Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  “DataCen?”

  “Not operational.”

  Krantz! If the Patrol’s own systems had crashed, then the anarchy was universal, and unbelievable. How fortunate that the Scythan Q ship was still ten weeks or more from…

  Merciful Mother! Was it possible?

  Create chaos, Roker had said…

  What greater chaos than a pepod attack? How much of the mainland had it affected? If it had any range at all, then half a dozen nations were going to be accusing their neighbors of starting it. Roker was dead. There would have to be a conclave to elect a new high admiral…Total, utter, screwup!

  Blade came staggering by with another screaming victim draped over his shoulders. He glanced curiously at Vaun as he went by—the great Admiral Vaun standing like a dummy with his mouth open. Blade was functioning, and functioning well, and that was both remarkable and fortunate, a tribute to Doggoth’s ruthless training. Very few people would fly a level flight path so soon after surviving such a massacre.

  “Ensign!”

  Blade, having laid his burden in the torch, straightened and spun around. “Sir?”

  Three more torches were settling down in swirls of sand. That was one good result of Roker’s stupidity—there was plenty of transportation here tonight. “Blade, you take over the rescue here. You’re in charge, regardless of rank, hear? Leave the worst till last, or shoot them. Get the rest up to the house. Don’t forget the woods. Security, accept this man’s orders to Level One. Feirn, get in. I’ll take this lot.”

  He pushed Feirn into the torch ahead of him and told her to control the moaning, writhing heap of people in the back—Blade and the pilot had loaded four. It was a bad overload. The torch was already airborne as the canopy phased in, but it skimmed a few wavetops before Vaun realized that the Valhal control systems were overloaded also, and not to be trusted. He snapped over to manual, and for a moment thought he’d cut it too fine. Then the craft steadied under his hands.

  He banked, and banked again as he saw how little climb he had. A bloody arm came crashing over his shoulder, and someone fell on him, and he yelled at Feirn over the ravings. She hauled the delirious boy off him.

  “Keep them back there!” he shouted.

  “Vaun…How did you do that?”

  “Do what?” The trees were still too close.

  “Make the pepods attack like that?”

  “What?” He turned in horror to look at her, and an updraft from the forest fires struck the torch, and for a moment he wrestled disaster. Motors screaming, the torch steadied. Now all four of the patients seemed to be shrieking at once. Pepod poison was fast, and he wouldn’t give a peppercorn for their chances, any of them. He was ferrying corpses, but it had to be done.

  “I didn’t do that!” he bellowed. She probably couldn’t hear him over the free-for-all going on back there…

  “Security—where is the sick bay?”

  “In the Great Hall, sir.”

  Good! He wondered if that was Maeve’s doing, and dropped the torch to an extremely rough landing on the front terrace, probably taking out half the windows in the west facade in the process. As he killed the motors, a gang of at least a dozen boys came running to unload. Someone was organizing.

  Vaun stumbled out, and lifted Feirn bodily after him. He identified a commodore he knew slightly and told him to take over the torch or find another pilot, and then he headed for the house with a firm grip on the girl’s slender wrist, almost dragging her. Before they reached the doors they were both coughing and weeping from the smoke of the burning forest. From indoors came a sound of bedlam.

  “Now listen, Feirn! I had nothing to…” But her eyes were as wild as her red hair, and he saw that smoke was not the cause. She wasn’t comprehending. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  She stumbled groggily, and he slowed. She was only a kid, and only a civilian, and the nightmares had been too much for her. Nevertheless, he daren’t have her running around suggesting that he was responsible for the catastrophe. She hadn’t heard Rokerand Quild outline their crazy scheme, hadn’t heard Vaun’s protests. She’d watched Vaun and Quild go off to the pepods, and then the whole thicket had charged in and started slaying. Hers was not an unreasonable assumption, perhaps, but she must not be allowed to spread such ravings around tonight. Things were bad enough without that.

  “You stay with me, all right?” he said as they reached the doors. He started to babble some nonsense about her being a professional eyewitness, and how important her testimony would be, and then saw it wasn’t needed.

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes! Yes, please!” She moved close, and clung to him.

  Fair enough—her fixation on the great Admiral Vaun was still there, and now he was going to be her personal protector. Her thinking was just muddled, and she would not deliberately make trouble.

  He blinked in the lights of the Great Hall. The tables had been pushed back, and bedding was being spread on the floors. He saw medical robots, and human attendants, and a lot of wounded. Amid all the noise and confusion, he sensed an undercurrent of method. Very few of the pepod victims would survive, but there would be burns and trauma and blast to deal with also. He could not see Maeve.

  Security imaged in before him, a transparent face on a misty torso. Even its voice was faint. “Sir, a great many male persons are heading for the parking lot. My resources are inadequate for peaceful deterrence.”

  Half a dozen girls had surrounded Vaun and were shouting for attention. The boys had taken a more direct approach, but all those innocent bystanders Roker had rounded up, Maeve’s guests of the night before…they would all want to head home now, to find out what had happened to their families and friends. Oh, gwathshit!

  “Use force, then. As little force as necessary. Zombie gas, or something. But do not let any torches leave without my authorization. Quiet!”

  The girls recoiled, and the hubbub around him stilled momentarily. “As soon as we know it’s safe, you can all leave!” he shouted. “But not until then! That is final, and you are under martial law. Tomorrow you can leave. Now go and help the wounded!”

  Angry and frightened, they began to disperse. Were Roker here, he would agree with Vaun’s decision. The Q ship was a dead issue now, until Ult recovered from this more immediate and tangible disaster.

  Just in time, Vaun grabbed Feirn’s arm as she moved to follow the others. “You stay with me, remember?”

  She nodded, and he hurried her out into a corridor.

  “Vaun?” she gasped breathlessly. “What happened? Why did you and the other man go to the pepods?”

  “It was Roker’s idea, not mine.”

  “But what was he trying to do?”

  “Vaun!” shouted another voice. “Feirn!”

  He turned as Maeve came running up. Her thick hair hung loose and disordered, and she wore an opulent white gown that seemed stupidly inappropriate for a major catastrophe. She looked from him to her daughter and back again. “You’re all right? Both of you?”

  Feirn huddled close to Vaun and said, “Yes!” defiantly.

  “We’re both fine,” Vaun said. “Can you cope with the wounded?”

  Maeve nodded, giving her daughter a worried frown. “I can use more help, though.”

  “No!” Feirn yelped the word, and clung to Vaun with both arms. She was shaking violently. He put an arm around her also.

  “She stays with me. I need her.”

  Maeve hesitated, then shrugged in agreement, her eyes asking questions she obviously dared not put into words. Maeve as a mother was a strange concept for him, one he found oddly disturbing. He smiled and shook his head ever so slightly. She seemed to take that for reassurance, and relaxed a little. “They’re going to die, aren’t they? Most of them?”

  “Yes. Almost all. Just make them as comfortable as possible.”

  She shuddered. “Gods, it’s awful. And not just here. What in Heaven’s name happened, Vaun?”

  Good question! What had Roker really wante
d? What had Quild intended? Had Quild being playing for the Brotherhood? Quild had certainly not been one of the brethren, and surely he would not have chosen to die so horribly. Assume Quild had been a victim of his own folly—had Roker really expected the weird pepod seance to produce results, or had he merely been plotting murder? The dead must be given the benefit of the doubt.

  “Roker was trying to find Cessine and Dice.”

  Maeve blinked. “Who?”

  “My brothers,” Vaun said. “My long-lost brothers.”

  LIKE THAM’S ESTATE of Forhil-like all the great Patrol houses—Valhal was equipped for defense. In a dark corner, Vaun triggered a hidden catch, and ushered Feirn through the door that slid open before them. It hissed closed as he followed, and the elevator fell swiftly.

  She yelped, and turned scared blue eyes on him. “Where are we going?”

  “To the bunker. Control center.” There he could run a much tighter operation than he could through the sims.

  Roker was dead. Until the conclave assembled, the Patrol would be commanded by the senior surviving officer, and Vaun had no idea who that was. It might even be the famous Admiral Vaun himself. Roker had cleaned out most of Frisde’s cronies when he succeeded, and all of Hagar’s clique. Many of the real old-timers had long since gone into withdrawal and been forgotten, others had lost interest and buried themselves on their estates, partying and leching and making merry. They would decline the honor. Vaun’s first duty was to establish contact with Data Central.

  The floor heaved upward underfoot; the door slid open on brilliance and a sense of busy activity. That was an illusion created by dozens of view tanks and overhead screens, all flickering information as if reporting to an army of invisible human operators. The big room was not quite as unoccupied as it should be, though—two boys and a girl sat at the long table in the center, slumped and silent. Vaun strode angrily forward and they lifted shock-dulled eyes to him.

  “Elan?” he demanded, and the girl nodded.

  So this had been Quild’s control room, and Vaun gritted his teeth at Roker’s impudence in making it available to a rabble of civilian academics. Nevertheless, he was delighted to have this lot fall into his hands.

  “Right!” he barked in his best Doggoth voice. “Report! What went wrong?”

  The girl shook her head blankly and looked to one of the boys. He just stared, licking his lips. It was the other who spoke.

  “We don’t know!” he said hoarsely. “They just went crazy.”

  “Well? Find out!” Vaun gestured at the tanks and consoles. “You’ve got all the brain power you can use right here. I want answers, and you don’t leave until I have them. Do I have to drug you alert, or can you function?”

  “You can’t—”

  “Oh, yes I can! We have a state of emergency in effect, and you three were responsible for the death of the high admiral himself, not to mention hundreds or thousands of people elsewhere, or haven’t you got that through your pretty heads yet? You are in terrible, terrible…Shut up! I can take you out and shoot you if I want to, or I can turn you over to the crowd upstairs, who will assuredly rip you all to shreds—so which is to be? Cooperation? Good. Then get busy!”

  The threats seemed to work, at least temporarily. The boys rose angrily and strode over to a board, and the girl followed.

  Vaun doubted they would produce results, but he left them to it, going to the commander’s seat in front of the primary tank.

  Then he remembered Feirn. She was leaning straight-armed on a chair back, watching him with lips drawn back and eyes like two holes in a snowbank. The harsh lighting did nothing for her. He had seen recruits at Doggoth look like that on their third or fourth day, but with much more excuse—Feirn still had her gorgeous copper hair, even if it was hanging in tangles, and she had not been raped even once that he knew of. Recalling his overwhelming physical response to her earlier, he squirmed with disgust. He certainly had no time for such reactions now. Or perhaps his head was clearing, although it felt as though it had been buried under a pile of sand. But he had promised Maeve he would look after her daughter.

  “Sit!” he said, gesturing at the next tank. “You can work one of these…You keep an eye on Blade for me. I’ve given him too much to do for his rank, and he’s probably too pigheaded to shout for help if he needs it. Let me know if he gets in trouble, all right?”

  Silently she nodded, like a frightened child, and sat down at the board.

  Putting her out of his mind, he set to work.

  First he ran a quick scan of the grounds. The wounded were being brought in, and Blade was coping so far, snapping orders, wielding the system like an expert. That boy had promise.

  There was Maeve, in the Great Hall, shouting down a hysterical female admiral. Excellent. The parking lot was being held against an angry, but so far nonviolent, group of boys, and two captains were organizing food in the kitchens.

  Satisfied that his immediate responsibility, Valhal, was running smoothly, Vaun turned to external affairs. He discovered that Data Control had been coming on line for a few nanoseconds at a time and then crashing again. He thought about that…

  “Archives. Isn’t there some regulation about field command when the C-in-C dies in action?”

  The overworked system creaked for a moment, and then flashed up a text in the tank: Para. 3-1a(1), Patrol Regulations 520.50. Unchanged since the Faorian Civil War, centuries ago, but still in effect…Senior officer on location takes command. Which is what Vaun had thought. Good old Doggoth!—when it taught a boy, he stayed taught. He needed several minutes to prepare his move, but the next time Hiport came up it was rammed by a priority override invoking 520.50 and clearing everyone else off the system.

  It worked.

  He sat back and rubbed his eyes.

  “Why are you grinning?” demanded a thin, scared voice.

  He looked around at Feirn. “Am I?” He grinned more. “I suppose because I just got a promotion.”

  “You did what?”

  “I just appointed myself emperor of the planet.”

  Nice.

  “COMMODORE! COMMODORE PRIOR?”

  That means him. He is Prior, here in Hiport. He is a commodore. The mudslug from the delta is a commodore now! People salute him. Highborn lieutenants and captains salute the mudslug from the delta.

  Rank and power and authority, and people groveling.

  He turns to the girl’s call, and something in his mind somersaults. Blue eyes, snub nose, big tits. Who is she? She knows him. So familiar! Memories…Prior’s memories. Prior knew this blond girl smiling so hopefully at him, Vaun. Prior laid her, and more than once. Name? Name! Name!…She’s not in uniform, so she’s probably some sort of flack or historian or something weird. Pretty face, fair hair swinging loose, blue eyes…and terrific pillow fodder, as Prior recalls for him. Greedy little wildcat.

  Lots of girls will do almost anything for a commodore.

  Name? Name! Damn it, Prior, give me her name!

  “Well! Hello, Gorgeous!”

  “Commodore Prior, how wonderful to see you again!” She is smiling and laughing. Ooops…She obviously doesn’t want to be kissed, at least not here in a busy corridor. She backs off, alarmed. “It’s been weeks! Where in the galaxy have you been?” And adds quietly, “Oh, darling, how I’ve missed you!”

  No wonder he collected this memory, then. It’s a current affair, and would have been near the surface. Prior always had at least three affairs on the go, the gnomes told him, and showed him sims, but this girl wasn’t one of them. Well, the next move is obvious.

  “Oh, but I’ve missed you, too!”

  Her blue eyes mist over. “Truly, darling? Oh, do you mean that?”

  This looks very promising, provided he can discover her name. Of course Maeve will not like it if he stays too much in character, and he does talk in his sleep. The nightmares are waning, though, and he probably doesn’t make enough sense for her to find out.

  “…ne
xt week?” asks the girl hopefully. “Hani’s going to the Resources Conference.” The blue eyes widen with appeal.

  That’s why she’s not in uniform—she’s Admiral Haniar’s lady.

  Down, Prior! “Next week, I’ll be gone again, I’m afraid. The same mission…I’m only back for a couple of days…Oh, beloved, I’ll count the minutes…”

  He is really getting quite good at this, he thinks, as he continues along the corridor with What’s-Her-Name’s protestations of unlimited devotion still tingling his id, plus assurances that tonight would be all right if he can let her know early enough. At times he can almost believe he truly is Prior, spacer veteran, spy, double agent, lecher extraordinary. At times both Maeve and Roker have accused him of it. But he has Prior under control now. The bastard is dead!

  I touched his brain, or what was left of it.

  Dead!

  The conference room is on the two-hundred level, circular and vertiginous. Walls swoop down to blend with floor, and all is transparent, even the seats. The impression is of floating high above Hiport, and on bad days the clouds float by. On those days it is easier to concentrate on the subject of the meetings.

  Operation Modred—top secret. Today there are four commodores and a dozen mere mortals and they are all staring in horror at Roker as he outlines the mission.

  Destroy a Q ship?

  Vaun listens with less than half an ear. He has heard all this before, and besides, he doesn’t want to hear it. If those missiles do get fired, he is going to be awfully, nastily, wet-armpity close to the target point. There’s some question as to whether the damned things will work at all, of course, which is comforting. They are so old that no one knows how old they are. Nowadays no one wastes resources building weapons for wars that can never be fought, but these beauties have been the Patrol’s treasure since time immemorial, and actually to fire them sounds like heresy. Attacking a Q ship is bad enough.

  Q ships are sacred.

  Vaun has been in Hiport for three days and Hiport is mind-blistering. The coils of the launcher are the largest artifacts Ult has ever known. Gangs work on them continuously, repairing the corrosion. By the time they get to the top, the bottom needs rescuing again. Almost half the metal ever mined on the planet has gone into the Hiport launcher.