Was Once a Hero

chapter Nine





“Ready?” he asked Shasti as he tightened the straps on his helmet.

“Always,” she replied.

Fenaday pulled back on the stick and the Wildcat fighter lifted from Sidhe’s main shuttle bay. He deftly piloted the fighter out the pressure doors midway up on the frigate’s blood-red hull then rolled the Wildcat on her side. Fenaday looked back at the ship where he’d spent the last few years and felt a pang. Sidhe was the closest thing he had left to a home. The frigate floated above him, beautifully lit by Mur’s starlight. Right now, with Enshar so close, he wished himself safely back aboard her.

“Perez to Fenaday.”

He keyed open the mike. “Fenaday here.”

“Communication check.”

“I read you five by five, Sidhe. Scramblers on, we should be secure.” He’d left the engineer in command. Perez was not trained to navigate a ship but Fenaday considered him more reliable than the inexperienced Micetich. In any event, he’d taken the precaution of locking the ship’s computers with codes to prevent anyone from taking Sidhe out of orbit for several weeks.

“Telisan to Fenaday, checking in.”

“Read you, Telisan,” he said, concentrating on the entry window for the dead world below them. He planned a steep and fast approach.

“He must be a good formation flyer,” Shasti said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked absently.

“Because I can see the color of his eyes from here, kind of a yellow gold,” she said.

Fenaday looked over his shoulder at his wingman. “Eek.”

Shasti was slightly exaggerating, very slightly. There was at least a five-meter separation.

“Fenaday to Telisan.”

“Read you.”

“I’m not used to being much closer than a few kilometers to another object in space. Much as I appreciate the company, how about one hundred meters separation?”

The Denlenn’s laugh sounded over the headset. “One hundred meters? I’ll have to fail you out of flight school. Why, we are so far apart now, I am deprived of much of the view of the beautiful Shasti Rainhell. Still, I swore an oath to obey you, so one hundred meters it is. I only hope that no one I know sees me in such a sloppy formation.” Telisan’s fighter slid smoothly out of view.

“Is everyone enjoying this trip but me?” Fenaday muttered.

“I could use more leg room,” Shasti said.

“You can keep quiet,” he snapped back. “You should be safely back on Sidhe.”

“I am where I chose to be,” she replied unperturbed. “There is little point running from death. It finds you anyway.”

“If I had my choice,” Fenaday said, “death would have to spend a good deal of time looking and wear out a few sets of boots chasing.”

Telemetry from the frigate showed their fighters on course for the landing window. Fenaday engaged his heat shield, watching it slide over the canopy. He readied the fighter for atmospheric entry. With her nose pointed toward Enshar, the Wildcat began to heat from atmospheric friction. Communications cut out due to interference. They slipped into the quiet time of entry. Whatever happened now would be known only to them.

They rode down in silence and the increasing heat that the fighter’s life support could not entirely dispel. Finally, the temperature began to lessen, and the canopy automatically retracted. They’d entered the ionosphere of Enshar about one hundred and twenty kilometers up. The fighter’s nose lost its cherry glow as its super-conducting material shed heat. They coasted high in the clear sky, still a midnight blue due to the nearness of space. Fenaday had timed their landing for ten minutes after sunrise at Gigor. They were coming in from the west, so the land below them lay shrouded in darkness.

“Fenaday to Telisan, status?”

“All in order.”

“Fenaday to Perez. Any reaction to our entry?”

“Negative and you are well below the height at which Flamme was destroyed. So far, so good, Captain.”

They continued their downward path. As they came into thicker atmosphere, the shuttles began to cut silver contrails through the starlit sky. Fenaday smiled as he looked back at his wingman. Telisan’s Wildcat looked brave, riding its contrail. A last moment of beauty to take with him if they were struck down.

*****

Thousands of feet below the Wildcats lay the tiny, desolate remnants of a farmhouse in the town of Smarr. The night lay cool and still. Suddenly on the edge of the field, dust, twigs and leaves stirred as if in a storm. For only a second, the whirling debris formed a shape. The shape faced heavenward, as if looking at the contrails. Then it dissipated, as if it had never been. There was not a breath of wind in the night. All returned to stillness.

Traveling eastward, the fighters raced over the horizon.

*****

“There’s Gigor,” Fenaday said. The sun cleared the horizon and its rays lit the tops of trees and buildings, leaving the field still cloaked in purple shadow. He heard Shasti’s seat creak as she leaned forward to look beyond the backrest of his seat. Fenaday put the Wildcat in a slow circle at a height of four hundred meters. Shasti and he looked out at the devastated base. Gigor base extended for tens of kilometers. The beige and yellow Enshari buildings in the distance had the squat and unlovely utilitarian look favored by governments. Beyond them, toward the city proper lay the domes and half-domes preferred by the Enshari. Shattered glass in those buildings splintered and threw back the sunlight.

“Looks worse than it did from orbit,” she said.

“Yeah,” Fenaday said. “No question that the base was attacked. By what I can’t imagine, the pattern of destruction doesn’t resemble that from an airburst nuclear weapon. Nothing else I know of—not even a mass driver—creates destruction like this.”

“Only a few military spaceships were based at Gigor,” Shasti said. “Most Navy traffic used the port at the capital city of Barjan.”

Fenaday pointed. “There’s the Navy area. It’s completely destroyed.” They had seen all this from orbit, but it lacked the effect of viewing it with their own eyes.

“Notice something?” asked Shasti.

“Yeah,” Fenaday replied. “Those shuttles on the apron look like they were cut down by a laser fired from ground level. See that neat slice on the metal of that green and white hospital shuttle? It’s cut almost in half. Whatever it was started striking the ground at a low angle, bubbling the apron.”

“Energy weapons don’t work that way,” Shasti said. “Why use massive quantities of power to cut metal when a kinetic weapon does it cheaper and faster? Lasers are for burning flesh, starting fires and damaging sensitive instruments—-”

“These are a few of your favorite things,” Fenaday murmured.

Shasti ignored the comment, “Well, this isn’t Conchirri work. If they had energy weapons like this, we would all be dinner.”

Fenaday brought the Wildcat to a hover near the edge of the apron close to the barracks. The sun had risen enough to light the field. A brilliant, dark-blue ground cover, reminiscent of pansies, dotted some of the nearby tarmac.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said tightly. “Are you ready, Shasti?”

“Locked and loaded,” she said, putting her tri-auto in her lap.

“Telisan, this is Fenaday. I’m going in. Keep circling. If anything happens, run for it. That is an order.”

“Of course,” replied Telisan. The Denlenn’s easy answer made Fenaday suspect Telisan was simply humoring him.

“Fenaday to Sidhe, we are landing.”

The fighter landed smoothly, blowing dust and debris away from the Wildcat. Fenaday throttled back the engines, but didn’t cut them off. He kept the HOTAS stick, which controlled thrust and weapons, in his right hand. Fenaday looked to starboard, Shasti to port. The fighter’s swivel-mounted guns followed the motion of his eyes. The Confed shuttles from the first expedition landed only sixty-three seconds before being overwhelmed by whatever killed their crews. Fenaday didn’t look at the clock. He scanned every shadow, dreading the sight of a dust cloud similar to the one that enveloped the Confederate shuttles three years ago. Telisan circled above, equally vigilant.

From Perez’ station aboard Sidhe, the engineer announced, “Thirty seconds.”

Fenaday kept his eyes on the ground. His heart pounded and his mouth felt dry. “Nothing in sight,” he reported. To his own surprise, his voice sounded calm.

“All clear here,” Shasti said. She didn’t even have the grace to sound concerned.

“Same,” Telisan reported. “Nothing on motion sensors.”

“Forty-five seconds.”

For an instant, Fenaday thought about saying something to Shasti, something about the night before. He snapped a quick glance into the one of the mirrors. She stared out the canopy, catlike, intent, totally focused on here and now.

He returned his attention to the field.

“Sixty seconds.”

Fenaday held his breath, his finger on the trigger.

“Seventy seconds, Captain. Congratulations on a new world record.”

The breath left his body in a whoosh.

“Okay,” he said, voice shaking slightly. “I’m heading into overheat, initiating engine shutdown.

“Telisan, keep circling. Perez, start the shuttles down. Tell Karass he is to abort if at any time we lose contact before landing.”

“Pop the canopy,” Shasti said. “I’d like to breathe some fresh air.”

Fenaday hit the release, and the canopy whirred upward and back. He unbelted, then removed the bulky flight helmet and stood in the cockpit of the fighter, drawing his laser pistol. A breeze blew across the ruined spacefield. It felt wonderful, sifting through the flight suit to reveal that he’d been sweating. The wind also brought the sounds of trees and leaves but nothing that spoke of animal life.

He stretched stiff muscles. Mur climbed overhead into a partly clouded sky, its light still stronger than Sol’s. Fenaday put on an unbreakable shooting visor and a ship’s cap. Shasti did not need a visor; her eyes could cope with greater extremes.

The first thing that hits you on an alien world, he thought, are smells. Not because they are alien, but because they are absent from ship air. Enshar smelled like trees, rain and dirt. Brilliant, lush green foliage edged the spacefield. The soil, what he could see of it, looked rather ordinary—if somewhat dark—compared to the brilliant vegetation in the distance. The apron of the field near the Wildcat seemed in reasonably good condition.

Sidhe’s shuttles wouldn’t arrive until they could line up on their own entry window, hours from now. Fenaday thought about staying in the fighter, waiting on the shuttles with their equipment and people to arrive. He also thought of other things. For the last few years he had shipped with people who did not mean a damn to him. The universe would generally be better off without most of his crews.

It’s different now, he thought. Sidhe had accumulated some regulars he cared about. While he still hated Mandela’s guts, the people the spymaster sent were good people, particularly Dr. Mourner and her team. Fenaday went first because Mandela did not trust him. Telisan came for honor. As to Shasti, only she knew her reasons.

Time to act like a real captain.

“Sidhe,” Fenaday said, “we are going to scout around some. I don’t want my people walking into a trap.”

“Sidhe to Fenaday, recommend you wait for the shuttles,” Perez said.

“Negative. I have over one hundred people inbound. If there’s a trap here, I don’t want it to spring on all of us.”

“Good for you,” came Telisan’s voice. “Permission to land and accompany you. I can do nothing up here in the sky if you go inside. Three guns are better than two.”

“Permission granted,” said Fenaday. He and Shasti climbed out of the fighter using the kick-ins and dropping the last meter to the ground.

The Denlenn handled the fighter like a featherweight pleasure craft. He eased down within a few meters of Fenaday. Back blast from the VTOL fighter lifted Shasti’s hair. She scowled and pulled out a bandanna to tie it back. “Showoff,” she said.

Telisan popped his hatch, leaping lightly from the fighter. Fenaday’s knees ached just watching him land. “Showoff,” he agreed.

The Denlenn strode up in good humor. “We are on Enshar and alive. Another glorious day in the Corps, as you humans say.”

“What do you want to check out first?” Shasti asked, looking about alertly.

“Those barracks are the nearest. Let’s do those first.” Fenaday turned, hitting the access panel on his Wildcat, which opened to a compartment holding a tri-auto carbine and some canteens. Telisan returned to his fighter, drawing out a similar weapon.

“Set them for AP bullets,” Shasti said. “We don’t want to use mini-grenades inside an enclosed space, and the flash of the particle beams can dazzle your low-light vision. It will be dark inside there.”

Fenaday nodded but noticed that Shasti left her selector on full auto. She probably just regards Telisan and me as liabilities now that we’re down. Of course, she’s probably right.

Everyone took a sip from the canteens, and they started toward the barracks. Their feet crunched on wind-blown grit and minor debris. They spread out, but as they had no cover, they just walked up, weapons covering windows and doors.

Up close they could see the signs of damages on the barracks structure. Most of the windows were broken and doors hung ajar. Just as they reached the building, something black lunged into the air over them. Instantly, they dropped to their knees, weapons snapping up. With a beating of wings, three bird-like creatures climbed into the sky.

“Damn,” Fenaday said, his heart beating furiously.

“Sidhe to Fenaday,” called Perez, into their light headsets. “You gave us a bit of a scare there. We’re going to lose you as you go inside. It will be voice only.”

“Acknowledged.”

“A good point to remember,” Shasti said. “This planet has gone back to the wild. The buildings are probably great denning sites for predators.”

“It would be a bit of an anti-climax to come all this way, through all this, to be eaten by the local equivalent of a bear,” Fenaday said. “Okay, let’s go in slowly and carefully.”

They reached the nearest door. While the Enshari were a small race, they were part of the Confederacy of Seven Species, with military and port facilities designed to Confed standard. Ceilings would be somewhat low, the doors small, but manageable. Shasti leaned past Fenaday before he could stick his head in, so he ended up covering her. They slid through the doorway into a corridor. There they saw the first bodies, or rather, pieces of bodies.

“We see bones in the corridor,” Fenaday reported. “There’s adequate light from some panels on the ceiling, so we haven’t needed torches yet. Be damned if I know what’s powering them.”

“These bones are chewed,” Shasti added, “probably by local animal life scavenging after the massacre.”

Fenaday thought of the gruesome, planet-wide feast that must have taken place in the days after the disaster and shuddered.

“Proceeding down the corridor,” he added. “If this is like most barracks, we will be in the main bunkroom shortly.”

The main bunkroom sat at the end of the corridor. Bunks lay strewn all over the place, lockers had been torn off walls. Equipment and bones lay everywhere. If some giant had taken a big spoon and stirred the room, it might have looked like this.

“What in the gods’ names happened here?” Telisan wondered, casting about with his torch. “More scavengers?”

“Big ones, maybe,” said Fenaday doubtfully. He reported the sight to the ship. Telisan began filming with a small video.

“Don’t do too much of that,” Shasti warned. “Keep your eyes on the area.” The Denlenn nodded, putting up the camera.

They moved through the building, up the stairs. Their hand torches lit places where daylight didn’t penetrate. Sometimes a torch reflected off Telisan’s cat-like eyes. A major disadvantage in a night fight, thought Fenaday, and unnerving in itself.

Fenaday jumped as he heard rustling and the scamper of small feet. Something small, fast and brown raced away from them through piles of paper and debris.

“Local equivalent of a rat,” Shasti said.

“Most of the larger animals probably fled the noise of the fighters,” Telisan said, lowering his weapon.

“Perhaps,” Shasti said. “Count on nothing.” Trailing her, they started forward again.

Everywhere that they found corpses, they saw the same sight, as if each room had been turned upside down and shaken.

In the non-coms quarters they discovered a new piece of the puzzle. The walls showed scorch marks and spalling from weapon fire. The bodies in that room were more intact. Behind a bunk frame that had been dumped on its side, they found the desiccated corpse of an Enshar trooper. Shreds of uniform still showed on the gnawed body and its bony hand clutched a standard-issue pistol. The Enshari had obviously jumped behind the bed for cover before being killed.

“Well, Sarge, at least you got a shot off,” Fenaday said. “I don’t know if it did any good, but well done anyway.” He looked around and found a dusty, chewed blanket and gently covered the body with it.

They stalked the halls into another barracks. This one was even more thoroughly wrecked, with walls bowed out from some form of pressure. Shattered pipes still leaked water onto the floors. In places it cascaded down in small waterfalls that had eroded the walls and created mold gardens. They stepped carefully to avoid bones and debris. They took a dank corridor to the left, splashing through foul-smelling, ankle-deep water. At its end they found a gymnasium. Again, Fenaday’s chief impression was that the space had been stirred with a stick. The room was a maze of torn-up chairs and fragmented skeletons. A game must have been going on when disaster struck.

They spread apart, facing outward. Fenaday caught sudden movement from the corner of his eye. On the second level, part of a stack of debris tilted forward.

“Shasti!” he barked. He swung his tri-auto up and peppered the area, aiming at a hint of a figure behind the stack. Shasti leapt away from the danger as the detritus smashed into the floor.

“Fenaday,” Perez shouted from the Sidhe, “what’s happening?”

Their eyes and torches searched the area of the slide. Nothing. Perez voice became shrill with panic as he called to them.

“Take it easy,” Fenaday said, with a calm he didn’t feel. “Some stuff came down that’s all. Junk fell. We are OK.”

“I would have sworn,” Telisan said, his cat’s eyes at their widest, “I saw a figure up there, only a shadow, but something.”

“Yeah, me too,” Fenaday said, “after the stuff started coming down. That’s why I opened up. Shasti, did you see anything?”

“No,” she replied, scanning the dark reaches of the building. “I was too busy getting out of the way.”

They mounted the stairs to the area of the fall, weapons leveled. There was nothing, only more debris. Shasti checked the dust for tracks and found none.

“That pile sat still for over three years and came down just when you were under it,” said Fenaday slowly, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

“Vibration,” she speculated, “our voices or footsteps perhaps. Yet, both of you thought you saw something. Still, I can find no track of anything up here.”

“Let’s get back to the fighters,” Fenaday decided. “We’ve pushed our luck enough for today.”

They made their way to the nearest exit, carefully covering one another. With their investigation complete for now, Fenaday felt no need to go back through all the buildings. Shasti shattered a recalcitrant door lock with a kick, and they fled into the open air. They trotted back toward the fighters. Once out under the bright sun of Enshar, it was easier to accept the incident as nerves and vibration. Yet, in Fenaday’s mind lingered a fragment of an image, difficult for him to dismiss.

Perez raised them as soon as they stepped into the open. “Nice to have you back out under the ship’s cameras,” the engineer said. “The shuttles are only five minutes out from your location.”

“Acknowledged,” Fenaday said.

The breeze blew more stiffly now and clouds piled in the distance. Fenaday frowned. There had been no forecast of storms in the intelligence report. Still, he heard a rumble of thunder.

“Wish I had a job where I could be wrong forty percent of the time,” Shasti said, looking at the sky.

“There they are,” Telisan said, pointing.

The three shuttles, painted the same Guard’s Red as the Sidhe, came in slowly, in formation, dropping onto the tarmac near the fighters. Ramps opened. Mmok’s robots, HCRs and crabs, poured out to take defensive positions, followed by the LEAFs and ASATs. Shasti’s small trouble team formed a circle around Duna, Mourner and her people as the scientists and doctors came out of the shuttles. The relief pilots, there to take the fighters back to the frigate, walked over to the nearby Wildcats and began preflighting them.

Fenaday, Shasti and Telisan trudged toward the arrivals. Belwin Duna had not gotten far from the shuttle. The little Enshari crouched, hands on the ground. They hurried over, Telisan in the lead, fearing the old scholar ill, but it was contact with his homeworld that overcame Duna.

“Ah, Enshar,” said Duna, as if addressing the planet, “I am here. Somehow, I will lead your children back to you.” His small, furry hands caressed the tarmac. Fenaday looked away, embarrassed. He remembered the conversation in the bar. It seemed an age ago. Without Enshar, Duna said, there would be no Enshari. Seeing him now, Fenaday believed it was true. They needed their homeworld on a deep, biological level.

Rigg and Mmok walked up to Fenaday and Shasti. “Orders?” Rigg asked.

Fenaday gestured with his head toward Shasti.

“The tarmac won’t allow us to dig in,” she said. “I want a portable fence barrier constructed. Set the electrical current at lethal levels for Conchirri. Make sure the scientists know the monofilament wire will cut skin at a touch and is difficult to see.”

“We could leave the light source in the wires on active,” Rigg said. “You can see it even in daylight.”

“Agreed.

“Mmok,” she continued, “put your crab robots on the perimeter. I’ll keep gunners constantly manning the top turrets in the shuttles. You and your HCRs can escort the scientific party as soon as they unpack the motorized mules from the shuttles.”

Rigg saluted and left. Mmok grunted and followed him.

The sky clouded, but the rain held off as the science teams investigated Gigor. Duna and Mourner sampled and analyzed, visiting the destroyed ships and barracks buildings as engineers tried to revive some of the port’s computers. Despite their efforts they learned little. A concentrated force had struck the ships and shuttles at the center of the base, though it appeared not to have been in a form of an energy beam. Gigor showed evidence of seismic shock in some areas and none in others. Often, they encountered what they began calling “the stirred effect.”

As night fell, so did the weather. A furious lightning storm broke over the field. Everyone retreated to the shuttles, save for Landing Force Troops on guard duty. They sat in the mules, which were grounded by their tires, putting up the plastic tops that gave only an illusion of shelter. Guards in ponchos cursed their commanders for not simply relying on Mmok. The robots were capable of grounding themselves and stood indifferent to the storm. The torrent blew out quickly, as if it had spent its strength. Half an hour after it began, the stars came out.

Fenaday ordered everyone not on guard back into the shuttles. It was tight but manageable with mules and other equipment off-loaded. Beyond Duna, no one felt much like sleeping out under the stars. Enshar’s animal life, especially the birds, manifested itself more with the setting of the sun. The robots and the gunners loaded infra-red prints of the native life in their weapon computers. It was probably the only way anybody would get any sleep. Nervous snipers, he did not need.

Fenaday sat with Shasti and Telisan in the left side hatchway of the shuttle Pooka, each too keyed up from the day’s events to sleep yet. They kept their weapons with them, but nothing seemed threatening. The light element in the barrier wire made a delicate tracery of white light around their perimeter. It would make a perfect beacon had someone tried to range on them with a mortar, but as yet there had been no sign of any conventional enemy on Enshar.

“I didn’t think I would be looking at stars tonight,” Fenaday said quietly.

“We are okay so far,” Shasti replied, “though no closer to finding any answer as to what happened and why. The scientists have been unable to find a computer with any useful information in it. They’re shorted electrically, damaged by electromagnetic pulse, deteriorated due to lack of care, or simply show nothing useful.”

“Still,” Telisan said, optimistic as ever, “we are alive and nothing has menaced us other than the weather.”

Fenaday shook his head. “Until we know what happened and why, no one dares bring the few remaining Enshari or anyone else back here. Our contract with you says we stay till Duna finds the answer or gives up. Who is to say what will happen tomorrow?”

“You are,” Shasti answered. “What does happen tomorrow?”

“The science team recommends we check out the Earhart shuttles,” he replied. “After that, Duna wants to stop at his home. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“Well, since I have the early morning watch,” Telisan said, “I am going to get some sleep. Wake me if the world decides to end first.”

Fenaday smiled at the retreating Denlenn. Shasti nodded pleasantly. She appeared to accept Telisan as a companion now, but Fenaday couldn’t help but wonder if Mandela was right about her being capable of sabotaging a shuttle with Telisan and Duna aboard.

“That’s probably a good idea,” she said. “Why don’t you do the same? I’ll take the first watch. I want to get something else to eat any way.”

“That reminds me,” he said, with a smile. Reaching into the pocket of his flight suit, Fenaday pulled out a large chocolate bar. “It’s broken, I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” she said, snatching it out of his hands, “it will taste just as good. I thought you were sure we would be dead after we landed?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what scared me more, Enshar, or being down on Enshar with you, without chocolate.”

“Is there more?” she asked suspiciously.

“We’ll see,” he replied. “Good night.” Fenaday’s bunk was just inside the hatchway. He fell asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.