Once a Hero

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Yes, sir." She was already thinking who she wanted.

  "Whoever gets control of a ship first takes group command," Bowry went on. Esmay hadn't thought of that, but they would need to coordinate. "My advice, if you're first, is to get that thing off the cradle—don't wait for me—and fire on the first ship you can locate."

  * * *

  Vokrais was furious. After all they had accomplished, that pighead of a ship pack commander was going to let two more shiploads board. He knew what that would mean—they'd be claiming credit for kills he and his men had made; they'd be marking loot.

  "There is no need," Vokrais said. "We have this ship at our mercy. Only the troops aboard Deathblade are needed. What if the Familias ships are following? If you take two more ships out of formation, how will you beat them off?"

  "You assured me they could not follow, having no idea where you are." The ship pack commander sounded entirely too complacent. When Vokrais had started this mission, the ship pack command had been promised to his own warclan. Now it had gone to the Antberd Comity, on whose graves he would spit if he got the chance. Ambitious, rich with loot they never bled for, he didn't know why the Overband let them get away with it. And here was another one, not even an Antberd, but a hireling . . . he had met Cajor Bjerling at the arena once, and hadn't liked him then.

  He wanted to slug someone, and unfortunately they'd dumped the Serrano cub for safekeeping before they came to T-4.

  "I claim this ship," he said. He wouldn't get it, but at least the claim would be registered. "I claim the blood shed, and the riches won, the deaths and the treasures, for the men who won them."

  "It's big enough to share the glory," Bjerling said. "And soon enough to divide the loot when the deed is done."

  "The deed is done," Vokrais argued.

  "You need not fear my justice," Bjerling said. "Unless you want to challenge my honor."

  Of course. In the middle of the operation he was supposed to challenge the commander? Even if he won, the Overband would not be pleased with him.

  "I do not challenge your honor," he said. "Only remember who opened this ship like an oyster."

  "You are not likely to let me forget," Bjerling said. "The troops in Deathblade will await the arrival of those from Antberd's Axe and Antberd's Helm before they maneuver."

  In other words, Vokrais thought sourly, he would have no chance to show the Deathblade troops, whose commander he knew well, how he had conquered. The others would overwhelm everything.

  "May his wife grow spines in her fur," said Hoch quietly.

  "If only it were possible," Vokrais said, enjoying the idea.

  "So we have to wait around for them all to land—assuming those incompetents can actually land on the test cradles—and get inside? Just stand here like targets?"

  "He would not be ill-pleased if any of these people did kill us—greedy swine. We shall be extremely careful, packsecond. There is no reason, with so many eager to find loot, for us to take risks."

  Hoch chuckled. "Perhaps we might even disappear?"

  "Not that, I think. After all, our people are in charge on the bridge. Perhaps we should go back and be sure they know who's being so helpful." Assassination on a mission was unusual, but not unheard of, and Vokrais felt in the mood to kill someone. "Let these people find their own way in; it will be good practice for them. Not all boardings are unopposed."

  * * *

  Esmay had just made it back to T-3 when she was called to one of the communications nodes.

  "I hear we're about to be trapped in here," Seska said, sounding angry.

  "Not for long," Esmay said. "We're going to take the ship behind you, and the one coming in to the T-4 test cradle. As soon as we're clear, they'll warp Wraith out."

  "Better odds," Seska said, sounding slightly less angry. "Save me one, why don't you? I presume you'll be taking one of them yourself?"

  "Yes—the one behind you; Commander Bowry's already got his crew over in T-4."

  "Who's going to take the one that's docked? Or were you going to leave that one where it is?"

  "Leave it—we don't have the crew."

  "And I presume you have a plan to get to the test cradle and board? What if they dump their troops and take off again?"

  "In that case, you're not blocked, and Bowry can take the ship of theirs that's in T-4. But what we hear through their transmissions is that they're planning to stay awhile—it's made the commando leader mad—he thinks they're stealing his glory."

  "Good. And good luck, Lieutenant."

  Esmay went back to the command center set up in the 14th's headquarters area.

  "I've got a list of volunteers for your crew, Lieutenant," said Commander Jarles. "You seem to be quite popular." She wasn't sure if this was sarcasm or honest surprise. "They're sorted by specialty, then rank-ordered by those with experience in ships similar to the enemy's. I told them to wait for you in R-17."

  "That's wonderful, sir." It was indeed; the only problem was knowing how many she should take.

  "We've got a link now to the other wings. One of the instructors over in Admiral Livadhi's command has done a tactical analysis—he suggests—"

  An alarm went off.

  "They're going through somewhere!" Esmay said.

  "They're not even off that ship yet," said Commander Palas. "We've been watching."

  "Then it's the others—the original intruders. But why? And where?"

  "Warn the bridge," Jarles said. "That'll be where they're going—they may not know we've taken it back. Lieutenant Suiza, pick your crew and get in position—I think we can ignore that tactical analysis."

  Esmay took the list and looked at it on her way down to R-17. Petty-major Simkins, Drives and Maneuver, had operated the commercial equivalent of the Bloodhorde hulls during the three years he'd tried making it in the civilian world. Two others had less, but some, experience with those ships. Scan—she hoped they'd be able to take some of their own aboard, or tight-link to Koskiusko's bridge. No one had a lot of relevant experience, but there was a pivot-major, Lucien Patel, that the entire Remote Sensing unit thought was another Koutsoudas. Worth a try, anyway. For backup in scan, she picked the one person with recent combat experience, and another because he had both commercial and military background. Communications, that was critical . . . that one, and that one, and a backup. Environmental she wouldn't worry about—they'd fight in their suits, and either win this in a hurry or die in a hurry. Weapons—she really needed good weapons people. There were five that seemed to stand out from the rest of the list.

  When she got to the meeting place, she was startled by their response—the swift approving murmur, the eagerness on their faces. They looked at her as if she could make this mad enterprise easy. She felt her own heart lift, and gave them back the grin they seemed to be waiting for.

  "Told you," she heard someone say. "She's got a plan."

  Not yet, she didn't, but she did have a crew list. She read it out, and those named came forward; others looked disappointed.

  "Can't you use a few more?" asked a burly sergeant who looked vaguely familiar. "If there's someone aboard, if there's a fight. I've won my share of barroom brawls."

  Extras with that attitude couldn't hurt. Esmay nodded, and another half-dozen clustered around. Others lingered, but didn't come forward.

  "The rest of you—if you haven't heard, some of the original intruders have gone back into the rest of the ship. And there are plenty of troops coming in. I'm sure you can think of something appropriate to do. The plans we had for dealing with the troops aboard one Bloodhorde ship now need to work for three times that number."

  The really worrisome problem was how to get to the drives test cradles unobserved. Both repair bays were now open and floodlit, so that any movement across the gap might be seen . . . would be seen if the Bloodhorde were looking for it. Even though she and Bowry both had guides—specialists who were test cradle supervisors—so that they could approach the keel of the test cr
adle rather than its upper deck where ships rested—they would be in sight of anyone watching from the repair bays for part of the distance. Esmay did not want to trust that no one would glance over and notice a string of EVA suits going the wrong direction.

  "We need something else to get their attention," Esmay said. "More smoke-and-mirrors, like we used to get the intruders well into T-4, but big enough to enthrall however many of them come out."

  "If we turned the lights out, they couldn't see you as well."

  "Not at first, but they probably have lights of their own. They'll be expecting something . . ."

  "We're supposed to have been partially disabled . . . what if our lights go off, then flicker back on? If they've got those fancy faceplates on their helmets, that'll give 'em fits."

  "I'll bet we can look really inept," someone else said. "Fluctuations in the artificial gravity, flickering lights—it could seem like the power's out of control."

  "But not until we're on our way," Esmay said. "And that means after most of them are off the test cradles—the timing's going to be tight."

  "Trust us, Lieutenant," said one of the people she had not picked for her crew. "We're trusting you."

  Good point. Esmay nodded at her. "Fine—I'll leave it to you, then. Come on, folks—let's get suited up and see about wiping out a Bloodhorde battle group, or whatever they call themselves."

  The Bloodhorde ships disgorged EVA-suited figures in clumps that reminded Esmay of strings of frog spawn in the lily ponds back home. Little shiny blobs, two and three together, silvery in the light from the repair bay. They kept coming and kept coming, more than Esmay would have thought would fit in such a small ship.

  "Do they know how visible they are?"

  "Probably. It helps them find each other, after all . . . though I don't know if other ships they attack have so much light outside. Why would they? It's depressing to think how visible we're going to be." EVA suits were intended to be seen; it was a safety feature.

  "Too bad we didn't think to spray ourselves matte black or something."

  Her gaze fell on the rolls of sheathing for Wraith's denuded flanks. "The skin."

  "What?"

  "The sheathing . . . those rolls . . . they wouldn't shine . . . If only we'd thought of that earlier. But now they'd see us if we tried to use them."

  "It's easy enough to peel off the hull," said one of the techs. "Just takes a sonic generator set at the right frequency, depolymerize the adhesive. What were you thinking, wrap it around you? It's not that flexible."

  "How flexible is it?"

  "It'd make a roll about this big—" The man held out his arms.

  "In other words, several of us would fit into it, in our suits?"

  "Oh, sure."

  "Would it be any good against scans?"

  "Most of 'em, certainly, small as you'd be."

  But they had no time; it could take an hour to cut and roll enough tubes, and they didn't have an hour. Esmay put that out of her mind and said, "What else might give us some cover?"

  "Well—we can't use the high-speed sprayers in the repair bays, 'cause they'd see it, and besides that's part of the plan—" Esmay wondered what plan, but didn't interrupt to ask. "But there's the little hand sprayers in the Small Parts Coating workbay."

  One of the EVA suit techs shot down that idea—paint might eat through the fabric, and they had no time to experiment—so they'd prepared to go as they were, silvery suits and all, when one of the cooks' assistants came running up with an armload of dark green waste sacks.

  "We'll look like a row of green peas," muttered Arramanche.

  "Better than silver beads," Esmay said. "At least they're dark, and not shiny."

  Ahead of her, the base of the test cradle loomed, clearly visible in light from the repair bay. Visible too was their shadow, enlarging as they neared. In its center was the little red blinking dot of the rangefinder on her helmet, giving her the distance and rate of approach.

  "Now," said Esmay. The lights went out; she had only her helmet readout to go on, and a single chance to make any adjustments that had to be made. But presumably the Bloodhorde attackers would be startled by the change in light—they'd be looking for people in the repair bays, where they were. Seb Coron had told her about night fighting, that no one could resist looking to see where a light had just come on, or gone out.

  Nearer—five meters . . . four . . . she pushed the makeshift control and a little jet of gas spewed out; she felt the shove as if the ones behind her were leaning on her back. Three meters . . . a very slow progression to two, then one, then she tucked her head, rolled, and felt her boots thud on the hull; her knees took up the impact easily.

  The base of the drives test cradle was a maze of cables and attachments, but the test cradle supervisor they'd found knew where the nearest hatch was. Once inside, they rose through the shaft with only short tugs on the line. Then they were at the upper hatch, and Esmay peered through . . . there was the Bloodhorde ship, an angular dark bulk against the starfield. She couldn't tell if it was occupied, not until she had the instruments in the test cradle up and running. That was a job for the supervisor, who grunted and fumbled around for a moment. Then—

  "It's got active scan leaking all over it," he said. "Can't do much without them noticing. Good thing is, with them putting out that much, they're not likely to notice anything we put on the cable. Want me to signal Kos?"

  "Yes."

  In moments the signal came back: their arrival had been logged, and they were waiting for Bowry's report from the other test cradle. Esmay reminded herself that his team had had longer to travel, that they had crossed below the line of the Bloodhorde troops coming in. Then, when she thought she couldn't wait another moment, the signal came.

  "Ready?"

  "Go." This was only one tricky bit in the many tricky bits of the plan. Keeping it simple had not been an option. They needed to focus Bloodhorde attention on the repair bays, away from the assault teams who were after Bloodhorde ships. What they had to work with was more in the nature of handwaving and colored smokes than real weaponry or the skill to use it—but to the repair crews of a DSR, handwaving and colored smokes were second nature. Esmay didn't know what they were going to do, only that it would occur in sixty-second bursts of maximum distraction. They hoped.

  The first of the Bloodhorde reinforcements had made it to the cradles when the lights went out. They cursed the stupid Familias sods who had not the sense to surrender without playing childish tricks, and turned on their own searchlights. The beams made harsh moving shadows of the construction machinery, the cradle supports, grapple housings, gantries and the robotics that sprouted on them like barnacles on a dock. In the vacuum of the open repair bays, the laser rangefinders left no trace; the first victims didn't even see the little colored dots on their suits for squinting into that mass of bright lights and shifting shadows. More curses in the headphones, but they knew how to deal with this kind of resistance. It was tricky, with their own ship now moored in T-4, but they lobbed in some of the little mines called bouncers, and waited until three or four of them had blown up. They had proximity fuses, but would recognize patches on Bloodhorde EVA suits, which made them only very dangerous to play with.

  They came on, alert for any more direct resistance. A hundred more had made it alongside their own ship, alongside Wraith, when the lights came back on, flickered on and off several times, and then went out again. Helmet filters darkened, oscillated in response to the rapid changes, and finally cleared as the darkness came back. Again their own lights probed the darkness, and they remembered the confusion they'd seen. They were not novices, to be put off by such basic ploys. They didn't bunch up; they moved along in a disciplined skirmish line, until their forward elements reached the airlock at the hub end of the repair bay.

  Then the big robotic sprayers, which had slid down the gantries centimeter by centimeter in the light, dropping meters whenever the lights weren't on them, rotated, aimed . . . an
d fired thick yellow liquid at them. It dispersed to a fine spray in the vacuum, a spray that adhered with equal rapidity to their suits, including the helmet viewplates.

  Not all of them got a full dose. Some, near the nozzles, were physically thrown off their feet by the force of the spray, and of those a few managed to curl protectively into balls, so their helmet faceplates weren't entirely obscured. But it took a critical few moments to realize what had happened, and its effect. In those few moments, their formation disintegrated. A few battered and blundered their way to airlocks. But the rest were blind, their external sensors clogged with spray, in some cases stuck fast to the deck by having unfortunately stepped on a coat of spray before it set completely.

  The suits were powered; they could pull free. But they couldn't see; they couldn't get the paint off with gloved hands . . . in fact, though they didn't know it, they'd have needed an unusual solvent to remove the paint without eating through the faceplate.

  * * *

  "They're wrathy," said one of those who could understand the language coming out of those suit radios. "They're cursing the name and the war clan of someone named Vokrais." Down on the deck of the repair bay, the brilliant yellow suits seemed almost to glow in the shadowy areas. Evidently those mixing the paint had added reflectants and fluorescents to it.

  "Good. How many of them did the trap miss?"

  The external vidscans, hastily rigged a few hours before to cover areas not usually monitored, showed several clusters of Bloodhorde invaders around the outer edges of the repair bays.

  "Perhaps fifty—a hundred—"

  "Let's keep them occupied." The sprayers lifted much faster than they'd come down, the beaked nozzles rotating inward. Other machinery shifted up and down, back and forth, in an elaborate dance intended to look vaguely menacing. Would that keep the attention of the Bloodhorde from what was happening behind them? One enterprising operator detached one of the sprayers from its usual mounting, and sent it toward the repair bay opening, as if in search of more troops to spray. He ran it out on a boom, its nozzle swinging threateningly from side to side, and watched on the vidscan as the Bloodhorde troops shifted uneasily on their lines. One of them raised a weapon . . . and let off a triumphant screech of Bloodhorde when his shot holed the paint reservoir.