Was Once a Hero (23 page)

“Your
planet seems to be haunted, Mr. Duna,” Fenaday began.
 
“Storms and now apparitions seem to be
plaguing us.
 
What do you make of these
phenomena?”

“I
truly do not know, Captain,” Duna answered.
 
“Enshar’s atmosphere, stirred by its powerful sun, is well known for
storms.
 
This is especially true in the
spring, and it is now mid-spring on Enshar.
 
Our violent weather is one of the reasons life on Enshar developed with
a predilection for burrowing.”

“There
was that burning electrical smell,” Shasti said, “just before the attack.”
 
As usual she managed to arrive
unobserved.
 

How the hell does someone so big manage to
do that?
Fenaday wondered.

“It
could well have been the computer,” Telisan countered, “damaged as it was.”

“Could
have,” she said, clearly unconvinced.
 

“That’s
all,” said Fenaday, eyeing Duna and Telisan.

After
they left the deck, Shasti turned to him, keeping her head near his so their
voices wouldn’t carry.
 
“Do we head up to
the ship?”

He
shook his head.
 
“Without a proper launch
window the shuttles could exhaust weeks’ worth of atmospheric operation and
still not reach a stable orbit.
 
There’s
little chance of arranging an orbital window to
Sidhe
inside of twenty-four hours.
 
Shuttles and ship have changed their positions relative to each other
too much.
 
We need a place to hole up
till you and I decide what to do next.”

“And
them?” she said with a slight inclination of her head in the direction Duna and
Telisan had gone.

“They
know, or suspect, more than they’re telling,” he replied.
 
“Watch them.”

She
nodded and slipped away, leaving the small flight cabin to Fenaday, Bernard and
Fury.

“Updated
forecast from the ship,” Bernard said.
 
“Big storm front ahead, looks natural though.
 
Meteorology on
Sidhe
says it has been there for days.”
 

“We’ll
have to chance it,” Fenaday decided.
 
“Even with our reactor drives we can’t keep flying forever.
 
Find me a nice island, something with no
habitations on it.”

Fury
checked the shuttle’s computer and triangulated with the frigate.
 
She pointed to the map display on her flight
panel. “An island suitable for our purposes is about two hour’s flight at
cruising speed.
 
It will get us down and
in cover by nightfall.”

“Shape
course for the island,” he ordered.
 
“Bernard,
alert the other shuttles.”

After
two hours of flying over the featureless ocean, Fury pointed over the shuttle’s
blunt nose.
 
“Land ho.”

Fenaday
looked out to see a large island, divided by low hills and windswept on the
deep ocean side.
 
After circling the
area, Fenaday decided on a clearing on the lee side.
 
A small forest offered cover there, though
the trees were short and scrubby compared to those by Duna’s home.

The
shuttles landed in their usual defensive triangle.
 
This time there was less of a casual air as
the troops piled out, accompanied by the robots.
 
Gray clouds heavy with rain scudded over
their landing site.
 
Shasti and Fenaday
stepped out as the shuttle ramps went down onto stony soil.
 
The smell of ocean greeted them, along with a
cool breeze.

“Looks
like New Eire, or pictures I’ve seen of Connemara,” Fenaday said.

“Be a
bitch to dig in with all this rock,” Shasti said, looking around the landing
sight.

He
glanced up at Shasti, as the wind stirred her tied-back hair.
 
She so
rarely sees the beauty,
he thought.
 
I wonder why?
 
What sort of life did she lead before I knew
her?

Shasti
flicked her mike switch.
 
“Rigg, Mmok,
Rask,” she said.
 
“We’re going to fortify
the encampment tonight.
 
I want barrier
wire strung, floodlights placed, directional claymore mines and the crab robot
guns sited.
 

“Mmok,
get your utility robots to dig firing slits and foxholes.
 
Human guards will accompany HCRs on regular
patrols.”

“Acknowledged,”
Rigg said.

“Yeah,”
came Mmok’s raspy voice.
 
“I’m going to send
Airbot to scout the rest of the island before the storm.
 
It’s an experimental model with a limited
charge and requires a lot of my attention, so I’ll have to ground it at night.”

“Agreed,”
Shasti said.

On
their own the crew began to gather wood for a series of cheery blazes using the
cargo robots and their cutters to fell trees.
 
The clearing teams opened up fire-lanes.
 
For those who had not seen the Shellycoat, the evening acquired
something of a holiday air, despite the tense precautions.

Shasti
and Fenaday walked the perimeter, checking the defenses.

“What’s
the plan?” she asked when they were out of earshot of the others.

“Simple,”
he replied.
 
“Break contact with the
enemy, bunker up and regroup.
 
We need
time to assess what we’ve found, or what’s found us.
 
I’m going to call a war council at
sunset.
 
I need to find out where the
diverse parts of my ‘command’ stand.”

“I’ll
make preparations,” she said.

He
smiled.
 
“I count on it.”

*****

All
the factions gathered on the open rear ramp of the
Pooka
just after sunset.
 
The
shuttles’ lights on their lowest setting and a nearby campfire provided soft
illumination though there were still banners of light from the sunset on the
clouds above them.
 
Shasti quietly
arranged to have her trouble squad nearby.
 
Fenaday knew the others would take similar precautions.
 
There was no way of telling how much of what
they thought secret reached Mmok’s ears through his web of robots and
electronics.

Rigg
showed up with Rask.
 
Mmok brought
Magenta, who wore one of the local white flowers in her polymer hair.
 
Fury, Karass and Nusam, the shuttle pilots,
followed them over.
 
Johan Gunnar poured
coffee all around before retiring to the side of the shuttle to watch.
 
The crowd of people stood in a semi-circle
facing the shuttle, looking at either Fenaday or Duna.
 
Shasti perched on a shuttle engine, a carbine
resting on her thighs.
 
Telisan sat near
the fire and stared into it.

Without
preamble, Fenaday launched the question.
 
“Mr. Duna, today we got a small glimpse of what happened here nearly
three years ago.
 
It wasn’t pretty.
 
I suspect you know more about this apparition
than you’ve told us.”

The
group stirred.
 
Shasti quelled it with a
cold stare.
 
It always amazed Fenaday how
her beautiful face could generate so much menace without a trace of expression
on it.
 
It felt like having a loaded
weapon track over you.

Duna
looked steadily at him.
 
“Captain,” he
said, equally formal, “if I told you an army from the Atlantis of Earth’s
legends had overwhelmed my people, would you not think me mad?
 
In truth, did you not think I was mad when we
first met?
 
I had suspicions of what
might have occurred.
 
These suspicions
made me doubt my own sanity.
 
The truth
is—I feared to confide my thoughts to your government or anyone else.
 
It would have given them the edge they needed
to deny my quest and destroy the last hope of my people.”

“Good
counterattack,” Fenaday said coldly.
 
“However, we are here now and I want to know what you know—all of it—and
I want it now.
 
What attacked us at your
home?”

“A
thing indeed,” Duna responded, stepping up onto a broad flat rock as if it were
a podium.
 
“A creature, if creature it
is, from the stories used to frighten naughty children.
 
It is, well, the word won’t translate into
your language.
 
An analogy would be to
the demons and spirits of Earth mythology.
 
They are creatures of air, taking their physical form from whatever lies
around them.”

“That
thing that attacked us,” Shasti said, “was real.”

“Let
me begin at the beginning,” Duna said.
 
He seemed to draw comfort from sliding into a scholarly role.
 
“We Enshari are an old race, compared to most
others.
 
We are very long-lived.
 
Our history is so lengthy it can literally be
the study of a lifetime.
 
There are seven
thousand years or so of well-recorded history in Earth’s China.
 
Is that not so, Mr. Li?”

Li,
looking surprised at being addressed, nodded from the shadows where he and the
other trouble team members waited.
 
“That’s what Mom used to say.”

“The
cave drawings of your ancestors are about fifty thousand years old, Captain,”
Duna continued.
 
“Our recorded history
dates back a hundred ninety thousand years and our prehistory goes back further
still.

“My
specialty is the study of that pre-history.
 
What we call the ‘Unearthing’.
 
It
was the time we left burrows and caves and began to build towns and
cities.
 
We developed science at an
astonishing rate compared to the other species of the Confederacy, and there
are schools that contend we did not make that leap by ourselves, that we were
helped by a beneficent alien race.
 
I am
one of those partisans.

“At
the time of the ‘Helpers,’ as we call them, my people were primitive; little
better than savages.
 
The highest society
was the kingdom
of Barjan.
 
It was pre-technic but had developed some
science and writing.

“The
most ancient records we have, which are themselves copies many thousands of
years removed from the originals, and hence less reliable, tell of a terrible
war of gods and demons fought on Enshar.
 
Much of our race perished at the hands of such demons, or in the storms
they raised.

“Then
came the others, the Helpers.
 
They
destroyed or chained the demons and storm monsters, seizing their leader.
 
Legend has it that the chief among the storm
gods, for whom we have no name, was chained in the depths of the Barjan Mountains.
 
What we now call the Barjan Deep.”

“That’s
the name I heard your friend Creda say,” Fenaday interrupted.

“Just
so,” Duna agreed.
 
“The story is that the
Chief Demon was one of the Helpers turned to evil; or perhaps something created
by them.
 
The Helpers could not, or would
not, destroy it.
 
They pursued the demon
from a distant land, in long running battles.
 
Legend says that they did not intend for Barjan to become a battleground
and they sorrowed for it.
 
In penance, the
Helpers taught the Enshari science and technology, turning our face outward to
the stars.
 
Then they left.
 
Within a few hundred years, we broke out into
space.

“No
record survives of what the Helpers actually looked like.
 
Apparently, they manifested themselves as
giant Enshari, though we doubt this was their real appearance.”

Silence
fell, broken only by the sounds of sea.
 
Camp lanterns and the lights of the shuttles themselves began
supplanting twilight as the sun disappeared.

“You
believe this tale?” Gunnar laughed.

Fenaday
glared at him and started to speak.

Shasti
preceded him.
 
“Quiet, Johan,” she said
softly.
 
The big man subsided.

“No,”
Duna replied politely, “not in the literal sense.
 
It is one of the creation myths of my people
and not an uncommon one among the seven races.
 
We think of it as a tale for children, or a fable, like your Noah’s Ark.

“Many
of my colleagues thought me a fool for studying it.
 
They claimed the leap to the stars is simply
an example of Enshari superiority.
 
The
tales were mere monster stories, perhaps like those you cited, Mr.
Connery.
 
What did you call the thing?”

Connery
looked back at the Enshari.
 
“The one
most like your monster is a Shellycoat.
 
It’s a Sidhe, an Elf, like the ones all our ships are named for.
 
The Pooka was a horse you rode to your death,
the Banshee’s wail foretold doom, and the Shellycoat would form out of anything
near a stream bed.”

“Very
similar,” Duna said.
 
“Perhaps we will
use that for a translation and call them Shellycoats.”