The Forever Hero (48 page)

“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”

The man's breath came in jerky gasps, one dragged out after the next, as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other. His head wobbled from side to side in the darkness, although he did not look over his aching shoulders.

He could hear easily enough the
pad, pad, pad
of his pursuer's even footsteps. He could hear, but not believe.

None of it was believable.

“Whuff…whuff…whufff…”

His feet and lungs labored as he staggered along the empty riding trail. He looked toward the heavier undergrowth beside the trail, but decided against that tactic. The searing pain that shot from his left arm every time he moved too suddenly reinforced that decision.

“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”

Whoever…whatever…chased him not only could see in the darkness of Haldane, but could move silently when it wanted. Whatever it was, it toyed with him.

His more rational side told him to stop, that attack had proven fruitless, and that flight was even less fruitful, but he kept putting one leg in front of the other.

“Whuff…whuff…whuff…”

How much longer he could move, let alone breathe, he did not know, only that each leg felt like lead, that flashes of hot light pricked behind his eyes, and that his mouth hung limply open.

Whhrrr!

Crack!

The sound of the unknown weapon jolted his momentarily still legs into a shamble onward down the slight incline before him.

His pursuer was invisible, silent except for the sometime padding of feet, silent except for the occasional missile like the one that had shattered his left arm.

“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…”

Each breath was harder to draw, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other. In the back of his mind, the thought flared—you're being hunted, like a fox, a garbou, like a dog.

But his unseen hunter refused to let him turn, driving him with the shadowy presence, with the silent
whrrr
of pain.

Right after he had seen the dark figure, he had charged the unknown, had actually touched the alien, if that was what it was, for the steel muscles of the shadow figure had paralyzed his remaining good arm and tossed him aside like a doll.

“Run…assassin…” Those had been the words hissed at him.

He had not run, not him. Not then. Instead he had turned and attacked with all the skill taught by the Guild. And had been tossed aside again. Like trying to catch a shadow at night. And it had been barely night then. Now dawn was approaching.

Each of those early rushes toward the alien blackness had found him sprawled into the dirt, into the grass of the park.

“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…”

When assault had failed, he had stood his ground. Until the terrible projectiles had whirred past his head, the second shattering his left arm.

“Run…assassin…” And the alien had hissed his terrible message again.

He had stood—until the shadow rose from nowhere next to him and had twisted his pain-wracked arm.

“Run…assassin…”

Whhrrr!

He had run—not wisely, but well, for who had ever outrun him? Who had ever outrun the Hound of the Guild?

“Whuff…whuff…whufff…”

His legs were shaking. The flares behind his eyes left him nearly blind to the path ahead. Staggering, he managed to catch his balance, lurching leftward, then right, until he came to the gentle slope upward, a slope that became more steep with each meter.

“Whuff…whuff…whuffff…whufffff…”

How could you fight something that struck in darkness, stronger than any man, that treated you with such contempt, that ran you down more easily than you had ever run any quarry to ground, and with seemingly less effort?

He dragged himself another step forward.

“Whuff…whuff…”

Whhrrr!

His legs balked at the uphill effort. He stood there, gasping, swaying like a tree about to crash into oblivion.

Whhrrr!

Crack!

He did not feel the stone that killed him, nor see the dawn that spilled from the eastern sky of Haldane a handful of minutes after his body had slumped into an untidy heap on the viceroy's private riding trail.

The hooded man at the head of the table cleared his throat.

“And now, for the unsubstantiated information…”

“It's gossip time,” whispered a uniformed admiral in the corner to his nearest colleague.

The whisper was not low enough. The hooded man, the figure known as Eye, turned and looked. While Eye's expression was hidden, the admiral wilted as if he had received a withering glare.

“Gossip, perhaps, but it has its uses. First, the Ursans are working on their own version of a jumpshift. We have a team looking into that.

“Second, an unknown group has moved against the Guild. While our sources have not been able to verify that, we have verified that there have been a number of deaths associated with individuals suspected of Guild activity. We have been able to investigate three deaths of this type and found reason to believe that the victims were also associated with the Guild.”

“A question?”

“Yes.”

“Why no faxnews stories?”

“The deaths have been spread over ten systems and roughly a standard year, but there is a pattern.”

“Do we know who or what is involved?”

“We have a name, believed to be a code name. That name is Merhlin. Who or what it represents is unknown at this time.”

“Do we want to get involved?”

“I doubt that is to our interests,” answered the hooded man.

His response brought a series of low chuckles from the Imperial officers around the table. One woman shook her head slowly.

“You disagree, Admiral Storz?”

“I would only point out that if an unknown has the resources to take on the Guild, not only without being discovered, but without being stopped, what would prevent such an organization from then applying itself to our agents?”

“Good point. Discovery, however, is not the same as involvement. I should have made myself clear. We are working to discover this group or agency. We do not intend to aid either party.”

Admiral Storz nodded.

“Any other questions on this one?” Eye surveyed the shielded figures around the table in the shielded room. “If not, the next item is the unreleased Forsenian communique which would require the registration of all Imperial agents with the local Forsenian government….”

The man in the full-fade blacks sighed.

War was hell, it had been said from the beginning of man's recorded history, and he did not look forward to the next phase of his war against the Guild. But the Guild was becoming more and more a tool of the unscrupulously wealthy, and the Empire did nothing.

Until he had the final product from the information the Infonet and Lyr's integrators were piecing together month after standard month, he had to continue to keep the Guild off-balance.

So far his efforts had been isolated enough to give second thoughts to individual agents, but the faxers and the other media had tumbled to the identity of the dead in less than a handful of the cases.

He shrugged.

The Infonet he had set up on New Avalon had proven a commercial success, but the mass of information he needed was still not complete. His personal wealth was accumulating faster than either ecological knowledge or knowledge about the Guild.

The Guild continued to monitor all the communications on the open bands in and out of New Augusta, and while he wondered to what degree they could pick up on his short torp messages, he found his own concerns were making even normal foundation business harder to carry out. While Lyr could still make credits hand over fist, and while existing grants could be extended, not as much in the way of new and innovative research was getting started as he would have liked, not when he had to watch his own step every meter of the way.

This time, this time his action should give the Guild some pause.

He checked his equipment and slipped into the lift, headed for his first target in the Tower. The regional Guild councils were not quite as careful about their security precautions as the Overcouncil.

While none had arrived at precisely the same time, and while their reservations did not share common lengths, for two nights the
top eight members of the arm council would be in the same Tower, at least theoretically.

Saverin appeared to be the one listed as Kerlieu, on the eighth level—the same Saverin once known for his proficiency in needle-point laser work.

Gerswin stepped from the lift and walked down the brightly lit but deserted hallway, his shiny bright privacy cloak with the crimson slash covering the shadows of the full-fade blacks beneath.

Saverin's portal was locked from inside, but the Tower's locks were standard. Gerswin pulsed the circuits twice, then opened the portal. He stood well back as the doorway irised open.

Whsssttt!

A needle flare of energy slashed across the space where he had been operating the portal controls an instant before and completed a quick arc search pattern.

Gerswin waited until the flare died before edging a black film decoy into the laser-wielder's line of sight.

Whhsstt!

Another needle of blue light burned through the black film and into the corridor.

As the laser flare winked out, Gerswin flashed inside the closing portal.

Whsst!

This time the blue needle came from Gerswin's laser, straight through the head of the white-haired man with the laser, dropping from his limp hand.

Whsst!

Gerswin sent another beam through the chest of the still-falling body.

Thud…clank
.

The laser rang dully as it impacted the hard synthwood of the suite floor.

Gerswin had rushed past the body, but his haste had been unnecessary. Saverin, as always, had been alone.

Gerswin used his elbow to tap the exit stud and slipped out through the portal without having touched anything in the suite.

The weakness with lasers, reflected the hunter, was that they took a few fractions of a second between bursts, and those fractions were all he needed. But then, surprise should have been in his favor. Saverin had reacted well, considering he should not have known he was being tracked and that he had not been an active assassin in several years.

Gerswin swirled the privacy cloak fully back around himself,
checking to insure that the mask was still completely in place. Although he had disabled the remote telltale circuitry of the Tower before he had started, he would inevitably run into guests and other recording devices. Even if his tampering with the Tower circuits had been discovered right after he had completed it, it would take a good technician more than a standard hour to undo what he had done, and Gerswin planned to be out of the Tower long before that.

Nonetheless, the mask remained a necessity.

Gerswin frowned as he moved down the corridor. While he had not had trouble with Saverin, the former assassin had been quick, either lucky or forewarned.

The next target, on the eleventh level, was not renowned for her reflexes. Margritta DiRenzo plotted out assassinations through carefully arranged accidents.

A pudgy man, belly boiling out over a too-wide golden waist sash, stepped on the lift as Gerswin stepped off. A lecherous smile crossed the heavy man's lips as he took in the privacy mask and cloak, and he inclined his head in mock salute as he passed Gerswin.

The thinner man nodded in return as he turned to the left, away from the target suite, toward the service access. The corridor was clear as he used his equipment to enter the small closet and stepped inside. Once there, he cut aside the access panels with a cutter, then used two quick movements to sever the power leads. The corridor outside the closet turned pitch black before the emergency lamps returned a dim glow.

Gerswin retraced his steps past the lift and toward the proper portal. He tapped twice as he cut his way into the service box and used the manual controls to open the portal.

“Maintenance!” he called.

“What is the difficulty?”

The woman spoke, although accompanied by a slender man. Both held stunners pointed toward the portal. A small portable light in the room outlined their forms in a faint glow, leaving their faces dim smudges.

Gerswin remained in the shadow of the portal.

“Lost all power on this level—”

Thrumm! Thrumm!

Both man and woman dropped to the bolts from Gerswin's stunner without triggering their own.

Gerswin closed the portal behind him and turned over the unconscious pair one by one. The man fit the description of a lover of Margritta's, a sometime Guild agent.

He looked around the room for something to complete the job in the proper format. The scowl beneath the mask turned to a grim smile as he saw the ancient projectile gun on the bedside table.

Three shots later, the job was complete.

It would be reported, at least initially, as a murder-suicide, as an accident/tragedy.

The Guild would know better, but they were supposed to.

Gerswin closed the portal behind him as he left. No one along the corridor had even peered out. He suspected that those occupants who were in their suites intended to stay behind locked portals, at least until power was restored.

He took the stairs to the twelfth level, where the lights were on, unaffected by his actions below since the Tower was designed with power controls set on two level increments. Still swirling his cloak about him, he sauntered down to the technical access closet, where he casually cut his way in, then through three plate covers, and burned through the main conduits for both levels twelve and fourteen. There was no level thirteen.

Although it was theoretically possible to disable all power shunts for the Tower at one point, that one point was a junction center that would have required a full-sized laser and would have alerted not only the Tower security forces, but system security types as well. By disabling only the levels he needed out of the way, Gerswin avoided such alerts, and delayed even the entry of Tower security forces.

Gerswin did not intend to disable more than the two centers he had already put out.

The first suite he wanted was halfway down the hallway on the left, but Gerswin did not have to worry about opening the portal. It was wedged open.

He frowned. That meant quick action—extremely quick action—and that both Council members were probably in the Sendaris suite at the far end of the corridor.

He took the chance of darting into the empty suite and picked up a tumbler, half-filled with something, not that he intended to drink any of it. Then he ambled along the corridor, letting the glass slosh in his hand.

A light flashed from the corner suite of the Tower where he was headed, sweeping the corridor ahead of Gerswin.

So they had a guard.

The direct approach was still the best.

“Hallooo, there. You got power?”

“Who's there?”

“Just old Modred. Looking for Welson's suite, you know, on the corner.” Gerswin lisped the words, and let his gait appear unsteady.

In his left hand were sling leathers, looking like a set of ribbons dangling from unsteady fingers. The tumbler sloshed in his right.

The light centered in on him, and he strained for the sound of a stunner whispering from a holster as he put his left arm up across his face, as if to block the glare.

“Easy…just looking for Welson.”

“Hold it right there.”

The voice was that of a bored professional, expecting no trouble from an obviously drunken partier, but ready to drop him at the slightest excuse.

Gerswin wobbled to a halt, several steps taken toward the light, as if in an attempt to catch his balance and stop.

“You're not Welson,” he accused the guard behind the light.

“Wrong suite, buddy. Better check downlift.”

Gerswin could see that there were two of them, both in dark brown uniforms, the second holding not a stunner but a powergun filled with explosive pellets, although it was not aimed directly at him.

“Sorry, sorry…” Gerswin made his voice whine with apologies as he turned and took one step, then another, back toward the direction from which he had come.

The light wavered as the guard flicked it to one side, then the other. While the aim was to see if Gerswin had been trying to misdirect them, to see if he had any accomplices, it was the wrong aim.

Gerswin dropped and turned.

Whhhrrr! Whhhrrr!

Crack! Crack!

Brrrrp-Crump!

Crack!

Gerswin came out of his dive with knives ready, ignoring the shrapnel cuts from the single burst of the powergun.

They were not necessary, and he resheathed them as he moved past the bodies.

The next step was anticlimactic.

Gerswin triggered the door overrides and tossed two circular objects through the portals, reversing the polarity and closing them before they had barely admitted the two grenades.

One was gas, the other antipersonnel.

Crump!

Crump!

The twin explosions reverberated satisfactorily, though muffled by the closed portal.

Gerswin jammed the filters into his nostrils, but forced himself to wait two full minutes before opening the door, surveying the corridor the entire time.

Then he used the regular controls to open the portal, standing well aside.

From the entrance he could see three bodies, but he waited, listening, as the gas filtered past him into the corridor.

Finally he moved into the suite, but his speed was unnecessary. There were four figures sprawled across the furniture, and all were dead—quite dead. Three he recognized as Council members, including Sendaris himself.

He left more quickly than he had entered, spurred, as he headed down the corridor to the emergency exit stairs, by the sound of a portal being forced open by someone who had obviously not read the emergency instructions. He slipped through the manual doors, designed for power and other failures, and began the descent.

He checked the time. Less than forty standard minutes since he had begun, but too long. Much longer than he had hoped. The time, combined with the obvious awareness of the Council that someone was after them, made up his mind, and he continued downward and away from the last target on the fourteenth level.

He who runs away lives to fight another day, reflected Gerswin as he reversed his cloak to the flip side, with the forest green shimmering outward. At the landing between the third and fourth levels, he buried his face under his arm. When he looked up and continued downward, he wore a green face shield matching the cloak.

Above him, he could hear footsteps, voices, then a scream as other Tower guests began to abandon their suites for the emergency exits. The lifts would still be operating, but those on the affected levels were not apparently stopping to try them.

A Tower employee, apparently alerted by a monitoring system, stepped through the first floor entrance as Gerswin came down the last section of stairs.

“I beg your parden, ser, but these are for emergency use—”

“No power on my level! Istvenn take it! Last time I stay here! And you say that's not an emergency? Just listen to all the others!”

Gerswin brushed past the man.

“No power?” stammered the young man.

“That's right. Listen. Just listen. Think I'd take
stairs
for joy?”

Gerswin finished stepping around the man and around the security officer behind him and into the main lobby, strutting across it with every gram of outrage he could counterfeit. He reached the electrocab concourse without incident, and stepped inside the second one.

“Inverr House!” he snapped, loud enough for the Tower employee holding the door to step back, and for the surprised Tower patrons whom he had stepped in front of to back off.

His effrontery paid off. The shrieking and clanging of alarms began only as the electrocougar dropped away from the Tower concourse.

He changed the destination, but not the color of the privacy mask.