Was Once a Hero

by Edward McKeown

*****

  Shasti spent a long day negotiating the purchase of a five-thousand-ton Standard Assault Transport from the Confederacy. The vessel would be perfect for landings on unimproved fields on Colony worlds. She left the Confederate embassy, deciding to walk back to the hotel alone. Her hired security protested, but the driver dropped her back in downtown London as she directed.

  Again she wandered about the old city, hoping that the crowds of humans would ease her aloneness. They didn’t. She wandered deeper and deeper into her own thoughts.

  As Shasti turned the corner by Harrods, something jarred her from her reverie. There was a wrongness about the street. She drifted into the storefront and studied the area with a trained eye. It took a few minutes, but she spotted several overlarge and bulky men, positioned where she would have placed them. They were aware of her, trying to watch and not watch. Another minute revealed a woman of average build with a bag the right size to conceal an auto-pistol or laser. Shasti began to wonder about the wisdom of her unprotected venture.

  A heavyset, middle-aged black man strolled up her side of the street. It attracted her attention, as he intended. His slow approach was meant to signal peaceful intent. As she studied the oncoming figure, it clicked. Fenaday had given her an exacting description of Mandela, the code name used by the spymaster who blackmailed them into the near suicidal Enshar expedition. A standard human, strong in his youth, she assessed, but late middle age had begun to show. He met her eyes and smiled broadly, walking up to her.

  “Fenaday described you well,” she said. With the street so crowded and Harrods’ front door at her back, she felt safe enough. She gazed over his head at the gunmen in the street, wishing she’d been able to smuggle a pistol into England.

  “Hello, Miss Rainhell,” Mandela said, his voice rich and pleasant. “I’ve seen images of you. They don’t live up to the real thing.”

  Shasti ignored the comment and waited.

  Mandela sighed. “I have a business proposal for you.”

  “Why would I consider working for you?” she asked, disinterested. “I almost died on your previous assignment.”

  “For the best of all possible reasons,” he replied in good humor. “Like last time, I have something you want.”

  “What would that be?” she asked.

  “How would Jalgren Pard’s head on a silver platter suit you?” He smiled again.

  Shasti faced him directly for the first time. Something terrible looked out of her beautiful eyes. Mandela froze; the gunmen in the street shifted nervously.

  “Keep the platter,” she said in a silky undertone known to very few still alive. Mandela offered her a chance for something she longed for, even dreamed of, Pard’s death at her own hands. Only one thing could bring the spymaster to her, an assassination.

  “I take it I have your interest,” the spymaster said. He turned, waving a hand. The woman with the bag nodded and spoke into a concealed mike. A late-model aircar, its road wheels down, cut through traffic and pulled to the curb.

  “May I offer you a lift?” Mandela asked.

  She remained still and silent for a few seconds, evidently surprising Mandela. She was thinking of Fenaday. On Enshar, he’d impulsively promised to help her against Pard, if they lived. She didn’t doubt that Robert would fight, even die, to protect her, but it was another thing to go into the lion’s den. It suddenly came to her why she’d never reminded him of the promise. She’d feared Fenaday would follow her to almost certain death on Olympia. Unconsciously, she had put Pard as far from her thoughts as she could, delaying the crisis. Shasti stood, hovering between the life only recently opened for her and death—hers or Pard’s.

  “Yes,” she said, choosing death. I can’t give up a chance at killing Pard, she thought fiercely. I can’t forgive what he did to me, how he touched me, what he made of me. It’s all I know, she thought, in mixed relief and sorrow. If I live, she promised herself, maybe I will be able to make it up to Robert. If not, maybe he will be better off anyway.

  Chapter Two

  A month later, Shasti stood next to Captain Daniel Rigg, Confederate Air Space Assault Teams, on the small bridge of the Marine Raider, Wraith. Rigg had led the ASATs on the Enshar expedition. At six-foot-six and in perfect training, he could pass for one of the lower to middle orders of Olympia’s genetically stratified society. Next to them, Captain Wargo, the Wraith’s skipper, stared intently at the images on her screens as the five-thousand ton attack transport crept toward Olympia’s orbit. The other four members of the bridge crew manipulated boards and controls in the low, red light of the horseshoe shaped bridge. The world Shasti fled years ago loomed in the screens of the stealthy marine raider.

  “Olympia,” Shasti said, “an ideal gone mad.”

  “How’s that?” Rigg asked.

  Shasti shrugged.

  “Come on, Rainhell,” Rigg said, a smile playing over his dark, lean face. “Talk once in a while. I’ve read what there is to read. I need more. You’re my native guide. Start guiding.”

  After a moment, she replied. “You’ve been to some of the separatist colonies.”

  “Yeah. They didn’t always work out as well as New Eire. Think of: Retief, Sappho, Lakota, and that disastrous Croat Colony.”

  “Olympia is unique,” Shasti said. “It’s a creed, not an ethnic group. Many of Earth’s finest athletes followed Dr. Allessandro to this place. After minimal terraforming, they built a society based on ancient Greece’s worship of human perfection. The healthiest mind, but only if in the healthiest body. It started with high ideals and beneficence. It degenerated to where the deformed or ugly need not apply. To where people became products. Olympians are supermen and superwomen. Failing to measure up courts death.

  “Most of humanity regard us as a bizarre cult. Only a few Olympians served in the Conchirri War and only under their own officers.”

  “Things are changing,” Rigg observed. “When the Conchirri brought the roof down, going your own way seemed like less of a great idea. Even the Moroks and the Dua-Denlenn have stayed in the wartime alliance.

  “We’re here to make sure it stays that way,” he added. “Pard and the Olympian government are buying surplus ships and weapons at a phenomenal rate. Part of the buildup is showing up in a much more robust Olympian military, much to the annoyance of Mr. Mandela. He wants to know where the rest of the stuff is going. Mandela tried getting sanctions passed, but the legislature wouldn’t go for it. Too many individual planets are strapped for cash and want to sell their surplus military equipment.”

  Shasti shrugged. She didn’t care about the government’s motivations; she wanted Jalgren Pard.

  “There’s a nice ice ring looping around the planet,” Wargo said. “Never saw a ringed Earth-type world before.”

  “An ice-comet shattered in Olympia’s orbit sometime before the planet was colonized,” Shasti said.

  “Must be pretty at night,” Rigg said. “Good for tourism.”

  Shasti eyed him.

  “Joke,” he said.

  “Olympia is very mountainous,” Shasti said, turning back to the screens, “with many volcanoes. The interiors are deserts, freezing at night, brutally hot in the day. Most of the settled areas of the planet are in the greener, more comfortable equatorial regions. That’s where we will find Marathon, the planetary capital. It’s on the coast, at the foot of a gigantic plateau.”

  “Not a lot of ocean,” Rigg observed. “Well, we won’t have to worry about parachuting into the sea then.”

  “There will be plenty to worry about without that,” Shasti continued. “Our weapons will be enough to deal with the oscots, vendran and other wildlife. My fear is running into a Denshi patrol or a force of Olympian regulars. What is the latest from your ground contact?”

  “We’re still on for a HALO drop over the northern sector near Manki, at 0300,” Rigg said. “Nothing new. I hate landing so far from the capital city, but we don’t dare drop any closer. It will take at least a week to get f
rom Manki to Marathon. Then we’ll have to see what we can do about getting a shot at Pard.”

  “Pard,” she said, her voice cold as February moonlight.

  Rigg looked at her curiously. He knew she held a grudge against Pard, though he didn’t know the nature of it. What he did know was that the woman was a consummate killing machine. It comforted him to think she was with them, until he remembered even she feared Pard.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The big trick is getting off planet again. Wraith will wait as long as she can. The Intruder will head for the rendezvous two days after the attack signal is sent. If we can’t get back to the rendezvous point, then we’ll have to try to break out using civilian transport. We have no other means of contacting the raider ship once the Intruder moves out of range.”

  “I remember the briefing,” she said coolly. “As a last resort, we get to the Confed embassy, and they try to get us out.”

  “Yep, they’ll be just thrilled to see us too.”

  “Mr. Rigg,” Wargo called. “ETA to the drop point is five hours and three minutes. From there you go in the Intruder and hope the brain boys are right about her invisibility to detectors. We’ve got two big space stations and a couple of patrol lines to cross. So far we’ve been lucky.”

  “Well, time to check equipment,” Rigg said. “Thank you, Captain.”

  Shasti nodded and followed. They went down the narrow, green painted gangway to the armory.

  “So, Rainhell,” Rigg said, ducking through a hatchway, “how did assassination become so respectable on Olympia?”

  “Like everything else on Olympia,” she replied, ducking even lower to follow him in, “with the best of intentions. Allessandro knew there would be conflict. He saw war as means by which the powerful fight each other using a couple million proxies, ordinary people fed to the God of War by leaders who stay behind in safety. Allessandro believed that the powerful should fight directly, leaving civilians out of it. Society would be less disrupted, and it supported his views on survival of the fittest. He sanctioned the Order of Assassins, House Denshi, led by his brother-in-law.”

  “Did it work?” Rigg asked as they walked onto the armory deck.

  “There’ve been no wars on Olympia.”

  “Can’t say the idea doesn’t have its appeal,” Rigg added. “Nice to think of some REMFs stopping bullets or beams for a change.”

  “REMFs?” she asked.

  “Rear echelon motherfu—” Rigg snorted a laugh. “Never mind.”

  They found the strike-team sitting on the deck, cleaning weapons. The four other team members were also over-large, excellent specimens, until they stood next to Shasti. No true aliens served in the team. Nonhumans were rare on Olympia and would attract attention. The decision provoked bitter complaints from Rigg’s second-in-command and close friend, the Morok, Lt. Rask. Despite his best efforts, Rask could not wrangle his way onto the mission.

  Other than Rigg, the team members remained almost strangers to her. Shasti hadn’t trained with the team long enough for her own satisfaction. An air of urgency, almost desperation, surrounded Mandela’s attempt to interfere in Olympian policy. Rigg, however, knew them well, which gave her some confidence. Randall, Zoski, and Kim looked tough and capable. Karen Minaravitch, the only other woman, rounded out the team.

  The ASATs finished checking their armaments and equipment. Rigg, once a sergeant always a sergeant, checked it again. They began to apply black face and hand camo. Shasti sat on the deck plates and concentrated.

  After a minute, Rigg noted her lack of movement. “Rainhell,” he said, annoyed, “time for camo.”

  Shasti’s body shuddered slightly. In an instant all of her visible skin turned a flat, non-reflective black.

  “Christ almighty,” Randall said. The others looked similarly stunned.

  Shasti’s eyes opened. They remained a cool jade color. The whites seemed even more pronounced. She met the stares of the standard humans. “This is what you are up against every second you are on Olympia,” she stated. “Never forget it.”

  *****

  Wraith avoided the Olympian out-system patrols and deployed her landing ship from well beyond the range of planetary detectors. The high-speed raider then fled for deep space as the landing shuttle headed for Olympia’s night side. The Intruder was the latest design, horribly expensive but nearly invisible to radar or microwave. It lived up to its name, tip-toeing past Olympia’s naval moon base and the lines of fighters and sloops patrolling the approaches to the planet. The Intruder slipped into Olympia’s atmosphere. At ten thousand feet, the shuttle went into hover, its rear cargo ramp sliding down.

  Shasti looked at Rigg and the other five members of the assault team, dressed in chameleon suits. They were low enough not to need the additional burden of oxygen, a blessing considering how much equipment they carried.

  Rigg looked back at her and grinned. “It’s your planet. After you.”

  Shasti nodded and strode out onto the ramp. The frigid, pitch-black night waited at the end of it. Above her the filigree of the ice-ring glimmered. Wind howled around her. Without hesitation she threw herself off the ramp, spread-eagled. As she fell, she rolled onto her back. Above her, she could see the others dropping in a perfect file. Their helmet faceplates did not leak the eerie green of the interior HUD night sights through which they saw the world. They plunged earthward like black rocks. Shasti flipped over and concentrated on her descent.

  At one thousand feet, Shasti’s black airfoil deployed. The others formed up on her like geese as they made for a landing on the plateau. Shasti’s boot slammed into the hard soil of her homeworld, but she kept her feet under her. The others dropped around her with less luck.

  They buried their chutes with trained efficiency and moved out in a ranger file, each person following the phosphorescent tag on the helmet of the person ahead of them. The small force headed for the isolated farmhouse to meet their contact.

  Shasti took point as the team trudged through the cold desert night air. Early fall chilled Olympia’s Northern Continent; she was glad it wasn’t winter. With barely a thought she raised her body temperature a full degree. Her usual 15-MM tri-auto rode on her hip, a strap across her chest holding some of the weight. The weapon, too heavy for most humans, was normally used by Humanform Combat Robots. She preferred its heavier killing power. She’d set it for projectile weapons, so the energy trace would be minimal. There were eyes in the sky.

  They reached the contact point, a large farmhouse in an isolated valley. The team spent ten minutes in stillness. Every sense, artificial and natural, strained to detect a trap. Finally, Rigg stood, cautiously moving toward the door. In his hand he held a metal cricket. He gave a recognition signal, a series of metallic clacks. The door opened slowly. A woman of Rigg’s size stood there, looking out. The two conversed. Rigg went inside for a second then came back out and gave the all clear signal on the clacker. The others moved quickly into the house. Shasti, ever suspicious, brought up the rear.

  Once inside, the woman turned on a lamp, then quickly drew curtains across all the windows to prevent the light from escaping. The light revealed a large, comfortably rustic room.

  Shasti studied the woman. Early stock, she estimated. Selected, not Engineered. Abilities from good genetics, with none of the hallmarks of the gene-tampering technology responsible for Shasti’s existence. She lacked the inhuman perfection and bilateral symmetry seen in the Engineered, the newest people. Shasti already knew that the older woman did not have dark-adapted eyes. She’d peered out of the door for a few seconds before spotting Rigg. Still handsome and lithe, the Olympian might well be close to sixty from the grayed hair and the existence of lines on her face. To the other team members she probably appeared to be in her early forties.

  Their contact looked over the members of the team then spotted Shasti. As she did, Shasti allowed her melanin levels to return to normal. Flat black skin color vanished in a heartbeat.

  The woman looked up at
her in obvious fear and backed a step. “Aristo,” she gasped, uttering the old slang for the Engineered.

  “No,” Shasti said. “I’m not an Aristo.”

  The other woman recovered her composure, but fear stayed in her eyes. “Obviously not in spirit, or you would not be here. But you are born Aristo—pardon, Engineered—for all the world to see. You may be the most perfectly made I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard. She’s perfect,” Kim groused.

  “Remember,” Shasti said, ignoring Kim’s comment, “on this world your social status is largely determined by your genetics. I’m a tailored life form, engineered from germ plasm. The amount of money put in my body would appall you. My size and general appearance mark me as an aristocrat.”

  The woman looked at the standard humans. “I had actual parents,” she admitted, eyes downcast. “They were not sanctioned by the order of Geneticists. My creation was unassisted, done by their own bodies.”

  Shasti was surprised. The woman’s appearance was better than her social status, given that she was entirely naturally conceived and far worse, unsanctioned. “I envy you those parents,” she said.

  The woman looked up, startled, then smiled sadly. “You are truly not Aristo to think so.” She extended a hand hesitantly, “I’m Leda Jenner.”

  “Shasti Rainhell,” she said, taking the hand. “Daniel Rigg, Kim, Randall, Zoski and Minaravitch.”

  “Names you must not use after tonight,” Jenner cautioned. “You have been briefed on your assumed names and identities?” They all nodded. “Good. You brought in clothes for tomorrow? Let me see them while you are getting out of that camouflage. Mr. Rigg, there is a safe in the basement for the heavy weapons.”

  “Not till morning,” Rigg demurred.

  “As you wish,” Jenner said. “The bathroom is through there.”

  Jenner looked at their equipment, discarding a jacket of Kim’s she ruled too ostentatious for his social status. Only Rigg, for all his size and lean strength, and Minaravitch, with her beautiful and symmetrical Russian face, could pretend to claim a status marginally exceeding Jenner’s own. Jenner discarded a dress of Minaravitch’s, pulling out something more suitable from her own closet. “That dress,” Jenner said, “isn’t even close. It would be fine on a comedian. Who picked this material out for you? Was your briefing no better than this?”