The Hero

by John Ringo

  Shot fired! And again he dodged, this time dropping as soon as possible. A small eruption of dirt in front of him indicated Dagger was trying to catch his feet. That would be a difficult shot, but obviously Dagger thought he could make it. Not good. It might have been best not to provoke him in this terrain. Still, it was better than just running, hoping for a chance. He could also feel tal pushing at him.

  Shot fired! Dagger was getting angry. Tirdal could feel it. This time he dove far forward, hoping Dagger wasn't leading him much, in response to his last two evasions. If he was right, he'd gain a few moments as Dagger repositioned for the next shot. If he was wrong, hopefully his armor would slow the round enough to reduce the injury. He arched in midair, landing flat on his abdomen and slapping the ground with his hands and toes to absorb the momentum. It was easier than he'd trained for, in this low gravity, although he got bashed in the head by his own gun again. At once he pushed up and went into a rapid crawl on toe and fingertips, scrabbling under the brush like a local scavenger. The tall grass and stalky growth reluctantly parted in front of him, bending but little from the narrow print of fingers and toes. The plant tops waved but little, leaving Dagger a broad potential target area to choose from. Dust and tiny insects blew past Tirdal's face.

  He felt another shot and rolled to his right, where the shots were coming from, hoping a low round would pass over him. It did, the grass cushioning his mass for a moment before ripping away, leaving a flattened area. But Dagger now knew what he'd done there, and that round had already been close. It wouldn't take many more before this came to an end.

  Another one came, this time a hornet round that cracked overhead as it targeted him. His suit snapped out a signal and the dead round banged into his hip, making him wince with pain but not causing major injury. That was good. It meant Dagger was getting frustrated, and doubted his own ability to make the shot. But he could shoot quite a few more rounds, and eventually one would hit Tirdal.

  Then something happened.

  The tenuous connection between them solidified again, and he could feel Dagger shooting. For just a moment, he could see what Dagger saw, a ghostly image over the reality in front of him. He closed his eyes for a moment to catch the scene, and moved. Dagger was aiming right at him and shooting now as Tirdal rolled away and rose to his feet, the shot chewing ground where he'd been, then another passing behind him. Dagger fired, leading him and he just stopped, standing precariously where he was for a moment, then moved at an angle then forward. Another hornet cracked, but he knew it was coming and dove forward. It missed him, barely.

  Then the connection broke, feeling as if it were full of static. Dagger was furious, howling angry. He was panting and sweating and starting to shake. But he wasn't shooting.

  And Tirdal knew where he was. He was on a low hummock of the rolling ground to north and east. Now he was heading for higher ground and trees to the north. Very well. Tirdal would meet him there. Should he follow behind Dagger, or circle around the east?

  Follow. That would disturb Dagger even more. He grinned again, despite the sting in his hip now turning numb, the aches in his shoulders and chest, the itching from abraded skin irritated by sweat, the urgent, gnawing hunger and the cloying promise of tal.

  It was time for Dagger to feel some of this.

  He let tal build, slowly, until he was experiencing a dizzying, exhilarating rush. It was still controllable, though it took concentration, and he'd have to shut it down in a hurry before anything resembling a kill. He'd just have to hope nothing attacked him across this savanna. In the meantime, he could easily feel Dagger over there. That confirmed, he moved at a low crouch, helmet batting the grass aside as he strode. He reached out for other life, and found the herd, dumb and contented with its grass, and a buzz of lesser creatures underneath that, nonsentient and merely background. No predators reached him here, though there were some in the "distance," undefinable. They would not be close enough to worry about, so he drew his awareness in to focus on Dagger and anything in that range.

  Dagger was moving for that small copse of trees, yes. Likely some trick of geology funneled water and nutrients to them, as they stood on solid ground, all alone. And Dagger intended, most likely, to climb one to use as a platform for a better shot. So while he moved that way, Tirdal could hurry closer.

  Should he risk the kill? Should he risk trying to capture Dagger? Both had their dangers. He'd have to decide soon, but options were always desirable.

  And there was Dagger, far ahead but visible. The range was about a kilometer, and Tirdal could see his head and rifle. The man was so enraged or so conceited he wasn't bothering with cover. Well, good. Some stray shots would serve to annoy him further . . . and just might hit him. Tirdal stopped, raised his punch gun and took careful aim.

  The first shot caused an eruption of dirt ahead of the sniper, who sent out a mental shriek of fear but then dove for ground with trained reflexes. Tirdal fired again and again at the area, tossing stalks and dirt in cascades. Dagger's fear was palpable, edging up toward the level of his rage. And there . . . fatigue, despair. Emotions were piling on each other, wrestling to be the most important. Tirdal realized he could not ask Dagger to surrender. It would be perceived as weakness. He must push and keep pushing until something snapped. It was still possible, however unlikely, that Dagger might ask to surrender. That would be the best outcome. But it must be begged for, not offered.

  Dagger was moving now, low and slow. Tirdal took his best guess as to where and fired again. As long as a few of his shots were close, Dagger was too low to realize they were simply lucky, and would continue to panic. The occasional wisps of smoke from scorched grass couldn't hurt, either. It would be best to space the shots, so the seventy left would last a goodly number of minutes. Tirdal recalled a human joke about Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics: things get worse under pressure. So pressure there would be.

  In fact, fire might not be a bad thing. Brush fires couldn't be too uncommon here, even though the oxygen level wasn't that high. It was a perfectly natural occurrence the Tslek shouldn't notice, and might serve to throw Dagger over the edge.

  A tiny adjustment to the punch gun's controls, accomplished as two movements between the ongoing shots, and the beam would disperse just slightly more. However, that meant a lower-pressure plasma sheath around each bolt, which should encourage dry, stalky growth, covered in dust and flaky husks, to ignite.

  It was a pity the weapon wouldn't fire faster. Still, four or five shots on the same area should do the trick, the subsequent beams providing more ignition sources and a slight wafting of air through the growth to fan the flames. Tirdal picked a spot he was sure was ahead of where Dagger was, drew it back to what seemed a good estimated distance, and started firing.

  * * *

  Dagger stopped prone and took a few breaths. He cringed as another scattering of dirt preceded the poounk! of the punch gun. The damned Darhel had figured out a way to track him. He thought at first that Tirdal had acquired some gear back at camp, and had finally figured out how to use it. His actions, however, indicated that he was only able to track sporadically, when Dagger was most frustrated. So it was his damned sensat crap. He seemed to notice when Dagger was going to take a shot, but only after the fact; he still could only sense emotions, not thoughts. So the thing to do would be to just . . . shut down. Get in that sort of meditation mode like when he was shooting. Just . . . become a rock, a blank spot . . . What was it that Darhel had said? "Think of a floating bubble . . ." He'd use that one, since he must. He shut out the earlier comparison to a pool and the surface. Had the slimy freak detected a residual thought of that time when he was eight, when the local bullies had held him under at the local swimming hole? Could it be coincidence, or was the Darhel trying to enrage him with bad memories? If so, it was working, and Dagger didn't believe in coincidence. So don't think about that. Think about that soap bubble bit. Ignore the implied insult about how simple and childish it was. There would be time to g
loat after he took the shot.

  Then he twitched again as another shot landed close enough for him to smell cooked lime from the ground. The Darhel bastard was learning quickly, and Dagger wondered if he'd managed to meet up or talk to Ferret. He was getting harder to kill, not easier.

  How could something dodge so many rounds? He was sure a few of them had nicked, at least. Enough to slow the alien twerp down. Except they hadn't. Was his suit that good? If so, Dagger might be in deep shit. But that wasn't reasonable, or Tirdal wouldn't be running.

  Except he wasn't running now. He was attacking. A sudden change in tactics indicated desperation. So Tirdal was in bad shape. A faint grin crossed his face as he thought of that. The asshole was trying to keep him scared as he approached, but he still wasn't doing too well. His best attack so far had been to try to topple a bluff. No matter what happened, Tirdal still couldn't actually kill.

  A familiar odor crept into his nostrils and brain. It was pleasant and relaxed him just slightly. That was nice. It wasn't something he'd smelled here, it was . . . grass smoke?

  Then through the waving stems he saw an orange flicker that was also familiar. "You asshole!" he whispered hoarsely, and started to shimmy back in panic. A lucky beam must have caught something dry and flammable in this arid terrain.

  Then Dagger realized there were more flames, making that crackling noise that meant they were spreading. Oily gray smoke hung low around him, and tickled his nose and stung his eyes. Shit. A whole area to his left was flaring up, between Tirdal and him.

  Still, that meant he could use it as a screen, and he'd better damned well hurry, he realized, because that was the direction the prevailing winds were coming from. If that was a five kilometer breeze he felt, it was as fast as a brisk walk. He'd need to be faster than that.

  Eyes wide again, feeling frustration, panic and fear fight with exhaustion and stress, Dagger rose to a crouch and sprinted the hell east and north. He'd had general plans to go that way anyway, but he hated, just hated, being forced into a course of action. But a grass fire was not something he could ignore, and it wouldn't react to his weapons.

  He rode over his shivers and thought of how best to dispose of the rage and, and . . . fear . . . he was focusing and concentrating. How about as a mental attack for that sensat bastard? Throw some of this at him and see what happened?

  Are you reading my mind, Tirdal the Darhel, cowardly little bastard? Read this, asshole.

  * * *

  Tirdal felt Dagger's mental outburst. Once again, he had a flashing connection to his enemy's brain, thoughts and feelings and sensory input cascading over him. Raw, seething hatred! Power and control. The strength of it caused his tal levels to rise, and he fought to lower them. That was the ongoing problem; maintaining the level high enough, without flying off that precipice.

  But he had caught that brief glimpse of Dagger's surroundings. He was now farther to the northeast, almost to those trees at the edge of the prairie. The fire behind him and to Tirdal's right front was dying down to an angry black and red scar, the red fading to ashen gray as a pall of smoke rolled up and thinned, the upper edge flattening out in the stratified air.

  Dagger's detectability was fading in and out as Tirdal fought the tal levels. Also, he seemed to be becoming "fainter." As if he was getting ready to take a shot. Or, more likely, trying to mask his emotions. There was a lot of rage there. Time to tweak it even further. Also time to stop shooting, so as not to provide a return target. He got low and began to belly crawl, arms stretched out ahead to minimize damage to the grass.

  He called up Dagger and started playing mind games again. "So, Dagger, how are you doing?" he asked as he slipped through the stalks, bending rather than breaking them again. "Of course, I don't really have to ask. I read your mind."

  He paused at a thinning of the weeds, only to determine it was a path cleared by another herd of gargantuan insectoids. Good. He'd learned much in the last three days. This was something else for the Darhel to practice, on either cultivated "wild" areas or remote planets. The human monopoly on force became less of a potential threat as other tactical knowledge grew.

  Dagger replied, a bit breathlessly but sounding surprisingly well controlled, "I take it you've never seen a real brush fire you little asshole? You do know they can go against prevailing winds, spread out in long lines, create firestorms that suck air in to feed them, and generally not do what you want them to do?"

  Tirdal had known some of that. The rest sounded very reasonable and he realized he—they—had been lucky the grass was merely weather dry and not kindling dry from drought. That was not a mistake he should have let himself make from eagerness. On the other hand, risk was an essential part of war. He should push the man more, since he seemed worried.

  "Dagger, a few degrees of flames and carbon monoxide with sulfur isn't bothersome to Darhel. I may decide to do that again. It's my turn to chase now."

  "Oh, quit with the bullshit. I've seen Darhel burned in accidents. You're as easy to cook as we are. That was either an accident, or you're really clueless out here."

  "If so, Dagger, it doesn't speak well for the humans I've been learning from," he said.

  Dagger apparently decided to ignore that. He seemed to be getting smarter. Instead, he changed the subject. "That was rather clever, hiding the box on the bug. It would have been really clever to keep it low, where I couldn't see it sticking out like a saddle on a boar." There was a slight smugness pervading the control in his voice. And the control was obvious to Tirdal. Dagger was trying hard to suppress his emotions. Suppression, however, was not what he should do. They should flow, not be bottled up. And Dagger seemed to do exactly the opposite of what anyone wanted . . .

  "I felt you needed the hint," he said to goad Dagger. "So far, you've shown little ability to outthink or outtrack anything smaller and brighter than these bugs." The bugs were impressive, though, he thought as he skipped behind one and dropped back into the stalks. They were the size of Earth's extinct rhinoceri.

  "I tracked Ferret, and he was supposed to be the vaunted master of it. You remember Ferret? I think he was wetting his pants when he realized I could see him. He was in good cover, too. Better than you've ever had. But the fickle finger of fate holds the trigger. And if you're so good I need a hint, why'd you drop the box and hide in the weeds?"

  "Very simply, Dagger, I found your tracer some time back. It no longer serves my purposes to have you follow it. That was a ruse to keep you where Ferret could stalk you," he said. He also could use Ferret as a mythical ally. And as the man was now dead, Dagger couldn't cross check. "Now that Ferret is gone, I have no need to make things simple for you anymore. You'll have to do some real tracking. It's time for you to learn a few things."

  With that, he rose back to a crawl, though this crawl was as fast as a good jog for a human, fingers and toes extended like a lizard's, but reaching far forward and behind to reduce the profile they cut in the grass.

  "I'm going to kill you, you alien freak," Dagger said.

  Tirdal spoke again to keep Dagger talking rather than shooting. "Really, Dagger, you should acquire calm, not just the outward symptoms. One should focus not upon the blankness within, but the blankness without, allowing it to draw the storm."

  Dagger interrupted his spiel. "I've got a philosophical question for you, Tirdal."

  "Yes, Dagger?"

  "If a Darhel gets his head blown off in the middle of the forest, do the trees hear anything?"

  "There, Dagger, you've made progress. You've acknowledged your anger. Now allow it to draw your fear of competence with it, and learn to feel. Only then will you be able to track a Darhel on flat ground without the tracer."

  The crack of a projectile echoed across the savanna. One of the large herbivores twitched and staggered, trod in a circle as its sharp-edged feet threw clods of sod and grass. It was seeking its antagonist, and confused at not finding one. Moments later, it lined up on a nearby bull and charged. There was nothing wr
ong with its gait. The armor-piercing projectile had done no more than chip its carapace and annoy it. And that should be another lesson for Dagger, Tirdal thought. The beast's thoughts had spiked at the shot and were now subsiding back to normal. Dagger needed to do the same thing, and disappear behind the noise of the local life.

  * * *

  Dagger wasn't stupid. He knew the conversation had been designed to distract him. Anyway, a good sniper worked better in silence. To say nothing could be the scariest statement of all. And the damned Elf wasn't going to trick him into not using the tracking module. That whole jab had been an attempt to throw him off. It hinted of "fairness," and Dagger was not one for "fair" when "effective" was available. He'd use the tracker, the superior range of his weapon, his cunning and precision. And, he'd use his human ability to kill. To do otherwise would be silly. Let the Darhel mutter his philosophy. Dagger would shoot beads instead.

  He took deep drafts of air, both to revitalize his flagging strength and to calm his nerves. Now he had to get into a state that Tirdal couldn't track. That would mean his tools would give him the advantage. His tools that didn't depend on emotion.

  Tirdal really was desperate, he reminded himself. He was talking, running, hiding the box, setting fires. It was all very annoying, some of it was foolishly dangerous, and all of it meant he was out of practical ideas. This was a battle. A low-scale battle between only two combatants, but still a battle. Some damage was inevitable. Tirdal had trouble inflicting it directly—probably he couldn't kill and was hoping to push Dagger into getting injured, thus leaving him here in a cowardly fashion.

  For a moment he remembered his own threat to Ferret, but that had been vengeful, not of necessity based on fear. Anyway, Ferret was dead, cleanly killed one-on-one.

  Otherwise, Tirdal was just hoping for a lucky shot to catch Dagger, and all Dagger had to do was stand up to the fire, figuratively, and dish out what Tirdal couldn't take. He'd gone face-to-face with Ferret, this gutless troll should be easier. And that's what he was. Not an Elf, but a troll. A filthy little freak from a race of freaks who needed humans to fight for them. So here it came.