The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Thrumm!

  The first stunner bolt flared on the bubble, the second through the open door. It staggered the watchman.

  Gerswin sprinted.

  He made it halfway to the pair before the taller of the two agents, catching the motion from the corner of his eye, whirled.

  Gerswin pumped his mad rush an instant longer, then dived low and rolled to the left, zigging forward, and coming up with the knife.

  Scrtttt.

  Clunk.

  The other agent brought her weapon around, hampered by its length, even as the taller one went down, his weapon echoing on the roof.

  Whuppp.

  Before she could get the barrel toward Gerswin, he knocked it from her hands and swept her feet from underneath her.

  The woman tried to bring her legs into play, but he twisted and dropped his full weight onto his right knee, which slammed into the side of her neck. The dull crack and instant limpness of her body signaled her death.

  Gerswin followed her down, dropping behind the ledge that had not been sufficient shelter for the agents, and reached for the projectile rifle.

  Strummm!

  The frequency of the stun bolt—heavy-duty military model—confirmed his earlier impression of the watchman.

  Still flat, he glanced at the first agent, wearing a full marauder-issue camouflage armor and matching helmet, twitching with the knife through his chest, though each shudder was slower and the time between each longer.

  Gerswin edged along the walkway, head below the coping level, until he could retrieve the knife. Before he could pull the knife out, the man shuddered a last time and was still.

  As the man in business gray checked the long weapon, he discovered it was configured for frag rounds. He squirmed another meter toward the watch bubble, keeping his body well below the wall.

  A quick look, and he squeezed off one round.

  Crummppp.

  He squirmed farther, and tried another.

  Crummppp.

  There was no answering fire.

  Several meters farther, nearly at the corner, he darted another look, then slowly peered once more.

  The watchman was sprawled halfway through the open bubble port, and the darkness spread across his shoulders was not sweat.

  Now what?

  He could leave, if he left immediately, before the reinforcing troops discovered that the wrong man had survived. But then he wouldn’t know what was behind it all.

  Besides, if the Impies had really known what was happening, they would not have pulled such a weak operation. So it hadn’t been organized by the Imperial government.

  A good Imperial records check would have resulted in a direct assault or investigation of the foundation itself, either with more finesse or with overwhelming force.

  He would have shrugged as he moved toward the watch bubble and the lift house behind it, but he saw the glimmer of light.

  “Once again.”

  He took a deep breath and charged the portal, managing to cross the ten meters and drop into the darkness behind the side of the portal as the two replacement guards walked out. The portal closed before they were even fully aware that something might be wrong.

  The right-hand guard turned toward Gerswin, something in his hand.

  Crummpp!

  The shot turned the marauder uniform into scraps of flesh and cloth.

  Before the second guard could turn, Gerswin reversed the weapon and brought the stock into his diaphragm even as he knocked aside the guard’s weapon hand.

  Leaving both the dead guard and the unconscious one where they lay, Gerswin scrabbled around to the back side of the lift shaft, looking for the concealed access port he knew was hidden there.

  His fingers traced the outline, and he backed away. A snap kick, and the plate fragmented, as designed.

  He reached down and punched the three studs in one of the preset combinations and, without waiting, scrambled back to the front of the lift where the remaining living guard was dragging himself toward his weapon.

  Gerswin kicked it away, pulled the stunner from his pouch, and fired.

  Thrummppp!

  At that range, even the guard’s armor offered little protection. His knees and legs buckled him into an untidy heap.

  Keeping one eye on the lift portal, Gerswin picked up the body of the unconscious guard and carried it to the flitter, quickly locking the now disarmed man into the cargo bay.

  His return flight was likely to be very quick, followed by an even quicker departure on the Caroljoy.

  Before he made that flight, he needed to claim whatever he could from the latest of the ongoing work and see if he could determine what exactly had occurred.

  Returning to the lift shaft access portal, he pulled a respirator pack from the recesses and pulled it over his nose and mouth, then, stunner in one hand and frag gun in the other, he returned to the lift port and touched the stud.

  While the light poured out, no one stood on the lift landing. He crossed the landing and peered down the shaft. Empty.

  First things first.

  He dropped to the private loading dock where his shipments were assembled, not that they were addressed as such, nor did even the Enver company employees know the real addressee. The official labels announced a destination as Research Center, c/o Drop Five, New Aberdeen.

  There were three packages, total weight roughly ten kilos. Gerswin debated, finally dropped the stunner. Anyone who was awake after the dosage of sleep gas that had flooded the building and the others in the complex would be hunting and shooting to kill.

  With the frag gun in his left hand and the three packages tucked under his left arm, he eased up the three flights of emergency stairs to his office, officially the office of the Patron, Enver, Limited.

  Instead of using the main portal, he walked to the storage closet at the end of the corridor, avoiding the three sprawled bodies in Planetary Guard marauder suits, and opened it, twisting the end of a shelf like a lever, then tapping a code on the plate that appeared.

  Inside the spacious office were five more unconscious forms, one in a marauder uniform, two in dress Guard uniforms, and two in civilian dress.

  Gerswin studied the office, since he wouldn’t see it again, ran his eyes over the Enver seal on the wall behind the wood-paneled executive console, and surveyed the twin leather and chrome couches, the conference table with the underslung recliners, and the Saincleer replica on the inside wall above the low old-fashioned bookcase.

  The original Saincleer was for Lyr; she’d mentioned once how she admired the artist. It looked as though she would receive it a bit sooner than he had thought, provided he finished up and stopped meandering.

  Gerswin turned his attention to the older of the two civilians—the one with the short blond hair and square chin, with the incipient potbelly.

  The planetary premier—the same man who had taken the credit for landing Enver, Limited, as a major new employer—had apparently regretted his action.

  Why?

  Gerswin frowned. He would love to know why Alerio had decided on or accepted such strong-arm tactics.

  He shook his head, glanced back at the Saincleer replica, then at the premier. The only possibility was the Empire—the only possibility.

  He gathered a few small items from the console as he considered the implications.

  Item—if the Empire had actually decided to move against Gerswin and the OER Foundation, then there would have been some rumors on New Augusta.

  Item—if the Empire were to move, then the I.S.S. or the Corpus Corps would have been involved, not the Maran Planetary Guard.

  Item—Alerio could not have had access to the Privy Council or the Emperor.

  Conclusion?

  Gerswin laughed once, silently, behind his respirator pack.

  Eye Corps had set up Alerio to set up Gerswin, to give Eye the excuse to declare him an enemy of the Empire.

  The decisions were already made. All he had to do was to m
ove faster than the Empire.

  He stood by the executive console and tapped in a series of numbers, waiting for the acknowledgment. When the confirmation came, he tapped in another set of numbers on a tight beam to the Caroljoy. Those would begin the evacuation options for Lyr. Once he returned to the ship and broke orbit, the message torps would take care of the rest. At least in that area, he had anticipated the need.

  He waited, then tried to access Enver data. The screen remained blank. He tried the most urgent priority codes, but the result was the same. No data.

  Finally, he entered the last code.

  The data in the files was gone—entirely gone. Within twenty-four hours, the buildings of Enver, Limited, on Mara would cease to exist. That might even buy his competitors, and their stolen techniques, some time before the Empire realized their enemy was not Gerswin, but the changes in society bound to occur as his biologics became more widely accepted.

  Gerswin took a final glance around the office he used perhaps fifty times and left through the storage closet.

  The corridor was still deserted, but he used the emergency steps to the roof—three more flights.

  Once in the open air, he could hear the distant sirens converging. After sprinting to the flitter, he dumped the guard from the cargo bay onto the roof, then scrambled into the flitter, beginning the take-off sequences even as he strapped in.

  The fading scream of thrusters on full power, four dead and one unconscious guard, and dust swirling over them were all that the Maran backup force found on the roof.

  The Maran Planetary Guard’s atmospheric strike force—thirty assorted flitters and skitters—arrived at a dusty field in a distant corner of the remote hunting preserve of the Count de Mermont just in time to feel the concussions created by the hasty departure of a high-powered and unseen spacecraft.

  Orbit control tracked, but failed to intercept, the streaking ship that ignored all departure procedures and conventions.

  XLI

  The screen chimed, and she acknowledged.

  At the blond hair and yellow eyes, she smiled, but her smile was wiped away by his first words.

  “Are you all right? Is there anyone with you?”

  Normally, he launched into whatever he had in mind.

  “Yes, I’m fine. And there’s no one here except the normal staff. Why?”

  “You have reservations on the luxury transport Empress of Isabel from the Imperial shuttle port tomorrow morning. Take only what you would take on a short vacation. Everything else has been arranged. The necessary documents and itinerary are in your name at the normal Halsie-Vyr drop.”

  “In my name?”

  He ignored her question and continued onward.

  “The Empress is an Analexian ship operated for profit, and the human quarters are quite opulent, I assure you. I thought the change would be beneficial.”

  “Why? I just can’t drop everything and run off on a vacation.” She brushed a gray hair off her forehead.

  “You’ll understand once you’re aboard. I can’t explain further. Take too much time, and time is short.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “No. Get your itinerary from Halsie-Vyr and get on the Empress.” Although he did not raise his voice, his eyes seemed to leap through the screen at her, and in all the years she did not recall such intensity directed at her.

  Perhaps she was tired, for she found herself saying, “Of course. Will I see you there?”

  Instead of answering directly, the image softened.

  “Take care, Lyr. Take care.”

  And the screen, with the background of the scout, blanked as suddenly as he had called.

  As she stared at the vacant console, she began to worry. After the first conflicts, the commander had almost never ordered her to do anything. While going on an expensive vacation was not an onerous order, there had to be more to it than met the eye. With him, there always was.

  Then, too, he had seemed rushed, almost as if he were trying to complete a long list of tasks without enough time.

  Finally, unlike him, about whom she knew more than he realized, or at least more than he let on she knew, Lyr was not the adventurous type once the subject got beyond financial management.

  And he was promising an adventure.

  XLII

  “Can you explain it?”

  “No, ser. I can measure the changes, but that’s about all.”

  The Commandant of Recorps, Old Earth, cleared his throat. “Environmental improvements suddenly occurring, and we haven’t any explanation?”

  He glared around the conference room, ignoring the blotches on the walls that indicated all too clearly the age of the building. “So what are we doing? Why are we holding together antique dozers with Imperial castoffs? Why are we risking lives day after day on the offshore purification pumps? Why are we working nights to educate shamblers?”

  “Commander.” The voice came from the woman, but it was cold and deep enough to chill the conversation.

  “Commander,” she began again, “whatever biological processes are involved are localized cases, at least so far. We cannot track the cause, only the results, and so far they have shown up in the Rhyn River effluent. There may be others, of course. While there are changes in the forest patterns near the river, with increased undergrowth, these are so far inconclusive.

  “In the meantime, Recorps has reclaimed nearly thirty percent of the most arable land left in Noram, plus nearly all the High Plains area. We have similar successes, albeit on a later time line, in Norcan and the Brits. No one else has even tried so much.”

  “Except the captain…” That unspoken thought loomed. Or had someone voiced it?

  “You’re right, Mercelle,” observed the commander with a tired shrug. “Hard to keep things in perspective. We’ll keep at it, keep track, and see if nature will at last give us a hand. Istvenn knows we deserve it.”

  “We forget,” added Mercelle, “that biological cleaning is a gradual process. Sometimes, you can’t tell it’s even taking place. Besides, until an entire region is clean, it really isn’t complete. In the meantime, we finally have an increasing population that needs the new ground we reclaim every year.

  “For the first time, we’re actually making an export surplus from the luxury items. Not much, but it’s positive.”

  “And,” added the executive officer, “we need to keep that progress up to justify the budget from the Privy Council.”

  “Right. The budget, always the budget,” concluded the commander sardonically. The logic was clear. With all the increasing pressures on the Imperial Treasury, and the decreasing revenues from the associated systems, unless Recorps could show continued numbers of hectares reclaimed annually, as well as an increased amount of resupply goods for visiting fleets, Recorps would be cut to what it could subsist on from foreign exchange from its minuscule exports, and that was nothing by comparison.

  What else could they trade on but tradition—tradition, reclamation, and sentiment?

  He pushed aside the thought that someday, someday, sentiment would not be enough. Nor would the tradition of Old Earth be sufficient.

  That was when they would need the mythical captain!

  XLIII

  Three marines, clad in full battle armor, wheeled the laser cutter up to the portal.

  A combat squad deployed behind the three technicians in the corridor of the building which had been sealed off. All the other offices had already been evacuated, silently, and one by one.

  The senior marine technician gestured. The deployed troops dropped their visors, and the two other techs began to bring the laser on line.

  The bright and thin purple lance of the cutter was nearly invisible as it knifed through the endurasteel casement of the portal, a reinforced structure designed to resist anything less.

  Thud!

  The tiles of the corridor carried the vibration as the entire portal assembly fell inward into the office it had served and guarded.

&
nbsp; More than a dozen marines sprinted into the office—a space totally empty of people—sweeping the area with stunners to ensure that the smoke caused by the abrupt rise in temperature created by the use of the laser did not hide anyone.

  Their duty completed, the assault squad returned to their deployed positions as the I.S.S. technical specialists who had been waiting behind the barricades trooped forward into the office.

  The most senior technician, white-haired, thin-faced, sat down at the main console, the one with the finish below the keyboard dulled with age.

  He frowned at the unfamiliar layout of the symbols.

  “Logart, this is an old Ferrin model, updated with Usart couples.”

  “Ferrin? Never heard of it.”

  “Ferrin Symbs hasn’t turned out anything since the twenties, maybe earlier.”

  “What was this place?”

  “Some foundation. According to the offreq scans, used as a cover for some of the Atey rebs. OER Foundation, I think the name was.”

  The third tech, a dark brunette who was inventorying records, decorations, and other loose items not actually in the data banks, looked up with a puzzled expression.

  “Jocham, this is original equipment.”

  “So?”

  “So,” answered the white-haired tech, “that means this place has been around a lot longer than the Atey movement.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Simple—”

  “Techs,” interrupted a fourth voice, one belonging to a figure wearing a privacy cloak over full-space armor, “all speculations are better confined to your official report, and backed by specifics.”

  The senior tech saw the woman about to complain, not realizing the organization the armored man represented, and cut her off.

  “Geradyn, official reports, as the Eye Service has requested. Official reports, with all relevant data.”

  Geradyn blanched. “I didn’t…”

  She broke off her statement and returned to her inventory under the shadowed eyes of the Intelligence Service officer who paced from one side of the OER Foundation offices to the other.