Chains of Destruction (13 page)

Topaz laughed again. "Great bedside manner you've got there. Don't worry about me, Janad." As she started to get the stuff to dress the wound he added, "and don't dress my wound. Just watch." He pointed at the wound, and she watched in amazement as it started to close. In seconds his skin was completely healed. Janad thought she now knew what these beings were.

"You're all gods!" she gasped.

"No, Janad, not gods. Although you can call me that if you like." Topaz smiled broadly at her. "I took a potion. That potion has made my cells regenerate themselves whenever they are damaged. That doesn't make me a god. It just makes me the end product of an experiment, and that's really all Poley and RJ are, too. Levits and David are normal just like you. The proof of that is that David is so sick right now. Everything has a logical explanation, just like I can tell you right now without fear of contradiction that your King is not a deity, and that whatever is making light and bringing water to your homes and belching out clouds is more of machine than god."

Janad thought about it for a minute then shook her head.

"No, you're wrong."

"Don't you understand, Janad? There are no such thing as gods," Topaz said.

"But the people,
my
people, believe in these gods, and therefore they have power. That power makes them gods," Janad concluded with finality.

"Well, I'll be damned," Topaz said appreciatively. "That's pretty sophisticated reasoning for someone who's supposed to be a primitive."

"You have powers, and therefore you must be gods," Janad said on a final note.

Topaz sighed. "I take back what I said."

Levits had taken Poley's place on the bridge, and Poley was trying to figure out how to turn off the force field around the gold when Topaz walked back in.

"You all right?" RJ asked, hardly looking up from where she was looking over Poley's shoulder.

"Fine as a fiddle," Topaz said. "I'm afraid your caviler attitude about my injuries upset Janad. But now that she sees what I already knew – that I am a god – she has gone back to the mess hall to eat. She's a very good eater that girl."

"So, you're a god?" RJ asked with a smile.

"Actually she thinks we're all gods. I think we'll be hard pressed to prove otherwise to her," Topaz said. "I rather like the girl; she grows on you after awhile."

"He'd like anyone who thought he was a god," RJ said to her brother.

Poley smiled and nodded absently and added, "I have the force field off."

"Well, duh!" RJ said. She could feel the slight electric charge in the air when it had been on. The absence of that charge was obvious to her.

Poley put his ear to the safe and started to turn the tumbler.

"Funny," Topaz said. "All this high-tech shit, and it all comes down to a simple combination lock. The same kind we had on our school lockers when I was a boy."

In a matter of minutes Poley turned the handle and opened the door.

"Holy shit!" Topaz exclaimed.

"I guess the price of slaves has gotten really high," RJ said. "There's got to be
 . . .
"

"One thousand, five hundred sixty-three pounds," Poley said.

Topaz shook his head in disbelief. "That's worth
 . . .
"

"Seventy-five million, four hundred and eighty thousand credits," Poley said. "Too bad it's radioactive."

"Radioactive!" Topaz and RJ screamed in unison. RJ ran over, slammed the door closed and locked it.

"That would mean this fucking gold is from the planet Stashes. They found a vein of gold there right on top of a shit load of plutonium," RJ said thoughtfully.

"The safe is lead-lined that's why no radiation leak showed on any systems check," Poley said.

"Freaking Reliance," RJ hissed. "Are there no depths to which they won't sink? They're trading soldiers for radioactive gold and cheap textiles."

"And think about this," Topaz said. "What do primitives do with gold?"

"They wear it," RJ answered, eyes widening as the realization struck her.

Topaz nodded.

"We've got to stop them," RJ said with conviction.

It took them several hours to fish all their things from the river in the dark. Their reed boat was in tattered ruins and beyond repair.

We could build another boat
, Haldeed signed, then hung some more of their wet things on a bush to dry.

"No, I think it's a sign that we should walk inland," Taleed said.

A sign from the gods
? Haldeed signed not without a healthy helping of sarcasm.

"Gods!" Taleed made a hissing noise as he picked up a rock with his toes and slung it into the water. "I do not believe my father is a god, Haldeed. I know for a certainty that I am not. Nor do I believe that whatever the priests hide in their caves is a god. If there were true gods, they would not show themselves, but would stay out of sight. They would make the world work, not order men to be maimed or wars to be fought. If they chose to meddle in men's lives, why would they not make things perfect? Why would they keep our planet barren, order us to have as many children as we can, and then order up wars? I say that if there are gods, then they care not for man one way or the other. I certainly don't believe that the priests speak their will. I'll tell you better than that – I do not believe that my father believes it – or even that the priests do."

Careful do not anger the gods, Taleed
, Haldeed warned.

"We have already angered my father, Haldeed. False gods have no power," Taleed declared.

We were nearly drowned in the river
, Haldeed reminded him.

"No god made a waterfall appear on the river. It has always been there. How can our failure to pay attention be considered godly power manifesting itself? Furthermore we didn't drown," Taleed said.

I almost did, and your power saved me
, Haldeed said signing in an excited way.

"Don't be ridiculous, Haldeed." Taleed said. "I simply used my head. I sucked air into my lungs, and then I breathed it into yours."

You truly don't believe in the gods
? Haldeed asked.

"I very truly don't," Taleed answered.

Their things hadn't quite dried when it started to rain. Taleed saw the look Haldeed gave him and frowned hard. "This is
not
punishment from the gods, Haldeed. It's just a little rain. Surely a god would be more creative than this. Getting wet is less like a punishment and more of an annoyance"

If you say so
, Haldeed said and continued to pack their wet gear into their backpacks.

They walked down the river till they found a well-used path. This they knew would lead them to a village. But they wouldn't stop there, oh no. If the royal guards came down the river looking for them, they would of course look in the town closest to the river. So they would continue to travel inland. They knew the further they got away from the river the better off they would be. The rain was coming down hard, and the river would come over its banks soon. In fact, it wasn't rare to look up after a storm up stream and see a wall of water coming at you. That's the way it was here – weeks, sometimes even months, without rain – and then torrential downpours that could last just as long.

They walked a little faster as the sound of the river got louder. It was still dark, so they walked around the back side of the village and continued on up the road before walking into the thick underbrush and making camp. They were soaked. Their tent and their bedrolls were soaked. What little food they had left was wet. It was raining too hard and it was too dark to look for more. Cold and wet and hungry, they crawled into their tent and tried to sleep.

It rained all through the daylight hours. Haldeed got out and foraged for food in the down pour, giving up any notion that the rain would slow up soon. No way of making a fire and all he found was some
carotte
root. It came up easy, and he simply left it hanging in a small bush until the rain had washed it clean. It didn't take long.

Haldeed held the root for Taleed to eat. Taleed chewed the horrible tasting root and made a decision. "OK, Haldeed. I've had it. Ours is neither a moderate nor a very forgiving world, and neither you nor I have ever been taught how to survive in it. I say we get up this very minute and walk up the road. At the very next village we come to we will find lodging, buy ourselves a good hot meal, take a good hot bath and sleep in a warm dry bed." Before he had finished speaking Haldeed had dropped the root and started packing.

It was the middle of the night when they came to the small village of
Are'ne
.
The inn, however, took them in at once. They had a backpack full of
bercer-roc
and that bought hospitality even when someone might not feel like giving it. The huge rock tub in their room was filled with hot running water fed by reed pipes from the temple. They bathed together, each one relishing in the warmth of the water and the feeling of being really clean for the first time in days. Two bowls of steaming legume soup were brought to them and they practically inhaled them. Then feeling warmed inside and out, and dry for the first time in two days they crawled into bed and went to sleep.

Levits felt like he was the one who needed to be heavily sedated. He was circling one of the six moons of the planet trying to find a safe place to land, when there really weren't any. Finally he found a suitable crater and started to descend towards it, trying to ignore RJ and Topaz's constant chatter.

"So, riddle me this. It's a huge planet, and they are living on a very small part of it – no way are they crowded. So, why have they picked the most inhospitable place on the planet to inhabit?" Topaz asked.

"The oceans, while teaming with life, are constantly in turmoil spawning literally hundreds of hurricanes and causing erratic weather patterns across the planet's surface. Then there are the several thousand active volcanoes which dot the planet's surface. Topographically it may appear that they have picked the most inhospitable region, but, in truth, they have probably populated the only truly habitable spot available," RJ answered.

"Would you both shut up!" When there was silence Levites took a deep breath. "I just don't know
 . . .
"

"You're doing fine," RJ said. "It's easy."

"If it's so easy then you do it," he snapped back. He drew a deep cleansing breath. They didn't understand what they were asking him to do. As he had explained to them this ship hadn't been meant to actually
land
.
It was meant to go from one space station to another and be tethered up. The troops would be off loaded onto the station then sent into smaller, faster ships to do battle either in the air or on a planet's surface. It was a pack animal, and as such it was never meant to do such delicate maneuvers as landing on a specific crater of a specific moon. He wouldn't have felt so bad landing on a planet. In a ship like this the crew could easily survive a minor crash. That is, on an inhabited planet with things like food and air. Not so crashing on a freaking moon made of rock with no breathable atmosphere. Here anything less than a perfect landing could mean disaster – even death. The only plus was that there was less gravity.

He slowed the ship still more and lowered it slowly down onto the surface of the moon without so much as a bad shake. Once he had successfully settled the ship on its landing gear he set the stabilizers, retracted the gear and anchored the ship. Only when he had checked all his readouts and knew for certain he had executed a safe landing and secure anchorage did he start to breathe again.

"See? I knew you could do it," RJ said smugly.

Levits turned on her, madder than hell. "You know what, RJ? Everything is not some big freaking joke. Do you have any idea how much I hate being responsible for all of you?" He unbuckled himself, jumped up and stormed off the bridge.

"Wow! Who shit in his cereal?" RJ asked of no one in particular.

"I think you did," Topaz told RJ in a scolding tone. "You might try being a little more sympathetic. You know that was damn hard to do, and you know he was worried about doing it."

RJ shrugged; she supposed she could be more sympathetic. After all she knew he wasn't thrilled about being in space, and she knew how he felt about being in a position of authority, still
 . . .
"He's got to get over it sometime."

"Physician, heal thyself," Topaz mumbled.

RJ pretended not to know what he meant and ignored him. She checked to make sure that all communication links with the Reliance were completely closed and that the ship's cloaking device had been activated. Now they would just have to hope that the Reliance wouldn't do a thorough reconnaissance of the planet's moons when looking for their missing ship.

Working in their favor was a strange planetary phenomenon. Beta 4 periodically radiated anomalous but powerful magnetic pulses. These pulses affected the planet and space immediately surrounding the planet, causing transmissions and other signals to either bounce or fluctuate erratically. Communication and locating devices were functional but not reliably so. Scans might indicate objects where there was nothing, and it was just as likely that things that
were
there might not show up. If the Reliance wanted to find the ship, they would have to send out a manned reconnaissance vessel to actually look for it. Not only was that improbable without some indication of an explosion, but it was a big moon, and after all, the ship
was
cloaked. It would be difficult if not impossible for the Reliance to find them in this particular location.