Shasti paused on the catwalk leading to the ship. Leaning back against the slim metal rail she looked up, pretending to study the ship. Not that she needed to. The vessel had been her home since her escape from Dua-Denlenn cutthroats.
Sidhe sat with her four hundred and eighty meter, blood-red hull engulfed in the launch cradle’s embrace. Wings, set far back on the hull, held two black Wildcat fighters. Far over her head, hung the turrets for the chain guns. Sidhe’s big punch, the mass acceleration driver, ran the length of the horizontal interior axis of the ship. Her crew of two-hundred fifty was largely dispersed through Mars by now.
The spot she’d stopped at allowed her to study her watcher from the corner of her eye. He was using some hand tools to work on the scaffolding, bolting and unbolting the same piece of decking. Confed police, she thought, and that means big trouble. Maybe coming was a mistake. What the hell has Fenaday done now? And why do I keep staying to save his ass?
When she had seen enough of the man’s face to remember it, Shasti started back up the gantry. A personnel lift took her up to the main gangway. She used her ship’s officer pass to enter the secured airlocks and boarded the turbovator. The door to the spade-shaped bridge opened.
*****
Fenaday looked up from his command chair as Shasti walked onto the bridge and cocked an eyebrow at him. He didn’t rise or reach out a hand. Shasti hated to be touched. For a while, he’d thought her uninterested in men, until she proved otherwise one spectacular night.
“I’ve checked the ship out,” he said. “I’ve got every anti-bugging and white noise device we have working,” he said, “I think it’s secure. No guarantees.”
“In this or anything else in life,” she replied. “I assume you didn’t bring me here for a sparring rematch.” She dropped into a bridge chair at her security station with an easy grace.
“No, no rematch,” he replied. It took him ten minutes to lay out the details of the meetings with Duna.
“Enshar? Why would you even consider this voyage?” she asked, looking at him as if he’d gone mad.
“I had another visitor later, a man, calling himself Mandela. He’s with Confed Intelligence. He knows about the day we met. Someone talked.”
Shasti did not yell, scream or curse the unfairness of the world. “Inevitable,” she shrugged. “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. I’m surprised it didn’t come out earlier.”
“There were too many eyes,” he agreed, standing and stretching. “You never would tell me how you ended up a prisoner on a Dua-Denlenn pirate vessel. Shoddy treatment for the man who rescued you.”
She cocked her head. “You had no idea I was aboard. You were after a bounty as always.”
“And for my troubles, you nearly brained me, ran off my guards and shot up my hold full of valuable prisoners. Next thing I know, my landing force is running, I’m looking at a pile of dead Dua-Denlenns and the barrel of my own pistol.”
Shasti leaned back in her chair looking pleased with herself. “It showed you why you needed to hire me. As for the rest, my solution took care of the need for paroles.”
“Yep,” Fenaday agreed. “Less paperwork, clearly. I suppose you had your reasons.”
Something flickered in her eyes, quickly suppressed. “I was working as a bodyguard,” she finally said, “when the Dua-Denlenn struck my employer’s compound. Someone hated her to have commissioned such an expensive raid. The cook drugged my food and they took me alive. My patron and her children died badly. I had to watch.”
“My only regret about the Dua-Denlenn,” she continued, “is that I didn’t have time to kill them slowly. Torture is part of the Dua-Denlenn culture, almost an art form. I’d have made each one of them into a masterpiece. But with you there, I had to settle for just dead.”
He looked at her sidewise. It was the most she’d ever said on the subject. “I don’t disagree,” he replied, “but it put us in the trap we’re in.” He drew a deep breath and came to a sudden decision. “Or at least, it’s the trap I’m in. I’m too well known to run and where would I go? I put most of my family into bankruptcy when I sold off the Shamrock. I have some money in a small emergency fund. It’s not enough to lift ship, but it’s enough for you to run.”
Shasti stared at him. “You’d do that, for me? They’ll jail you on that basis alone.”
He shrugged. “There are worse things.”
She stared at him, then shook her head. “No, I’ll stick with you.”
“Shasti, I’m going to die on Enshar. There’s no chance. It’s a fool’s errand. They’re sending my ship because they have to send something and no one cares if we die.”
To his surprise, she gave a small smile. It was the first he could recall. “If we don’t survive,” she said. “I’ll never have a chance to meet this wife of yours. A woman who could so obsess a man might teach me a thing or two.”
He laughed ruefully. “If that happens, I may end up with some explaining to do.”
“Is that why you stopped?” she asked, catching him off guard. Her expression closed up again; the glimpse into the depths suddenly shuttered.
Now he was in uncharted space. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I thought our affair meant I was giving up. After all the things I did to start my search, I can’t do that. A lot of people were hurt when I sold the company. My cousin’s father shot himself... Then there’s all I’ve done since. Maybe some of the people I’ve dealt with had it coming, but that doesn’t seem to square somehow. If I give up, then I did it all for nothing and I’m not sure I can live with that.
“There’s something else,” he hesitated, then plowed ahead. “I wasn’t sure if you were with me because you felt you needed to be...”
She shook her head; her long, glossy, black hair shimmered.
A knot released in his chest. He hadn’t realized it until then, but it was important to him that it had been more than business. Vanity, he supposed. “I’m not free to give more. I felt bad about that.”
Shasti smiled again. It seemed the day would be full of such surprises.
“You’re an anachronism, Robert, a throwback to the days of white knights. Even now, with Enshar staring us in the face, you’re thinking of ways to keep looking for her. Why? Tell me why?”
He looked at her blankly for a second. “She’s my wife.”
“Wife,” she said with surprising bitterness, “just a word. It tells me nothing, Robert. You’ve searched for years for a woman whose ship disappeared in unknown space. When the ship doesn’t come back, the crew doesn’t.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I know all the sayings. Your life is the ship’s plus the air in your suit. I’ve heard them all.”
“Yet, you continue,” she said.
He looked at her intent face and gave a small sad smile. “Do you know what I was before I met Lisa?”
Shasti shook her head.
“Lonely,” he said. “Living a life without purpose or passion. Never had to struggle for anything, everything was handed to me because of my family’s wealth. I never knew if someone loved my wallet or me.
“Then I met Lisa. She wasn’t impressed with the name Fenaday. I found I had to be more than a spoiled rich kid to keep her. She told me once that I was her world. That’s a lot to live up to.”
“When her ship disappeared, I wasn’t prepared to just stand there and take it. I wasn’t prepared to be reasonable.
“I may not be the toughest or the brightest. God knows nothing I’d done before prepared me for this life. I’d be dead a couple of times if it wasn’t for you and dumb luck. What I am though,” he added with a grin, “is what the Irish are best at, stubborn and unreasonable.”
She stared in frustrated incomprehension. “Words and words. They mean something to you, born-human. To me, created and engineered, they convey nothing. The meaning seeps out of them. All I have left is the sounds.”
Fenaday looked at her tentatively. Created? Engineered? Her past was something
she’d never discussed, a place barred and warded. Today, Shasti seemed so different, so much more approachable. “You’ve never told me about your life on Olympia. All I know is the same wild rumors—”
She stood abruptly.
Too far, he thought. Damn. He waited, dreading that she would storm out.
After a long, dark moment, Shasti sat back down, as if she’d forgotten the reason for rising. She dusted imaginary lint from her sleeve.
“Sorry,” he ventured.
She nodded, not looking at him.
“For now,” she said, before the silence could lengthen again, “since neither of us wants to spend the rest of our lives in a cell, we need to focus on how to do this and survive. You know they’re watching the ship.”
“Yes,” he said, equally anxious to get back to neutral territory. “I’ve spotted several of them on the external monitors. As obvious as they are being, I suspect they want us to know they are there.”
“We’ll need a crew,” she said. “We are not going to find a lot of people in our situation.”
“How about you taking the executive slot?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t have the navigation math or the certifications but I wouldn’t want the last fool back even if he wasn’t locked up.”
“No, I don’t want him back either,” Fenaday mused. “I’m promised a number of people by this Mandela, specialists he said, and better than what we could find, but still...”
“We don’t want them in charge,” she warned. “God knows their real agenda.”
“Agreed.”
“We need an X.O. who isn’t in their pocket,” she continued.
“I met a hot pilot with Belwin Duna,” Fenaday said, “navy-trained and a Wing Commander. For some reason—and it is just a hunch—I feel he is trustworthy, at least where it doesn’t cross Duna. His name is Telisan, a Denlenn.”
She stiffened.
“Denlenn,” he said, “not Dua-Denlenn.”
“They look much alike,” she growled, “but a hot pilot you say?”
He nodded.
“I can live with it,” she said, standing. “I’ll start rounding up a crew. The usual wages won’t attract anybody.”
“Tell everyone it is a high-risk mission,” Fenaday said, “with an extremely good chance of not coming back. No details, don’t mention Enshar. It will get out eventually, but I don’t want to deal with the press if I can avoid it. Tell them it pays a hundred thousand credits for able-bodied spacemen and twenty-five thousand more for every grade over that. It goes to their dependents if we don’t come back.”
She blinked. “We have that kind of money?”
“Yeah, but on a very short leash, otherwise we’d be lifting for the Fringe at maximum delta-v. We are not dealing with fools.”
“Be nice,” Shasti sighed, “if it was easy once. Just once.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked
Shasti gave him a mock glare, shaking her head. “Standard humans,” she muttered.
Chapter Five
Shasti and Fenaday spent the next thirty-six hours looking through the low places of Marsport for their crew, trolling through bar after bar and less savory dives and flophouses. Sidhe was crewed normally with two hundred-fifty spacers and her own Landing Expedition and Assault Force, nicknamed the LEAF. Fenaday wanted a full contingent of ground fighters on this trip. He’d need fewer regular crew, since they’d carry no cargo or trade goods. This was a military mission, and Fenaday planned to take as few to death with him as he could. As for Mandela’s people, they were not his responsibility.
Fenaday finally located Carlos Perez, Sidhe’s chief engineer. Ironically, he found him in Luchow’s, where Fenaday had carried his own sorrows the day before. His wife had already thrown him out. Again. Fenaday explained about the upcoming voyage.
“Sounds like a suicide mission,” Perez said, dark eyes blazing. “That is exactly what I want, provided La Bitch gets nothing in the event of my death.” Fenaday clapped him on the shoulder and sent the engineer back to the ship to start coordinating repairs and maintenance.
Moshe Karass, pilot of the shuttle Banshee, was maintaining Marscabs in a garage. Karass was one of the few of Fenaday’s crew in whom he had much faith. The Israeli was a good pilot and loved spacing. Karass looked pleased to see him. He wiped his hands on a rag before shaking Fenaday’s hand.
“Hey, skipper,” Karass said. “What’s the good word?”
“There’s work, Moshe. It pays four hundred thousand credits for a top pilot but I can’t recommend it.”
Moshe whistled in astonishment. “Four hundred thousand credits? Where are…never mind. If you could tell me, it wouldn’t pay such a mint. Well, I’m no closer to getting a decent spacing job. Pan World’s frame job on me for that moon shuttle collision is still fresh in the minds of prospective employers. My only way back into space is with you. If we live, I’ll have enough money to clear my name.”
“Okay, Moshe. Get down to the ship as soon as you can.”
Meanwhile, Shasti had found most of her LEAF troops in bars or jail cells. Some were working as leg breakers, bouncers and such. A few had found respectable work; those she left alone. This mission was suicidal and only the desperate, or those they desperately needed, were invited.
One of the respectable turned up at the ship anyway.
Shasti looked down from the gantry to see a familiar, tall shape, striding between lines of supply carts. “Johan,” she muttered to herself and took a work elevator to the ground.
Johan Gunnar had served in the LEAF with her since she arrived on Sidhe. He’d landed a job with a shipping warehouse as a manager. Glad of it, she’d not contacted him.
He smiled when he saw her open the elevator cage. “I hear there’s a mission,” he said, his eyes level with Shasti’s. Breath steamed from his breather unit as it whiffed O2 to him.
“I heard you had found a job already,” she replied.
“Bah,” he growled. “A few days behind a desk and I begin to think death might be preferable.”
“You’re being a fool,” Shasti said. “This is a voyage for the desperate and the damned.”
“You’re going,” he said, “that’s good enough for me.”
“I qualify on both grounds,” she snapped.
“My choice,” he shrugged. “For my own reasons.”
“As you say,” she said, “your choice.” Angry for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, Shasti spun on her heel and left.
She spotted Fenaday by the front landing jack. As usual he had a preflight list in his hand. He and their tactical officer, Katrina “Cat” Micetich, were talking to an engineer and pointing at the immense jack towering over them. Fenaday spotted her and waved her over, handing the comp to Micetich, who walked off with the engineer.
“What’s our status on ground troops?” he asked, adjusting his breather and zipping his leather jacket. It was bitterly cold in the ship’s shadow.
“Pickings have been better than I expected,” she said, putting Johan out of her mind. “With the war over, the economy lousy, there are lots of hard cases available: LURPS, Commandos, and Air Space Assault Team troops. Mars seems full of people with little concern for life and hungry for money.” Shasti knew the type too well, having been raised from childhood as an assassin in the Denshi Order on Olympia. She’d developed an eye for the good, for the ones putting up a front and for the plain crazy. She made her picks, hoping she read people—standard humans as she thought of them—correctly.
Fenaday grimaced, “Great. Well, the contractors showed up an hour ago and began the most extensive maintenance Sidhe’s ever received. I’m glad Mandela’s footing the bill for it. We’ll have shipwrights around the clock. I’m having them pay particular attention our shuttles and fighters.”
Something tickled Shasti’s senses and she turned away from him. In the distance, just coming around a machine shed, a group of people came into view.
F
enaday’s stepped forward to stand next to her, eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”
“Must be Mandela’s contingent. About fifty of them,” Shasti said.
“I wish I knew how you do that,” Fenaday muttered.
“Just rely on it that I can,” she replied.
The group passed the gate to Sidhe’s launch pad, led by another forgettable individual.
“I do like punctuality,” Fenaday said. “Let’s go meet the latest members of the legion of the damned.”
Shasti nodded, trailing him in her customary position to his left and slightly behind, opposite his gun hand. Shasti shot equally well off either her left or right.
*****
They walked over to the loading platform in silence. Fenaday waited, trying to look relaxed as the newcomers came up to them. A breeze from the terraformed desert tugged at his brown hair, he shivered again then put on a cap bearing his ship’s name and identification numbers.
A nondescript man came forward, the group pausing behind him at a hand signal. He walked up to them slowly. “Good morning, Captain Fenaday, Commander Rainhell.”
“Just Rainhell,” Shasti said, she didn’t look at the man, her eyes searched the people behind him for any threats.
“Who are you?” Fenaday asked.
“Mr. Gandhi,” he replied. “Mandela sent me.”
Fenaday grinned mirthlessly. “Your boss has a hell of a sense of humor.”
“I assure you that you have no idea. Be glad of it. I’m bringing you the promised help, all sworn to secrecy, of course. A damn sight better than anything you’re likely to find.” Gandhi turned and waved at the group. A small woman, bundled in an ankle-length, blue Marscoat, led five other people up to them.
“This is Dr. Shizuyo Mourner,” Gandhi said. “She has a Ph.D. in Enshari biology. Dr. N’deba, also an MD and familiar with Enshari biology, Dr. Fierman, Dr. Hecht, their assistants Yamata and Vashti.”
Was Once a Hero Page 4