Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  “Stay there or I shoot!” Vaun grips the gun with both hands and forces it up. They can’t take it from him without getting into the gravity trap themselves. He is crushing his own legs and his neck is breaking. Soon he will not be able to breathe.

  “You won’t be hurt, Brother. We won’t hurt you.”

  “One more step and I shoot!”

  “We are your brothers.” Abbot continues to come.

  With a sob, Vaun shoots him in the thigh.

  Abbot screams as his feet fly from under him and he falls, slowly in the erratic pseudo-gravity. Black jumps to catch him, and lowers him to the floor. The bullet must have gone right through the muscle; it would have taken off the limb had it struck bone.

  Black finds the pressure point with his thumbs to stanch the blood, and then turns an angry, perplexed look on Vaun.

  “Will you shoot us all, Brother?”

  “Roker will! They’ve launched missiles! We’re all going to be neuroned!”

  Black shakes his head. “That’s no excuse!”

  Another brother hurries in through the doorway with a first aid kit. He is wearing green pants. Abbot moans and whimpers.

  Vaun begins pushing himself backward, but he needs his hands to do it, and then he cannot aim the gun. Inch by inch he strains…his heart is bursting. He comes to a halt, and it is a moment before he realizes he has reached the wall. The lip of the entrance to the umbilical is waist-high behind him. Somehow he will have to rise.

  Two boys are carrying Abbot out. Blood-spattered and wearing the cap, Black is coming toward Vaun, and his face is bleak.

  “I am Abbot now, Brother. Give me that gun!”

  “I’ll shoot!”

  Abbot continues to come. Abbot, Abbot, Abbot…There will be hundreds of Abbots, all the same, all Vaun himself, all Raj and Dice and Prior…

  Crumpled into a heap, unable to lift the gun from the floor, Vaun manages to tip it up with both hands, pointing at Abbot. He blinks helplessly as sweat runs into his eyes. He fires. And misses. The bullet detonates deafeningly on the background wall.

  “Give me the gun.” Abbot is still coming—puzzled, angry, worried, but coming. He holds out a hand in a scarlet glove.

  It is too late now to escape Unity before Roker destroys her. Too late. The gun slides from Vaun’s limp, damp grasp.

  The steely bands of gravity spring loose. Abbot takes the gun and tosses it away into the pilot boat. Then he kneels down beside Vaun and puts his arms around him and hugs him tight as he sobs, with fear and frustration and shame.

  “I THINK YOU ought to kiss me,” Feirn said brightly, although she was eating a large and untidy sandwich. Vaun had come aft to the galley to fetch yet more coffee. He’d found enough to fill the mugs halfway, and he could work out who had drunk the rest. Having spent most of the day in bed, she looked pert and bright and refreshed. Her pale green dress set off her copper hair admirably.

  Vaun was limp with fatigue; his eyelids ached. Neither he nor Blade had slept during the trip, or even left the flight deck for more than a few minutes. They had spelled each other off at the controls, which was certainly good flying practice in a craft so unwieldy, but in this case mutual stubbornness had played no small part. The barge was descending steadily now, and Kohab not far off.

  “Why the hell should I kiss you?”

  Trying to discourage Feirn was as useless as mopping up the ocean.

  “One—you would certainly enjoy it. Two—I need the experience. Three—I discovered Kohab for you, and it would be a nice way of thanking me.” She smiled triumphantly, revealing a fragment of green caught between her front teeth.

  “I don’t feel in the mood.” Remembering the absurd hypothetical conversation he had held earlier with his copilot, Vaun added, “I’ll send Blade back to do it. How many kisses, and how many minutes each?”

  “Don’t you dare! I can kiss Blade anytime. Now I want a real, genuine hero.” Her frivolity was probably hiding a genuine appeal for affection. The child had troubles.

  Right now, so did Vaun. “You won’t getkisses from either of us if you steal all the coffee. Brew up some more.” He bent to peer out the port.

  For a couple of hours their course had paralleled the coast of Thisly, but without the autos he had been able to make out very little. Now, as the barge descended, he could see the barren, scabbed landscape, and even the minute remains of buildings and settlements. Lots of them. Once this had been prosperous, fertile farmland. Overproduction in ancient times had stripped away most of the soil and left the rest salinified and useless, a desert. Too many people once, so now no one…Why did that concept make him think of Prior?

  Feirn was pouting. “What do you expect, Admiral? What are we going to find at Kohab?” She bit into her sandwich with enthusiasm.

  “Nothing.”

  Mouth too full for speech, she raised fine copper eyebrows inquiringly.

  “I think they must know what happened last night. The pepods would have told them…Hell, they must watch pubcom like everyone else. They’ll be gone.”

  That was a pretty wild guess—as the girl’s expression told him—but his only justification for this mad escapade was speed. Common sense and fatigue together were telling him that he had blundered. He should have dispatched a Patrol strike force.

  By disconnecting the autos Vaun had arranged matters to let him sneak into Kohab without announcing his arrival, but he had also made the Sheerfire so maladroit that he dared not attempt a backdoor landing—on a beach, say. He would have to come in on the strip, if it was usable. The gazeteer said that it wasn’t, but it might have been repaired. If it hadn’t, then all he would achieve was a quick overflight, and he could have called up more information than that from a view satellite without ever leaving Valhal.

  In other words, Admiral Vaun had apparently gone off half-cocked. He didn’t like that idea. He liked the alternative even less—what did he hope to achieve?

  As he turned to go, Feirn choked down a wad, and said, “Vaun?”

  “Yes?”

  “When are we going home?”

  “Home?”

  “To Valhal.” She fluttered her lashless eyelids at him.

  Krantz! The girl had a one-track mind—but of course her mother had called it an obsession.

  He wondered how she would perform in bed. Awful, likely. Her mother at least was well padded, although that had never slowed her at all. Feirn would be agile enough, but too skinny for comfort, emotionally unpredictable, subject to crying fits and temper tantrums—exactly the sort of girl he could not tolerate for more than a quick bang. He should have known that at once, but he had been bewitched by her unusual pigmentation, flattered by her hero worship. He wondered if his fixation on red hair was a design fault or something he had picked up somewhere, like a disease.

  What a stupid, disgusting business it all was! If he had any sense, he would give up stiffener altogether and save himself all the hassle and heartache. Wild stock had no choice, but the Brotherhood was immune, and he had no real need to play the silly game.

  Well…he did. The one thing that had kept him at it all these years was dreams. Prior dreams, Brotherhood memories. The psychs had never been able to explain why screwing kept them away, but then Ultian psychs had no experience of boys who did not care for screwing…boys without parents, boys who lived only for their brethren and hive.

  Feirn had colored under his stare. “Mother says…”

  “Yes. What does your dear mother say?”

  “Nothing. Vaun, I really will try! I promise I’ll try as hard as I can!”

  “Try what, Feirn?”

  “Try to make up for the way she broke your heart. Try to give you the real happiness a hero deserves.”

  He sighed. When they got home, he would see what the Patrol shrinks could do for her. For her age, she was bearing up remarkably well. There was much there worth salvaging. With medical help and a few years’ maturity, she might turn into someone worth befriending.r />
  Meanwhile, he was too tired to be patient or tactful, and he no longer burned with lust whenever he set eyes on the child. He didn’t like to think about that now. The trouble with stiffener was that it turned half the population into targets.

  “Feirn, you are far too young for me. And you are just not my type.”

  She bristled. “What does age matter? And I am so your type! You always go for redheads and freckles, because of mother. Have you any idea what these freckles cost?”

  He shook his head in sad disbelief. Half the troubles of the race came from its instincts for reproduction. Three-quarters? Or even more. No wonder the brethren were superior.

  The floor tilted slightly. Blade was turning the barge landward…Time to go.

  Feirn was smiling hopefully. “I was meant for you, always!”

  “You are a stupid, misguided little tart!” he said wearily. “Some boy really ought to put you over his knee and spank you hard on your freckled little ass.”

  Feirn flushed again. “If that’s how you want it. Mother never mentioned that.”

  “You,” Vaun said, “are absolutely disgusting.”

  Even that, he reflected as he spun on his heel, might not jar Citizen Feirn out of her delusions He was right.

  “Vaun!”

  Still clutching the coffee mugs, he glowered back at her through the doorway. “Yes?”

  Blue eyes were glistening. “You still love her, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Maeve, of course!” Sniff… “That’s why you don’t want me.”

  Krantz! He would not even think about that problem now, let alone discuss it. “Feirn, will you promise to keep a secret?”

  “Oh yes! Of course!”

  Vaun glanced up and down the corridor, as if Blade could leave the controls or there might be more stowaways aboard. He lowered his voice. “Even your dear mother doesn’t know this…But after she left, I discovered that I really prefer other boys. We of the Brotherhood are made that way. Didn’t you know? All those girls who come and go at Valhal are just camouflage. That’s why so many of them get mad and leave—they feel neglected. I’ve managed to keep it hidden and that’s good, but now, if you’ll excuse me, Blade and I were having an important discussion about ways in which he can advance his career.”

  He left her with her mouth hanging open and stalked back to the flight deck.

  Too intent to notice his superior officer’s smirk, Blade accepted a mug and contrived to drink coffee and fly the high admiral’s disabled barge at the same time, which Vaun would not have attempted. They were coming in due east, and the barren coast of Thisly lay straight ahead.

  “In the saddle between those two peaks, sir.”

  Vaun did not ask him if he was sure. He wouldn’t say so otherwise.

  “Head in for a landing, then. If it looks in the least bit dicey, pull up smartish, and we’ll take a look around afterward.”

  It was riskier to do it that way, but it would use their surprise arrival to maximum advantage. It was riskier to let Blade do the work, too—for, in truth, Vaun was still a far better pilot—but the kid had earned the opportunity. He was almost smiling again.

  The hills had to be smaller than they had seemed, for they rushed forward impetuously. The shore surged upward, a rocky moorland still spotted with a few patches of dirty snow. Vaun saw surf outlining a spit of rock that still held traces of a jetty—he thought that part of it had been repaired and might be usable for small craft—and then the beach. The ground seemed to rise to meet the cruiser. As Blade had said, the saddle held the only signs of life, a few tumbledown sheds and crumbling brick buildings. No trees and almost no cover. The strip lay straight ahead, and it was clear. Vaun glimpsed a thicket of pepods rummaging at the far end, but then the tarmac swept up and the Sheerfire came down to meet it.

  Bump. Bump. Brake…and Blade was taxiing quietly over to a ramshackle hangar.

  Vaun released his breath. “Beautifully done, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He sounded surprised that what he had done merited a compliment. Feirn, Vaun recalled, had mentioned Blade’s tendency to provoke homicidal impulses in others.

  The valley was wide and hummocky between the two hills, and seemed deserted. Summers were hotter and winters colder in the south, but with Angel gone from the sky, this barren moorland was cool enough forpepods to be active even in a late-spring afternoon. That might be the very thicket that had triggered a massacre across most of the planet. The pepods alone justified a visit to Kohab, even if the Brotherhood theory was all dustbunnies.

  “What do we do now?” asked Feirn, who was peering out over Blade’s head.

  “Now I leave you.” Vaun was lacing his hiking boots. “There’s not much cover, but I’ll try to disappear before anyone comes, and have a look around. If anyone comes, that is. Blade, you were ferrying the high admiral’s barge from hither to yon and your autos gave out. Emergency landing. Okay?”

  “Sir.”

  “Look out for pepods, of course. Play dumb for the natives, if any. I’ll try to get back before midnight. That ought to hold…Uh-oh!”

  The Sheerfire was just coming to a halt before the hangar. It was a very large hangar, and perhaps not as decrepit as it seemed at first. Lined up inside it, well back from sight, were half a dozen torches.

  “Those look new,” Feirn said.

  Grabbing up the Giantkiller, Vaun hurried by her without a word. He threw open the door and jumped out into a cool and blustery wind, smelling of ocean. If there was anyone tending those torches, then to dive for cover would be idiotic. If there wasn’t, then he would have plenty of time to burrow before anyone could arrive from the main buildings.

  The problem solved itself instantly. A boy had been standing back in the shadows. Seeing Vaun, he emerged and strode quickly forward, wiping his hands on denims so grubby that they must have been used for that purpose many times. He wore a bright orange shirt, sleeveless in spite of the chill, and his dark hair blew free in the wind. Then he broke into a run. He was smiling widely.

  Vaun knew that smile…hard to see it because the wind was making his eyes water. He stumbled forward a few steps. “Dice?” he croaked—there was something wrong with his throat, too.

  “Vaun! Really you, Vaun?”

  The Giantkiller clattered unnoticed to the tarmac as the two boys met, threw their arms around each other, and tried to crack ribs. Then they pummeled each other on the back a few times and went back to hugging.

  “Vaun! At last! The admiral in the flesh!”

  “Dice! You are Dice? Or are you Cessine?”

  “No, Brother. This unit was never Dice…”

  “Then—” Vaun stopped in midquestion, staring over his brother’s shoulder. Another three boys were coming at a sprint, shouting in glee. By the color of their shirts, they were Green, Violet, and Tan. Tan could not keep up, because he wasn’t fully grown yet, maybe sixteen. But he was close behind, and he cannoned into the melee and was absorbed also, while Vaun, in the middle of it, thought he would be battered to death, or crushed to death, and there were arms everywhere, and laughing. His eyes had misted over completely.

  Back with his brethren. Home. A hive.

  How many of them would there be?

  Tan was unbelievably like Raj. He sounded like Raj, he grinned like Raj. And he said, “Wow! Really Brother Vaun!” in the sort of awed, excited tone that Raj might have used. “I know all about you, Brother!”

  Raj had been dead for almost half a century. Vaun had betrayed him, all of them.

  Orange or maybe Green said, “Oh, it’s wonderful to meet you at last, Vaun.”

  “Know all about you,” said another.

  “You can’t know it all!” Vaun protested—Raj and Prior and Unity?

  The voices blended all around him. “Sure!” “’Course!” “Watched what you’ve done for years!” “You’re a hero!” “We’ve got plans for you!”

  “What about the wilds, Broth
er?” asked Violet or Orange.

  “Wilds?” Then Vaun remembered, and looked around. The sunshine seemed brighter than it had before, the sea wind sweeter, the hills in the background greener. Blade and Feirn were standing on the tarmac, she clinging very tightly to him, her cheek pressed against his chest; he with one arm around her. She looked horrified; his face was as unreadable as concrete.

  Vaun thought, What on Ult can I do with them?

  Then he realized that decisions were no longer his to make. What on Ult can we do with them?

  He glanced at his brothers and saw a puzzled frown on Violet’s face. Then Green caught it…and Orange…

  They didn’t know why he was in any doubt.

  “We’ll have to kill them, of course,” he said.

  Feirn screamed, “Vaun!”

  “Could give them to the pepods?” young Tan suggested, as if he had just had a brilliant idea.

  “That would still leave a couple of corpses,” Green said, but he was clearly relieved that Vaun had admitted the obvious.

  “Vaun!” Feirn shouted. “You don’t mean that!” Her face was ashen-pale. She turned to look up at Blade, and hugged him tighter. “He’s not serious, is he?”

  Blade did not even look down. He continued to stare bleakly at Admiral Vaun, his lifelong hero. Blade knew the answer.

  Vaun did mean it.

  If he supported the Brotherhood, then he must guard the secret of the hive, meaning that those two must not leave Kohab alive. If he was still on the other side—and at the moment he was too shocked to know where his loyalty lay—then he must pretend not to be. Apparently the brethren would accept him as one of them, but he must play the part. The two randoms must pay the price. His own life was in danger, too.

  Either way, he had no choice.

  “They’ll have to die,” he said. “But when and how, I’m not sure. Let’s lock ’em up somewhere and decide later, okay?”

  “There’s a storeroom in the air plant with a lock on it,” Tan remarked, ever helpful.

  “Fine. What did you all mean about having plans for me?”

  The boys’ voices jumbled all around him. “What you can do to help, of course.” “What you can do for us.” “To help the hive when Armageddon comes.” “Your part in Die Day.”