Was Once a Hero (20 page)

Bodies
and equipment lay about the shuttle as if some giant had picked it up and
shaken it.
 
“Just like Gigor,” Fenaday
said.

“Look
at this,” Shasti called.
 
She stood in
the middle section of the shuttle, near the communications panel, pointing at
one of the dead ASATs.
 
The desiccated
corpse lay on its back on the panels, a pistol still clutched in mummified
hands.
 
A space suit lay on top of the
body, as if in some obscene embrace.
 
The
suit was the armored type used in boarding actions, and two blast holes showed
in its back.

Fenaday
looked at Shasti.
 
“From the pistol?” he
asked.
 
Pulling out his long Scottish
dirk, he tried to lever the encrusted space suit off the body.
 
It stuck.
 
Impatient at his squeamishness, Shasti simply grabbed the suit’s
shoulder with a gauntleted hand and pulled it off the corpse.
 
It came free with a nauseating, crackling sound.
 
She flipped it over, revealing larger blast
burns on the suit’s front.
 
It had been
shot from close range.

“Perhaps
someone threw it at him,” wondered Telisan.
 
The Denlenn had returned from the cockpit with dog tags clutched in his
hands.
 
His face looked drawn and tired.

“Or
he held it up for defense and shot through it,” Duna mused.

“Doesn’t
make sense,” Shasti said, looking at the shuttle’s interior with distaste.

The
scientists plied their probes as the rest of them checked the shuttle’s instruments.
 
Gunnar ran a cable from
Pooka
to the
Wolverine’s
ground power port to no avail.
 
The ship
was thoroughly dead.

Mourner
came over toward them.
 
The small,
intense woman stood next to Shasti, who overtopped her by most of a meter.
 
The Olympian and the doctor made for an
incongruous sight.

“As
near as I can tell,” said Mourner.
 
“Most
people in here died from blunt trauma.
 
Bones are broken, skulls cracked.
 
There are also indications on some bodies of stab wounds.
 
Three, including the pilots, show signs of
electrocution.
 
The bodies are too badly
decomposed for me to tell much in a field test.
 
All this mold has screwed any chemical analysis.”

“What
the hell went on here?” Fenaday asked.

“I
don’t know, Captain,” Mourner replied.
 
“I can tell what killed them, but not who, or how they got aboard.”

“I
don’t think any attack force was on board,” Shasti said.
 
“It doesn’t look right for a gunfight or
close-in battle.
 
No burns on the
bulkheads, magazines full of unfired rounds.
 
They died quickly.
 
Yet, who could
surprise troops of this quality?”

“None
of it makes sense,” Telisan growled.
 
“The shuttle doors never opened.
 
How did attackers get in here?”

“I
checked the hull floor-plates,” Shasti said, “they are intact.
 
Nothing came up from below.”

“Maybe
they went mad and attacked each other,” Mourner said.
 
“I just don’t know.”
   

“Any
reason to stay here further?” Fenaday asked, fervently hoping there wasn’t.

Mourner
sighed.
 
“Not without a real lab.
 
I’ve taken samples, holos and everything else
I can think of.
 
Maybe after we get back
to the starship and I can use her facilities…”

Fenaday
looked around the dead shuttle and shuddered.
 
“All right,” he said harshly.
 
“Everyone out and back to our ships.
 
We are pulling out and heading to Duna’s home.”

The
crew left gladly and quickly.
 
As they
came to the hatch, Telisan put a hand on his arm.
 
“Help me reseal it.
 
I want no animals disturbing their rest.”

The
hatch was clearly beyond the strength of the two, but they didn’t call for the
HCRs.
 
This was a job for people.
 
Shasti and Johan Gunnar threw their backs in
as well, and the Confederate shuttle resealed.
 
They made their way back to
Pooka.
 
As they crossed the open ground, Gunnar
looked up.
 
Clouds darkened the sky and
thunder rumbled in distance.
 
The big man
scowled.
 
“Does it rain every damn day
here?” he groused.

“Maybe
we landed in the rainy season,” Shasti replied.

Gunnar,
one of the few people who could small talk with Shasti, grinned at her.
 

Telisan
and Duna listened to the conversation and exchanged anxious looks at each other
and the sky.
 
The Denlenn looked as if he
might speak, but the Enshari shook his head.

*****

In
Wolverine Six
, behind the sealed hatch,
something stirred in the darkness.
 
From
near the shuttle's communication panel, a shape humped itself painfully
forward.
 
The armored space suit Shasti
had thrown to the deck in disgust rose from where she left it.
 
It crawled slowly, seemingly with great effort,
to the hatchway.
 
Once there, it became
mostly erect, propped against the hatch.
 
It plopped its mass against the hatch several times, as if trying to
pass through the obstinate metal.
 
A
slight electrical smell wafted through the fetid air along with the crackle of
a tiny discharge.

The
door remained sealed.
 
Even Mmok’s guardian
angels did not hear the slight sound the suit made in the dead ship.
 
The faceplate of the suit pressed against the
porthole.
 
It could not be seen against
the shuttle’s darkened exterior.
 
Then,
as if exhausted by the effort, it dropped to the deck like a puppet with cut
strings.
 
Utter stillness returned to
Earhart’s
dead shuttle.

*****

They
lifted from the site of the Confed shuttles and their slaughtered crews,
leaving the impending storm behind.
 
Fenaday looked down on the shuttles sitting in the defensive triangle
and shook his head.
 
He turned to the
pilot, Angelica Fury.

“Keep
Pooka
in lead, triangular formation,”
he said.
 
“Maintain an economical
cruising speed.”

“Aye,
sir, four hundred knots it is.”

“Why
so slow, Captain?” Duna asked, “Aren’t these
Dakotas
marginally supersonic?”

“Yes,”
Fenaday replied.
 
“We have fuel-efficient
reactor-based drives, but their range isn’t infinite.
 
The more propellant we use, the more often we
have to either shuttle up or send the fighters down with tanks.”

“Of
course, Captain,” Duna said.
 
“Foolish of
me to ask.”

“Relax,”
Fenaday said kindly.
 
“We’ll be there in
a few hours.”
  

From
the deck of the
Pooka,
Fenaday and
the others watched the farmlands roll beneath them.
 
Brilliant yellow crops topped with growths of
swaying rusty orange filled the miles in a scene reminiscent of the American
Midwest.
 
Dark-hued trees looking like
Terran pines but studded with white flowers marked the edges of the fields.
 
Occasionally, the spacers saw
farmhouses.
 
Most were of the domed
variety the Enshari favored, painted in light cream and beige.
 
Duna pointed out some of an older style.
 
Small hillocks of natural dirt, poured over a
modern construction, these resembled the early dens of Enshari farmers.

Other,
less pleasant sights presented themselves: crashed aircraft of various types,
cars and trucks that had run off roads.
 
The shuttles flew over a wrecked Maglev train, its cars flung about as
if by a maddened child.

The
contrast between the pleasant countryside and the devastation became too much
for Duna.
 
“My poor people,” he
mourned.
 
“What force is it that hates us
so?”
 
His small hands covered his
expressive brown eyes.
 
Telisan put a
hand on Duna’s shoulder, his golden, leathery face marked by concern.
 
Shasti looked out of the canopy,
uncomfortable.
 
Fenaday, who had lost a
home and family, felt a pang of sympathy for the Enshar.

“While
we are still alive, there is hope,” Telisan said.

“Hope
is a thin meal,” Duna replied, uncovering his eyes.

For
the first time, Fenaday drew a sense of age from the Enshar.
 
Duna always seemed energetic.
 
It was hard to believe the little alien had
lived for eight hundred years.
 
Now Duna
looked every one of those years, old and tired.
 
For some reason, it frightened Fenaday.
 
He wished desperately for something comforting to say but could think of
nothing that did not seem trite in light of the tragedy.

Li,
one of Shasti’s trouble squad, came up with a cup of hot tea.
 
Shasti assigned Li as a bodyguard to
Duna.
 
Duna looked up at the tea and the
concern on Li’s hard-bitten face.
 
The
scholar took the tea and bowed his head against the cup twice in an Enshari
gesture of respect and thanks.
 
Li bowed
gracefully from the waist.

Fenaday
shook his head.
 
Li, like most of his
crew, had never shown a sign of giving a damn about anyone.
 
Somehow Duna seemed to bring out the best in
people.

Li
caught his look.
 
“I learned it from the
old movies,” he said.
 
“I grew up in Stockholm.”

There
was a brief laugh from the humans, even Mmok.
 
Duna and Telisan looked puzzled.
 
Telisan made the Denlenn equivalent of a shrug, a gesture Fenaday had
learned meant, “Aliens, who can understand them?”

People
settled in.
 
Mmok, Rigg, Rask and some of
the other troopers folded down enough of the seats to play cards.
 
Some talked, cleaned weapons, or slept.
 
Fenaday and Shasti stayed by the canopy
watching the world roll beneath them: beautiful, mysterious and alien.
 
One could almost forget the disaster that had
brought them here.

Three
hours later, the shuttles began circling a huge house on the outskirts of the
town of Pelen.
 
The sprawling structure was painted a
mustard-yellow with an olive green roof and cream trim.
 
Duna’s home sat on a cliffside, its back to
the eastern sea of Canelda, with its dark, almost black waters.
 
It fronted a wide lawn where the shuttles
could land without difficulty.
 
Two
smaller cream-colored domes of typical Enshari architecture sat on the grounds
as well.
 
The staff and groundskeepers
had lived there.
 
Duna’s home was only
for the family and guests.
 
The house was
not typically Enshari, as befitted its unusual owner.

“Pelen
is where I was born,” Duna said.
 
“I met
my wife, Medu, here.
 
We made it our home
for three hundred years.
 
She passed away
years before the disaster and is buried on the property below, but my mission
here is not sentimental.
 
As one of the
few of my kind to spend much time off-world, I enjoyed a quasi-ambassadorial
status.
 
My home, which I’ve not seen in
fifteen years, also acted as an intelligence gathering station.
 
The staff maintained an extensive bank of
computers, recordings, books and periodicals, sending me material on all manner
of current events.

“My
hope is that the computers in the building survived whatever happened.
 
They were electronically protected from
snooping, and the building has its own power supply.
 
We may find some clues within.”

“It’s
beautiful,” Telisan said, looking at the huge building.

“Medu,”
said Duna, “trained as an architect.
 
She
based the design, with a few Enshari refinements, on homes found on the North
Atlantic coast of Earth’s North America.
 
The building style is similar to a New England telescope house, though she added another
story.
 
Oh, how proud she was when it was
finished...”

Duna’s
home reminded Fenaday of his own on New Eire’s rugged seacoast.
 
An unexpected feeling of homesickness swept
through him.
 
He turned away from the
view outside the canopy for a few moments.

They
flew in over the lawn, dropping in a triangular formation.
 
Robots sprang from the shuttles, forming a
perimeter.
 
Rainhell’s and Rigg’s people
fanned out, more confident now, also taking defensive positions.
 
Fenaday held the shuttle engines at low
throttle for a minute.
 
Annihilation did
not threaten.
 
He joined the others on
Pooka’s
rear ramp.