by Selina Rosen
He wondered what would happen to the platinum blond war goddess who had led them, whoever she might really be. What happened to someone who had lived for battle when there were no more battles to be fought?
He wondered what was going to happen to him. He had also lived for the battle, and for her. Without her, without a battle to fight, did he even know who he was? He was going home to be with his family and his old friends, but he'd hardly visited in the last twenty years, and when he had been there just three weeks ago . . .
How can he be dead? I was just there, I just saw him. He was old and frail, but . . . He's dead; accept it. What am I ever going to do with the information Pete just gave me? I know why he told me, so I'd understand why she wasn't upset. But now there are a billion other things I just don't understand. She is the devil from all the stories my father told me when I was a child. Yet even at her worst that wasn't the woman I fought beside, not the woman that I knew.
This thought brought him a surprising glimmer of hope for his own future. If she could change that much, then who was to say he couldn't settle down quite happily to a normal life on his home planet? Maybe raise a couple of kids, grow some crops, and . . .
What the hell was he thinking! He'd die of boredom. He was going home to grow old and die, just as his father had done. He sat down in the boat and cried for the rest of the ride to the mainland. The people in the boat with him pretended not to notice, and no doubt thought he was crying for his father.
Chapter Twenty-two
When they were in range Poley cautiously hailed the space station.
He had asked RJ, "What should I say?"
"Say what you wish to say, all is for nothing and nothing is for me," she had replied.
"You know, RJ, you're really starting to piss me off," Poley said, raising his voice ever so slightly to show that he was agitated.
This had caused her to laugh. The first real laugh he'd heard pass her lips in years.
"Just tell me what I should say. We have no idea what has happened here in the years that we've been gone. Whether the Reliance is still in power, the New Alliance or even the Argy," Poley said.
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
Poley thought about that for a minute, and decided nothing of any value was likely to come from her mouth soon, so he put together his own message. "People and computers of the space station I don't know the name of, we are approaching in our vessel, the Avonlea. We are in an old Reliance military troop carrier, but there are only three of us, we have been lost in space for several dozen years and are completely neutral concerning all things political. May we please dock at your station?"
To his surprise, Marge's voice droned back, "We have been expecting you. Please dock."
Poley walked all through the ship till he found RJ laying in the middle of the floor making bubbles by blowing through a wire hoop covered with sudsy water.
He relayed the communication just as it had transpired, and RJ slung the bubbles aside and sat bolt upright.
"Now that's interesting indeed," she said, and it almost looked like she might actually get up without further coaxing.
"Are you sure, RJ?" Poley asked, working very hard on his best sarcastic voice. "Are you sure it isn't bland and nothing circled in a ring of meaninglessness?"
She laughed and then she did get up. "Marge, you say?"
"Yes, Marge, and she seemed to be expecting us, at least expecting the ship."
"And you stupidly told them there were only three of us," RJ said.
"I didn't figure it would matter to you since everything we do is only nothing and . . ."
"You do understand!" she said excitedly, and hugged him. Then she released him and skipped off in the direction of the bridge, which he was no longer sure was a good thing.
When he got to the bridge Alan was sitting in his seat looking shocked and more than a little scared, and RJ was talking to the space station.
"Yo, Marge! This is RJ in the Avonlea. By the way, everything is nothing and nothing really matters."
"I know," Marge droned back.
"Damn! It is you, Marge. Hey listen, who exactly has been expecting us?"
"Us, we have been expecting you," Marge said.
"Who us?" RJ asked.
"You and me."
RJ's hand moved away from the transmitter, closing transmission to the space station. The near idiot half smile that had graced RJ's features for the last five plus years eroded to be replaced by a look of pure rage. "Kirk!" she spat out. She depressed the com button again. "Marge, have I been here the whole time?"
"Here and there, and we have been waiting for your return."
RJ let go of the button again, stomped to the middle of the bridge and started pacing. "Kirk!" she hissed again, then started mumbling almost to herself. "Jessica kills Jago, and I hate her, so she can't stay in Reliance space. So she goes to Argy space and hides out, but once I'm gone all she's got to do is get an eye, any eye, and she can just come right back to Earth and take over being me. Topaz was right, you can never go home again." She let out a roaring, growling scream that echoed through the ship. Then she took off in the direction of her cabin.
"Where's she going?" Alan asked.
Poley shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know."
When she came back a few minutes later she had changed into an old Reliance issue sleeveless black coverall, she had her chain wrapped around her waist with a blaster in the coils, she'd cut her hair, and he could see where Jessica's eye cube bulged in her pocket.
"Glad to have you back," Poley said with a smile.
She smiled back at her metal brother and walked over and messed up his hair. "Nice to be back. Now dock this freaking ship and let's figure out just exactly what's happened while we've been gone."
Alan gave Poley a confused look, and Poley smiled. "I think my sister just found something that mattered to her."
Alan stayed close to Poley and RJ as the bay door opened, and he entered the tube with great trepidation. He followed just behind them. Knowing that they didn't really know what to expect made him feel even less secure. For the first time he began to wonder if he should have stayed on Frionia. It wasn't after all such a bad place and . . . Aaah! There were aliens everywhere he looked. The docks were crowded. Surely nothing could be accomplished with so many people in the same place. Then they all started chanting RJ's name.
Alan wondered if they had lied to him about the life expectancy of humans. Most of these people looked younger than he was. How could they remember RJ? Unless they were older than they appeared, most of them wouldn't have been alive when RJ had landed on Frionia. Then he remembered what Poley had told him about RJ, and realized what RJ had been so upset about on the ship. One of the clones had taken her place, the most hated one, the one she'd told him stories about when he was a child. The one whose eye she carried in her pocket.
That was why she'd lost her religion.
RJ looked at the sea of humanity chanting her name and wanted to scream. Kirk had stolen her identity, and Nothing only knew what she'd done with it. That she had infiltrated the New Alliance was clear, just exactly what she had done with it wasn't so obvious.
Fortunately, it wouldn't be very hard for RJ to find out. She'd just borrow a trick from her hated sibling and pretend to be her . . . self. By the end of the day she should know everything that had transpired while she was gone and where her opponent was. Which was good, because she was sure that by now Jessica Kirk knew just exactly where she was.
She had been sound asleep when the alarm rang. The alarm she had set up so long ago that only she knew its true meaning. Jessica jumped out of bed and threw on her robe, then she headed for the main computer complex.
"Where is she?" Jessica asked.
"Her ship has just docked on Justice Station, and she has been greeted."
"Visual," Jessica ordered. In seconds she was looking at a picture of her sister flanked by the robot—did he look older?—and some obviously alien boy.
RJ didn't look happy. She looked for and found the camera, and then she stared into it. For a moment Jessica was sure she was looking right at her.
"So RJ's back. She found some near Earth normal world to hang out on until she got enough fuel to get back. I think I'm more surprised that it took her so long than that she was able to do it at all. So what now?"
She'd never really gotten around to making a plan. The obvious answer was to take Pete, break and run for it, but that really wasn't her style.
There was really only one answer.
She met her son in the mess hall for breakfast as she always did when they were home. She carefully kept her emotions in check. "Things are pretty quiet these days. Why don't you go to Beta 4 and spend some time with Baldor?"
His head snapped up, and he was obviously excited at the prospect. "By myself?"
Jessica laughed. "I think you're old enough to take a trip by yourself, don't you?"
"Yes, when can I leave?"
"There's no battle looming on the horizon, and you're not a child anymore. You could go whenever you wanted. Baldor was pretty upset by his mother's death, and it might be nice for him to have an old friend around. Someone once said that no matter how old you are, when your parents are both dead, you're an orphan. That's got to be tough, especially when you grew up with two such loving parents. Why not leave today?"
"So soon?" and now he was a little suspicious.
"Why not? There's nothing really happening here, just a bunch of boring deskwork. Shoveling funds here and moving product there."
"You could come with me, you know he'd love to see you . . ."
"I can't. Someone has to help Dax do all that boring fund-shoveling and product-pushing."
"All right, I'll go pack." He kissed her cheek, then took off at a run. He was looking forward to this time apart from her, which was normal. He was a grown man; he shouldn't be spending all his time with his mother. He wasn't a boy anymore, and it was high time he struck out on his own, had a little independence.
It hurt that he didn't need her anymore, but she supposed that was good, since she might not be around forever after all. Still it, was a sharp pain in her soul to know that she had done such a good job raising him that she had made herself unnecessary.
She knew there was no way RJ could get there in less than a week, but she still breathed easier when Pete's ship left Moonbase Station.
As soon as his ship had been given the all clear she ordered an evacuation of the fort on Alsterase Island, leaving only enough personnel to run the computer complex.
"RJ, what the hell's going on?" Dax demanded after loading his wife and children safely into a helicopter. "Are we under attack?"
"Not yet," Jessica answered.
"We can't leave the fort. We can't leave Marge. The entire New Alliance is run from here. Everything depends on the computer."
"We downloaded all of Marge's files onto crystals and had the crystals sent to Sever Station two years ago . . ."
"The new Sever Station computer complex won't be finished for ten years. What would you like us to do in the meantime?"
"I'll try to keep the fight outside," Jessica said thoughtfully. Then added, almost to herself, "We never should have had all our guns in this armory. We should have had a secondary supercomputer built long ago. Still, if I can keep the fight outside . . ."
"Fight? What fight are you talking about, RJ?" Dax demanded, apparently tired of being left out of the loop.
Jessica looked at him. He wasn't the baby she had nurtured through the flu, the boy she had played with, or even the young man she had helped to mold into a leader. He was a forty-two year old man with children of his own and responsibilities far greater than most beings. She sighed, no sense candy coating it.
"All right, Dax, the fast track. I'm not RJ. You've never known RJ. She disappeared from our space before you were a twinkle in your father's eye. I hated my life, I wanted to make a change, and so I took over hers. No harm no foul. Well, now, RJ's back in our space, and she'll come here, for me.
"I suppose I could make a run for it. Hide from her, but then we'll just be chasing each other for eternity. I could at the very least leave Alsterase Island, which would remove Marge from harm's way. But it would make me more vulnerable, put me out in the open, and that's no way to prepare for battle. This is the most fortified complex in the entire New Alliance. This is where she'll expect me to be. This is where it has to happen. She knows I'm not going to run, because she wouldn't run. I'm not going to just gift-wrap my ass and hand it to her. If she wants me, she's going to have to come in here and get me."
Dax was silent, just seeming to let his mind digest all that she had said. Then he looked up at her. "I'm not leaving."
"What!"
"I said I'm not leaving. I am President of New Freedom of Earth. I have a responsibility to this world, this space, to you . . . you're my best friend. I don't care—how could I care—about who you were before I was even born. As far as I'm concerned you're RJ, and this other woman is the imposter. I'm going to stay here, with you, and help you fight her."
"Dax . . . what can you do? She's me and I'm her. She's a GSH, and for the record, on the one other occasion we stood toe to toe, she stomped my ass in no uncertain terms."
"I . . . I can help run the weapons console. Maybe I could talk to her."
Jessica laughed, not at him, but at what he said. "I don't think RJ is coming across the vastness of both charted and uncharted space to do any 'talking'. RJ is a creature of action, not words. Even more than I am."
"All my life you have protected me. When you went into battle I stayed on this island and hid. Now someone is coming here for you, and I'm not going to run from here to hide somewhere else. I won't run to safety while I leave you and the computer that runs our entire empire in jeopardy. I would lose all credibility as a leader."
"No one would know, Dax," Jessica said in a pleading tone. "I'd rather have you out of harm's way."
"I would know. I'm not a child anymore, and I don't need your protection." Suddenly his voice eroded in anger. "Why did you wait till now to tell me? I have told you everything, every humiliating, stupid, or just plain wrong thing that I've ever done. I thought there were no secrets between us. You could have told me."
"Dax, do you know what you're saying? You got caught masturbating by a girl you had a crush on. You fell off the dock, showing off for your friends and broke your arm. The worst thing you ever did was throw a grenade in a toilet." She pounded her fist into her chest three times hard, as tears streamed down her face. "I blew up a city, and not just any city, but Alsterase. I had a GSH built specifically to kill my own sister. How could I ever just tell you that? I'm sick to death of everyone making excuses for me and forgiving me without a moment's hesitation. What I did is inexcusable, and no one seems to be even really pissed off. Well, now finally someone's coming who understands what I did, and she is pissed. Whatever happens, there is finally going to be some closure."
Dax closed the space between them and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head on her stomach. "Nothing could change the way I feel about you. No one blames you, because we all know you, the person you have become. It's not fair. It seems like we just crushed the last of the Reliance resistance. This was supposed to be a time of peace, and now what? What's going to happen? What do you honestly think is going to happen?"
Jessica took a deep breath and expelled it. "RJ will come, I don't know exactly when or how, but it will be soon, and it will be spectacular. She's coming to kill me. I'll try to talk her out of it, it won't work, and we'll fight till one of us is dead."
"Then what?"
"Well, that rather depends on who winds up dead, doesn't it?"
Chapter Twenty-three
"Beer is cool," Alan drooled from where he half-stood, half-lay against the bar.
"I think you should stop drinking now," Poley suggested sternly.
"I never want to stop drinking," Alan laughed.
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"If you continue to drink, you will continue to lose motor function until you fall onto the floor, and then you will in all likelihood vomit a disgusting combination of the pretzels you've swallowed without really chewing, beer and stomach bile."
Alan wrinkled his nose up and looked at Poley with slightly blurred vision. "Really?"
