Was Once a Hero (18 page)

It’s different now,
he thought.
 
Sidhe
had accumulated some regulars he cared about.
 
While he still hated Mandela’s guts, the people the spymaster sent were
good people, particularly Dr. Mourner and her team.
 
Fenaday went first because Mandela did not
trust him.
 
Telisan came for honor.
 
As to Shasti, only she knew her reasons.

Time
to act like a real captain.

“
Sidhe,
” Fenaday said, “we are going to
scout around some.
 
I don’t want my
people walking into a trap.”

“
Sidhe
to Fenaday, recommend you wait for
the shuttles,” Perez said.

“Negative.
 
I have over one hundred people inbound.
 
If there’s a trap here, I don’t want it to
spring on all of us.”

“Good
for you,” came Telisan’s voice.
 
“Permission to land and accompany you.
 
I can do nothing up here in the sky if you go inside.
 
Three guns are better than two.”

“Permission
granted,” said Fenaday.
 
He and Shasti
climbed out of the fighter using the kick-ins and dropping the last meter to
the ground.

The
Denlenn handled the fighter like a featherweight pleasure craft.
 
He eased down within a few meters of
Fenaday.
 
Back blast from the VTOL
fighter lifted Shasti’s hair.
 
She
scowled and pulled out a bandanna to tie it back.
 
“Showoff,” she said.

Telisan
popped his hatch, leaping lightly from the fighter.
 
Fenaday’s knees ached just watching him land.
 
“Showoff,” he agreed.

The
Denlenn strode up in good humor.
 
“We are
on Enshar and alive.
 
Another glorious
day in the Corps, as you humans say.”

“What
do you want to check out first?” Shasti asked, looking about alertly.

“Those
barracks are the nearest.
 
Let’s do those
first.”
 
Fenaday turned, hitting the
access panel on his
Wildcat,
which
opened to a compartment holding a tri-auto carbine and some canteens.
 
Telisan returned to his fighter, drawing out
a similar weapon.

“Set
them for AP bullets,” Shasti said.
 
“We
don’t want to use mini-grenades inside an enclosed space, and the flash of the
particle beams can dazzle your low-light vision.
 
It will be dark inside there.”

Fenaday
nodded but noticed that Shasti left her selector on full auto.
 
She
probably just regards Telisan and me as liabilities now that we’re down.
 
Of course, she’s probably right.
 

Everyone
took a sip from the canteens, and they started toward the barracks.
 
Their feet crunched on wind-blown grit and
minor debris.
 
They spread out, but as
they had no cover, they just walked up, weapons covering windows and doors.

Up
close they could see the signs of damages on the barracks structure.
 
Most of the windows were broken and doors
hung ajar.
 
Just as they reached the
building, something black lunged into the air over them.
 
Instantly, they dropped to their knees,
weapons snapping up.
 
With a beating of
wings, three bird-like creatures climbed into the sky.

“Damn,”
Fenaday said, his heart beating furiously.

“
Sidhe
to Fenaday,” called Perez, into
their light headsets.
 
“You gave us a bit
of a scare there.
 
We’re going to lose
you as you go inside.
 
It will be voice
only.”

“Acknowledged.”

“A
good point to remember,” Shasti said.
 
“This planet has gone back to the wild.
 
The buildings are probably great denning sites for predators.”

“It
would be a bit of an anti-climax to come all this way, through all this, to be
eaten by the local equivalent of a bear,” Fenaday said.
 
“Okay, let’s go in slowly and carefully.”

They
reached the nearest door.
 
While the
Enshari were a small race, they were part of the Confederacy of Seven Species,
with military and port facilities designed to Confed standard.
 
Ceilings would be somewhat low, the doors
small, but manageable.
 
Shasti leaned
past Fenaday before he could stick his head in, so he ended up covering
her.
 
They slid through the doorway into
a corridor.
 
There they saw the first
bodies, or rather, pieces of bodies.

“We
see bones in the corridor,” Fenaday reported.
 
“There’s adequate light from some panels on the ceiling, so we haven’t
needed torches yet.
 
Be damned if I know
what’s powering them.”
 

“These
bones are chewed,” Shasti added, “probably by local animal life scavenging
after the massacre.”

Fenaday
thought of the gruesome, planet-wide feast that must have taken place in the
days after the disaster and shuddered.

“Proceeding
down the corridor,” he added.
 
“If this
is like most barracks, we will be in the main bunkroom shortly.”

The
main bunkroom sat at the end of the corridor.
 
Bunks lay strewn all over the place, lockers had been torn off
walls.
 
Equipment and bones lay
everywhere.
 
If some giant had taken a
big spoon and stirred the room, it might have looked like this.

“What
in the gods’ names happened here?” Telisan wondered, casting about with his torch.
 
“More scavengers?”

“Big
ones, maybe,” said Fenaday doubtfully.
 
He reported the sight to the ship.
 
Telisan began filming with a small video.

“Don’t
do too much of that,” Shasti warned.
 
“Keep your eyes on the area.”
 
The
Denlenn nodded, putting up the camera.

They
moved through the building, up the stairs.
 
Their hand torches lit places where daylight didn’t penetrate.
 
Sometimes a torch reflected off Telisan’s
cat-like eyes.
 
A major disadvantage in a night fight,
thought Fenaday,
and unnerving in itself.

Fenaday
jumped as he heard rustling and the scamper of small feet.
 
Something small, fast and brown raced away
from them through piles of paper and debris.
 

“Local
equivalent of a rat,” Shasti said.

“Most
of the larger animals probably fled the noise of the fighters,” Telisan said,
lowering his weapon.

“Perhaps,”
Shasti said.
 
“Count on nothing.”
 
Trailing her, they started forward again.

Everywhere
that they found corpses, they saw the same sight, as if each room had been
turned upside down and shaken.
 

In
the non-coms quarters they discovered a new piece of the puzzle.
 
The walls showed scorch marks and spalling
from weapon fire.
 
The bodies in that
room were more intact.
 
Behind a bunk
frame that had been dumped on its side, they found the desiccated corpse of an
Enshar trooper.
 
Shreds of uniform still
showed on the gnawed body and its bony hand clutched a standard-issue
pistol.
 
The Enshari had obviously jumped
behind the bed for cover before being killed.

“Well,
Sarge, at least you got a shot off,” Fenaday said.
 
“I don’t know if it did any good, but well
done anyway.”
 
He looked around and found
a dusty, chewed blanket and gently covered the body with it.
  

They
stalked the halls into another barracks.
 
This one was even more thoroughly wrecked, with walls bowed out from
some form of pressure.
 
Shattered pipes
still leaked water onto the floors.
 
In
places it cascaded down in small waterfalls that had eroded the walls and
created mold gardens.
 
They stepped
carefully to avoid bones and debris.
 
They took a dank corridor to the left, splashing through foul-smelling,
ankle-deep water.
 
At its end they found
a gymnasium.
 
Again, Fenaday’s chief
impression was that the space had been stirred with a stick.
 
The room was a maze of torn-up chairs and
fragmented skeletons.
 
A game must have
been going on when disaster struck.

They
spread apart, facing outward.
 
Fenaday
caught sudden movement from the corner of his eye.
 
On the second level, part of a stack of
debris tilted forward.

“Shasti!”
he barked.
 
He swung his tri-auto up and
peppered the area, aiming at a hint of a figure behind the stack.
 
Shasti leapt away from the danger as the
detritus smashed into the floor.

“Fenaday,”
Perez shouted from the
Sidhe
, “what’s
happening?”

Their
eyes and torches searched the area of the slide.
 
Nothing.
 
Perez voice became shrill with panic as he called to them.

“Take
it easy,” Fenaday said, with a calm he didn’t feel.
 
“Some stuff came down that’s all.
 
Junk fell.
 
We are OK.”

“I
would have sworn,” Telisan said, his cat’s eyes at their widest, “I saw a
figure up there, only a shadow, but something.”

“Yeah,
me too,” Fenaday said, “after the stuff started coming down.
 
That’s why I opened up.
 
Shasti, did you see anything?”

“No,”
she replied, scanning the dark reaches of the building.
 
“I was too busy getting out of the way.”

They
mounted the stairs to the area of the fall, weapons leveled.
 
There was nothing, only more debris.
 
Shasti checked the dust for tracks and found
none.

“That
pile sat still for over three years and came down just when you were under it,”
said Fenaday slowly, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

“Vibration,”
she speculated, “our voices or footsteps perhaps.
 
Yet, both of you thought you saw
something.
 
Still, I can find no track of
anything up here.”

“Let’s
get back to the fighters,” Fenaday decided.
 
“We’ve pushed our luck enough for today.”

They
made their way to the nearest exit, carefully covering one another.
 
With their investigation complete for now,
Fenaday felt no need to go back through all the buildings.
 
Shasti shattered a recalcitrant door lock
with a kick, and they fled into the open air.
 
They trotted back toward the fighters.
 
Once out under the bright sun of Enshar, it was easier to accept the
incident as nerves and vibration.
 
Yet,
in Fenaday’s mind lingered a fragment of an image, difficult for him to
dismiss.

Perez
raised them as soon as they stepped into the open.
 
“Nice to have you back out under the ship’s
cameras,” the engineer said.
 
“The
shuttles are only five minutes out from your location.”

“Acknowledged,”
Fenaday said.

The
breeze blew more stiffly now and clouds piled in the distance.
 
Fenaday frowned.
 
There had been no forecast of storms in the
intelligence report.
 
Still, he heard a
rumble of thunder.

“Wish
I had a job where I could be wrong forty percent of the time,” Shasti said,
looking at the sky.

“There
they are,” Telisan said, pointing.

The
three shuttles, painted the same Guard’s Red as the
Sidhe
, came in slowly, in formation, dropping onto the tarmac near
the fighters.
 
Ramps opened.
 
Mmok’s robots, HCRs and crabs, poured out to
take defensive positions, followed by the LEAFs and ASATs.
 
Shasti’s small trouble team formed a circle
around Duna, Mourner and her people as the scientists and doctors came out of
the shuttles.
 
The relief pilots, there
to take the fighters back to the frigate, walked over to the nearby
Wildcats
and began preflighting them.

Fenaday,
Shasti and Telisan trudged toward the arrivals.
 
Belwin Duna had not gotten far from the shuttle.
 
The little Enshari crouched, hands on the
ground.
 
They hurried over, Telisan in
the lead, fearing the old scholar ill, but it was contact with his homeworld
that overcame Duna.

“Ah,
Enshar,” said Duna, as if addressing the planet, “I am here.
 
Somehow, I will lead your children back to
you.”
 
His small, furry hands caressed
the tarmac.
 
Fenaday looked away,
embarrassed.
 
He remembered the conversation
in the bar.
 
It seemed an age ago.
 
Without Enshar, Duna said, there would be no
Enshari.
 
Seeing him now, Fenaday
believed it was true.
 
They needed their
homeworld on a deep, biological level.