Was Once a Hero (12 page)

Fenaday
stared at him for a few seconds, trying to read something in the one human eye
and failing.
 
“How did you arrange that?”

The
half machine man looked at him coldly.
 
“I uplinked to Mandela as soon as I saw trouble.
 
He’s sending the cleaners.”

“Let’s
get to the ship,” Fenaday decided.
 
“Telisan, can you walk?”

The
Denlenn nodded and they started off, keeping the best speed they could.
 
The HCRs paced them at a distance.

“How
did you know we were in trouble?” he asked Mmok.

Mmok
gestured upward.
 
Fenaday looked up to
see a small, saucer-shaped object floating silently, about thirty meters over
them.

“Reconnaissance
robot,” Mmok grunted.
 
Despite the limp
he had no trouble keeping the pace.
 
“Didn’t see the ambush.
 
They were
undercover in the cars and buildings.
 
Saw the fight.
 
Me and the girls
came as fast as we could.”

“It
appears that you will be useful to have around, Mr. Mmok,” Fenaday said.

Chapter Seven

Mourner
and medics greeted them at the gantry to
Sidhe
and rushed them to the sickbay.
 
The
brightly lit bay looked more like a hospital suite now then the rudimentary
space it had been only days ago.
 
Medics
checked everyone, but Mourner herself examined Duna.

Fenaday
was glad for her expertise.
 
Mandela
would take any harm to Duna out of his hide.
 
Fortunately, the old scholar had taken little injury, thanks to Telisan.
 
Mourner decided to keep him in sickbay for
observation, assigning a medtech to watch over him.
 
The old Enshari spent from the fight dropped
off to sleep almost immediately.

With
the adrenaline rush of the fight over, Fenaday’s bruises and cuts asserted
themselves.
 
In some cases, the bruises
went to the bone.
 
Telisan’s cuts looked
deep and painful, but well within the skills of Doctors Mourner and
N’deba.
 
The transformation in his
sickbay amazed Fenaday.
 
He had a full
medical staff of a quality a regular navy vessel might well envy.
 
Mourner’s skill with a tissue regenerator
awed anyone watching.
 
She fluttered
about them like a small, active bird.

“Your
injuries barely need attention, Commander Rainhell,” Mourner said, clearly
fascinated by the Olympian.
 
“They
already look days old and are well on their way to healing.
 
I’d love to do some lab studies of your—”

“No,”
Shasti growled.
 

Mourner
looked as if she might press the point, but Shasti fixed her cold, empty,
jade-eyed stare on her.
 
The doctor found
herself suddenly without words, something Fenaday suspected seldom happened to
her.
 
Shasti stood, slipping her jacket
back over her shoulders.

Fenaday
looked past the two of them toward Mmok.
 
Fatigue weighed on him like a sodden blanket.
 
“We have a few hours to sunrise.
 
See that the ship is secure, Mr. Mmok.”

Mmok
grunted, his chief form of communication.

“I’ll
be in my cabin,” said Fenaday, standing and barely suppressing a groan.
 
“Wake me only if the Conchirri attack Mars.”

*****

Sunrise
came but the Port Police didn’t.
 
Shasti
woke him, bringing a message that appeared on
Sidhe’s
computer, untraceable, though they had no doubt of its
origin.
 
“Press getting wind of the
mission, get off Mars.”
 

“What
now?” asked Shasti.

“We
move up the clock for liftoff,” he replied.
 
“Call everyone to the ship after sunrise.
 
Order them to come in groups of ten or
more.
 
Once aboard, everyone but you
stays aboard.

“I
want you to scout the area of last night’s fight.
 
Don’t take any risks.
 
If you see anything suspicious, pull
out.
 
Use our private channel.”
 
He hesitated for a second, “Take a weapon,
screw the regs.”

She
nodded with her usual economy of speech.
 

Two
hours later Fenaday stood on the bridge, working through the prelaunch
checklist with Katrina Micetich when his private com beeped.
 
He walked into his ready cabin off the bridge
and clicked on the com.

“All
evidence of the attack,” Shasti said without preamble, “including the blood,
has disappeared.
 
Mandela cleaned up our
mess very professionally.”

A
chill ran down his spine as he wondered what’d happened to the unconscious and
dead they’d left behind.
 
“Okay.
 
Get back here as soon as you can.”

The
next twenty-four hours became feverish as Fenaday made one day do the work of
two.
 
The crew came aboard, resigned it
seemed, to blasting off into the unknown.
 
Dobera and the stores crew finished loading at 2 A.M. local time.
 
Fenaday ordered the last connections to the
docking cradle severed with relief.
 
Sidhe’s
own power came completely on
line.
 
The ship sealed for space.
 

On
the bridge of the former Conchirri frigate, Fenaday sat in the center
seat.
 
Shasti stood beside him.
 
She had no flight duties, but a monitor gave
her details of the ship’s security functions.
 
Liftoff was her favorite part of space flight.
 
She always watched from the bridge.

Fenaday
clicked on the monitor in the arm of his chair.
 
Perez’s face appeared.
 
He and the
ship’s engineers, the so-called “black gang” manned the reactors far aft in the
ship.
 

“All
engines ready for all power settings,” said Perez.

“Excellent,”
Fenaday replied.
 
“Standard Mars launch
settings then.”

He
looked over at Micetich and a new crewman seated at the ship’s controls.
 
The gunnery stations remained unmanned.
 
Mmok appropriated a seat there, a chill and
unwelcome presence.
 
Fenaday forbade him
to bring an HCR to the control center.
 
The cyborg was bad enough.
 

He
turned to the radar and communications specialist, Sharon Hafel, a gray-haired,
stocky woman, one of Mandela’s people.
 
“Keep scanning and stay alert for any out of pattern traffic.”

“Aye,
sir,” she replied without taking her eyes from the instruments.

He
noted Shasti’s curious gaze.
 
“Be a bad
thing if we were hit by a conveniently out of control aircar.”

“Not
much we can do,” she shrugged.
 
“Mandela
is not going to allow us to arm weapons anywhere near Marsport.”

“Captain,”
Telisan called from the companionway entrance behind them.
 
“The port pilot is here.
 
We are cleared for lift.”
 
The port pilot, a rotund fellow, followed him
in.
 
His arms were full of forms and a
portable com.
 
The pilot would unlock
Fenaday’s weaponry and leave in his little cutter after
Sidhe
cleared atmosphere.
 
The port pilot walked over to Micetich’s station and gave Fenaday a
questioning look.

Fenaday
nodded, “Take her up.”
 
He hit the
klaxon, which hooted three times.
 
“All
hands, this is the bridge.
 
Take hold,
take hold, take hold.
 
Stand by for
artificial gravity to cut in at ninety seconds after liftoff.”
 

Around
the bridge people buckled into seats or belted themselves to takeholds mounted
in consoles and walls.
 
After the ship’s
AG came on, the precaution would be unnecessary.

The
port pilot displaced Micetich, who moved to stand behind him, a slightly
disgusted look on her heavy-featured Slavic face.
 
Fenaday understood her feelings.
 
He hated the arcane port procedure.
 
Fenaday believed it existed to give the
Confederacy an excuse to implement fees.

The
red frigate shuddered in her cradle as the power came on.
 
Slowly, she began to lift against Mars’ still
formidable gravity.
 
The pilot put her
into a forward ascent.
 
Sidhe
derived lift from her wings and
aerodynamic hull to save on reaction mass.
 
The starship reached high Mach numbers quickly, flying into orbit like
the space planes of the 21st century.
 
After they reached orbit, Fenaday thanked the port pilot and put him off
in his cutter.
 

Once
free of the drag of Mars’ atmosphere,
Sidhe
rendezvoused with an automated tanker platform, replacing fuel used in lifting
out of the gravity well.
 
After that
Fenaday set course for the system’s edge where the FTL drive could work.
 
The inner system was far too dense to allow
the FTL drive to be effective.
 
Fenaday
enjoyed the freedom that came from Mandela’s checkbook and burned fuel at
military levels to speed them on their way.
 
Another tanker station awaited them at Sol system’s edge.

“Radar
contact,” Hafel announced calmly, “bearing, two hundred seventy degrees and
zero degrees relative.
 
Distance, thirty
thousand kilometers, relative speed... dropping to zero.”

“Let
me guess,” Fenaday replied, “a Confederation cruiser, Battle or Nova class.”

“Good
guess,” Hafel said with a sidelong glance of her almond shaped eyes.
 
“IFF shows Confederation Battle class
cruiser,
Rourke’s Drift
.
 
Shall I raise them?”

“Negative.
 
If you start to transmit, she’ll jam us.”
Fenaday replied.
 
He turned a sour look
on Telisan.
 
“Your friend Mandela doesn’t
want you to get lonely or talkative.”

“I am
no more convinced he is my friend than that he is yours,” the Denlenn
said.
 
“People like him fly whatever flag
suits them.
 
I saw my fill of them during
the war.
 
Killers, not warriors.
 
They use us like the clip of a tri-auto.”

“True
enough,” murmured Fenaday, a little surprised.
 
Telisan was regular Confed military.
 
“Is it different among your kind?”

Telisan
made an odd gesture that Fenaday felt might be a sigh.
 
“Yes, or rather it was.
 
A Denlenn leader is expected to lead from the
front.
 
To be bravest.
 
So we were when this war began.
 
Our methods cost us many of our best fighters
and leaders.
 
Your kind told us this was
foolish, but we would not listen.
 
These
ways served us during our wars with Dua-Denlenn.
 
Our cousins have no honor but at least fight
with civilized restraint.
 
Why lay waste
to a world and lose the value of it for all time?
 

“Nothing
prepared us for the Conchirri.
 
Honor and
restraint were unknown to them.
 
We lost
many battles, even some worlds, before we resigned ourselves to changing to
your methods, as the Moroks already had.
 
Your kind makes war almost into a business, a matter of calculation.”

“It
had been a long time since we’d had to fight,” said Fenaday distantly, thinking
on the long history of humanity’s wars.
 
“The big ones ended centuries ago, as the stellar Diaspora allowed many
of earth’s adversaries to gain sufficient distance from each other.”

“It came
back to you quickly,” Telisan said.

Unable
to decide if this was an accusation or a compliment, Fenaday opted for silence.

*****

Three
days out from Mars, Fenaday decided to break the news of their wild venture to
the crew.
 
First, he filled all critical
stations with either Mandela’s people, or the few reliable members of his own
crew.
 
He ordered Shasti, Gunnar, Li,
Mmok and his HCRs into the central shuttle bay, where the rest of the crew
gathered.
 
Rigg dispersed his Air Space
Assault Team troops throughout the ship to provide security.

Fenaday
met the others outside the bay.
 
Shasti
had put her port clothes away.
 
She wore
the same loose, sage-green, fatigue uniform as the ASAT troops.
 
Simple and functional, it hid her fascinating
curves, making it easier to concentrate around her.
 
She carried a baton as well as a
short-barreled riot gun.
 
He assumed
she’d loaded it with plastic bullets.
 
Connery, Gunnar and Li carried similar arms.
 
Telisan, an expert shot, carried a laser, as
did Fenaday.
 
Mmok wore no obvious
weapon, though Fenaday felt sure the cyborg had something secreted on him.
 
His four HCRs stood around him.
 
Magenta wore a plastic flower in her hair,
more of Mmok’s sardonic humor.