelligent person to know how to convey a message to someone who has no concept of the words and machines that we take for granted. How do you explain a transporter sabotage to someone who worships a thermo electric plant?"

"How do you explain to a pompous ass like Briggs that if you poison these people's gods and they find out, they are going to be pissed?" Bradley asked with a shrug.

"RJ." Levits called out as he walked up behind her – you definitely didn't want to take the chance of sneaking up on her. You just might get yourself killed. He wrapped his arms around her. She placed her hands over his and leaned her head back onto his shoulder. "So
 . . .
Are you going to try to get some sleep, or are you just going to stand out here and look at the moons?"

She laughed a little. "While I'd love to tell you that I was just looking at the moons, I was actually watching the sky. I really expected the Reliance to try a little harder than this."

"They would if they knew it was you," he said. "If they knew you were the cause of their problems they would have sent every shuttle on the station. They just think they have a primitive uprising, nothing to get too worked up about."

"Blowing up a big hunk of their station should have gotten their attention. Mickey should have made his transmission by now. That should have given them some clue," RJ said.

"Their minds don't work like yours. They're a little slow on the up take sometimes. Do you have to be so disappointed that we're not under siege already?" He moved her hair and gently kissed the side of her neck. "Can't you think about something besides fighting for a few moments?"

"I was thinking that the blue color of the smaller moon is most probably caused by gases enveloping it," RJ said.

"Oh! How very romantic," Levits groaned. "I had something else in mind."

RJ laughed and turned in his arms to face him. "Yes, but if it's only going to take a few moments, it hardly seems worth the effort."

Levits shrugged. "What can I say? I'm only a mere mortal, and there is that added twenty-five pounds of gravitational pull. I just can't promise anything."

She moved away from him then took hold of his hand and started pulling him towards the solar blanket he had laid out under the shuttle. "Tell you what. You just lay there, and I'll do all the work."

Taleed looked across Haldeed to where the one they called Poley was leaned against the frame of the open ship door. He was pretty sure that he was asleep. He shook Haldeed until he woke up. Haldeed glared at him, obviously upset about being awakened.

"I think you were right, Haldeed, we should not stay with these strangers. We should sneak out while they are asleep and otherwise occupied." A few minutes earlier strange sounds had started to echo from under the ship, and Taleed didn't have to wonder what the alien woman and her mate were up to. They were obviously too busy to notice them slipping away.

"Poley never sleeps," Topaz said in a whisper making both boys jump. "And no matter how busy his sister is, she's not likely to miss you two clumsy boys trying to sneak away."

Poley had brought Topaz back to camp about thirty minutes before, and he had just walked in, lain down, and Taleed thought, gone to sleep.

"Why can't we go if we want to go?" Taleed asked in an angry whisper.

"Because RJ said you can't." Topaz rolled from his side onto his back. "Do yourself a favor, boy, and don't cross RJ. She's a very good friend, but she's an even better enemy, and unless I'm mistaken – and I hardly ever am – you could use a friend, and you already have enough enemies."

Taleed nodded silently, lay down and tried to get comfortable. It wasn't easy, all of their gear was still damp and the strangers hadn't had anything extra. He looked over once more at the man who guarded the door. This time he looked at Taleed, and even in the darkness Taleed could see his smile.

He mocks me. I do not know what to feel. Haldeed, he already sleeps again. He is too tired to worry. He's more tired than I am because he has to do everything for the both of us because the priests have made me a cripple
.
He forced his eyes to close.
These people are so strange – so different. They know so much more than we do. Their technology is so superior to ours. I don't know whether to trust them or distrust them. I don't know whether I like them or despise them. I know that I don't like being told that I can't leave. That my decisions are not mine to make. If this is to be my new life, then it is no different from the life that I fled. I thought I didn't want to know what my life would be. I thought I wanted adventure and an unknown destiny, and now I cower like a child behind their parent and wish I knew what tomorrow was going to bring. I must stop sniveling, this is my chance, perhaps my only chance to break the palace bonds and make my own way in the world. I must not be afraid. My one true friend, Haldeed, is with me. I am not alone in this. I must be brave
.

But he didn't feel like being brave. He felt wet and cold, and the floor of the ship was hard. His thoughts strayed to the palace and his life there, and he began to wonder what he had hated so badly.

As they neared the planet's capital the dwellings came into view and Bradley took a double take. Obviously the city had once been a huge cave the size of a small sea. Some geographical catastrophe had sent the ceiling crushing in. The debris of the roof had been carried away, probably over many centuries leaving what he assumed were huge brownish green streaked stalagmites. The population had carved these stalagmites into dwellings, and they looked like
 . . .

"Looks like huge piles of shit, doesn't it?" Stratton said.

"Yeah," Bradley said with a laugh. Then suddenly the Palace came into view, and as they got closer and he was sure of what he saw, his mouth flopped open in amazement. "Shee
 . . .
it!" He exclaimed.

It was an old colony ship, like the ones he'd seen in history books. Huge. Easily twice as big as similar ships today, and he knew why. The older ships had been almost completely filled with engine. From this angle it didn't even look damaged, but from the way it was sitting, with a huge stand of stalagmites behind it and a clearing several square miles long in front of it, he imagined that the entire side that wasn't visible as well as the belly of the ship had been destroyed. Few, if any, would have survived such a crash.

Stratton looked neither surprised nor shocked by what they were looking at, and he realized that she must have known what the "Palace" was.

"We are responsible for their religious beliefs, and now we are using them against them," Bradley said more to himself than anyone else.

"Yeah," Stratton said plainly. "A space ship filled with high-tech equipment crashes onto a primitive planet just starting to use rock tools, and the next thing you know, there is a whole new god in town
 . . ..
Apparently there was at least one survivor."

Bradley nodded silently as their craft landed in the clearing just in front of the "Palace," sending clouds of dust into the air.

"Suits completely off," Stratton ordered. "Apparently the natives worship the suits, and we don't want to appear as their gods, just as people doing business with them. When we step outside the ship stand still and wait. Apparently they will send an escort."

"Is
 . . .
is it safe?" Bradley asked.

"The most dangerous thing on this planet is the radioactive gold we gave them," Stratton said with a hint of anger in her voice.

They removed their suits, opened the seals and walked out into the early morning sunlight. Bradley noticed that he felt heavy and remembered that the gravitational pull was heavier than Earth's. While he'd never actually been on Earth, he'd spent his life on space stations that were designed to simulate Earth's gravity.

He'd seldom been sent planet side, and it was a rare treat to step on dirt, smell "real" air, to see the sky above, trees and plants – he wondered why humans had ever left their home planet and journeyed to the stars. What had been their motivation? If you had everything you needed, why go anywhere else?

"Ran out of resources," Stratton said, seeming to read his mind for the second time that day. But it turned out she was just explaining the existence of the old Earth ship on this planet. "Too many people, not enough stuff, so they started sending out ships like this in search of new planets. Planets with resources that we needed. This ship must have gone off course. Beta 4 has nothing the Reliance wants. Nothing we need. Dirt and simple rock, that's about all that's here. No plutonium, no uranium, no suitable materials with which to make metal. It rains too much or not at all, and the soil is nitrite poor so that the things these people call forests would be considered wasteland anywhere else. Then there are all the damned magnetic pulses that emanate from deep within the planets' surface, making communications and even some equipment run erratically. In short, it's not a suitable habitat for humans. It was more expedient for the Reliance to trade with the natives for items the planet actually did produce and that they found desirable than it was to try to colonize it."

"The natives seem to be doing fine," Bradley said watching as the natives ran towards them.

"Only because they periodically hold wars to cut down their population. Otherwise there would be mass starvation," Stratton explained.

Bradley looked at her, his eyes growing large with realization.

"Why do you think the Reliance is taking them to fight their war?" Stratton asked. "Generations of selective breeding."

More natives seemed to appear by the minute, all talking and pointing. Bradley didn't touch his side arm; they weren't acting in an aggressive manner, just a curious one. One of the men with them must have felt a lot more intimidated, though, because he raised his weapon and threw off the safety.

"Put that damn thing away, Jackson," Stratton said heavily. "The last thing we want to do is make them think that we mean them any harm. They are a race of warriors, treat them with the same respect you would have for an Elite. Their weapons may be primitive, but they are stronger than we are and well trained in the arts of war. There are thousands of them and only five of us. Better weapons won't save us against those kinds of odds. Use your head."