"This is plain bullshit!" Jackson grated out lowering his weapon.
"I'm inclined to agree," Bradley turned suddenly to face the three
bodyguards
the Captain had sent with them. He knew them by sight, but didn't know them personally. It was a big station, they were combat branch and he was maintenance, still he felt safe enough to ask. "Any of you feel good about what we're doing to these people, or about all the finger pointing that's going on back at the station right now?"
"I don't think any of us would be here right now if we agreed with everything the Reliance and that pompous ass Briggs is doing," Stratton said. "What's your point?"
"My point is that all I want is to be left alone to do my job and live what little life I have. I don't agree with what we are doing to these people, and I don't appreciate being given what that prick considers to be a very dangerous assignment just because I said something he didn't like. But here we are. Let's just do it, try to get it right, and get back to the station without pissing off the natives. I don't know about the rest of you, but after years in space and in the heart of war zones, I don't want to die on a third class planet on the end of some primitive's spear."
"Agreed," Jackson said.
"I don't want to be part of giving radiation sickness to anyone," one of the men said.
"They'll do it with or without us, Decker," Stratton said sadly. "We screw this up and if the natives don't kill us it's a sure bet that the Captain will have us spaced when we get back to the ship. Then he'll just get someone else to do it."
"But at least it wouldn't be us," Decker said.
"Because we'd be dead, you stupid little dork," the third marine said. "Me being dead to save a bunch of bug-eating natives isn't an option. Let's just do whatever it is we're supposed to do and get back into space where we belong."
Bradley remembered him now from the mess hall. His name was Hank, and he was a smart assed punk who was constantly mouthing off to someone. The kind of guy who was always aching for a fight, verbal or otherwise. Hank and Harker had come to blows once, and Harker wasn't the sort of guy who ran around spoiling for a fight, he just wasn't one to walk away from one that was shoved in his face. No doubt Hank had been put on this detail not because he had any principles, but because he had mouthed off to the wrong person.
"Let's just do it and get it over with," Jackson agreed.
The crowd in front of them parted and four priests covered in gold chains and the signs of radiation sickness in full bloom walked through the crowd to greet them.
"Damn," Jackson muttered from behind him.
"This is just wrong," Decker whispered.
Bradley looked at Stratton, and she frowned. "There has to be something we can do," she whispered.
Bradley nodded. "Give me a second." He ducked quickly back into the ship. He came back out a few moments later carrying the pocket medic.
Stratton nodded her head in agreement.
But Decker whispered, "You can't just slap a bandaid on it."
"We can slow it down," Bradley whispered. "Maybe the Reliance will change policy."
"Yeah, and maybe dogs will fly!" Hank laughed out.
"Fuck you, Hank," Jackson muttered under his breath.
"All of you calm down," Stratton ordered.
The priests bowed before them.
"Rise," Stratton said. "We have brought medicine for your illness."
"I knew the gods would save us," one of the priests said. Bradley assumed he was a big shot because he was wearing more of the gold and more actual clothing – long purple cotton robes with full sleeves tied with a wide red sash.
"In return we wish to speak to your King," Stratton said.
All the priests looked at her in disbelief.
"Is there a problem?" Stratton asked.
"No female may enter the holy places. So you may not enter either the Temple or the Palace. However if you wish to have the honor of sleeping with our God
. . .
"
"No
. . .
That's all right," Stratton said quickly. She turned to Bradley. "Briggs left out this little detail. Can you handle it?"
"I'll try," Bradley said.
"All right then, I'll just stay here and have dinner waiting for you boys when you get back."
Bradley smiled at the look on her face. She looked at him and shrugged as if to say that this had just gone onto the list of things that were no longer her problem, and started for the ship taking Decker with her. Probably more to keep him from saying or doing something to sabotage their mission than because she felt like she needed protection.
Bradley, Jackson and Hank followed the priests into the Palace. Red warning lights flashed as they walked down what had once been the main corridor of the ship, and warning sirens blared. The throne room turned out to be the ship's bridge. The huge observation window, which had a crack running through the full length of it, looked out over the city. The King sat in what had once been the Captain's chair. It was now strewn with small furs, lizard skins and bright colored fabrics. The room was decorated with strangely shaped sticks and dried plants hung in bundles from the ceiling.
The King/God, who had no hands, wore a loin-cloth made of reptile skin, a red shirt with a huge collar and equally huge puffy sleeves. The King was draped in even more of the tainted gold than the priests, so he was in far worse physical condition. This became even more evident when a dry racking cough echoed from his lungs. He covered his mouth with one of his stumps until the coughing spell ended.
Even a few years ago such exposure would have meant certain death, but with the new medications extracted from that hole Stasis, it wasn't too late to save even this man who had lost most of his hair and whose skin was covered in oozing sores. Of course all the medication would do was slow down the inevitable if they didn't remove the source of the radiation – namely the gold that all of these men were wearing in such abundance.
Bradley was glad when the sirens and warning lights were turned off. It was the sort of noise and light that put your teeth on edge when you had grown up in space because such things meant imminent disaster. Here they no doubt thought it was a way of greeting important guests.
The priest relayed the message Bradley had given him to the King, and the King looked with eager eyes at Bradley. Bradley walked forward and bowed before the King, then he stood up and held the pocket medic out before him. "My Captain sends medicine to help you with your illness." The King nodded and held out his arm, apparently not completely ignorant of the technology, and Bradley administered the drug to him.
"It will take time to work," Bradley said. He turned and handed the med kit to Jackson. "Inject the priests."
Jackson nodded and started injecting the priests who had lined up as instructed by the high priest. He hadn't finished injecting the forth one when twenty more came running in the room and lined up behind him.
"Why have you returned evil for good?" Bradley asked the King slowly.
"I do not understand," the King said.
"We have traded with you in good faith. Now you have blown up one of our transmat units and have severely damaged our space station," Bradley informed him.
"I have not heard of this. Nor was this action ordered by me." He coughed again then continued speaking. "I do not believe we have weapons that could harm you
. . .
Perhaps your own people have done this terrible thing. Or perhaps the machine has malfunctioned, as machines are prone to do. Perhaps you should have your priests look into the matter. Perhaps they should consult with your god."
Bradley did not believe the man was lying. He really didn't have any idea what Bradley was talking about, which since the incident had taken place roughly two hundred miles from here, and the planet had no form of telecommunications, was perfectly believable.
Bradley added that to the fact that The New Alliance had taken credit for the attack and came to the natural conclusion. Someone on the station really was a traitor to the Reliance. Someone – or more than one someone – was working with the New Alliance to try to stop the Reliance. Right now Bradley wasn't sure how he felt about that.
"We would like your permission to investigate this matter," Bradley said.
"Yes, of course," the King agreed graciously. "We must keep good relations between our two peoples so that both may prosper. We have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide. If you find that one or more of my people is guilty of any criminal act against you, then you may punish them in whatever way is your custom."
We are the ones committing the crime, and I'm very sorry
.
Bradley waited for Jackson to finish inoculating the last of the priests.
He bowed to the King, and the King dipped his head to him, and then they left the throne room and headed back for the ship. His insides felt like they were on fire. How could he live with what he had just done? These people trusted the Reliance, and the Reliance was using and killing them on a grand scale. How could he walk away and never mention that it was the gold that was killing them? How could he leave them to die?
There was only one real answer – there was nothing he could do to stop it. The Reliance did what it wanted to do; it had no conscience. It didn't see the individual. It was too big, and too many lives were at stake. Isn't that what they had drilled into him at school? The Reliance sometimes did things that seemed wrong because the individual was incapable of understanding the mysterious ways in which the Reliance worked. The Reliance always worked for what was best for the masses, and so if you thought they were doing something evil, you must be wrong.
The Reliance had supposedly gotten rid of religion, but all it had done was make itself into a god. A god they followed as blindly as these people worshiped thermo generators. They didn't understand where the power came from, or how it worked, so instead of trying to find out they just said it was unexplainable and worshiped it. To go against the Reliance was to go against god. So just like these poor saps were wearing tainted gold to honor their gods, they were carrying out orders that they knew were wrong to honor theirs.
He almost doubled back more than once, but he had no right to make decisions for the others. Especially when Stratton was in charge, and he was acting in her stead.
"He says he had nothing to do with it and I believe him," Bradley said sitting beside Stratton as the others got in and the hatch closed. "He gave us the go ahead to investigate told us to punish the guilty party according to our customs."
"Those stupid fuckers," Hank laughed. "They're all eaten up with radiation sickness, and it never once dawns on them to take the damn gold off."
"Because they trust us," Decker said hotly. "They don't think we're trying to kill them. They aren't stupid; they're naive."
"Well, we'll fix that," Bradley said heavily.
"Don't think I'm not going to tell command how you wasted medical supplies on those savages," Hank said. "After all I need all the points I can rake up so that prick Briggs doesn't keep putting me on shit patrol."
"You're a stupid dick head," Decker spat at him.
"Let's just do this and get it over with," Stratton said taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly before she finished talking. "It's going to take a long time for me to get the taste of this mission out of my mouth."
The craft took off and they headed for the village where the transport had been sabotaged.
"Who do you suppose did it?" Stratton asked Bradley.
"I don't know," Bradley said. "Could have been one of our people, working with the New Alliance. Let's not forget that they took credit for it, and that they know what's going on here. They certainly have a reason to try to stop our little mission. I still didn't have an accurate body count when we left the station. One or more of our people who came down here might have stayed on the planet and rigged up the whole thing. You got nothing but arms and legs and body slime, it's hard to tell who's there and who's not. It's awful easy to throw your ID into a pile. Someone working with the natives could have very easily over powered the patrol, especially if he had help from the New Alliance."
"And there's that missing ship," Jackson reminded them. "It might have been hijacked by the new Alliance and landed on the planet during a pulse. We'd be none the wiser. That ship could be here right now."
"He's right. Certainly those are all sound theories," Stratton said, the tone and dismissive quality of her voice led him to believe that she had a theory of her own and was basically dismissing theirs.
They were talking about the mechanics of the mission because most of them didn't really want to think about what they were really doing. Someone had defended these people, and now they were trying to find out who and get rid of them so that the Reliance could go right on raping them.
Stratton started trying to patch into command on the station to update the Captain on their progress. Instead of getting a channel out, Stratton wound up getting one in and the communicator started giving them the news of the day from the station. "Damned magnetic pulses," Stratton said trying to readjust.