by Selina Rosen
"No, maybe I shouldn't tell, but I don't see how I can not tell you. I feel like I'm lying to my mother." Dax had a tear in his eye, but he didn't cry.
Jessica suddenly realized that they weren't talking about any simple virus. "What's wrong with him, Dax. Can it be fixed?"
"It's some disease the Fourers get," Dax explained. "It can't be cured. They were calling it Le Mort de Corps."
Jessica took in a deep breath and it came out in a sob. "Las Tarak." Her breath almost left her on the words.
"What?" Dax asked in a quiet voice.
"That's the problem with hybrids," Jessica explained. "You can get all the good traits of both races, but you can also get all the bad traits. Mort de Corps is Las Tarak. It's an Argy disease that attacks the central nervous system. It starts slowly, loss of feeling in the extremities that comes and goes, then temporary loss of the use of an arm or a leg, till the body doesn't work at all. Eventually they even lose the ability to speak, only the brain is still alive. They can live like that for years."
"Do the Argy have a cure?" Dax asked hopefully.
Jessica shook her head no, her voice had left her.
"He didn't want you to know because he didn't want you to treat him differently, but I thought maybe you should know because then you could treat him differently. If I'd known my mother was going to die when she did, I would have made sure I told her that I loved her, I would have treated her nicer and minded the first time I was told to do things."
Jessica sucked her tears down inside herself. "Do you know how advanced the disease is?"
"It's just beginning. He told Dad he had about three years before he'd lose the use of his arms and legs," Dax said.
"Then we'll make the next three years count," Jessica said nodding. A tear escaped the eye that wasn't hers, and it reminded her of all the things she'd done to get here to this moment. "I'll pretend that I don't know, and hope that he doesn't change his mind about telling me."
"Are you mad I told you?" Dax asked. "Was it the wrong thing to do?" He was young, still trying to decide what was right and what was wrong.
"No, I'm not mad at you. I'm so glad you told me. I just don't want Gerald to know that I know, because it isn't what he wants," Jessica said.
Dax nodded. He still had something on his mind, but she could tell he wasn't going to give it up, and if it was more bad news she didn't want to hear it.
"Do what?" David asked the insane image on the screen before him.
"Launch an assault against Trinidad," Jessica ordered again.
"What on earth for?" Taleed demanded. "If we do that, they're sure to retaliate."
"And while they're busy fighting you in space and attacking your planet we can put our people into position and no one will even notice. The leaders will be called together to challenge this new threat. The battle will last five days total and do very little damage, if any. Me and my people will be docking at the space station in two days time and shuttling to the surface to prepare our troops there and take up strategic positions across the surface of the planet."
"The war orphans," David said almost under his breath. This was what she had sent them here for. To fight an assault on Beta 4 itself.
"Any casualties here are unacceptable!" Stratton exclaimed. "There is no need to put this planet or these people at risk."
"After all that the New Alliance has done for Beta 4, I think it's time for you people to either put up or shut up." No one had to ask what she meant by that. She smiled as if to cushion her words and continued in a calmer tone. "On a planet of warriors I think if you put it to a vote you'll find the majority of them would be more than happy to stomp a little Reliance ass. We have given you the ships to carry out the assault. We have armed your planet and protected it all these long years. While you have experienced peace and prosperity, we have fought battle after battle that served us all. It's payback time, don't you think?"
"She's right," Taleed said. "Order the assault on Trinidad. RJ will be here to defend us long before our fleet reaches Trinidad, and it will take them days after that to retaliate here."
"Our people were born and trained as warriors from our birth," Janad explained to Stratton. "We don't fear death, we long for a good fight. We have known this day would come, and now . . . RJ is right, if given a vote on this matter our people would fight for the right to die for the cause."
Coming from the fifty-year-old mother of his two grown children, it temporarily brought a smile to David's face. However he only half heard what was being said around him as he stared at the vision of RJ on the screen.
"We will send the fleet out at once," Taleed said, "and we happily await your return to our world."
RJ nodded. "As I look forward to my return. I'd say I wish it were under happier circumstances, but these are the happiest of circumstances. When this battle ends, so does the Reliance's reign of terror. A new age shall be born and rise from its ashes." She closed the transmission.
"David?" Janad asked of the expression on his face, his silence.
"She's coming," he said, "here."
Jessica turned away from the screen, and she smiled at Dax, who hadn't stopped babbling since they had left Earth. Things she took completely for granted thrilled him, and it was fun to view the experience through his eyes.
Gerald looked up at her and smiled. She pretended not to have seen him fall into the chair when one of his legs locked up. It wouldn't be long now till he was completely immobilized. She tried to live in the moment and not think about it, or what life was going to be like without him. She had to think about the battle at hand, and how she was going to handle David Grant, who thought he knew her intimately and who she had only ever talked to over the viewscreen. He would no doubt expect . . . What, exactly? RJ had left him there, why? Jessica didn't really know. She didn't know how they had parted, what was said, or what wasn't. She'd have to be very careful, or he'd figure her out. She'd avoid contact with him altogether, but that wasn't really an option since he worked with the king and the council on Beta 4. Besides, avoiding him would be the most suspicious thing she could do.
Gerald was trying to stand and couldn't do it. She purposely didn't look, but Dax was staring, near tears, and obviously wanting to go and help his "uncle." Jessica grabbed the boy's arm. "Come on, I'll show you the weapons bay." She pulled him quickly away from the commander's office and in the direction of the armory. "Dax . . ."
"I know, I'm sorry," he said. "It's just so hard."
Jessica nodded. "It's hard for me, too, but he can't know I know, not now."
"Can I ask you something?"
"I know what you're going to ask, and no, you can't ask."
Jessica marched into Taleed's throne room as if she owned the place, dressed much to David's amusement in traditional Fourer garb—a leather loincloth and vest. Well, it was almost traditional garb; she was still wearing those damned Elite boots, and her chain was wrapped over her right shoulder and around her waist, her blaster hanging in the coiled strands of chain.
She hadn't changed a bit, not one tiny bit. David imagined what his own lined face framed in gray hair must look like to her. On her right hand a big bald Fourer strode in with the confidence of a warrior, and on her left was a young man of such short stature that David knew he had to be Mickey's son. David ran to her, embraced her, and she hugged him back. Janad and Taleed both took turns hugging the returning champion as David's children and the young prince stood in the background, obviously in awe of the white-haired beauty who was the hero of every story their parents had ever told them.
The fact that she was every bit as charismatic as she had ever been must have made them feel as if they were in the presence of a god.
David hugged her again. "RJ, I can't tell you how good it is to see you."
"And you." Though her hug and her tone of voice felt less than enthusiastic.
"Baldor, Sandra come here," David said excitedly. The children appeared, almost hiding behind his back. "RJ, the
se are my children."
"Pleasure to meet you. David, this is my mate, Gerald, and I'm sure you've guessed that this is Diana and Mickey's son, Dax."
"My son, Taheed the second," Taleed introduced his fifteen year old son, who seemed more than happy to keep Sandra between himself and RJ.
"I'd love to visit, but we'll have time for that later. Chairs?"
David was a little taken aback. RJ could stand for hours without even getting tired. Still, when the chairs arrived she was the first to sit down, so maybe even though she didn't look it she was feeling her age. When Gerald sat down beside her she took his hand and looked at him, and even David could see that she loved him. It was obvious from the way he looked at her that he loved her, too. Some of the guilt David still had concerning Whitey was washed away when he saw this. She had found someone else.
Dax first sat down next to RJ, and then as the boring adult meeting rambled on, he had drifted off with the other young people to sneak into the palace gardens. RJ had glanced up as he left, making sure exactly where he was going and what he was doing, and David realized with no small amount of surprise that she considered him to be her child. She was mothering him.
Which became even more obvious when she insisted that Taleed, his family and retinue spend the entirety of the battle in Sûreté Station, which was what they had named the bunker they had made from the old Argy ship—and that Dax was to go with them. When the meeting was over they moved to the banquet hall, also known as the old ship's mess hall, and sat down to the feast Taleed had ordered prepared in their honor.
David had sat beside RJ at the table and started rattling, telling her all about his life on Beta 4, his kids and Janad. RJ had in turn told him about how Mickey was doing and all about Dax, and her mate, Gerald, but about herself she said very little.
When she finished eating she said she was tired, and after telling Dax to go directly to his quarters when he had finished dinner, she excused herself and she and Gerald left the dining hall and followed one of the palace servants to their assigned room.
David was curious and more than a little disappointed.
"What?" Janad asked at his shoulder.
"RJ . . . She doesn't get tired."
"Her man has Le Mort de Corps," Janad said. "I saw it earlier, when we got ready to go to dinner, his legs wouldn't work so that he could stand. That's why RJ started talking again, to wait till his legs would work again."
David well knew the effects of the disease. "He's dying, then."
"Yes, and very close to losing the use of his legs at the very least," Janad said sadly.
David ran his hands down his face. "She can't catch a break, first Whitey, then Levits, and now this guy. She's not aging, and neither is anyone she touches, because anyone who touches her dies."
"Maybe that's better," Janad said.
"What!" David exclaimed.
"What must it be like to sit and watch someone you love shrivel and die of old age, while you're still," she shrugged, "feeling and looking like you're twenty-five?"
Chapter Sixteen
RJ weeded her garden, pulling out the plants she didn't want and putting them in a bucket to be cleaned and eaten. It was hard to keep the plants in any sort of check. She had built a gazebo and a large fishpond that was fed by a small stream she had made by digging out and diverting a spring. Raised beds and pathways made from debris from the old city stretched out in every direction.
The huge garden was her little hobby. The one she'd taken up after deciding to let Topaz and Levits handle the running of the Abornie's lives, and after she'd grown tired of working on the ship. Topaz and Levits had collected all the Abornie into three ruined city areas spaced far enough apart to make sure there was enough food, but close enough together that they could all be governed easily. For the most part RJ ignored them all and let them do as they pleased. She only stuck her two cents worth in when it was absolutely necessary.
She had thought she would find peace and tranquility immensely boring, but you could fill your time just as easily with projects as you could with warfare. She found that she liked building things and encouraging things to grow—although mostly she seemed to spend her time trying to keep them from growing where she didn't want them—almost as much as she liked blowing things up. It wasn't as challenging as warfare, but it was rewarding in a different way.
She was about to deadhead a bunch of flowers when Topaz stomped into her garden, shattering her peace.
"What the hell are you playing at?" he yelled.
"Huh?" she asked as she pulled a wilted flower from its stalk.
"It took me months to figure it out, but I just realized why you lost interest in working on the ship and became so damned interested in gardening, and it isn't because you couldn't find a suitable power source."
RJ grabbed him, quickly dragged him to her and clamped a hand over his mouth. "Keep your voice down, old man." He nodded and she let him go.
"Uvar just told me that you and Poley found a more than suitable energy source in the core of an old power plant. That you installed it in the ship instead of handing it over to be used by the Abornie . . ."
"I told you that's a rumor."
"Can the crap, RJ, I've been down to the reactor room and I've seen it, whatever the hell it is."
"The energy source is very unstable. I'd never willingly put it in their hands . . . If it's so important to them, let them make their own expedition and find another one. They have access to the same books that I read, and they could find another power plant easily enough. You could lead them if it's that important to you, but they'll get the one we installed in the ship over my dead body."
"That isn't the point, RJ. The point is that the ship is fully operational and fully fueled. In fact, the way I understand it, that power source in tandem with the ship's scoops should be almost infinitely renewable. We could lift off today . . ."
"And go where, old man? We don't even know where we are in relationship to our space."
"And now you're lying again," Topaz said in a hissed whisper. "Poley is a lot of things, but a good liar isn't one of them. I know that you and he have known where we were all along. More because of what he wouldn't say than because of what he would. Now what the hell is going on? What are you playing at, RJ? For years you've done nothing but complain about getting off this planet and back to our own. Now I'm sure you have the means, and you're just staying here playing with plants."
"I like it here. You said it yourself, why should we leave?"
"I said it, but you never agreed. In fact, you gave dozens of reasons why we shouldn't be here at all, so why are we still here?"
RJ sighed. "Levits is seventy-seven years old, Topaz, and at least sixty-five of those years he's actually used. He's a sixty-five year old man who I ripped away from peace and prosperity on his own planet. He wanted to stay, I didn't, and he came with me because he loves me.
"Just like you, he's happy here, Topaz. He goes fishing and plays with the Abornie children; hell, half of them call him uncle. He was a man who should have had his own children and grandchildren, and he couldn't have any of that, again because of me. Unlike you and me he is living on borrowed time. Yeah, I could shove him into cryogenic sleep again, and we could spend years in space and get back to . . . What? We don't know what has happened, much less what will have happened by the time we get back. I could fly him back into hell again. I could jerk him away from a life he loves, to take him—a sixty-five year old man—back into a war zone to start all over again. And he'd go with me, Topaz. He'd leave everything he cares about and go with me because even after all these years he still loves me. So we're staying here, right here, until he's had a chance to live out his life. Then we'll go. Time doesn't matter to us. He'd do anything for me, and this is the least I can do for him."
"Why don't you tell him? It might be nice for him to realize just how much you care for him," Topaz said quietly.
"Because if he knew I could leave and wouldn't b
ecause of him, he wouldn't be able to enjoy staying. If he thinks we can't leave, then he can be happy."
"What about you, RJ, are you happy?" Topaz asked.
RJ shrugged. "As much as I can be. The indigenous people suck, but I like the plants."
Two short weeks later she was working in her garden again when she smelled something familiar on the wind and stiffened.
"What is it?" Poley asked from where he'd been helping her in the garden. But she was gone, running in the direction of the smell, and he ran after her without waiting for her to answer just in case she might need him.
