Chains of Freedom (19 page)

He'd seen how the high-rankers lived. They had everything a man could dream of. He had nothing. He had busted his hump for the Reliance, and they sent him to die.
No reward in that.
And if he'd died, who would have cared?
Who would even notice
?

Well, 1-Z-2678-11 bit the big one today.

Anyone to claim his ashes?

No.

No? What a shame.

Yes, what a waste. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to reduce a body to ash?

Oh, this one was mostly done when it got here.

No one to claim the ashes?

That's right.

Well, then put him with the others on the public gardens.

"No!" Alexi screamed out loud and doubled his pace. He wasn't going to die in this damned fire and become fertilizer. He wasn't going to die a nobody.

RJ and David came to a river. The water ran hard and fast. RJ stepped in and David followed. At this point, he was too exhausted to do anything but follow dumbly. The current was strong, and the rocks were slippery, but worst of all, the water was frigid.

"The infrared won't be able to track us in the water," RJ told David, though for once he didn't ask.

The water got deep, up to David's waist. The current was strong, and David no longer had the strength to fight it. He collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

David had been holding on to her for the past three hours, so she felt his grip on to her chain loosen. She turned just in time to see David go under. She didn't think; she just dove in after him. It wasn't easy, but she caught hold of him and pulled his head out of the water. He was OK, or at least he was still breathing. She wrestled him out onto the bank, caught her breath, and pulled her laser. She looked at it in a defeated sort of way, and poured the water out of it. It would be useless till it dried. She was sure she didn't have time to strip, dry and reassemble it now. She quickly checked the case to make sure it hadn't leaked. It would be the shits to have gone through all this for nothing. The case was tight, and the computer was dry.

She was exhausted; running on empty. No wonder David had collapsed. She couldn't afford the luxury of rest right now, however. That meant only one thing. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the leather pouch and extracted one of the pills. She swallowed it dry. As always, the effect was almost immediate. She took a deep breath; she'd be good for hours now. She began to replace the pills, but stopped. Smiling wickedly, she dumped one into her palm, replaced the cap and carefully stowed the pills in her kit. The she took a cup from the pack and filled it with water into which she crushed the pill. Using the knife from her kit, she cut several three-foot lengths of straight limbs from a nearby tree. Sharpening each stick, she dipped the sharpened end into the Pronuses solution and set them carefully aside to dry briefly. She poured the remaining solution over the sharpened spearheads for good measure, then tossed the cup across the river. She packed up quickly, tossed the pack over one shoulder, David over the other, picked up the spears and started off again.

"They went into the river. The infrared won't . . ." Sikes found himself on the defensive again.

"I don't want your excuses, Sikes." Jessica had lost any sign of patience hours ago. "All I asked was that you not lose them, and now you tell me some story about the water. Find them. Now!"

"Yes, Senator," Sikes grated out. Transmission ended.

"Captain, look!" The man pointed to something on the trail ahead of them.

They stopped beside the cup. A quick scan showed that the rebels had crossed the river at this point. Somehow, Sikes didn't share the secondary's enthusiasm. The people they hunted didn't make mistakes; she'd left the cup for a reason. Still, they crossed the river, leaving the man with the wounded leg behind. There was only one set of footprints on the other side, but the depth showed that one was no doubt carrying the other.

"One of them must be wounded," the secondary said.

"Or just exhausted. Remember that they have been on foot all night," Sikes said. "Come on, we should be able to catch them easily now."

They had traveled only a minute or two when the screaming started. They ran back, weapons pulled. But when they arrived it was obvious that the wounded man hadn't died of any direct attack. Even from across the river, they could see that the man's face was bubbled and misshapen. Sikes saw the cup in the man's hand. Only one thing could do that. Sikes looked away.

"God damn her! Is there nothing she can't get her hands on?" Sikes cursed.

"What happened to him?" the secondary asked, sickened.

"Pronuses poisoning. She must have laced the cup with it," Sikes said.

"Pronuses! But only
freaks
have Pronuses!" Obviously, the man was now terrified.

"Don't be a fool, man. Only Elites wear Elite boots, but she's got a pair of those, too. Come on. Let's go before the trail gets cold."

RJ found a clump of brush and put David into it. She covered him with leaves, partly to keep him warm, and partly to hide him. It was time to get rid of the dogs. They were following her footprints. If that told them where to find her, it also told
her
where to find
them
. She walked back down her own trail then crawled into a tree with her spears to wait.

Sikes stopped. He held up a hand, and the secondary stopped, too. He could feel it. She was watching him. The spear hurled through the air to land with a pounding thud in the secondary's chest. Death came so instantly that he didn't have a chance to scream. He fell backwards, his body arched once, and then he was still. The boiling of his flesh told Sikes that such a direct hit was unnecessary.

"Go ahead! Kill me! I can't see you, I can't stop you! Go ahead!" Sikes screamed. He spread his arms wide."Come on, kill me! But at least have the guts to show your face."

RJ was never one to deny a man his last wish. She jumped down from the tree.

Sikes' reaction to her appearance wasn't quite what she'd expected.

He stared at her in horror and confusion, mouthing words he couldn't get out. His reason, already stretched tightly, snapped.

RJ raised the spear.

"How? Why?" Sikes gasped.

"The answer to 'how' is easy," she smiled broadly. "I'm a freak. 'Why?' Because I want to topple the Reliance. Is that all? May I kill you now?" Actually, she didn't wait for his answer.

He fell to the ground and rolled. The spear missed, but his blast hit her square in the chest and sent her reeling. He took the opportunity to run, but he knew that a blast to the chest wasn't going to slow the freak down for long. He turned on his comlink, and there was Kirk.

"You're not killing me!" he laughed maniacally.

"Sikes, what's going on?" Jessica demanded.

"They're all dead. But not me. You're not going to kill me, you freak!" He threw his comlink against a tree, where it shattered. He'd lost her for the time being, but she'd heal. Then she'd come to kill him. He laughed hysterically. "You won't kill me!"

RJ had taken the full blast in her chest. She stopped and leaned against a tree. She tried to catch her breath, but ended up slumping down to the ground. She had to catch him, but it would have to wait. Hell, she could see her breastbone through the hole in her chest.

"Oh, bother." She took another Pronuses and waited for the effects. "Pride goeth before a fall. Father always said that." She felt better. Glancing down, she saw the damage rapidly repairing itself, so she got up and continued the chase.

The hunter had become the hunted, and as was so often the case, the hunter couldn't handle the role reversal. RJ found her quarry hanging limply in a tree with a rope around his snapped neck. She quickly took his jacket—he'd ruined hers, after all. She took his shirt and sidearm, too.

Addressing the corpse, RJ commented dryly, "You know, if you start killing yourselves, you're going to take all the fun out of this little war."

On the way back to get David she stopped just long enough to take the dead secondary's clothes and weapon. Then after she uncovered him, RJ traded David's wet clothes for the dry ones. Oh, the pants were a little wet from wading the river, but nothing compared to the wet, muddy mess that David had been wearing. David groaned as she changed his clothes.

"Oh, just shut up and go back to sleep. A lot of help you are." She picked David up and started out again. Right now, her only plan was to keep moving.

Jessica tried desperately to reach Sikes. She couldn't. She played back his last communication. The word "freak" echoed through Jessica's brain. She quickly erased the communication from the terminal's main memory.

She was tired of playing. It was time to get serious. She put on her combat fatigues. If you wanted killing done right, you had to do it yourself. She wanted RJ dead, and if Sikes wasn't dead already, she had to kill him, too.

It took all of RJ's skill to continue dodging the ever-increasing number of patrols in the area. Now there were helicopters, and that made it decidedly more difficult.

After two hours of carrying David, she sat down for a rest. She slapped him a bit. Till then, all the bouncing and trouncing and tossing from one shoulder to the other like a feed sack hadn't made him so much as stir and mutter. Therefore, RJ was surprised that the gentle slap had any effect at all.

David stirred.

"Yes, it would be nice if you woke up now," RJ commented sarcastically. She rubbed her Pronuses-dry eyes as David rubbed the sleep from his.

He was awake, and he looked around in a disoriented way.

"Have a nice nap?"

"What happened?" David asked. He felt nauseous and his ribs and stomach hurt.

"You passed out." She got up and helped him to his feet. "Can you walk now? We've got to keep moving, and I'm tired of carrying you."

He nodded, although he held his head when he did so, and looked a little green.

"The water," he mumbled. It was like he was remembering some horrible nightmare. "Under the water . . ." He remembered hands grabbing him, pulling him out, a gasp for air, and then all was dark. He knew only that RJ had pulled him out of the river. If she hadn't, he'd have surely drowned. "Thanks, RJ."

"Don't thank me yet. We've just been spotted." It wasn't her imagination, either. The helicopter flying just above the tree tops tossed out two brightly colored smoke bombs.

"What the hell did they do that for?" David coughed out. "Now they can't see us."

"Now every troop in the area knows where we are. By the time the smoke clears, we'll be surrounded. Come on." She ran, pulling him after her.

Alexi saw the colored smoke, but he went towards it for a different reason than his fellows. If RJ died, almost everyone would know, and everyone who knew would care. Pro or con, no one would be indifferent.

#

RJ and David broke into the clearing. "Hit the ground and stay there."

"Why?" David wanted to know. "What are you going to do? What can you do?"

"Just stay down." She didn't have time to explain.

She ran into the clearing. As she had expected, the helicopter spotted her. It swooped down for the kill. RJ waited till the runners were dangerously close. Then she jumped for all she was worth and caught hold of one of them.

"Where'd she go?" the gunner asked the pilot.

The pilot shrugged.

"Where did who go?"

Both men turned to look at the woman standing on the runner. Their mouths hung open in disbelief.

"Oh, you meant me." She grabbed the gunner and jerked him out of the helicopter.

The pilot drew his gun and fired point-blank.

RJ looked from the hole in her jacket to the stunned pilot and frowned. "Damn it, I just got this jacket."

The man screamed as she grabbed the front of his shirt in one hand. His scream rose to a shrill soprano as he was hurled out of the chopper, and didn't stop till he hit the ground with a wet thud.

RJ finished climbing in, took the controls, turned the chopper around and set it down close to David.

David didn't have to be told twice. He ran and jumped in, thinking that RJ would take off immediately.

She just sat there.

"What are you waiting . . ." then he saw the Elite with the rocket launcher.

"Turn the bird off, and get out—slowly."

There were three others with him, all holding lasers pointed directly at them.

RJ turned off the helicopter.