Hero!

by Dave Duncan

  Arkady was very close to Hiport!

  Hell! He reached for his clothes.

  Security here was as primitive as coal. The brethren trusted one another absolutely, and relied on secrecy to defend them against the outside world. Bishop might have thought to install a camera in the dormitory, but it was not likely. If he had, then the switching of shirts should have put it in the wrong place—inspecting faces for bruises would have been a big operation.

  Vaun wondered if his bruises had faded much in the night.

  Half a night.

  One thing a boy learned in Doggoth was waking to order.

  THE CORRIDORS WERE dim and almost deserted. A few sleepy boys wandered the corridors, but whatever business they were on had nothing to do with security or guard duty. They exchanged smiles and nods with their black-shirted brother, and went on without having really noticed him at all.

  Finding the air plant was easy. It was hot and stunningly noisy, filled with a mind-numbing throb of archaic machinery, monstrous black shapes vibrating in the shadows of what had probably once been a shaft. Huge ducts and girders led off from it in various directions, vanishing into rock and overhead darkness. The place looked deserted, as if no one had visited it for years.

  There was at least one camera somewhere, though.

  Vaun could see only one other door. It was a plate steel antiquity, rusty and solid and unrevealing. He stood for a while in a corner to study it, struggling to make his sleep-sodden brain do its duty.

  Duty? He was sorely tempted to say The hell with it! and just go back to bed. Any bed. There had been several empty pallets with no clothes on them and no dark-haired head on the pillow. Any of them was his for the taking. This was where he belonged. This was what he’d been born for…conceived for, designed for.

  Shit.

  Maeve’s daughter.

  Pepods.

  After a while he felt himself starting to wilt in the heat, and that roused him to move. He was mostly worried by the key hanging on a nail in plain sight by the jamb—it seemed too easy. The key could be a trap, booby-trapped somehow. The hinges were visible, and a ramshackle tool bench nearby was littered with implements and junk. He could hammer the pins out of the hinges—except they were well rusted in and he would make a lot of noise.

  The hell with it. He went to the bench and selected a weighty ball-peen hammer…to disable the camera, he told himself, while suspecting he needed it more to satisfy some atavistic craving for a weapon. He marched over to the cell door and took down the key.

  The lock squeaked. The hinges creaked alarmingly, a shrill scream of alarm rising over the basso background roar of the compressors. He opened the door just wide enough for him to peer inside, gagging at the musty stench that greeted him, the rot of centuries.

  The room was very small, the floor filthy and littered. At the far side, a shapeless bundle of blankets was already starting to stir. If he were going to put a camera in here, he would put it right above the door, high up. He squeaked the door a little further and slipped inside.

  Near the ceiling, above his head, a black limpet about the size of his thumb clung to the rock. It was unobtrusive, but newer than anything else, unmarked by the pervasive dirt. He swung the hammer up and crushed it, and was showered with dust. Unless the watchers had noticed the sudden brightness of the door opening, they would assume a malfunction—those must be commonplace in the archaic junk market. And it might operate only in the infrared anyway. He stared all around, looking for others.

  “Admiral Vaun?” Blade asked softly. He was sitting up, and he did not seem to have any clothes on.

  Feirn mumbled sleepily beside him, and groped for the blanket. She said, “Eek!” as her hand found Blade instead.

  “Get dressed! And hurry!” Of course, Vaun could have gone around by the washroom and stolen some hive garments, but those would not disguise either the girl’s red hair nor the boy’s height. Somehow they must avoid being seen at all on the way out.

  “Is this a rescue, sir?” Blade was not moving.

  “Of course it’s a rescue! You think I came to kiss you goodnight?”

  “Is this wise, sir?”

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘Is this wise?’”

  “Won’t they be sending you back, sir? I mean, don’t they expect you to resume your duties with the Patrol?”

  “What of it?”

  “Well, sir. If we try to escape and don’t succeed, then there will be no way to warn Hiport about this hive. Even if we do get away, they will guess that you helped us.”

  “Idiot!” snarled the girl. She, at least, was scrabbling into her garments, but Blade was just sitting.

  “You have a touching faith in my loyalty, Lieutenant!”

  “Your presence here now would seem to vindicate my trust, sir.”

  “God’s tits, boy! Get dressed! Now!”

  “I still think the tactic is questionable, sir.”

  “They’re threatening to throw you both to the pepods, you clatterbrain!”

  “I am aware of that, sir. But our fate is not important compared to the fate of the planet. I think you should play along with them, sir. I really do!”

  The girl was almost dressed. She said, “Blade!” furiously. “You can’t mean that! One minute you say you love me, and the next minute you want to feed me to pepods?”

  The kid was absolutely, one hundred percent right, though. Vaun should not be here. Even if he believed that the hive no longer trusted him, he would have a much better chance of escaping on his own. He ought to slam the door, lock it again, and walk out by himself. Or go back to bed.

  He hefted the hammer, fighting a fierce urge to throw it. “I have given you an order, Lieutenant!”

  “Sir!” Blade spasmed into motion, but he still argued. “If they trust you, sir, then you could order a strike in force, and in proper order.” He was on his feet already, zipping his pants; speed dressing was a Doggoth specialty. “If you release us and come with us, and do manage to get away, then they will have time to evacuate at least some of—”

  “You idiotic numskull! Spare me your woolly idealistic heroics!” Vaun slipped back out of the cell with relief, gasping some welcome fresh air.

  The corridor beyond remained deserted; nothing had changed. The captives followed him, Blade still furiously buttoning. The girl had an arm around him.

  “This is for real, isn’t it?” she demanded, glaring at Vaun as if she suspected he was about to turn into someone else. “Last night I really thought you’d gone over to their side!” She had transferred her hero worship to a new hero, obviously. Fine by him, but Maeve would not be pleased.

  “So did I.”

  “What!?”

  They wouldn’t have me. Still carrying the hammer, he led the way out into the tunnel.

  What had the brethren decided after he left the hall? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know, not now.

  He walked as fast as he could, but this was one of the unimproved parts of the mine, with ancient rails on the floor and many overhead ducts and dangling cables. The lights were matted with webs, everything was deep with the megafilth of centuries. “I don’t suppose you noticed any com equipment around, did you?”

  “None, sir.” The lieutenant was practically dancing as he tried to stay close to Vaun and also negotiate the rough terrain, while adjusting his long stride to that of the girl clinging to him, and not bang his head.

  “Then listen,” Vaun said, “both of you. We may have to split up. Can you fly a torch, Feirn?”

  “Not as well as Blade.”

  “Few can. The torches may be locked. They may have disabled the Sheerfire. But if we get the chance, we should scatter, understand? They’ll follow and try to bring us down.”

  “I won’t leave Blade!”

  “You have your orders, Lieutenant.” Vaun stopped talking while he negotiated an ominous hole in the floor. “There’s at least one more hive somewhere, possibly at a place called Ralgrove. Got
that?”

  “Yes, sir. Ralgrove.” Blade scooped Feirn bodily over the ditch with him, using one arm and not braking stride. “I see why we need a com, sir. Do you think they even have them in their torches?”

  “Probably not. Not even for emergencies.” The brethren would sooner die than imperil security.

  “The nearest strip is at Fondport, sir. Twenty kilometers south.”

  Vaun wondered if he should have promoted Blade to a higher rank than lieutenant. Of course, if they came out of this alive, the kid would be a commodore tomorrow. Their chances were about three in a billion. He signaled a halt as they reached the first crossing. He knelt and peered around the corner, both ways. There was no one coming. “Right,” he said, rising.

  “Left, sir,” said Blade. “If we’re going back to the exit, that is.”

  “Please yourself.” Vaun went left, and the other two followed. Probably either way would do, but the way the captives had been brought might be shorter. This was one of the improved tunnels, paved and clean, and it seemed to go on forever. The night lighting was dim, but anyone who stepped in from a crosstunnel was going to see well enough to notice two very odd brethren, even at a distance.

  At the next intersection he stopped his companions and walked boldly ahead, glancing to right and left. Seeing no one, he beckoned for the others to come, and they dashed across to him, hand in hand.

  He hurried onward. “Our main message, the one we must get through, is to neuron this place soonest. Ralgrove should be investigated. This one—fry it!” What of Number 516? He had kissed the child goodnight and now he wanted to melt every cell in his brain before he woke up. But even if he could save the innocents, they wouldn’t stay innocent. In fifteen years or so, Number 516 would have all the deadly potential Dice had had when Vaun first met him. Roker’s talk of an infection had been realistic. Every spore must die.

  Think Armageddon instead!

  And how to convince the Patrol? “Trouble is, I don’t know the codes.”

  The day code would have changed since he left Valhal. The fences would open for most admirals, for they could be identified by voice or face, but Admiral Vaun was a special case. The systems had special procedures for him, and they would certainly talk back to a lieutenant, especially if this one was already posted AWOL.

  “I could get through, sir.”

  “So could I,” said the girl.

  “You? How?”

  Feirn laughed harshly. “Think any pubcom station would resist a beat like this one? Petly’ll wet his pants. Then he’ll call the Patrol for comment, right? And Petly can get high up, fast! I know—I’ve seen him do it.”

  Messy! But it would suffice if only the girl escaped. And, of course, Blade’s mother was quartermaster at Hiport, so he might be able to get through to Weald or Phalo faster even than Vaun could. Infuriating, superhumanly efficient young upstart!

  Another intersection…He went forward, and still saw no other pedestrians. How long could this luck last? Again he beckoned for his companions to join him. When they caught up with him, he said, “If we can get out, we scatter. If they have corns in their torches, then get through to Hiport as soon as you’re airborne!” The Sheerfire would be speedier than a torch, but its electronics were dead. Blade knew all that. Time would tell, maybe.

  And there was going to be pepod trouble. The pepods would react to humans but not brethren. Time to think about pepods when they got out of the hive.

  “They’re training the pepods to be a weapon, of course. Report that. And the Q ship. It’s going to look like a near-miss, but it’s not a rock, it’s a boat.”

  “Unmanned, then,” Blade said.

  “Yes, unmanned.”

  “Told you that, sweetheart!” the girl said. “Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “I said no one would send a Q ship across interstellar space just to give someone a bad fright twenty-five years in the future! You didn’t believe me, darling.”

  Oh, Krantz! They were into the lovebird stage.

  “Yes, I did, dear. Sir, we go right here.”

  Vaun turned right without questioning. This tunnel sloped steeply upward, and it was pleasantly dim.

  “The brethren are talking about Armageddon!” he said. “It’ll be a tin boat, not a rock. Or maybe a very small rock, able to take the tidals from a course correction at three hundred millies. So it’ll seem to be going to fly by, and then it’ll veer at the last minute and impact. My guess is that it’ll take out Hiport.”

  The girl gasped. “But why, Vaun?”

  “To destroy Ultian Command. No more central control. It will devastate the planet—earthquakes, no communications, no solar power, no harvests for years. Billions dying. Chaos and anarchy. I sent Weald a file—it’s all in there. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, Vaun.”

  “Back!” He shoved; Blade wheeled and dragged the girl back with him to the sidetunnel they had just passed. Vaun carried on as if nothing had happened, climbing toward the two brethren who had just appeared up ahead. The lighting was dim—would they have noticed?

  Apparently not. They were deep in talk, and passed him with vague nods. He turned off into the tunnel they had come from, then stopped and peered back around the corner until they had vanished. His knees were shaking. Time oozed by in drips of sweat as he waited for Blade to conclude that the coast was clear and follow. He was dismayed to realize how easily he had come to trust his self-appointed deputy.

  Trust…Apocalypse…Meteor impact and pepod attack…Communication breakdown. Then famine and pestilence and civil war and breakdown of order…Petty warlords taking control with their own militias…

  What leader could ever refuse an efficient, trustworthy subordinate? Or a fearless bodyguard, loyal to the death? Or ruthless mercenaries, genius advisers? Or officials utterly incorruptible, immune to both gold and girls? As deputies, the brethren would be irresistible and very soon make themselves indispensable in all the high places. If your opponent has one, then you must have one…Just intelligent cyborgs, of course, but very handy.

  And in twenty years or so, the knives would turn in their users’ hands—all of them at the same instant. The Master Race would rule. The wild stock would be domesticated, and Ult would go silent. It had worked on Scyth, and perhaps on a thousand other worlds.

  The two human fugitives emerged from their sidetunnel and came racing along to meet him. He held out the hammer so they would recognize him—even so, he noted that Blade took a hard look at the bruises that distinguished the one good brother. The traitor.

  Without a word, they resumed their march, hurrying now with a shared sense of urgency. Time was running out. They must reach the torches before dawn.

  More turns…more frantic dashes and pauses to peer around corners…Twice more they hid from wandering brethren. They must be close to the entrance now, and the hive seemed to be stirring into life. Blade’s memory of the route had been faultless.

  And then they were all three jammed into a dead-end crevice, hardly breathing as a troop of four brothers went trudging by, muttering sleepily. Vaun suspected they were the night watch from the gate coming off duty. Pity…the replacements would be more alert. But the four had gone by and it was only a matter of minutes before the fugitives could try their break for freedom.

  The boys stayed silent.

  “Sweetheart?” Feirn whispered.

  Blade said, “Dearest?” It was nauseating.

  “What good are we going to do? If the Q ship is going to hit the world…I thought Q ships couldn’t be stopped?”

  “This one can, I think. They can’t hit Hiport from Scyth.”

  Good boy—he’d seen the one slim chance.

  “Huh?”

  “It probably can’t even hit the planet from seven elwies, and certainly not a bull’s-eye on Hiport, if the admiral is right and that’s its target. It’ll have to make a sighting.”

  “I don’t follow.”r />
  His voice was very low and patient, but he was talking to Vaun also. “It will have to shut off its fireballs for course confirmation. Maybe for only a minute or so, but when it does, it’s vulnerable. Right, sir?”

  “Right. I hope that’s right.”

  It was right in theory, and a tin boat was a lot more vulnerable to hardbeams than a rock, but it was going to call for some very, very nimble work by the Patrol.

  It didn’t sound like Ultian Command, somehow. It would take everything the Patrol could put in the sky, and then some. Roker might have been able to organize it. Maybe Vaun himself could, if the Patrol would let him. Weald, Phalo…not too likely.

  A hell of a slim chance, but it was all they had.

  “Let’s go,” Vaun whispered. “Every boy—and girl—for himself. I’ll try for the gun rack. You two wait a minute, then sprint for the door, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kiss me, darling.”

  Vaun left them to it.

  He dropped the useless hammer, made sure the tunnel was empty, then stepped out into the passage and ran for the guard room.

  TRUST…THE WHOLE system was based on trust, the certainty that a boy was who he said he was.

  On his arrival the previous day, he had seen no signs of electronic trickery. The hive’s only real defense was its enemies’ ignorance of its existence.

  He strolled into the guardroom. Four boys were sitting there, muffled in blankets, reading books. They were amateurs in security, he assumed, specialists in other disciplines who had drawn an unwelcome tour of sentry duty in addition to their regular labors. That explained why they were all huddled together—unusual to find the Brotherhood being inefficient. They did not even look up at him.

  “Prior,” he said, and walked over to the gun rack.

  His Giantkiller was there, but there were two newer-seeming versions beside it in the rack, and he recalled Tan’s remark about those being lighter. He slung one on his shoulder, tucked a hand-beam into his belt, and turned to go. “How’s the weather out there?”

  “Cold,” said a grumpy voice. “You’ll need a coat.”

  Perhaps there was a password. Perhaps the light fell on his bruised face. Perhaps he walked like an admiral. One of the books clanked to the floor, one of the guards struggled to unwrap himself. “Hey! Aren’t you…” Moving in unconscious unison, they threw off their blankets and sprang from their chairs, not even glancing at one another—four of them, each one glaring at Vaun, each as good as he.