Hero! (30 page)

Silently she nodded, like a frightened child, and sat down at the board.

Putting her out of his mind, he set to work.

First he ran a quick scan of the grounds. The wounded were being brought in, and Blade was coping so far, snapping orders, wielding the system like an expert. That boy had promise.

There was Maeve, in the Great Hall, shouting down a hysterical female admiral. Excellent. The parking lot was being held against an angry, but so far nonviolent, group of boys, and two captains were organizing food in the kitchens.

Satisfied that his immediate responsibility, Valhal, was running smoothly, Vaun turned to external affairs. He discovered that Data Control had been coming on line for a few nanoseconds at a time and then crashing again. He thought about that…

“Archives. Isn’t there some regulation about field command when the C-in-C dies in action?”

The overworked system creaked for a moment, and then flashed up a text in the tank:
Para. 3-1a(1), Patrol Regulations 520.50
. Unchanged since the Faorian Civil War, centuries ago, but still in effect…Senior officer on location takes command. Which is what Vaun had thought. Good old Doggoth!—when it taught a boy, he stayed taught. He needed several minutes to prepare his move, but the next time Hiport came up it was rammed by a priority override invoking 520.50 and clearing everyone else off the system.

It worked.

He sat back and rubbed his eyes.

“Why are you grinning?” demanded a thin, scared voice.

He looked around at Feirn. “Am I?” He grinned more. “I suppose because I just got a promotion.”

“You did what?”

“I just appointed myself emperor of the planet.”

Nice.

“C
OMMODORE! COMMODORE PRIOR?”

That means him. He is Prior, here in Hiport. He is a commodore. The mudslug from the delta is a commodore now! People salute him. Highborn lieutenants and captains salute the mudslug from the delta.

Rank and power and authority, and people groveling.

He turns to the girl’s call, and something in his mind somersaults. Blue eyes, snub nose, big tits. Who is she? She knows him. So familiar! Memories…Prior’s memories. Prior knew this blond girl smiling so hopefully at him, Vaun. Prior laid her, and more than once. Name? Name!
Name!
…She’s not in uniform, so she’s probably some sort of flack or historian or something weird. Pretty face, fair hair swinging loose, blue eyes…and terrific pillow fodder, as Prior recalls for him. Greedy little wildcat.

Lots of girls will do almost anything for a commodore.

Name? Name!
Damn it, Prior, give me her name!

“Well! Hello, Gorgeous!”

“Commodore Prior, how wonderful to see you again!” She is smiling and laughing. Ooops…She obviously doesn’t want to be kissed, at least not here in a busy corridor. She backs off, alarmed. “It’s been weeks! Where in the galaxy have you
been
?” And adds quietly, “Oh, darling, how I’ve
missed
you!”

No wonder he collected this memory, then. It’s a current affair, and would have been near the surface. Prior always had at least three affairs on the go, the gnomes told him, and showed him sims, but this girl wasn’t one of them. Well, the next move is obvious.

“Oh, but I’ve missed you, too!”

Her blue eyes mist over. “Truly, darling? Oh, do you mean that?”

This looks very promising, provided he can discover her name. Of course Maeve will not like it if he stays
too
much in character, and he does talk in his sleep. The nightmares are waning, though, and he probably doesn’t make enough sense for her to find out.

“…next week?” asks the girl hopefully. “Hani’s going to the Resources Conference.” The blue eyes widen with appeal.

That’s why she’s not in uniform—she’s Admiral Haniar’s lady.

Down, Prior!
“Next week, I’ll be gone again, I’m afraid. The same mission…I’m only back for a couple of days…Oh, beloved, I’ll count the minutes…”

He is really getting quite good at this, he thinks, as he continues along the corridor with What’s-Her-Name’s protestations of unlimited devotion still tingling his id, plus assurances that tonight would be all right if he can let her know early enough. At times he can almost believe he truly is Prior, spacer veteran, spy, double agent, lecher extraordinary. At times both Maeve and Roker have accused him of it. But he has Prior under control now. The bastard is
dead
!

I touched his brain, or what was left of it.

Dead!

The conference room is on the two-hundred level, circular and vertiginous. Walls swoop down to blend with floor, and all is transparent, even the seats. The impression is of floating high above Hiport, and on bad days the clouds float by. On those days it is easier to concentrate on the subject of the meetings.

Operation Modred—top secret. Today there are four commodores and a dozen mere mortals and they are all staring in horror at Roker as he outlines the mission.

Destroy a Q ship?

Vaun listens with less than half an ear. He has heard all this before, and besides, he doesn’t want to hear it. If those missiles do get fired, he is going to be awfully, nastily, wet-armpity close to the target point. There’s some question as to whether the damned things will work at all, of course, which is comforting. They are so old that no one knows how old they are. Nowadays no one wastes resources building weapons for wars that can never be fought, but these beauties have been the Patrol’s treasure since time immemorial, and actually to fire them sounds like heresy. Attacking a Q ship is bad enough.

Q ships are sacred.

Vaun has been in Hiport for three days and Hiport is mind-blistering. The coils of the launcher are the largest artifacts Ult has ever known. Gangs work on them continuously, repairing the corrosion. By the time they get to the top, the bottom needs rescuing again. Almost half the metal ever mined on the planet has gone into the Hiport launcher.

And maybe half the nonmetal materials into its buildings, Vaun suspects. Hiport is ’immensely old, and immensely impressive. It is too huge to comprehend. They don’t make ’em like this any more. He hates it. In Hiport he can almost never be alone with Maeve, and when he isn’t with Maeve his longing for her drives him lunatic. He dreams fantastic dreams of actually pulling off this crazy mission and returning as a hero, to inherit Valhal. Then he will throw Roker out and keep Maeve. Just the two of them together alone for always.

Not extremely likely.

An intercontinental is coming in. Traffic is heavy today. May be going to rain, later.

Roker drones on. He will not tell this group why the Q ship is suspect, for that is the heart of the most secret, but soon he will explain how Commodore Prior will be taking up the pilot boat.

Eventually someone will object that it is dangerous to run boats around Q ships when the fireballs are active, and Roker will say he knows that, thank you. He may or may not explain the need to stop the intruder dispersing a few quick shuttle craft on the sly. What he certainly won’t say is that the pilot boat is going to be in a lot more danger from the crew of the Q ship than from its singularities.

At least there is no longer any doubt about motive, no doubt that Prior was an advance scout for an invasion. Vaun has Prior’s memories, or some of them, enough of them. He remembers Prior remembering that the brethren plan to be on that ship, if they can. Of course if the Brotherhood lost the war on Avalon, then the ship will be harmless and Vaun will disappear very soon after he makes planetfall again. If the brethren are on board, then they will want to talk with Prior, but they will be very suspicious.

Vaun will have to play it by ear, both ears.

If he can give Roker enough evidence to justify attacking the Q ship, then he will probably die in the neuron blast.

If he finds the Q ship is harmless, then he’ll be disposed of afterward, but quietly.

If he alerts the brethren on the Q ship, then they may get him before Roker does.

Issa. That’s the name of Admiral Haniar’s lady. Issa.

Tonight would be all right, she said. Yes, tonight would be all right for him, too. He’ll have to make it awful quick, but it would be all right. Nice being a commodore.

E
MPEROR OF THE planet!

Roker was dead and Central had accepted that Vaun was in command—it was a heady feeling, but unfortunately he had no time to savor it.

When he finally had time to inquire, he learned that the senior surviving officer in the Patrol was Admiral Weald. He knew of her vaguely as a recluse interested in nothing outside her collection of antique porcelain. In all his forty-eight years as an admiral, he had not met her once. She turned out to be a slight, frail-seeming girl who looked as if she could never have survived toilet training un-traumatized, let alone the rigors of Doggoth. Yet her eyes were steady as she stared out of the tank, and her pale smile seemed genuine. A spacefarers’ blaze was nestled in the lace on her blouse.

“I was afraid you might call,” she said.

“Ma’am, I have the honor—”

She shook her head, and her dark hair waved. Her home must be a long way east of Valhal, for sun streamed through the window behind her. “You’re doing very well, lad. I’ve been watching you all morning, and no one could have done a better job. I think you should continue to act.”

Strangely, despite all his years of frustration as a figurehead admiral, Vaun felt no ambition to retain command of the Patrol. He had enjoyed the challenge of the last few hours, but it was over now, and he wanted to wheel himself off to bed. On the other hand, this sprig of a girl hardly looked like a high admiral, even if the records said she was twice his age. Not even if she did call him “lad.”

“It would not be appropriate,” he said.

“Very appropriate! You’ve done a splendid job. The flacks must be ecstatic.” She laughed as he pulled a face.

Space Patrol to the Rescue—Famous Hero Takes Charge…

“Seriously,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of reports here. Look them over and you’ll see what I mean.”

Weald pouted, but did not object as he had expected. She faded out. He sent her his work on the Q ship trajectory, and Tham’s Ootharsis of Isquat file.

He leaned back and stretched sensuously, enjoying his aches and a world-sized yawn. Then he looked around, and the three biologists were sprawled over the table, heads on arms, all apparently asleep. He must have been here for hours.

“Why inappropriate?”

He had completely forgotten Feirn. She was sitting cross-legged on the next chair to his, and regarding him with a steady, if understandably bleary, gaze. Obviously she had recovered her wits and poise. She had combed her lovely hair, too, sometime in the last however-long-it-had-been. Good for her!

“Why aren’t you watching Blade, as I told you to?” he snapped.

She smirked. “Because he’s in the shower.”

“
Shower?
”

“He’s finished. Wounded and bodies, all collected. He tried to report to you and I told him you were busy.” Feirn tossed her head pertly.

Obviously she had resilience as well as impudence. “Then tell him to come down here as soon as he’s ready,” Vaun said, hiding amusement.

“I already did! He’s done very well, hasn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s done extremely well. He’s one of the night’s heroes.”

She frowned at that. “You’re the biggest hero. Why are you trying to give up now?”

As Acting High Admiral, he was no longer free to babble Patrol secrets to Feirn, if he ever had been, so he laughed off the question. “I don’t want to overdo the hero-saves-the-world act. People may get bored of it.”

“But you just did. Did save the world.” She seemed quite serious as she said it.

Vaun shrugged. “The pepods have erupted many times before, and Ult has always survived without any help from me.”

“This was the worst outbreak of modern times. It was the worst since at least 19,090, if you’re interested.” She smiled cockily at his surprise, and indicated the tank beside her. “Blade didn’t need me, and your conversation began to get boring.”

He apologized solemnly.

She considered the matter, head on one side, eyes as bright as a bird’s. “Well, I admit you were busy saving the world, but don’t expect that excuse to work every time.”

There was a sparkle there that he had not anticipated, but if she thought their date for this evening was still on, then she had chagrin coming. Admiral Vaun lusted for bed, and bed alone.

“The cities escaped, of course,” she said seriously. “And the winter weather was a godsend, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Kept people indoors. So now we all stay indoors for a few days, until the vegetation calms down?”

“That’s about it.” Vaun covered a yawn. He had apparently impressed both Feirn and Weald, but in fact Hiport’s computers had done most of it. He had been helped by the special powers he could invoke under Roker’s state of emergency—that had been a fortunate irony—and all he had needed to do was keep his head, set priorities, and issue orders. He had dispatched air strikes against the worst infestations; he had untangled communications; he had organized rescues and medical help; he had restored public calm. Almost every operational torch and spacecraft on the planet was operating on his behest right now.

It had not been difficult. If the Brotherhood was planning to create worldwide chaos, as Roker had suggested, then it could hardly do better than what had just happened, but the effect had been very brief, in spite of Roker’s death. And that had been a fluke, for high admirals did not normally spend much time near pepods. Moreover the timing had been wrong, because the Q ship panic had not started yet. So the pepod outbreak had nothing to do with the Brotherhood, right?

Right
, said logic.

Wrong
, said instinct. Paranoiacs live longer…But if there was a connection, he couldn’t see it. He yawned.

“So why give up your command?” Feirn had turned serious, her blue eyes glazing over with hero worship.