Was Once a Hero (39 page)

He fled into the reaches of space, pursued
by his own kind.
 
He landed on world
after world and woe to the life of that world, in
whom
he saw only the enemy.
 
His friends
pursued, now in grief, intent on ending the terror caused by their fallen hero.

On Enshar the Order caught him.
 
He had begun his conquest of the tiny people
of that world.
 
His soldiers of air and
light had grown weaker and lacked much of their former intelligence.
 
In truth, they were effective only when he
focused the strength of his mind on them.
 
Even then, they were the merest shadows of their former selves, as was
he.
 
For subjugating the tiny primitives
of Enshar, however, they sufficed even in their near imbecilic state.

The Order, led by a new First, landed and
attacked.
 
Relentless pursuit and battles
had worn on him, and the scientists had made new arms for the Order.
 
He was taken in defeat, pinioned and brought
to justice.
 
Death was not in their
judgment, for they were a just and merciful race.
 
He had been the greatest among them and
suffered unimaginably in their service.
 
They still bore him love and honor for that.
 
Yet, his crimes were severe.
 
There were innocent, lifeless worlds behind
him.
 
He had to answer for all this.

They sentenced him to confinement and
meditation.
 
The machine and his powers
were a part of his mind.
 
They could find
no way to remove either without causing his death.
 
With the Order’s new technology, his powers
were repressed and confined.
 
They hoped
that, sealed away in a suspended animation chamber, yet conscious, the
disciplines of the Order would restore his balance.
 
They confined him in a chamber from which his
power could not emanate to disturb the pitiful Enshari, the remnant of which
the Prekak now took as their charge.

He was secured in his life-preserving
chamber and left to ponder his sins.
 
They would return for him when they judged his penance complete.

Though he could not control or influence the
Enshari, as part of his penance he was allowed to sense them.
 
The Order hoped it would teach him
remorse.
 
Perhaps, at first, it did.
 
Eventually, he came to see them as insects,
scurrying above him, burying him in the excreta of their cities.
 
In a few of their short lives, he was
forgotten, reduced to mere legend.
 
Eons wore
on, yet there was no sign of a return of his kind.
 
In loneliness and terror, he called to the
Enshari, who could not hear him.
 
Buried
alive and forgotten, he grew to fear the Prekak were no more—that they had come
to disaster out among the stars.

His hatred of the Enshari became all
consuming, even exceeding what he had felt for the Enemy.
 
He plotted their destruction, in infinite
detail, over millennia.
 
The plan became
second nature.

The world moved in the greatest of the
Enshar quakes.
 
The walls of his tomb bulged,
and there was damage to the system.
 
He
died and did not die.
 
The machines and
his powers did not allow him even that mercy.
 
His body wasted, though enough remained to anchor him in
space-time.
 
The Prekak’s mind grew more
strange and bitter.

After an unimaginable time, a hole opened in
the ceiling of his tomb.
 
The Enshari had
found him again.
 
So far gone was he that
a substantial period went by before what was left of his consciousness reacted
to the fact he was free to strike.
 
The
vermin brought power into the pit.
 
He
seized their minds and took the power from them.
 
The machines sucked at it greedily.
 
He allowed no outward sign of the return of a
measure of his strength.
 
To the
scientists and archeologists—now concerned by the strange behavior of their
co-workers—he remained merely a colossal pile of dead bone.

Then the plan,
laid
down for epochs, burst outward in an orgy of devastation and death.
 
The soldiers of light and air were once more
raised.
 
Many in Barjan, near the focus
of his power, died merely at his mental command.
 
He drew from the planet’s electromagnetic
forces,
lightning became whips of energy and lethal
radiation.
 
He turned his mind outward to
the giant stations.
 
His soldiers
attacked sensitive installations, appearing inside the most critical
areas.
 
Radiation and force whips struck
the stations.
 
There was no defense
possible.
 
Death scoured Enshar, without
mercy, without distinction, in every corner.
 
He knew of the other races, and though he did not hate them with the passion
he reserved for the Enshari, no mercy was shown them either.
 
In hours it was over.

He had nearly spent his final strength.
 
For as Enshar died, much of his power died
with it.
 
The machines slipped back into
lower modes, and his awareness faded as well.
 
When the primitive warships arrived, his strike was feeble, barely
sufficient to ward them off.

A slumber of exhaustion came over him
then.
 
Dissolute and ancient, he gnawed
on the memories of his hates.
 
Many of
the soldiers of air and light faded entirely.
 
Some continued to wander the world, unseen and unfelt, with little
volition or intelligence left to them.
 
Specters in the charnel house they had made of the world.

Tiny pinpricks impinged on his consciousness
recently.
 
They had not been enough to
rouse him.
 
Until now.

*****

Fenaday
twisted in the mental grip of his tormentor, but the thing focused its
attention above.
 
The soldiers of air and
light formed beyond the lights and rushed toward the spacers.
 
Cobalt and the other robots detected the
movement, opening fire instantly, as Mmok cried a warning.

These
Shellycoats were different, more dangerous and cunning.
 
They ducked and dodged and used cover.
 
As one shattered, another formed.
 
It took more gunfire to break up the
manifestations.
 
They reached the line of
crab robots and leapt on them.
 
Electrical arcs lit the area as the Shellycoats, sucking power from the
fabric of the world, grappled with the robots.
 
Had they been even half as powerful as they were the night of the great
slaughter, the battle would have lasted seconds.
 
Ancient and enfeebled like their master, the
Shellycoats could muster only a small fraction of their previous
deadliness.
 
The robots battled back,
hand to hand, as the two forms of unlife tried to disassemble each other.

Cobalt
fell as a large Shellycoat seized her in an electrical embrace.
 
The HCR stiffened in a parody of human agony
and dropped.
 
The human defenders added
their gunfire as the wave of enemies crashed through the sudden gap.
 
Lasers, tri-autos and grenades lit up the
battle scene.
 
Shasti threw flares as far
and fast as she could.
 
Parts of the
ceiling started to fall, sparking fresh terror.
 
Shellycoats absorbed the falling bits, using them for mass.

A
rush of the creatures pressed in suddenly.
 
One seized Mmok.
 
He fell in a
crackle of electricity.
 
Duna and Telisan
tried to reach him.
 
Telisan blasted
several Shellycoats before a flailing blow dropped him to his knees, blood
cascading down his face.
 
Another knocked
Duna flying from off the back of a utility robot, and the Enshari slid, unseen
and limp, into a small hole.

A
Shellycoat leapt on the back of the cargo robot at the pit’s edge.
 
Shasti shot it to pieces.
 
It fell into the pit, disintegrating into its
components of rock, dirt, metal and bone.

Shasti
handed her heavier weapon to Connery.
 
“Keep shooting.”
 
She turned
toward the pit, seizing Fenaday’s safety line.

“Did
he set the timer?” Connery yelled.

“I
don’t know.”
 
Shasti bent her wide
shoulders to pulling Fenaday out of the hole.
 
She could see him by the light of his torch, lying on the floor.
 
His arms were rigid and his head thrown
back.
 
He might be dead,
she thought.

Even
with her genetically engineered strength, pulling the 180-pound Fenaday out of
the pit was difficult.
 
He swung at the
end of the cord, making the weight worse.
 
Screams, gunfire and the snapping of electrical bolts sounded in her
ears.
 
A thrown piece of something struck
her in the back.
 
Shrapnel stung her legs
and arms.
 
She ignored it all and pulled
with quick, powerful tugs.
 
Fenaday came
out of the hole.
 
She seized him and
pulled him to her.
 
His heart pounded
madly; his eyes were open but unseeing.
 
She untangled him from the rope and threw him up on her shoulders.
 
Now she had hands free to fight.
 
She grabbed Connery’s carbine from where he
laid it.

She
turned to see Verdigris and three of the crab
robots fall under a wave of Shellycoats.
 
A bolt of electricity ripped from a Shellycoat and struck Connery.
 
He flew backward past her and struck the ground,
smoking, clearly dead.
 
She could not see
Duna.
 
Telisan, his face a bloody mask,
struggled to his feet.
 
Li fired
frantically, trying to cover Telisan.

Vermilion
appeared next to her, blasting the Shellycoat that killed Connery.

“Situation
desperate,” the robot stated in cool mechanical tones.
 
“HCR controller is down.
 
Unit being overrun.”

“I
know,” Shasti snarled, cutting loose with the carbine.
 
“Fight.”

Vermilion
analyzed the situation.
 
Her CPU
determined their reduced firepower could accomplish nothing.
 
They would be overrun and destroyed in eleven
seconds.
 
Mmok’s last directions to the
slender robot indicated the pit was the center of the attack.

“Auto
destruct engaged,” Vermilion said.
 
Before Shasti could say a word, Vermilion leaped into the pit.
 
She had no specific target and settled on an
airburst, exploding in a deafening blast, high in the chamber.

A
titanic moan filled their minds.
 
Shellycoats faltered, some disassembled, but many remained, seemingly
stunned.
 
The sense of the alien consciousness
receded greatly, but did not disappear.

Shasti
looked over at the others.
 
Telisan
regained his feet, leaning on Li as they dragged Mmok, unconscious or dead,
along with them.
 
She couldn’t see Duna
anywhere.
 
The others were too far away,
on the other side of a mass of milling Shellycoats for her to reach them.
 
“Out,” she ordered at the top of the
lungs.
 
“Get out as best you can.
 
Run.
 
I’ll see you on the surface if I make it.”

“Belwin!”
Telisan called, “Belwin!”

A
Shellycoat took a step toward Telisan.
 
Li fired into it.

As if
roused by the firing, about half the Shellycoats moved toward them.
 
More began to form, though slowly.

“We’ve
got to go,” Li screamed.
 
The last two
crab robots screened them, but there was no question of holding their ground.
 
They were forced away, heading back the route
they came, firing.
 
Telisan lifted Mmok
off the floor as he retreated, still calling Duna’s name.

Shasti
took advantage of the distraction to make her own escape, backing away with
Fenaday still balanced on her shoulders.
 
She was cut off from the others, and now Shellycoats stood between her
and the pit.
 
Her night sight was almost
as good as an Enshari’s, and the bio-panels provided enough light for her to
see by.
 
She fled in the opposite
direction, hoping to find another exit.

A
small access roadway led back to the area of new homes.
 
She climbed up whenever she could, heading
for the surface levels.
 
Fenaday’s weight
began to tax even her endurance.
 
Just like the Morok colony,
she thought,
only now it’s a mile upwards.
 
Well, at least he isn’t bleeding this time.