Was Once a Hero

chapter One



“You drive a hard bargain,” Gianni Martini said. His elegant face showed some of the strain of the marathon session.

Shasti Rainhell ignored the arms merchant’s comment. She looked out from the balcony toward the skyline of Old London, her back to the buzz of the reception that the Martini-Henry Company had arranged in her honor. London’s restored beauty made little impression on the colonist, though it was thousands of years older than any human city she’d visited before. Shasti had come to buy weapons for the re-established Shamrock line of New Eire. The war with the Conchirri might be over, but space remained far from safe.

“I take it that we have a deal then,” she said. “You’ll send the contract over to my hotel, and I will have our solicitors review it.”

Martini waved his arms in a grand gesture. “As you wish. Shall we have a drink to seal the bargain?” He gestured to a nearby waiter. The smartly dressed servant presented the platter of champagne with a flourish. Gianni plucked two tulip-shaped glasses. He presented one to her, looking up at her with a speculative gaze.

He wasn’t the only one. Even in cosmopolitan London, Shasti attracted attention. At six foot-nine, she towered over the partygoers. She was marginally aware of men staring at her with interest, captivated by her flawless ivory skin and jade-green eyes. Women also stared, though some of the looks held a touch of envy. In Olympian society, where genetic perfection was social status, Shasti was an aristocrat of the highest order, for all that she had lived as a hunted fugitive for most of her life.

Shasti took the glass and drank. Champagne was new to her life, though she could easily afford such luxury now. The success of the starship Sidhe’s desperate voyage to Enshar had made her wealthy. Money meant only two things to Shasti: security and independence.

“I’m not used to looking up at a woman. Are all Olympian colonists so tall?”

“We’re bred for size and strength,” she replied, knowing where the conversation was leading. Business was over. Gianni Martini was handsome, wealthy, powerful and he saw himself bedding her, adding to the long collection of women he’d doubtless had.

“And all so beautiful?” he asked.

Shasti controlled the stab of annoyance. Predictable, she thought. How many times have I heard the like from men? “Beauty is relative. Sometimes it’s even a weapon.” A gust of wind stirred her long black hair, and she closed the seal on the severe crimson jacket she wore.

“Thank you for the champagne,” she said. “Please send for my security.”

“What? You would deprive us of your company so soon?” Martini made a gesture of mock horror.

“Our business is concluded,” she said. “I have other things to accomplish for the Shamrock.”

“Ah, you mean for Robert Fenaday.”

Shasti’s jade-green eyes narrowed. She didn’t like the sound of his name on Martini’s lips.

Martini edged closer. “He is far away and he doesn’t own you.”

“It is as well for you that he is a long way away,” Shasti whispered. “And no one, no one owns me.”

Martini saw his hopes of an exotic conquest fade, and the pleasant mien slipped. A retort died on his lips as he looked into her eyes. Don’t push me, little man, she thought. I’ve killed more men than are in this building.

“The contracts will be in your suite by morning,” he said. “I’ll have my assistant attend to it.” He started to turn his back to her, but some instinct stopped him and he backed away carefully. Shasti laid down her empty glass and strode from the room, people spilling out of her way. A limousine, and her hired security, awaited her at the entranceway. In minutes she was back at the Dunhill hotel.

Hours later, Shasti stalked out of the quaint but expensive Dunhill, wandering through the streets of London, confused and angry. She knew she should have stayed in her secure hotel room preparing for the next day’s meetings. It would have been sensible, but after a few hours the room became oppressive, cage-like. Restlessness struck with full force and drove her into the streets.

Martini’s comment had pulled off a scab. Robert did not own her, but once she had been property, a human not selectively bred—but made. Her creator, Jalgren Pard, headed the House of Denshi Assassins on Olympia. In the labs of the Order of Geneticists, Pard fashioned the template that gave rise to Shasti’s existence. In designing her enhanced body, he endowed her with capabilities too near his own. The miscalculation nearly cost the master assassin his life when she escaped. She had lived free since, working on the wrong side of the law with the only talents she had.

Now, a Confederate pardon shielded her from all her past crimes and the law sided with her. Still, life remained dangerous for an enemy of the Denshi order.

I wonder what Robert is doing now, she thought. She pictured Fenaday, sturdy, shorter than her, as most men were. He was nearly ten years older with a pleasant if not handsome face with his dark-brown hair and green eyes.

They’d fought about their future the night before she left New Eire, a subject usually raised by him. Shasti rarely thought beyond the day, turning aside his attempts to do so. In truth she could not even form a picture of her future life; it was so far out of her experience. She found the closeness of their relationship alternately exhilarating and frightening. Pard had designed and raised her to need no one. Now she felt an absence. Letters and holo-messages from Fenaday helped, but they also emphasized the change in her. She felt incomplete and vulnerable in a way she couldn’t understand and wasn’t sure she could risk.

“No one owns me,” she said to herself. “No one.” She pushed thoughts of Robert and the disturbing complication of her feelings for him out of her mind. I belong to myself.

She passed the night as she had in her mercenary days, in darkened bars and clubs. Shasti drank excessively, seeking distraction, still moody and irritated, but she didn’t experiment with other drugs. Alcohol, her body could shrug off by an act of will and manipulated chemistry.

A woman approached her in a club, her long blonde hair spilling down her back. She was blue-eyed, lithe, with a well-toned body not much concealed by her dress.

“Hello,” she said, looking Shasti over in a fashion she usually received from men. Women had expressed such interests before. Shasti had never responded to it. This time she welcomed any distraction from her thoughts.

“Hello,” Shasti replied coolly.

“Ah,” the woman said. “I thought your voice would be lower. I like it this way. It’s musical.” She moved close to Shasti, brushing against her. Shasti quelled the urge to knock her flying. People did not casually touch her. “Buy you a drink? My name is Sandara.”

“I’ll buy,” Shasti replied. She wondered if the woman could be part of a trap, but Shasti was not known to be interested in women, making Sandara a poor choice for bait. It should be safe, perhaps even save her from her present mood.

A lot of drinks later they ended up at Sandara’s apartment. Shasti felt as drunk as she could remember being and willfully refused to use her body’s defenses to shed it. Shasti threw her jacket on the floor and, with Sandara’s eager help, quickly shed the rest of her clothes.

Sandara slipped out of what little she wore, then stepped back to look at Shasti. “My god, you have a fantastic body.”

“Quiet,” Shasti said. She leaned forward and swept the smaller woman to her, turning and pressing her to the wall. Her lips met Sandara’s full, sensuous ones.

“Easy, big girl,” Sandara said with a quick nervous laugh. “Not so rough, please.”

Shasti eased her grip on the smaller blonde, and Sandara’s smooth, taut, body slid down against her own. Shasti bent her head down, and Sandara’s eager tongue darted into her mouth as her hands roamed over Shasti’s body. Her legs came up to wrap around Shasti’s waist.

After a minute Shasti stopped, drawing a shaky breath. “Bedroom,” she demanded.

“Second door on the right,” Sandara gasped.

Shasti carried the slender woman toward the bedroom. Sandara laid her head on Shasti’s shoulder. Her long soft blonde hair mixed with Shasti’s own night black.

“You’re so strong,” Sandara whispered.

Shasti said nothing but tumbled them onto the huge bed she found inside the door, quieting Sandara with her mouth. She wanted neither to talk nor to think. She found her lips on the other woman’s small, firm breasts, so soft compared to a man’s. Fenaday’s chest hairs always tickled her nose when she did this. She thrust the errant thought aside. No thinking. She tried to lose herself in the other woman’s soft sighs of pleasure.

Her fingers explored Sandara’s taut, quivering body, followed by her tongue. She decided she must be doing it right as Sandara’s breath began to come shorter and shorter. Finally Sandara arched her back and cried out, her thighs clasping Shasti with startling strength.

Shasti rolled over and Sandara slid on top of her. “My turn,” she said with a mischievous grin. She kissed Shasti passionately, starting with her lips and drifting to her nipples, then lower.

Shasti shifted, wishing for Sandara to find the right spot, the place where Robert would touch her without being asked. She stroked Sandara’s head. If she didn’t slip her fingers through the long hair she could almost pretend it was him. Stop, she said to herself, concentrate.

It took some time, but fantasy and Sandara’s flicking tongue brought her to a small climax. It satisfied Sandara, who moved up to play more. Shasti went with it.

Sandara told her vividly what she wanted. Shasti’s hard body seemed to drive her wild. Well, thought Shasti, if I decide to do something besides killing people, I’ll have at least one other talent.

Eventually Sandara collapsed, exhausted. Shasti felt vaguely frustrated despite the other woman’s enthusiasm. At least the experiment confirmed her belief that she preferred men. She wondered if it was her genetic programming or her own desires shaping this.

Shasti showered and dressed quietly, but Sandara woke as she put on her shoes.

“Won’t you stay?” Sandara asked blinking sleep out of her eyes.

“No,” Shasti said. “I have work to do in the morning.”

“Please take my number,” Sandara asked, disappointment on her face. “Call me before you leave Earth. I’d love to see you again.”

Shasti took it to avoid argument. Clearing the door of the apartment, she threw the number away, dismissing Sandara from her mind.

A hangover couldn’t be as easily forgotten, even by her genetically engineered body. She’d allowed the alcohol in her blood too long. Still she detoxed faster than a standard human. A growing depression waited beyond the physical misery. As she walked back toward her hotel, it occurred to her what she done with Sandara was callous, even brutal, a symptom of the emotional deadness with which she struggled.

A final revelation lay beyond that one. Fenaday would be hurt if he knew. With that realization, she came face to face with what she had been avoiding. The reason for her restlessness, for the trip away from the comforts of his home on New Eire. She no longer belonged entirely to herself. The realization brought a stab of an old fear. Fenaday cared for her, maybe loved her, whatever that meant. He was not like her ex-husband, Jalgren Pard. Yet, the thought of any man having a hold on her opened old wounds. She wanted, needed, the closeness he offered, but the reflexive habits of a lifetime bound her.

Suddenly she felt a new emotion, shame. She should not have been with someone else. Created as property, Shasti would die before becoming chattel again, but standard humans made different claims on each other. They lost some freedoms, gaining new and different ones. The thought of the hurt Fenaday would feel gave her a strange, weak feeling. When she finally reached her own hotel, sleep eluded her. She sat by the window, watching the city lights, feeling more alien than ever. Hours later the sun came up, and she was no wiser for the vigil. Well, she thought, I can at least do what he sent me here for. Quickly, she dressed and summoned her security.

*****



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.