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Chapter Nine

By the time Senator Kirk arrived, all she could do was assess the damage and try to figure out what had happened. To do this, she decided to go to the beginning and follow the rebel's trail. She took General Sacks with her, although at this moment she wasn't sure that she really wanted company—especially Sacks.

"I really can't see what good following this trail will do us," Sacks grumbled.

They stopped their bikes at the spot where RJ and David had set up their rough camp. Jessica got off her bike and started to look around.

"We should be after them. We should be trying to find them."

"And how would you suggest that we do that, Sacks?" Jessica asked hotly. "Should we ask them nicely? Yoo-Hoo! Oh, Rebel Terrorist! Could you please set off a smoke bomb or something so that we can find you?" She saw something on the ground, and moved towards it. "We must see just who we are up against. Obviously, these two people are a lot more capable than our soldiers, since a large number of them died out here trying to catch two Rebels. AH!" She reached down slowly and moved the leaves aside. She carefully lifted the discarded food tray with two fingers."So, RJ, you do occasionally make mistakes." She put the tray into her backpack. Then she got on her bike and they started out again. The next stop was the booby-trapped bike. Jessica seemed oblivious to the body of the man who had died here.

From here, the rebels had gone on foot. She got off her bike again, this time taking her pack and the infrared scan with her.

"Let's go," she ordered.

"On foot!" the general shrieked. The three first class soldiers with them didn't seem any too pleased themselves.

"You'll join me, General. You men will follow on the bikes." She was not in the mood to argue with the arrogant jerk, and with her rank, she didn't have to.

"Whatever for?" Sacks whined.

"Because I said so," she spat with venom. She turned cool eyes to him. "And, in case you've forgotten, I'm in command. If I tell you to shit, you had better drop a turd. Do you understand, Sacks?" she screamed.

"Yes, of course, Senator. A thousand pardons." He got off the bike and got his pack.

"Double time," Jessica took off. She expected him to keep up, and he did—just. They followed the path RJ had taken as well as they could. The fire had wiped out part of the trail. She stopped and studied the ground.

"Doubtless, you've noticed that one of our rebels is wearing Elite boots," Jessica said to Sacks.

Actually, he hadn't, but he nodded anyway. He didn't have the breath to talk.

Jessica looked at Sacks and frowned. She didn't like the implications. Sacks was a strong, healthy man at the peak of physical health and strength. As an Elite General, he couldn't have been anything else. He was damn near done in, but the rebels had continued from here. Had, in fact gone on to wreak devastating havoc. How could they, if Sacks' condition was any indication of what theirs had been . . . Add to this that they probably hadn't slept for twenty-four hours, and that it had been night, and Jessica started to form a picture of her adversaries that she did not like at all.

They came to the river, and Jessica waded in.

"You've got to be kidding," Sacks groaned.

"In," she ordered. Sacks complied.

Thirty minutes later, Sacks had had it. "I can't believe they walked in the water this long. I'm freezing."

So should they have been. Jessica had a sinking feeling. Ten minutes later, they came to Sikes' discarded bikes.

Sacks only had to take one look at the body to know what had happened to the man.

"Pronuses." He swallowed hard.

Jessica nodded, and picked up the cup. She sniffed it.

"She laced the cup with it. This fool must have used it." She put the cup in her pack. "Come on, this is where they crossed over." On the other side, Jessica found where RJ had pulled David out of the water. From the amount of water still on the ground, Jessica deduced that they must have both been drenched from head to toe. She looked fleetingly at Sacks. He was huffing and puffing, trying to catch his breath. He was on the brink of exhaustion. Likewise, one of the rebels had been in worse shape than the other. She scanned the footprints, and puzzled out the prints left by the rebels.

"One of them had to carry the other one from here. The one with the Elite boots."

Sacks nodded silently. He didn't find that too hard to believe. Ten minutes later, he collapsed. Jessica left one of the men with him, and took the other two with her.

She found the body with the spear sticking from its chest, the face twisted and distorted.

"Very clever. Pronuses-laced spears." She put her foot on the man's chest and pulled the spear out, oblivious to the gore that oozed out of the now-open wound. Both soldiers swallowed hard. Jessica shook her head.

"A direct hit was unnecessary. You were showing off, RJ." She was talking to herself.

There were two sets of Elite boot-prints on the ground now, and they were going every which way. It was obvious that RJ had lost the dead weight of her partner at this point. Jessica followed the clearest set of prints. One set of Elite prints followed another. Sikes and RJ were apparently about the same size, because she couldn't distinguish between the two. Still, Jessica had no doubt who was chasing whom.

Even so, Jessica was not prepared for what she found. She stopped short with a gasp. Sikes was dancing there in the air like a puppet on a string. This explained Sikes' last hysterical outburst. He had cracked. She really couldn't blame him. His troop had been meticulously picked off. One by one, each had fallen. He had been alone, and he knew there was no escape. He hadn't given RJ the satisfaction of killing him.

"Oh, Sikes," she sighed a deep and heavy sigh. If he had lived, Jessica would have killed him herself, but she still hated to think of him dying like this. Sikes had been a brave man, a strong man. But he couldn't fight RJ. Jessica thought she knew why. She assessed the damage, and her worst fears were only confirmed. There just couldn't be any other explanation for all that she saw.

At the end of the trail, she talked to a third-class soldier who had been on hand to witness the slaughter in the air.

"What did they look like?" Jessica asked.

"What?" The man was in shock. He'd been hit in the arm by a piece of shrapnel. It wasn't a bad wound, but it hadn't been anything but field-dressed, and he was in a great deal of pain.

Jessica didn't care. She was out of patience with the whole damn lot of them.

"The rebels, man. What did they look like?" She demanded.

"I wasn't very close. They were both over average height. The man was very dark, average build. The woman was . . . well, she was blonde . . . as blonde as yourself, Senator, and her skin was about your color."

"A hybrid," the third-class Captain—the soldier's commander—said.

Senator Kirk stiffened. She turned icy blue eyes on him, and his blood ran cold.

He shrugged. It wasn't like it was any secret that Kirk was a hybrid.

"They were joined by a third man," the soldier said.

"He had to be one of ours," Jessica said thoughtfully. "He must have sympathized with her, and gone over. God, if she builds an army, there will be no stopping her." Again, the Senator was talking to herself.

"I don't believe that for a minute," the captain said. "He must have been one of her men."

Jessica slammed the palm of her hand into her head. Partly because she couldn't believe that a man with so little in the way of brains had made it to third-class captain, and partly because after all that had happened, hitting her head felt good.

"It's no wonder they got away. There is not a whole brain in the entire Earth-based Reliance army. RJ and her friend were alone, being chased all night and most of the day. You want me to believe that this fellow just happened to stumble upon them here at the exact moment that all this"—she made a flamboyant hand gesture—"happened? Do you have any idea what the odds of that happening are?" She was yelling in rage by the end of her speech.

The Captain stood there silently. Obviously, he was trying to do the math in his head. "No, Senator. I don't know," he said at length.

Jessica ripped his captain's patch from his shoulder. "Think about it, private. Think about it long and hard. Save all your money, and maybe someday you'll be able to buy a brain. They are doing wonders with artificial intelligence these days. Wait around and maybe technology will catch up with you."

Jessica stomped over to the chopper that was waiting for her and boarded. "Take me back to Capitol. Get me the hell away from all these incompetent fools."

"At once, Senator."

 

 

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