The New Hero: Volume 1

by ed. Robin D. Laws

  Dead silence fell across the Palodan United Nations development office, vapor wafting unregarded from a dozen suddenly-neglected coffee mugs.

  Voice quavering on the edge of hysteria, Mednaiya Knight added, ‘I had to flee from Stonefletcher’s gunmen after we filmed this. I certainly didn’t have time to invent or fake a pile of dead citizens riddled with bullets! These men—and women—and children—are dead. That company’s private army has conquered Mariacordoba!’

  She was hurling those words at the security guard, but really aiming them the staffers sitting behind him—the four who quietly reported to the oil industry, and the two who secretly passed information to North American intelligence agencies.

  Not to mention the camera-festooned local stringers for global media, who’d arrived for their daily press release handouts, and were now gaping at a real story, dumped right in their laps.

  The sudden burst of gunfire, right outside the front doors, was deafening.

  Both security guards grabbed for their guns—but the knot of running men now crashing through those doors bellowed, ‘Drop your guns! Drop them or die!’

  The intruders wore fatigues and combat boots, and waved gleaming assault rifles, some stitching warning bursts across the ceiling.

  Staffers screamed, but as men slapped and kicked away the security guards’ guns at gunpoint, their leader advanced, snarling, ‘Nobody move!’

  Aside from swallowing, nobody did.

  Yet they stared, seeing it all—the intruders’ Stonefletcher Global Logistics badges included. Two of those gunmen had already seized Mednaiya Knight’s arms, one trying to clap a hand over her mouth and the other wrestling her for the camera.

  She flung it away, high and wild.

  It hit the ceiling far down the office and fell somewhere among the cubicles. A gunman fired after it, spraying the ceiling again, but the SGL leader roared, ‘Never mind that! Grab her!’

  In an instant, the woman was struggling vainly in the grip of eight burly gunmen.

  ‘Help!’ she shrieked desperately, as they dragged her out the doors. ‘I’m an American citizen! I—help meeeee!’

  But no one moved a muscle until long after silence had fallen, and all running men with guns had disappeared.

  Then a siren rose in the distance—and nearby, the motor of a powerful boat burst into life and roared away at frantic speed, up the River Colobo toward Mariacordoba.

  Inside the UN office, people started to scream and shout and swear.

  ‘It was too easy, Naya!’ Colin shouted, to be heard over the outboard’s roar as they raced back to Mariacordoba, the jungle a purple-green blur on either side.

  ‘That, Colin,’ the Midnight Knight replied, ‘is exactly what I’m afraid of. Whenever things go very easily, they are unfolding too easily.’

  All around, Merry Blades were peeling off stolen SGL fatigues and tossing them and the guns overboard. They’d made very convincing Stonefletcher mercenaries.

  Her idea, of course. No reporter would be able to resist snapping a photo of a beautiful Americano woman struggling in the hands of brutish mercenaries, as they dragged her into the jungle.

  None had.

  It should make newscasts across America, all right—and the wider world. Whatever happened now, Stonefletcher Global Logistics had gained one very large black eye.

  ‘Too easily,’ Mednaiya repeated softly, shaking her head. And smiling.

  She and her Blades would have to move like proverbial greased lightning to stay alive—and really do something about Max, while all the dithering began back home and at the UN—before Max learned what she’d done, and decided to really do something about her.

  ‘What do you mean they’re all asleep? You’re fucking kidding me!’

  Maxwell Stonefletcher’s usual coldly sneering manner deserted him for a moment. He glared at the three uneasy SGL men in his office then slammed a large hand down on his desk and spat, ‘What do you mean you can’t wake them? Are they snoring, or just lying there like they’re dead?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Drugged, damn it! Who did this? Any intruders reported—or are the damned sentries asleep, too?’

  ‘No, Mister Stonefletcher,’ Gordon replied, a little sullenly. ‘They’re not, and saw no intrusions—nor attackers outside the walls.’

  ‘Well, send up a chopper to look! Torture the maids! Find out who did this, and—’

  ‘Certainly, Mister Stonefletcher, but we do have some intruders within our walls: our guests, the actor-pirates.’

  Beside Gordon, the other two, Danran and London-Smith, nodded and muttered frowning agreement.

  Stonefletcher simmered, glowering at them as he tried to think. ‘Go get them—especially her. Now. Bring them here—no delays, no excuses, and no weapons, not so much as a toothpick. We’ll put them somewhere secure and you’ll stand guard, all of you. In shifts, three men at a time. So we’ll need more triggernecks. Call Hamrelton, and hire another squad in.’

  He strode restlessly away across the leopard-pelt rug—then froze as an idea struck.

  ‘The boiler room; it has better doors than the Palace vaults. But bring Miss Knight here to me first. Go.’

  His three commanders went.

  ‘What do you mean you can’t find any of them?’ His voice rose almost to a shriek during the half-incoherent string of profanity that followed. Snatching up his whiskey glass, he hurled it as hard as he could at the nearest wall.

  Unsurprisingly, the wall won.

  Maxwell Stonefletcher stood panting as the shards tinkled, staring at that wall and thinking fast.

  His thoughts were not happy ones. He’d been a ruthlessly successful shark for a long time. He could sense when things were going very wrong—and he was sensing it now.

  The mercenaries stepped back, their faces going carefully blank. Bowing their heads slightly against the verbal gale, they set themselves to weather the rant, then rush to obey.

  No matter what he might order them to do.

  They’d stopped their boat well short of where the White Palace lawns came down to the river and melted into the jungle—fake SGL mercenaries with one rich Americano woman in a dress.

  Choppers had roared and clattered overhead all day, but no SGL men had come tramping through the jungle.

  Mednaiya had smiled at that. Max must be having trouble awakening enough triggernecks to man his perimeter and search for the missing occupants of his guest palace, leaving futile jungle searches beyond him.

  Soon it would grow dark. Time to light the dozens of fire-barrels along the riverbank, to foil SGL infrared nightscopes.

  Then it would be time to stage a little coup. The traditional way.

  As they reached the Palace pool change hut, Manuel leaned past Colin to give the Midnight Knight a bright grin—and Fernando appeared behind Manuel’s shoulder to ask eagerly, ‘So, Lady Knight, what’s the plan?’

  Mednaiya smiled. ‘My Blades have been busy with some Stonefletcher rockblasting charges. In a minute we should—’

  The rest of her words were lost forever in a blast that struck their ears like a flying fist, lit up the night blindingly, and flung tiles clattering off the roof of the White Palace—even before pieces of shattered SGL helicopters started to crash down out of the sky.

  The Midnight Knight sprang at all three men, driving them in under the edge of the hut roof.

  It rained chopper shards for a surprisingly long time, during which Mednaiya peered through her nightscope at the Palace.

  ‘Damn,’ she said calmly. ‘Only two went off. Max still has a chopper to escape in.’

  ‘To hunt us down in, more like,’ Colin warned. ‘Loaded full of mercs with their favorite guns, up high where they can look down on us, and …’

  ‘So we’ll have to end this before sunrise,’ she murmured.

  Lights flared on all over the Palace, and there was much shouting. Men went running here, there, and pounding everywhere waving gleaming machine guns.
/>
  A fire was blazing on the lawn around two twisted and still-flaming heaps of ruin, but the third chopper was whup-whup-whupping into hasty life as men scrambled aboard.

  As it lifted, someone was yelling order after order at them out of a Palace window with a loud-hailer. Maxwell Stonefletcher.

  ‘Not waiting for daylight,’ Colin snarled. ‘I hope they don’t shoot up the UN—’

  The night erupted with the thunder of a big explosion down by the seafront.

  Its echoes were still rolling back off the mountains when there was another blast, far to the east.

  Manuel gave the Midnight Knight a frown.

  Her smile was impish. ‘I had to give Max a rebel army to hunt. Farewell to all vehicles parked at his guard posts at the docks and the airstrip. Palace gatehouse, next.’

  Armored cars were roaring away from the Palace as she spoke, someone firing wildly into the night out of one as it picked up speed. They should just about be at the gatehouse by—

  A great whump rocked the world, and Colin winced.

  Which is when he became aware that there was no longer a woman standing beside him.

  Dark gown streaming, she was racing across the Palace lawn.

  He, Manuel, and Fernando exchanged startled looks then sprinted after her.

  ‘You are going to leave Mariacordobans a little of their Palace to reclaim, aren’t you?’ Colin gasped, as they crouched in a dark Palace room, to catch their breath.

  The Midnight Knight gave him her impish smile again. ‘Why should boys be the only ones who get to blow things up?’

  ‘Lady,’ Fernando hissed urgently, ‘we must get away from—’

  A machine gun spat out of the darkness, and he toppled to the floor.

  ‘It was you!’ Maxwell Stonefletcher snarled from behind it. ‘I thought so!’

  Mednaiya kicked the door closed in his face.

  ‘Run, Naya,’ Colin panted, as he ran to put his shoulder to it. ‘I’ll—’

  A heavy Palace statue toppled past him, crumpling the metal door into its frame with a metallic shriek. Stonefletcher’s gun promptly started stitching holes in it.

  Breathless from shoving the statue, the Midnight Knight panted, ‘No, you go. The networks will land in Paloda, and we need those cameras here for the world to see. Stick to the plan. Go. You too, Manuel! Mariacordoba will need someone to lead it, when this is all over!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll hold them off.’

  ‘But Mednaiya … dead is …’

  Those magnificent shoulders lifted in a smooth shrug. The glorious gaze meeting his was both dancingly excited, and calm.

  ‘If no one takes chances, the brutes and bastards always win.’

  Her long arms reached for Colin and gathered him in. He felt her lips brush his ear.

  ‘Go,’ she told him in the softest of whispers, and shoved him at an open doorway.

  By the time he got his balance and whirled, she was gone, hair swirling in her wake.

  Damn it, she could run faster than he could, too.

  Empty.

  Maxwell Stonefletcher flung the machine gun down, ran to his bedside table, and scooped out his little automatic.

  There it was again. That faint sound. Bare feet, moving fast.

  He grabbed up his flashlight—and saw who he’d expected he’d see.

  ‘You bitch. You fucking bitch. You did this! Well, you made one little mistake: you didn’t get me! Now, I’ll—’

  He fired.

  Nothing happened.

  Max pulled the trigger again, and again, but his gun produced only clicks, no matter how furiously or often he fired—or shook it disbelievingly.

  It seemed someone had thoughtfully emptied it of ammunition.

  The raven-haired beauty across his bedroom gave him a cold smile. ‘I do my own dirty work, Max. It’s finally time for you to do the same. If you can.’

  Stonefletcher glared, flung down the gun, and sprinted across the glossy tiles at her, plucking down one of the crossed gold-hilted rapiers hanging on the bedroom wall.

  The Midnight Knight’s smile never wavered. From another pair of crossed swords she fetched a blade of her own.

  ‘I’ll slice you like a steak!’ he snarled, hacking the air as he came. ‘Cut you apart and feed you to my dogs!’

  ‘Well, fangs a lot,’ Mednaiya replied. ‘I’d been wondering what to do with your carcass, being as you’ve been busily filling up the wells around here …’

  ‘Bitch! You’re dead!’ Stonefletcher spat, slashing at her wildly.

  ‘Not quite yet,’ she purred, dancing aside.

  Max hacked at her again, teeth clenched.

  Their swords met with a ringing clang that would have brought a dozen guards running if Mednaiya’s slumbertime hadn’t done its work.

  Yet the two of them, it seemed, now had the White Palace all to themselves.

  When Stonefletcher bellowed out names—presumably belonging to the men Mednaiya had left sprawled senseless across their Uzis outside the bedroom doors—no one came.

  Max wasn’t waiting for aid. He wanted the woman who’d dared betray him dead, swiftly and messily and right here at his feet.

  Not that she seemed ready to oblige.

  As their swords shrieked across each other and locked together, he tried to force Mednaiya over onto her back and down to the floor.

  Trembling arms strained, metal screamed—and she stood her ground, braced strength matching his.

  ‘You … you …’ he ran out of insults, and spat at her instead.

  ‘Me,’ she agreed calmly, eyes going colder. ‘And when I show up, Max, your luck has about run out.’

  Suddenly she collapsed down to the floor, the sword set against his gone. Overbalanced, Maxwell Stonefletcher stumbled helplessly forward—which was when two fast and very hard feet came up into his crotch from below and hurled him onward, as he shrieked in agony—and stone pillars rushed up to greet him …

  The room swam above him.

  He was on the floor, head ringing and nose streaming blood like a ketchup tap. When he tried to roll over there was a sickening pain in his crotch. He must have hit a pillar …

  Max fumbled for his satellite phone. One of only four allowed in Mariacordoba. The underlings who had the others could bring dozens of ruthless triggernecks down on this bitch as fast as a chopper could—

  A hand like a striking snake dashed the phone from his fingers and slammed into his throat, as hard as any sword’s edge …

  And Maxwell Stonefletcher’s world went dark.

  He was drifting in darkness …

  The voices seemed to come from far above him.

  ‘What about …?’

  ‘Leave him. Don’t kill him. I still have a use for him.’

  Mednaiya, sounding almost gentle.

  Still have a use for him …

  Trying to wonder about that, Max drifted deeper …

  The world swam blearily back to Maxwell Stonefletcher.

  Cold hard steel handcuffs were around his wrists and ankles, attached to chains that rattled as he moved. Manacles.

  Mednaiya’s face was close above him. Behind her were some cold-faced men. Americans.

  ‘You’re coming with us, Mr. Stonefletcher. Stateside. To face quite a long list of charges.’

  Some swaggering thug of a federal agent. Max ignored him, trying to focus on Mednaiya’s face.

  The bitch who’d betrayed him.

  She wasn’t smiling. Or sneering. She looked sad, but there was no pity in her eyes.

  ‘Why, Naya?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Why all this? You could’ve just killed me.’

  ‘No, Max,’ she replied, and there was an edge of hard steel in her firm voice. ‘No, I could not.’

  The Thirty-Ninth Labor of Reb Palache

  Richard Dansky

  This is how Reb Palache decides, in matters of life and death.

  He does not decide who lives and who dies. It is given
only unto the Lord of Hosts, the Author of Life to do so, and whither He sends His faceless angel who is Death, no man may know.

  Reb Palache is many things, but he is not the Lord of Hosts, nor does he know His mind. He is a trader and a teacher, a sailor and a spy, a diplomat and a pirate of bloody intent, an exile and a man who has prospered in a new land.

  And right now, he is a man who sees sails across the water. They are tiny, and they are distant, but they are neither so tiny nor so distant as they were an hour ago. He raises a brass spyglass and peers through it, reflexively muttering thanks unto Adonai for the keenness of eye that he still possesses, and sees more clearly what he had known all along he would: a fat merchant ship, wallowing through the seas heavier than she was designed for. Wind bellies her sails, but it is not enough, not enough. And above those bloated white sheets flies the flag he knows, the flag he hates, the flag that says unto him that this ship is prey.

  Slowly, he casts his eye lower, along the decks. The crew is working furiously, he sees. Lines are hauled, more canvas unfurled. He can almost hear the shouted orders from the frantic captain, the crack of the whip against the bare back of a sailor whose work is not quite fast enough.

  The ship is low in the water. He sees that, too. She is weighted down, perhaps with spoils from the New World, silver and emeralds or golden idols not yet melted down.

  He looks away.

  His own ship runs lean, a wolfhound leaping over the waves. His men need no lashes, no frenzied exhortations. They have done this before. They see the ship before them, and they are eager to close with it. Behind him, the snap of canvas suddenly pulled taut rings out, another sail unfurled in the name of the hunter’s pursuit.

  He hears them calling to each other, reminding each other of duties long known. They have sailed with him long, most of this crew. He has picked them, the flotsam that Spain cast out upon the waters. Strong men, the weakness burned out of them by sun and wave and battle until they are as beaten bronze, remorseless and dutiful and united in purpose. Some he found on the docks of Lisbon, or working merchant ships out of Malaga and hiding their heritage away from the relentless eyes of the Inquisition. Some he found in the streets of Rotterdam, sons of exile and of a new land that cared less what god a man worshipped and more what he might do.