Was Once a Hero

by Edward McKeown

  The port pilot displaced Micetich, who moved to stand behind him, a slightly disgusted look on her heavy-featured Slavic face. Fenaday understood her feelings. He hated the arcane port procedure. Fenaday believed it existed to give the Confederacy an excuse to implement fees.

  The red frigate shuddered in her cradle as the power came on. Slowly, she began to lift against Mars’ still formidable gravity. The pilot put her into a forward ascent. Sidhe derived lift from her wings and aerodynamic hull to save on reaction mass. The starship reached high Mach numbers quickly, flying into orbit like the space planes of the 21st century. After they reached orbit, Fenaday thanked the port pilot and put him off in his cutter.

  Once free of the drag of Mars’ atmosphere, Sidhe rendezvoused with an automated tanker platform, replacing fuel used in lifting out of the gravity well. After that Fenaday set course for the system’s edge where the FTL drive could work. The inner system was far too dense to allow the FTL drive to be effective. Fenaday enjoyed the freedom that came from Mandela’s checkbook and burned fuel at military levels to speed them on their way. Another tanker station awaited them at Sol system’s edge.

  “Radar contact,” Hafel announced calmly, “bearing, two hundred seventy degrees and zero degrees relative. Distance, thirty thousand kilometers, relative speed... dropping to zero.”

  “Let me guess,” Fenaday replied, “a Confederation cruiser, Battle or Nova class.”

  “Good guess,” Hafel said with a sidelong glance of her almond shaped eyes. “IFF shows Confederation Battle class cruiser, Rourke’s Drift. Shall I raise them?”

  “Negative. If you start to transmit, she’ll jam us.” Fenaday replied. He turned a sour look on Telisan. “Your friend Mandela doesn’t want you to get lonely or talkative.”

  “I am no more convinced he is my friend than that he is yours,” the Denlenn said. “People like him fly whatever flag suits them. I saw my fill of them during the war. Killers, not warriors. They use us like the clip of a tri-auto.”

  “True enough,” murmured Fenaday, a little surprised. Telisan was regular Confed military. “Is it different among your kind?”

  Telisan made an odd gesture that Fenaday felt might be a sigh. “Yes, or rather it was. A Denlenn leader is expected to lead from the front. To be bravest. So we were when this war began. Our methods cost us many of our best fighters and leaders. Your kind told us this was foolish, but we would not listen. These ways served us during our wars with Dua-Denlenn. Our cousins have no honor but at least fight with civilized restraint. Why lay waste to a world and lose the value of it for all time?

  “Nothing prepared us for the Conchirri. Honor and restraint were unknown to them. We lost many battles, even some worlds, before we resigned ourselves to changing to your methods, as the Moroks already had. Your kind makes war almost into a business, a matter of calculation.”

  “It had been a long time since we’d had to fight,” said Fenaday distantly, thinking on the long history of humanity’s wars. “The big ones ended centuries ago, as the stellar Diaspora allowed many of earth’s adversaries to gain sufficient distance from each other.”

  “It came back to you quickly,” Telisan said.

  Unable to decide if this was an accusation or a compliment, Fenaday opted for silence.

  *****

  Three days out from Mars, Fenaday decided to break the news of their wild venture to the crew. First, he filled all critical stations with either Mandela’s people, or the few reliable members of his own crew. He ordered Shasti, Gunnar, Li, Mmok and his HCRs into the central shuttle bay, where the rest of the crew gathered. Rigg dispersed his Air Space Assault Team troops throughout the ship to provide security.

  Fenaday met the others outside the bay. Shasti had put her port clothes away. She wore the same loose, sage-green, fatigue uniform as the ASAT troops. Simple and functional, it hid her fascinating curves, making it easier to concentrate around her. She carried a baton as well as a short-barreled riot gun. He assumed she’d loaded it with plastic bullets. Connery, Gunnar and Li carried similar arms. Telisan, an expert shot, carried a laser, as did Fenaday. Mmok wore no obvious weapon, though Fenaday felt sure the cyborg had something secreted on him. His four HCRs stood around him. Magenta wore a plastic flower in her hair, more of Mmok’s sardonic humor.

  I would hate to believe he sleeps with the damn things, Fenaday thought.

  Shasti raised an eyebrow at him. She did not smile, but again, her quirky way of looking at him made him suspect she knew what he was thinking and that it amused her.

  Fenaday took a few deep breaths and led them into the shuttle bay. The buzz of conversation lowered as he mounted the hastily erected dais. Shasti stood on the deck before him, her head still level with his. The HCRs fell in on the corners of the dais. Mmok and Telisan joined him on it. Shasti’s best Landing Force troops took up strategic spots in the bay.

  “Not like the old days, when you could have taken the bay by yourself,” he murmured, just softly enough for Shasti to hear. The barest hint of a smile touched her lips, then her face returned to its usual mask-like calm.

  He looked at the crew, as unusual a collection as had ever flown space. They ran from dedicated professionals from the shadow side of the military, to adventurers to the desperate. They all stood staring at him.

  Fenaday keyed his throat mike. “You’re gathered here to find out the destination of our mission. All of you signed up for the voyage knowing this was a high-risk mission. It is for this reason that the least ranked of you will make most of a lifetime’s earnings on this one voyage.

  “You know we are government sanctioned and sponsored. Government people are onboard. They won’t admit it. Their bosses don’t carry them on official rosters. The point is—we are legitimate. We are doing something the government wants done, but does not want to risk regular forces to do.”

  He drew a deep breath. “We are on our way to Enshar.”

  The reaction was as bad as he expected. One female crewmember screamed and others cursed. Fenaday looked at them, seeing wide eyes, open mouths, terror stamped on every face.

  “Silence,” Telisan roared in his best parade ground voice. As if to emphasize his point, the HCRs snapped from parade rest to attention in absolute unison.

  “We’re dead,” one crewman sobbed into the wary silence.

  “We are not,” said Fenaday sharply. “The command staff has no more desire to die than you do. We have brilliant doctors and scientists on board, the best robots and equipment the Confeds have and an ASAT team. They did not come here to die.”

  “They had a whole planetary military on Enshar,” called one man. “They were wiped out. Just like the fleet that came after.”

  Fenaday recognized the man after a second, Greywold, a bar tough hired by Shasti to pad out the landing force. She’d been unhappy about him afterward, but they needed the gun.

  “The fleet was not wiped out,” Telisan replied. “I was with it. The attack on us ceased as we drew away from the planet. I will also tell you something now declassified. I took a scout below the so-called line of death. I descended to the height of the Flamme’s orbit. The zone of death is not there.”

  “Sidhe,” Fenaday said, “will not approach the planet closer than the point at which the attack on the fleet ceased. I’ll take a single fighter on an atmospheric entry. If I’m not attacked, the three Dakota shuttles will come in for a planet landing. I’ll ask for volunteers, but if I nominate you as necessary for the mission, you go.

  “Understand this, Sidhe is a military vessel. We are under Letters of Marque and Reprisal on a military mission. This means military discipline. I will brook no dispute with our mission. I will shoot space lawyers, plain and simple.”

  The crisis point seemed past. Many in the crew relaxed at the news that the starship herself would not land. Others, whose specialties meant possible inclusion in the landing, stood tense, their eyes flickering around the bay as if seeking escape.

  “We didn’
t sign up for this,” Greywold called out from the back.

  “You are here, you signed, you go,” Fenaday stated. “That is also the last outburst I will tolerate." Behind him, Shasti brought her riot gun up; its butt rode comfortably on her hip.

  “While I command the mission,” Fenaday continued, waving toward Duna. “I want you to meet the sponsor of it.”

  Belwin Duna entered from the passageway door where he stood waiting with Li. He walked with apparent ease to the dais and stood on a box Fenaday set up for him.

  “Greetings, crew of the Sidhe,” said Belwin. “Though you do not believe it now, in times to come, each of you will be venerated as heroes among my people for participating in this great cause.”

  Duna delivered an impressive collection of indirection and platitudes. He acquainted them with the facts of the disaster and reminded them that in the time since the attack on the fleet, there had been no sign of any hostility on the planet. All this glossed over the fact that nothing remained on the planet to attack. The little scholar’s speech calmed the crew at least for now.

  Duna made much of Telisan’s flight. The scholar had only learned of it after liftoff, one of Mandela’s conditions on Telisan’s pardon for stealing the stealth programs. When Duna learned of Telisan’s flight, the hope that shone in the old scholar’s eyes was painful to see. Fenaday realized that Telisan had been right to keep the information secret.

  “Let me guess,” Fenaday whispered to Telisan, “that sometime in his long life, he was a politician.”

  Telisan did not nettle as expected. “It has been a long life, as you say. He has been many things in it. Here, I think he means just to comfort. They must go to Enshar. Perhaps they go less afraid now. I tell you that he believes there is a chance, or he would not do this.”

  “A leader can deceive others,” Fenaday replied, “but he should not deceive himself.”

  “As you wish,” Telisan said. Manners forbade him to argue with his captain.

  The meeting broke up and the crew went back to their stations. For the rest of the ship’s day, Fenaday worked the crew as hard as possible. Maintenance, fire drills, everything else he could think of to keep them busy.

  That evening, Quartermaster Dobera made sure dinner was the best food Sidhe could boast. Fenaday met Duna and Shasti at the entrance to the mess, leaving Telisan on the bridge standing watch.

  Sidhe didn’t have an officer’s wardroom, but Fenaday sometimes used a large table on a raised area in the back for official functions. A steward greeted them, rushing out drinks.

  “The condemned will eat a hearty meal,” Johan Gunnar said.

  Duna overheard the comment and looked over at Fenaday. “Your cook is good?”

  “My cook,” Fenaday said as they seated themselves, “insists on being referred to as Chef Marcel. He affects a terrible French accent, but he’s no more French than Shasti. He’s a deserter from the War. He is also a trained chef, so naturally the Confederacy drafted him for the infantry, the service arm with the highest rate of casualties.”

  “Yes,” Shasti added. “Claiming he’d trained to prepare meals, not risk becoming one for the Conchirri, he deserted. We were refueling on Morokat when he tried to sneak aboard Sidhe. I caught him immediately.”

  “She brought him to the bridge,” Fenaday said as plates were set about him. “I was reaching for the com to call MPs when he asked me if I was a betting man. He made a wager that if he could serve me one meal, I would never turn him over to the MPs. He won.”

  Duna laughed, his small, furry body shaking.

  “The chocolate soufflé garnered him Shasti’s support,” Fenaday continued, reaching for a glass. “I figured hiring him was a good chance to bank a favor with my formidable new security chief. Food on Sidhe had been miserable.”

  “Good thinking,” Shasti said, with a causal wave of her knife.

  “At times like this,” Fenaday said, “when I need to pump morale in, I’m glad to have him. Terrible accent notwithstanding.”

  Normally Fenaday didn’t eat with the crew, but tonight it seemed best to see and be seen. Marcel, crowned with his pleated, white chef’s hat, brought their food, too busy with the special meal to subject them to much of his fake French.

  Fenaday scanned the room. He frowned at a group of crewman clustered around an animated Greywold. Katrina Micetich caught his look and slunk sheepishly away. Greywold held his eye for a second. He felt Shasti shift beside him. The man’s eyes dropped as he suddenly discovered an interest in his meal. Fenaday turned to look at Shasti. She nodded, and he knew she would keep an eye on him.

  “Captain,” Duna asked, missing the by-play. “How long will it be to Enshar? I keep forgetting to ask Telisan.”

  “Always an interesting question,” Fenaday replied. “Hyperspace itself has no analog with normal space, so distances in jump don’t mirror those of the normal universe. A voyage between two relatively close stars can take months of objective time. Yet, others separated by hundreds of light years, take only weeks. Hyperspace is ‘thicker’ or “thinner’ between certain stars. Even in those jumps, the currents of hyperspace can change the length of the trip, depending on where you enter. Between some stars there is an express pipeline, as if a river’s raging current helps the ship’s drive. The jump to Enshar is one of these, shorter than many jumps, for all that it’s over six hundred lights to your system.”

  “Which means?” prompted Duna.

  Fenaday laughed. “Forgive the lecture, Professor. The voyage will take four weeks of actual time. We will be in hyperspace for thirty-eight days universal time.”

  “Not that we will experience that,” Duna mused. “It never fails to amaze me how one experiences nothing in hyperjump, not even dreams. I think that thirty-eight days will bring us to the city of Gigor in the spring.”

  “Yes,” Fenaday replied, butterflies hitting his stomach at the thought. In Gigor sat the dead Confederation shuttles. They lay there now, awaiting him.

  *****

  Sidhe accelerated outward from Sol system. Onboard, Fenaday and Telisan continued working up the crew. Belwin Duna did all he could to restore the crew’s morale. Always available, he spoke to everyone and answered every question. Fenaday’s instinct proved correct, the old scholar had once been a politician. He worked the crowd. Before long many of the crew began to see themselves as heroes on a quest.

  Wherever the little scholar went, an HCR, or Mmok himself, followed. Clearly the cyborg had orders to keep Duna safe. Fenaday worried about the Enshari’s safety as well, but there was no one better suited to protect Duna than Mmok and his unsleeping watchdogs. Mmok’s sentry duty also freed up Shasti’s limited number of reliables to watch Mmok, Telisan and everyone else.

  Sidhe reached the edge of Terra’s system and the FTL drive began its buildup. The small quantum singularity that provided the ship’s artificial gravity now bent the fabric of space time. Sidhe breached that fabric and leapt into hyperspace, heading outward to Enshar.

  Chapter Eight

  Fenaday groaned as reemergence brought him back to the land of the living. “I think living,” he muttered, fighting dizziness. He sometimes felt that he left larger and larger pieces of himself in hyperspace each jump. Maybe one day he wouldn’t come back at all. Vision returned slowest, lagging sound, which started as a roar in one’s ears then muted to the normal operating sounds of a starship. There was nothing to smell but canned, tasteless air. Gradually shapes began to form before his eyes, followed by a gray light and finally color.

  “Status,” he croaked.

  “No targets on scan,” Sharon Hafel said, her own voice rough and hoarse.

  “Ship speed is .66C,” Nye added. “Momentum from Sol system is still with us.”

  “Weapons armed and ready,” Wardell said.

  “Engines and ship systems nominal,” Telisan said.

  Fenaday’s stomach lurched and he only partly smothered the groan.

  “The long fast ones are the worst
,” said Telisan, standing beside him.

  “At least have the decency to look ill,” Fenaday groused. The Denlenn seemed fresh and ready for anything. Fenaday, as usual after a jump, wanted a shower and some sleep. Jump was hard on the human body. Why, no one knew. Dobera and his department would be running through the ship, handing out food and drinks laced with restoratives. Sickbay would have a few people overcome by jump sickness.

  “Well,” Fenaday said, “no immediate threat nearby. Still. Bernard, Hafel, do you have that holographic camouflage on line?”

  “Aye, sir,” Bernard answered. She was one of Mandela’s people, a brilliant young comp tech. “System just came back up. Wish I’d been able to look at the machinery itself, though.”

  A thought Fenaday shared. Mandela’s shipwrights had cannibalized a large forward compartment and sealed it. He had no idea what was in it. Gandhi had told him on his final call that if the seal was broken, they might as well not come back.

  “Engage holographic camouflage. Let’s see if Mandela’s expensive toy works,” Fenaday ordered.

  Sidhe went into stealth mode. Her holographic generators slowly cloaked the warship’s hull with the appearance of an asteroid. Other stealth devices installed by the navy reduced her radar signature by fifty percent. Not invisible, but comfortingly obscure, Fenaday thought.

  “Helm,” Fenaday said, “put this solar system on the main screen. I want constant update from scan.”

  Micetich manipulated controls and Sidhe’s main screen fractured into a computer schematic overlaid with multiple views in long and short scan. On it they could see their ship, arrowing in from beyond the orbit of the twelfth world. Star charts listed the primary as Britton 335, known locally as Mur. A G5 star, larger and hotter than Sol, it sleeted out more radiation. Moonless Enshar orbited farther from Mur than Earth did from Sol. Duna had told him that the higher radiation count factored in the development of burrowing creatures on Enshar.