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 things 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.
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 walked 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."
He frowned and then laughed hatefully. He ran his finger carefully down her face as if daring her to bite him. She tried and he jerked his hand quickly away.
"If you don't start singing a different tune before we get to Earth, you will be terminated," he informed her. "And it would be a terrible shame if I didn't get to fuck you at least once while you were still alive."
He thrust his hips in such a manner that she learned what "fuck" meant. It didn't take a genius to figure out what "terminated" meant, either.
"And if I'm not killed as soon as we land, I'll be sent to the front lines of your war zone, where I'll be killed. We're expendable bodies. I am a warrior; I know what you will do with us. You will send us in first to knock down their numbers before you send in your own people," Janad said. He gave her a startled look. "We're not
all
stupid. So save your lies for those of my people who believe the priests' lies, and kill me now if it pleases you. If you don't kill me now, I shall surely kill you first chance I get, and my people
. . .
You may think we are all just stupid animals, but we are not stupid animals. It is only a matter of time till they figure out what I already know. We do not like to be tricked. Turn your backs on us, and you will find that you have two enemies instead of one."
His superior called for him, and he gave her an angry look and walked away.
She felt smug for a few seconds, but her triumphant feeling didn't last long. Shackled to the ship wall with no prospects for escape, her words sounded hollow even to herself. She was doomed; they only took the shackles off to let her go to the bathroom, and even then two armed guards accompanied her. She knew she was being made an example of, and as such any attempt on her part to escape would be met with immediate weapon fire. Their treatment of her made the others sure that they wanted to behave themselves, and if they killed her so much the better. She was nothing more than product to the Reliance, and expendable product at that.
Suddenly Janad grew impatient with herself. She was giving up too easy. She was a hunter a warrior of the clan of Nond, village of Ducont, and nothing was impossible. Except
. . .
If she got away, where would she go? The ship was huge; surely she could find somewhere to hide. She relaxed and started to form a plan.
She hollered till Shit-Head and another man came to take her to the bathroom. As the shackles came off she hit Shit-Head in the face with her fist. Then she spun, hitting his friend with a roundhouse kick in the knee joint that took him down. She took off at a dead run for the door. As laser fire struck all around her she ducked under the two guards who had run into the doorway, rolled across the floor and rose into a crouch. Quickly she checked the hall in both directions before she jumped to her feet and started running. A stray shot hit one of the guards who had run into the doorway, and they were all screaming at each other over whose fault it was, giving her a few seconds when their attention was everywhere but on her. She used the opportunity to run down the hallway she had entered. She had no idea where the hall went, but at least it was away from the angry guards who were now chasing her.