Chains of Destruction (36 page)

"RJ
 . . .
What do you want with surveillance cameras?" Levits asked as she loaded the third one on him.

"The weapon works in two parts. First by using sonic waves to interrupt the brain's normal function and causing sleep, then by stimulating the fear centers in the brain, causing your own brain to attack you. The components I pulled out of the console are the weapon itself. However these surveillance cameras hold the apparatus which makes the actual sound," RJ said jumping up and pulling down yet another.

"How many of them are you going to need?" David asked.

"A few. Why?" RJ asked, jumping up and grabbing yet another one.

"Because we have to carry them down the freaking mountain!" Levits practically screamed. "We have to cart this weapon – which none of us feels very safe around, and you don't yet know what you are going to do with – down the side of a freaking mountain."

"What is with this word
freaking
?" Janad asked. "You say it all the time for everything. What does it mean?"

"It's the same as the word
fucking
," Levits said.

"If you mean fucking, why not just say fucking?" Janad asked.

"Because when you do, certain people higher up in the ranks get all tightassed and you can get demerits, even brig time," Levits explained. "Get your pay docked or spend a couple of nights in the brig for letting the wrong word slip in front of the wrong prick and you learn real quick to say something else. It means exactly the same thing, but for some reason they let it slide."

"Huh?" Janad said scratching her head.

"It's military stuff, Janad," David explained. "It never makes any damned sense.
Freaking
encompasses a whole range of emotions from frustration and anger, as in
The stupid freaking mountain
, to excitement as in
You've got such a freaking big wang
."

"Poley has a freaking big wang," Janad said.

"Yeah, well, that's technology for ya," Levits said with a sigh.

RJ turned to look. "Do you people ever freaking listen to yourselves? Let's just get what we freaking need and get back down the freaking mountain." Looking at them she realized they were all carrying about all they realistically could. So she stopped getting cameras and started walking down the hallway opening doors and looking in.

"What the hell are you doing now! Let's pack this damn crap up and get the hell out of here." Levites ordered.

"If they had this weapon on board, it's a sure bet they had some kind of device the crew could wear to cancel out the effects. Ah ha!" She walked in the door she had just opened, and right up to one of the three mummified remains of humanoids that were in the cabin.

"Well
 . . .
This is freaking creepy," Levits said making a face.

"They're all wearing the same uniform," David observed.

"No doubt they were part of the crew." RJ checked them out closely one by one.

"What the hell are you looking for now?" Levits demanded. "Are we going to need mummified Argy's later? Maybe you're going to make a freaking potion."

RJ ignored him, choosing instead to talk more to herself than anyone else. "Damn! The prisoners must have stripped the crew of the apparatus
 . . .
That would have made it a damn sight easier for them to get out. Smart
 . . .
of course if they had been very smart they would have looked for the weapon and turned it off like I did. Of course, criminals of any species are almost inherently stupid. Well, no sense hanging around here." She started walking back towards the bridge, and the others followed. "They obviously used the apparatus to escape from the ship, so they are doubtless on the surface of the planet somewhere."

"If they had the sonic disruptors, why didn't they use them to dismantle the ship? At least take
some
thing?" Levits asked.

"I imagine the units had a limited power supply. After all in most cases they would only have to last long enough to put down an uprising, and with that machine in place that shouldn't take more than a few minutes. They probably only had enough power to get out. They escaped with only what they could easily carry and could just grab," RJ explained. "With something like that thing playing in your brain, you wouldn't be thinking clearly, and most of them wouldn't have had the disruptors."

"If it's just sound wouldn't ear plugs work?" David asked.

Levits laughed loudly and gave David a '
you really are an idiot'
look.

"Sound waves can penetrate practically anything," RJ answered. "You need something to interrupt the sound waves and change them into something harmless. We should be able to make something that will work fairly easily."

"Just to satisfy my morbid curiosity," Levits started, "what killed those people back there?"

"Well, they were tied into their chairs, there was no sign of blunt trauma to the head, no obvious laser marks on the clothing or skeleton, there was too much mummified flesh left on their bones to suggest that they had starved to death, so I would say off hand that the weapon killed them," RJ said. They had reached the flight deck.

"Well, isn't that a lovely thought? Everyone gets to die from their own worse fear," David said.

"Oh, it's worse than that. The Argy are empathic," RJ said conversationally. "They got to experience everyone else's fear as well." RJ pulled two backpacks from her own; she'd come prepared to carry a power supply back if they had found one. She used the radiation proof bags she had brought to wrap the components of the weapon, and Janad helped her pack them into the back packs.

"It can't work now, right?" David said as she slipped one of the packs on his back.

"Of course it can't work, you dildo," Levits said exasperated. "All the optics have been broken, and it's been disconnected from its power source."

"I was just making sure," David spat back hotly.

"You are such a dumb ass," Levits sneered.

David turned on Levits. "Get off my back, or I'm going to kick your scrawny ass."

"Why don't you go ahead and try it? I'll
 . . .
"

"Get your ass kicked," RJ said. "David is bigger, stronger, and more experienced in hand-to-hand combat, so he'll kick your ass."

"I'd like to see him
 . . .
"

"But I wouldn't. Nobody's going to be kicking anybody's ass." She held the second pack out to Levits, and he grudgingly put it on mumbling the whole time.

RJ moved to turn the ship's power off.

"Hey! Why'd you do that?" Levits asked as he raced to turn the light on his com-link on.

"No sense in leaving it on to run the power out. Who knows, we might need this ship yet," RJ said. She looked back around her, suddenly feeling a reluctance to go. She had an illogical feeling that for an instant she had connected with the other side of her heritage. The only way she had ever interacted with them before had been by killing them on planets in galaxies far away from here. She took a deep breath and walked out of the ship. If they hurried, they should be able to make it down the mountain before it got dark enough to impair her companions' vision.

They had been walking a little over an hour when she realized that Levits was very purposefully not talking to her. She let David take the lead for a while and held back with Levits.

"So, what did I do now?" RJ asked with a grin.

He glared back at her. "You know what you did. You took his side."

"I didn't take his side," RJ said in disbelief. "All I did was tell the truth. He can kick your ass. You and I both know that you would have talked your way out of it anyway, because you have an aversion to pain. So in the end the outcome is the same, and it was a lot quicker this way. You're smarter than he is; he's stronger. In all reality, which would you rather be?"

"You could at least pretend that you think I'm stronger," Levits said with a smile.

RJ smiled back and took his hand in hers. "I didn't ask you to pretend to be dumber just to make David feel better."

"RJ
 . . .
What are you going to do with this damned weapon?" Levits asked, more than ready to change the subject.

"I really don't know yet. It could be modified to do any number of horrible things."

"Worse than what it does now?" Levits scowled. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Rather depends on who we use it on, doesn't it? Some people deserve a tortuous death
 . . .
"

"I'm not sure
anyone
deserves
that
," Levits said a cold chill running up his spine as he remembered the terror. "RJ, I'm curious. What was your fear? I mean
 . . .
I didn't think you were afraid of anything."

"I'm an empath, too, Levits. I felt your fear – all of your fears," RJ said simply. That was all he needed to know. She didn't want to talk about her only real fear. They could all avoid their fears, but on the other hand her fear was inevitable.

Haldeed didn't know what the Defrocked priest and the old one were talking about, he only knew that it was slowing down progress on the prince's hands. This was frustrating Taleed, so that he was bitching at Haldeed. He and Taleed had been catching
colma
ç
on
all day, and they had enough for a feast. He had shelled and cleaned them and was now pushing them onto a spit to be put over the fire.

"Hurry, Haldeed," Taleed said impatiently. "I want to see what the old one is talking about that is so important that he has all but stopped working on my hands."

Haldeed just looked exasperated and worked a little faster at poking the crustaceans onto the skewer. He didn't stop to explain to him that since Taleed was contributing nothing but aggravation, he could leave at any time. Haldeed grunted when he had finished the task, and together they walked over to the fire where Topaz was talking to the priest.

"So all the priests are basically schizophrenic," Topaz was saying excitedly.

"I don't know what that is," Jessit answered.

"They all suffer from this disorder where they hear voices in their heads," Topaz said.

"Yes," Jessit said shaking his head. "I have it, too, but I know it isn't gods that are talking to me
 . . .
" He looked then at the young prince and fell silent.

"Speak freely. I have long believed that the priests spoke falsely, and everything I have seen on my adventure since I left the palace has only strengthened my belief. If you have any insight, please share it with us," Taleed said.

"Only that
 . . .
."

Haldeed put the snails over the fire.

"My goodness! What a fine feast we will have," Jessit said smacking his lips.

"Jessit, please," Topaz begged with a sigh. "Try to stay on task. What were you going to say?"

Haldeed smiled. He thought it was funny that the old alien should be telling anyone to "stay on task," when Taleed's hands lay in the dirt at his feet untouched and unfinished.

"Well, it became obvious to me early on that the voices in my head couldn't be the gods. Why would the gods want me to have sex with my neighbor's farm animals? Or slit the throat of a merchant who over charged the man in line ahead of me? I spoke to the head priest Ziphed about it. He said the gods spoke in mysterious ways, and that I must learn to interpret what they were saying to me. I knew then that everything that he said was only lies. Lies that he told when he interpreted things like
Have sex with the neighbor' farm animals
, and turned it into
The gods want us to fight with each other
.
I mean how can you credibly translate having sex with your neighbor's animals into anything godly? Perhaps you could make an argument that it means the animals should be bred, or perhaps that the community as a whole should condemn or perhaps engage in acts of bestiality. But it hardly seems to me that the gods would waste their time talking about such trivial matters."

Haldeed couldn't make much sense of what the priest was saying and from the looks on the faces of the three alien strangers, neither did they. They seemed more like the Reliance people he had seen all his life. The ones that had come to the Capitol to trade hides and carvings, beads, art and sometimes meat for cotton cloth and metal implements. Cold and detached, like priests. Not like RJ and her people, who were more like the palace guard. Very serious at their posts, but cutting up, laughing, and offering mute palace servants a sip of wine they weren't supposed to have when they were off duty.

Haldeed understood what they had said about why they were here, but he wasn't sure that he trusted them. Their expressions were devoid of emotion. Their movements were stiff, their body speech unreadable. He wondered if this was part of some training they had undergone, or whether their world just repressed them so much that their souls had retreated from their faces.