The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The bartender retreated several steps, toward an open space, and waited for the towering security officer.

  Catalin lurched to a halt as he saw the older man’s stance, took a deep breath before he whirled to catch Lyssa as she tried to ease around the table toward the kitchen entrance.

  “Come here. Need to talk, woman.”

  No one except the bartender even looked as the massive security officer led the dark-haired woman back to his table.

  The bartender retreated behind the bar and motioned to another barmaid.

  “Take Lyssa’s section.”

  “But—”

  “He’s Security.”

  “Poor kid. Her little boy’s just five.”

  “No contract?”

  “Dead. Impie spacer. Unofficial. No comp. No status.”

  The bartender shook his head, but continued to watch the table where the young woman sat, head down, and listened to whatever proposition the security officer was making.

  In response to a question, she shook her head. Once, then twice.

  Crack!

  The sound of the slap penetrated the entire saloon, stilling it for the instant it took for the patrons to see the perpetrator was a security officer. Then the conversations resumed, more quietly, with everyone avoiding the pair at the rear corner table. Everyone except the bartender, who eased out from behind the bar toward the table.

  The other bartender watched with a frown.

  “Lieutenant? You here on official business? Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Could I see your warrant?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “Constitution says you do. I say you do.”

  “No, Martin!” pleaded the woman. “You don’t know what he can do.”

  Catalin smiled and stood suddenly.

  “See you later. Both of you. You’ll wish you’d treated me better, Lyssa. Much better.”

  Both the older-looking man and the woman watched the security officer’s broad back disappear through the front entry.

  “He’ll be back with a full crew as soon as he can round them up.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll take us away. Martin, don’t you understand what you got me into?”

  “Assumed you didn’t want to be his property to get used and abused and generally beaten.”

  “I don’t. But I’d submit to it for Bron’s sake.”

  He touched her arm, watched her suppress the wince. “Does he know where you live, or your full name?”

  “No…I don’t think so. Never saw him before tonight.”

  “Where could he find out?”

  “Central payroll, or from Si.”

  “Will he tell anyone else about you? Or will he come for me as a subversive to prove he can hurt anyone?”

  “Uh…probably…for you.”

  “Good.” He paused. “Go home. Now. Don’t argue. You’re sick as a dog.”

  “But—”

  “I need to get ready, and Si won’t push you. You draw too many customers.”

  “Martin, you don’t understand. Subversion means the Security Farms, and no one comes back from there. Never!”

  “I didn’t say I was going. Now get home, and, by the way, Lyssa, the name isn’t Martin. It’s Gerswin. Only tell your friends that. Don’t worry about Catalin. He won’t bother you again. Or anyone else.

  “Now, go.”

  She gathered herself together, then flounced toward the kitchen, as if offended.

  The bartender smiled behind his blank face, and he, in turn, swung around and walked down the side corridor to the back rooms. Once inside the room he wanted, he retrieved a battered and cheap-looking case that nothing short of a field-grade laser could open.

  “Leaving, Martin?”

  Gerswin caught sight of the stunner in Simon Lazlo’s right hand.

  “Temporarily. You have some objection? Or are you interested in having me neatly trussed up for the Security Forces?” Gerswin was relieved to find Simon concentrating on him. That probably meant that Lyssa could leave. Gerswin did not set down the case he was holding, but let go with his left hand, leaving it behind the case.

  “Let’s say I object in practice to my employees alienating Security Forces.”

  “Then you approved of the way that lieutenant used his rank to force himself on a defenseless woman?” Gerswin edged his hand toward his belt.

  Lazlo shrugged. “I don’t have to like it, but there’s not a great deal I can do about it. Unlike you, I have no illusions and no pretensions. And I have to live with the DomSecs. I just can’t run away, Martin.”

  “Name’s not Martin. Call me Gerswin, and I’m not running.”

  Without raising his voice, Gerswin made three moves simultaneously, hurling the case at the stunner with his right hand, throwing the belt knife with his left, and flinging himself forward and to the right.

  Thrumm!

  Crunch!

  Clank.

  The stunner lay on the floor, and Lazlo squirmed to pull himself from the wall where the heavy knife held him pinned.

  “Bastard Impie! HELP!”

  Thrumm! Gerswin retrieved the stunner and turned it on the saloon operator.

  Lazlo slumped.

  Gerswin checked outside the door, surveying the narrow hallway. No one appeared, and the noise from the patrons continued unabated. He reclosed the door and retrieved the knife. With the thin door locked, he laid Lazlo out on the floor. The owner’s shoulder wound still bled, but not heavily.

  After opening the case, he slipped into the black full-fades and strapped on the equipment belt, transferring the knives from his bartending clothes.

  He closed the case with a snap and opened the door, slipping down the last few steps to the rear exit. The serviceway outside was dimly lit in the early evening, dimly lit, and empty, with enough shadows for him to leave and take his position without visual detection.

  The security squad would doubtless arrive at the front with a flourish after several less obvious troops first appeared to cover the rear.

  Gerswin waited in the shadows.

  Shortly, he heard the clicking of boots on the synthetic pavement. Three security types stationed themselves at points equidistant from the rear entrance of Simeons.

  Gerswin continued to listen, but could hear but a single other set of boots, a single other set of breathing. He checked the stunner.

  Thrumm! Thrumm! Thrumm!

  The three went down like the sitting ducks they were.

  Gerswin did not move, knowing that the fourth guard had been caught unawares and had no real idea from where the fire had come.

  Finally, the other guard moved, and Gerswin caught sight of him in the shadows of the nearest parallel serviceway.

  Thrumm!

  As he dropped, Gerswin hoped that the obvious instructions to maintain comm silence had held. Certainly he had heard no voices, even whispers, from the four. He waited, remaining motionless and silent, listening to see if there were others.

  At last, he took out his knives, and did what had to be done.

  He left a fair amount of blood with the four bodies.

  Fear…the only thing those who create it fear is fear.

  Surprisingly he felt no remorse for the dead DomSecs, not after what he had seen in the streets and at Simeons.

  He moved to the shadows near the front of the building, carrying three stolen stunners and the laser rifle that the last guard had borne.

  Lieutenant Catalin had yet to make the grand entrance he had promised Lyssa.

  Again, Gerswin waited, straining for the sound of the approaching electrocars, wondering if his judgment of Catalin had been correct, that the man would ignore the silence of his rear guards and plunge ahead.

  He was half-right.

  Two electrocars purred up. From the first poured five men, who lined up in a rough order, glancing at the facade of the saloon and back at the lightly armored vehicle. One was the lieutenan
t.

  Gerswin shrugged and hefted the heavy laser.

  Hisssss.

  Thrumm! Thrumm! Thrumm! Thrumm!

  Catalin had been the first to fall, with a laser burn through his skull.

  Gerswin had missed the fourth guard with the stunner, and the man, with quicker reflexes than his compatriots, had dropped behind the electrocar.

  Thrumm!

  The return bolt missed Gerswin by more than three meters, but, unfortunately, showed the guard had the general idea of where Gerswin was.

  The man in the shadow clothes eased back down the serviceway to the emergency escape and slowly edged upward on it, trying to keep from making any sounds that would carry. Once on the roof, he crossed to the front of the building and surveyed the street below from the facade.

  The guard had not bothered to look up, a sign of either poor training or no real opposition.

  Hisss.

  The exposed guard crumpled, unaware he was dead until the fact was academic.

  Still, no one had emerged from the second electrocar, nor was there any action from the slab-sided wagon.

  Finally, Gerswin eased away from the facade and to the opposite escape ladder, slipping down it as quickly as possible and edging along the narrow space between the buildings until he was back at the front shadows, on the other side from his first attack. Flattening himself next to the wall, he checked the sights on the laser, then levered the power up to full, enough for two full shots.

  Hisss.

  The first severed enough of the rear plastaxle for the left rear wheel to buckle.

  With such provocation, the side door slid open, and two hulking figures emerged.

  Gerswin grinned. The idiots! Both were clothed in riot suits, guaranteed to reflect any laser or stun weapon short of Imperial artillery.

  Both carried hand lasers and stunners. Each headed for a different side of the building, the side from which he had first fired, and the side where he now waited.

  Gerswin retreated five meters, inching up onto a ledge in a meter-deep recess well above eye level, which, given the darkness and the shadows, should have concealed him until the riot-suited guard was close enough.

  Gerswin was wrong. The guard did not even look up or check the sides of the narrow serviceway, but walked through, almost as quickly as possible, firing both laser and stunner at random.

  Once the guard was past, Gerswin threw both knives in quick succession.

  Thunk! Thunk!

  The riot fabric, while proof against energy weapons, was more than vulnerable to old-fashioned throwing knives. The guard collapsed into a sack of muscles and fabric.

  Once more, Gerswin clambered up the fire escape after retrieving his knives and taking the guard’s most highly charged laser.

  It took both knives to stop the second riot guard as the man panicked his way back toward the front street after, Gerswin surmised, finding four bloody bodies. Gerswin swung down and wrenched both knives from the body.

  While he would have preferred to have finished off the entire troop, he could hear the distant, but oncoming, whine of more than just a pair of electrovans, and decided to do the prudent thing.

  He ran, silently, picking up the case and cloak from where he had hidden them. But he ran, stretching out his strides into the effortless and ground-covering lope of a devilkid ahead of the she-coyotes, racing the landspouts and the terrors of Old Earth.

  But he ran, real and imagined terrors pursuing.

  XXIX

  The copy editor scanned the screen, frowning as he read the headline.

  “No Need For Protein Restrictions.”

  “Where did that come from?” he muttered, calling up the full text, speeding through it as he did. Then he reread the first paragraph.

  “(INS) New Augusta. ‘No system government should need to impose protein restrictions on its people,’ claimed D. Daffyd Werlyn, Proctor of Agronomy at the Emperor’s College, in his farewell address.

  “Werlyn stated that the ‘bestmeat’ plant, once banned in the Fursine system, could bring about the end of hunger and protein restrictions in any system. ‘It’s tasty, nutritious, and grows under the most adverse conditions, from poisoned sewage to sand, but produces untainted slices of protein undetectable from the finest organic steaks.’

  “Werlyn noted that several systems have banned the growing of the plant because it causes ‘agricultural disruption.’ The Fursine provisional government just recently revoked such a prohibition and stated that ‘bestmeat’ was a national treasure, since a small garden could provide enough protein for an entire family of four year round.

  “The Novayakin system government recently banned the home cultivation of the plant…claiming it provided support for outlawed Atey rebels…”

  The editor read the squib again, then checked the routing codes, which indicated an Imperial message torp, as opposed to a Ydrisian commercial torp.

  He frowned, then tapped his fingers across the board, waiting for the response to his inquiry. The story had already run on two successive netwide faxnews prints.

  At that, he smiled briefly before touching the red stud on the console, the special red stud that only a few of the news service personnel had.

  The comm screen centered on a man in the dark brown uniform of Domestic Security.

  “DomSec, Andruz.”

  “Pellestri, FPNS. Thought you should see something that crossed the net, Andruz.”

  “What now, Pellestri? Another subversive headed this way? Another Atey deploring the inappropriate and restrictive technology of Forsenia? Or perhaps another intellectual critiquing the regime from behind the protection of New Avalon’s Ivory Towers?”

  “I’m sending the squib direct, if you want to receive.”

  “Send it.”

  Pellestri touched the transmit stud and listened to the high-pitched bleep. Then he waited, confident that Andruz would not cut him off and that there would be a reaction.

  He was disappointed.

  “So there’s a new food plant? So what?”

  “Just doing my duty, Andruz. The regulations say I have to report anything which has a potential of upsetting planetary order.”

  “So…you did what you thought was best. Break.”

  Pellestri broke. Then he touched the keyboard again, quickly.

  “Pelle! And during the day, too.”

  “Do you have a hard-copy terminal there?”

  “Yes. But…”

  “Take this and see what you can do. All right?”

  “Do?”

  “Just see if you can track down the subject. Call it personal interest. Might be more than a good story. Might even make life…give it a better flavor, if you will.”

  “Aren’t you mysterious. All right.” The dark-haired woman nodded slowly, without betraying her understanding of how important the matter was to him. “Send it, and we’ll get on it.”

  Pellestri sent another bleep through the terminal and broke the connection.

  Then he went back to editing, although his thoughts did not.

  Marta had the old homestead back in the hills, beyond the military perimeter, out beyond where the regime had confiscated private property, and if half of what the squib had hinted were true, it all might be possible, in the months ahead, or at least by next year. But they’d have to be careful. Most careful.

  His hands continued to edit the material on the screen as it crossed before his eyes.

  XXX

  The man in the full-fade camouflage suit waited in the shadows for the scheduled DomSec patrol.

  Despite the high-intensity pole lights, when the evening fog was thick, as it usually was right after sunset, gloom dominated most of the interval between the circles of light.

  A set of footsteps, light and quick, pattered toward the man who lay stretched under the ornamental hedge bordering the public gardens. His eyes followed the thin, middle-aged woman who nervously hurried from pool of light to pool of light toward the tube stati
on three hundred meters farther down the boulevard.

  The sound of her steps rang down the nearly silent boulevard long after her image and shadow were swallowed by the yellow-gray of the fog.

  The man who waited could feel the vibration coming from the tube buried ten meters beneath him. He quirked his lips and hoped the woman had made it to the station. If not, she had a long wait for the next train this late.

  Whhhrrrr.

  The purring of an electrovan sounded from the cross street a hundred meters downhill to his right, then faded as the van continued eastward.

  Click. Click, click. Click.

  The measured tread of military boots on the pavement continued to increase in volume, although the fog concealed the DomSecs who wore those boots. The man in the depression behind the hedge remained there, flattening himself still farther.

  Two sets of steps meant increased concerns. At that, he permitted himself another brief smile. Then he waited. With two guards, there was a good chance one was carrying and using a heat sensor, but sensors were line of sight, and his position was not. He remained hugging the grass behind the hedge as the steps neared.

  Click, click. Click, click.

  “Scope?” asked a deep voice.

  “Negative.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Maybe. You want to be an Atey casualty?”

  “Stow it.”

  Click, click. Click, click.

  “Somebody in front of us. See?”

  “Small prints. Almost gone. Scope pattern says a woman.”

  “Who says it’s a man after DomSecs?”

  “Who says it’s one person?”

  Click. Click, click. Click.

  The steps passed.

  The man edged into a crouch, edging along behind the DomSec pair, but well to the side and trailing them, shadowing them, while fitting a small rounded object into a leather sling.

  Whirrrrr!

  Crack!