Was Once a Hero (34 page)

“I
hope you’re right,” said Fenaday.
 
“We
have only one tactical nuke.”
 
He dreaded
the prospect of crawling for days through the subterranean city, searching for
the heart of the darkness that overwhelmed Enshar.

Tense
hours followed, but there was no sign of any enemy.
 
Fenaday reduced the alert so more of his
force could rest, then summoned his senior officers.
 
They gathered in the ambassador’s office to
review their plan of battle.
 
Shasti
attended, with Risky by her side.
 
The
animal had not ventured far from her since they found him that afternoon.
 
Shasti had asked Dr. Mourner to examine the
dog, who pronounced Risky healthy, just underweight and suffering from some
vitamin deficiencies.
 
The native bugs
and parasites on Enshar had shown little interest in Risky, who was bigger than
most of the wildlife he encountered.

Risky
boosted everyone’s morale.
 
Everyone
wanted to pet the dog, who reveled in the attention.
 
They took his survival as a talisman that
their luck had changed.
 
Fenaday was glad
for the effect, especially among the wounded.

Fenaday
drained his coffee and looked at the others.
 
“Well, we are in as good a situation as can be hoped for.
 
We are in the capital city, dug in with all
the supplies we need.
 
The worst of the
wounded are back on the ship.
 
Tomorrow
we start work on getting out of here and finishing off this... this... whatever
the hell it is.”

“If
we last through tonight,” Mmok said, sitting back in the chair with both hands
behind his head.

Fenaday
shrugged.
 
He didn’t feel the need to
candy-coat the situation for this group, but he wanted no pessimism either.
 
“We have a good chance.
 
There have been no storms.
 
We have relocated twice in the last
forty-eight hours.

“If
Duna is right in his theory that there is no central intelligence guiding the
attacks on us, at least as yet, we may have slipped off the boards as far as
the enemy is concerned.”

“Yet,
here we are in the middle of what may be its central location,” Shasti
cautioned.

“Remember,”
Telisan said, “the attacks have been disjointed, purposeless, stupidly done—if
still terrifying.
 
The thing may not have
garrisoned this city; it does not act in what we perceive as a logical
fashion.
 
We do not know. ”

“We’re
not out of danger,” Fenaday said, “but what point is there in planning for an
overwhelming attack by an invincible force?
 
If it happens, we die.
 
If not, we
are the first force to survive long enough to launch a counterstrike.

“Strike,
we shall,” Fenaday promised.
 
“Mr. Duna.”

“Every
evidence we can find,” Duna began, “indicates that the assault radiated out of
Barjan.
 
Here, the slaughter took minutes,
if that long.
 
The entire disaster was
over, planet-wide, in hours.
 
As the
captain says, we are the first force to survive the initial attacks.
 
We are in range of the enemy, alive and
armed.
 
There is—there must be—a chance.”

Shasti
looked up from stroking Risky’s fur, as if to speak.
 
Fenaday caught her eye and she subsided.

“We
will attack in this fashion,” Fenaday said.
 
“Shasti, Connery, Li, Mmok, and the bulk of his HCR and crab robot force
will accompany me as we descend into...”

“Captain,”
interrupted both Duna and Telisan simultaneously.
 
Fenaday looked at them in surprise.

“I
must go, Captain,” Duna continued.
 
“None
of you has ever even been in an Enshari city.
 
You cannot recognize the signs, much less read them.”

“Duna,”
Fenaday said, “you could give directions.”

“No,
Robert,” Duna replied, “not well enough to help, but there are other reasons as
well.
 
You were brought into this through
my actions.
 
We have lost a quarter of
our force, killed or wounded.
 
I bear the
ultimate responsibility for this.
 
I
dragged you here to face monsters.
 
I
must stand with you when you do.

“Finally,
I am the only member of my race on this planet.
 
This is my home, the place I buried my wife, where we had our children,
where some of them died.
 
In the name of
all who have died, in the name of all that we lost, an Enshari must be there to
strike the blow.

“Give
me a place in this fight,” the Enshari demanded, his eyes brilliant.

There
was silence in the room.

“It’s
not necessary for me to give you what is yours by right,” Fenaday said
softly.
 
“You fight with us in the
morning.”

The
Enshari sat on the floor, his hand-paws covering his eyes.
 
Telisan placed a long fingered hand on his
shoulder.
 
Duna grasped it tightly.

“I
too, must go,” Telisan said, “for my comrades on the
Earhart
, for my friend Belwin and to buy back a lie.”
 
He looked directly at Fenaday.
 
“I demanded an oath from you, and you have
been true in all things.
 
I knew of
Duna’s fears that some ancient menace had been uncovered.
 
I knew the stories of the demons and
monsters, what you call the Shellycoats.
 
I did not tell you even after I was your officer.
 
I have not lied in any matter of honor
before.
 
I must go to buy back that lie.”

“You
don’t owe me,” Fenaday said.
 
“I’m not
some noble adventurer tricked into a quest.
 
Shasti and I were forced to go by the government when our pasts caught
up with us.
 
Had you told either of us
what you suspected, we would have thought you mad.
 
Even if you’d told us and we believed you,
what else could have been done?”

“Then
it is myself I owe,” Telisan replied.

“Who
will command the team to go to the spaceport and find a ship?” Fenaday asked.

“Send
Fury,” said Telisan.
 
“I am a fighter
pilot.
 
She actually served on freighters
before the war.
 
In any event she knows
ship systems better than I.”

Fenaday
looked at Telisan and smiled.
 
“You’re a
damn fool, but I’ll be glad to have you along.
 
I’d rather be going anywhere else myself.”

“For
once we agree,” Mmok added.

“All
right.
 
Fury will take Rask and half the ASATs
and LEAFs back to the port, along with any of our engineers or other people she
feels she’ll need.
 
Rigg, you’ll take
command here.
 
I’m not going to give you
any orders.
 
Once we are gone, it’s your
shop.”

“Mmok,”
Fenaday said, turning to the half-cyborg, “I assume you can rig a variety of
different time delay detonation sequences for me on that nuke.”

“In
my sleep.
 
How long a delay do you want?”

“I
need four settings: three days, twenty-four hours, six hours and one for two
seconds.”

The
last fell on them all like a shroud.
 
There was only one reason for the two-second delay, to replace a painful
death with a quick blast of nuclear light.

“We’ll
take one of the multi-fuels in the morning,” Fenaday continued.
 
“Duna, draft a map of where you think the
excavation might be.
 
Everyone will carry
one.
 
It shouldn’t take all of one day to
get there and back.
 
It’s not much of a
plan, but there it is.”

“The
underground will not be so bad as you all imagine,” Duna said.
 
“We Enshari evolved from denning animals, but
we hunted on the surface.
 
Our eyes see
somewhat better in darkness than do yours, our sense of smell is better, but we
do need light.
 
In addition to all the
shaftways bringing down light, there are bioluminescent panels almost
everywhere.
 
Remember, our genetic
engineers developed them to a high art.
 
They do not need replacing during their lifetimes and live twenty years
or more, if tended properly.
 
There will
be sufficient light to see by.”

“We
will take torches and lanterns anyway,” Fenaday said.
 
“Daylight is 04:30 standard time.

“Mmok,
prepare the nuke.
 
Also, send that scout
robot of yours out and see about securing us a decent route to the Barjan
Deep.
 
Duna will give you the
coordinates.

“I
suggest everybody check their equipment and try to get their heads down for a
few hours.
 
‘
Boots and saddles’
sounds at 03:00.
  
Any questions?”

Mmok
grunted as usual.
 
The others shook their
heads.

“Dismissed.”

Chapter Sixteen

Before
seeking his bed, Fenaday made a tour of the guard posts.
 
Nothing moved in the tomb Barjan had
become.
 
The sky remained clear.
 
Stars formed unfamiliar constellations over
his head, crowned by a view of the galactic core unblocked by nebula or
clouds.
 
Enshar’s moonless but brilliant
night sky gave him an extra feeling of security—their enemy seemed to prefer
full darkness.

After
he reviewed the defenses, he headed for ambassadorial quarters.
 
Rank, after all, did have some few privileges
still attached.
 
He collapsed onto the
bed gratefully.
 
He was nearly asleep
when he heard someone enter the room.

Without
speaking, Shasti joined him on the bed.
 
He turned toward her, looking a question.
 
She laid her head on his shoulder and closed
her eyes.
 
With the padding of four feet
and the clicking of nails, Risky joined them.
 
He circled at the foot of the bed a few times before settling in with an
immense yawn on the rug.
 
Fenaday dropped
off instantly.

When
he woke some hours later, he reached for her, still half asleep, and said
Lisa’s name.

“No,”
she whispered.

It
brought him fully awake.
 
“God, Shasti,
I’m sorry.”

“Don’t
be,” she replied.
 
“I am not trying to
take anyone’s place.
 
I am here, now, and
for my own reasons.”
 
She reached for
him.
 
They made love, quickly and
urgently, both believing it might be the last time, the last touch.

They
fell asleep again in each other’s arms.
 
Then something wet and cold touched Fenaday’s butt.
 
He jumped.
 
Claws clicked on the floor.
 
Risky
was awake, too.
 
Shasti struggled to
smother a laugh.

He
glared at her in the semi-darkness of the room.
 
“A thing like that can give a guy a complex.”

Shasti
lost her battle with the laugh and it burst out, a surprisingly high-pitched
and girlish laugh for Death’s Angel.

“Oh
well,” he grumbled, “I might as well get up.
 
It’s near three, and I doubt I could fall asleep again after that.”

The
showers at the embassy still worked.
 
Embassies serving different species had to be, for necessity, nearly
self-sufficient little fortresses.
 
Even
on a world as friendly and civilized as Enshar, the embassy followed the
standard pattern with its own gravity-fed water supply.
 
Shasti joined him in the shower.
 
They enjoyed the utter luxury of being
completely clean.
 
When they came out,
they dressed in the fresh uniforms that had been among the last supplies dropped
in by the
Wildcats.
 
They left their old clothes in a pile for
the laundry detail to collect, as no one knew how long they would be down-world.
 
The little details of being alive, from
toilet paper and soap to ammunition, all required tending.

Their
personal weapons they kept with them.
 
The rest of the gear they would pick up downstairs.
 
It felt odd, he thought, sitting on the bed
and sorting uniform parts.
 
Here we are getting ready to crawl into a
dead city, on the hope of blasting some unseen monster to bits with an atom
bomb, and the day begins with trying to find two socks that fit.
 
The ordinariness of it seemed bizarre.
 
It felt more like going away on a camping
trip.
 
The heartsick fear that gripped
him on the night before the landing was missing.
 
He didn’t know why; maybe it was that ‘good
day to die’ people talked about.