Was Once a Hero (45 page)

“REMFs?” she asked.

“Rear echelon motherfu—” Rigg snorted a laugh. “Never mind.”

They found the strike-team sitting on the deck, cleaning weapons. The
four other team members were also over-large, excellent specimens, until they
stood next to Shasti. No true aliens served in the team. Nonhumans were rare on
Olympia and would attract attention. The decision provoked bitter complaints
from Rigg’s second-in-command and close friend, the Morok, Lt. Rask. Despite
his best efforts, Rask could not wrangle his way onto the mission.

Other than Rigg, the team members remained almost strangers to her.
Shasti hadn’t trained with the team long enough for her own satisfaction. An
air of urgency, almost desperation, surrounded Mandela’s attempt to interfere
in Olympian policy. Rigg, however, knew them well, which gave her some
confidence. Randall, Zoski, and Kim looked tough and capable. Karen
Minaravitch, the only other woman, rounded out the team.

The ASATs finished checking their armaments and equipment. Rigg, once a
sergeant always a sergeant, checked it again. They began to apply black face
and hand camo. Shasti sat on the deck plates and concentrated.

After a minute, Rigg noted her lack of movement. “Rainhell,” he said,
annoyed, “time for camo.”

Shasti’s body shuddered slightly. In an instant all of her visible skin
turned a flat, non-reflective black.

“Christ almighty,” Randall said. The others looked similarly stunned.

Shasti’s eyes opened. They remained a cool jade color. The whites seemed
even more pronounced. She met the stares of the standard humans. “This is what
you are up against every second you are on Olympia,” she stated. “Never forget
it.”

*****

Wraith
avoided the Olympian out-system patrols and deployed her landing ship from well
beyond the range of planetary detectors. The high-speed raider then fled for
deep space as the landing shuttle headed for Olympia’s night side. The
Intruder
was the latest design, horribly
expensive but nearly invisible to radar or microwave. It lived up to its name,
tip-toeing past Olympia’s naval moon base and the lines of fighters and sloops
patrolling the approaches to the planet. The
Intruder
slipped into Olympia’s atmosphere. At ten thousand feet,
the shuttle went into hover, its rear cargo ramp sliding down.

Shasti looked at Rigg and the other five members of the assault team,
dressed in chameleon suits. They were low enough not to need the additional
burden of oxygen, a blessing considering how much equipment they carried.

Rigg looked back at her and grinned. “It’s your planet. After you.”

Shasti nodded and strode out onto the ramp. The frigid, pitch-black
night waited at the end of it. Above her the filigree of the ice-ring
glimmered. Wind howled around her. Without hesitation she threw herself off the
ramp, spread-eagled. As she fell, she rolled onto her back. Above her, she
could see the others dropping in a perfect file. Their helmet faceplates did
not leak the eerie green of the interior HUD night sights through which they
saw the world. They plunged earthward like black rocks. Shasti flipped over and
concentrated on her descent.

At one thousand feet, Shasti’s black airfoil deployed. The others formed
up on her like geese as they made for a landing on the plateau. Shasti’s boot
slammed into the hard soil of her homeworld, but she kept her feet under her.
The others dropped around her with less luck.

They buried their chutes with trained efficiency and moved out in a
ranger file, each person following the phosphorescent tag on the helmet of the
person ahead of them. The small force headed for the isolated farmhouse to meet
their contact.

Shasti took point as the team trudged through the cold desert night air.
Early fall chilled Olympia’s Northern Continent; she was glad it wasn’t winter.
With barely a thought she raised her body temperature a full degree. Her usual
15-MM tri-auto rode on her hip, a strap across her chest holding some of the
weight. The weapon, too heavy for most humans, was normally used by Humanform
Combat Robots. She preferred its heavier killing power. She’d set it for
projectile weapons, so the energy trace would be minimal. There were eyes in
the sky.

They reached the contact point, a large farmhouse in an isolated valley.
The team spent ten minutes in stillness. Every sense, artificial and natural,
strained to detect a trap. Finally, Rigg stood, cautiously moving toward the
door. In his hand he held a metal cricket. He gave a recognition signal, a
series of metallic clacks. The door opened slowly. A woman of Rigg’s size stood
there, looking out. The two conversed. Rigg went inside for a second then came
back out and gave the all clear signal on the clacker. The others moved quickly
into the house. Shasti, ever suspicious, brought up the rear.

Once inside, the woman turned on a lamp,
then
quickly drew curtains across all the windows to prevent the light from
escaping. The light revealed a large, comfortably rustic room.

Shasti studied the woman. Early stock, she estimated. Selected, not
Engineered. Abilities from good genetics, with none of the hallmarks of the
gene-tampering technology responsible for Shasti’s existence. She lacked the
inhuman perfection and bilateral symmetry seen in the Engineered, the newest
people. Shasti already knew that the older woman did not have dark-adapted
eyes. She’d peered out of the door for a few seconds before spotting Rigg.
Still handsome and lithe, the Olympian might well be close to sixty from the
grayed hair and the existence of lines on her face. To the other team members
she probably appeared to be in her early forties.

Their contact looked over the members of the team then spotted Shasti.
As she did, Shasti allowed her melanin levels to return to normal. Flat black
skin color vanished in a heartbeat.

The woman looked up at her in obvious fear and backed a step. “Aristo,”
she gasped, uttering the old slang for the Engineered.

“No,” Shasti said. “I’m not an Aristo.”

The other woman recovered her composure, but fear stayed in her eyes.
“Obviously not in spirit, or you would not be here. But you are born
Aristo—pardon, Engineered—for
all the
world to see.
You may be the most perfectly made I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, we’ve heard. She’s perfect,” Kim
groused
.

“Remember,” Shasti said, ignoring Kim’s comment, “on this world your
social status is largely determined by your genetics. I’m a tailored life form,
engineered from germ plasm. The amount of money put in my body would appall
you. My size and general appearance mark me as an aristocrat.”

The woman looked at the standard humans. “I had actual parents,” she
admitted, eyes downcast. “They were not sanctioned by the order of Geneticists.
My creation was unassisted, done by
their own
bodies.”

Shasti was surprised. The woman’s appearance was better than her social
status, given that she was entirely naturally conceived and far worse,
unsanctioned. “I envy you those parents,” she said.

The woman looked up, startled,
then
smiled
sadly. “You are truly not Aristo to think so.” She extended a hand hesitantly,
“I’m Leda Jenner.”

“Shasti Rainhell,” she said, taking the hand. “Daniel Rigg, Kim,
Randall, Zoski and Minaravitch.”

“Names you must not use after tonight,” Jenner cautioned. “You have been
briefed on your assumed names and identities?” They all nodded. “Good. You
brought in clothes for tomorrow? Let me see them while you are getting out of
that camouflage. Mr. Rigg, there is a safe in the basement for the heavy
weapons.”

“Not till morning,” Rigg demurred.

“As you wish,” Jenner said. “The bathroom is through there.”

Jenner looked at their equipment, discarding a jacket of Kim’s she ruled
too ostentatious for his social status. Only Rigg, for all his size and lean
strength, and Minaravitch, with her beautiful and symmetrical Russian face,
could pretend to claim a status marginally exceeding Jenner’s own. Jenner
discarded a dress of Minaravitch’s, pulling out something more suitable from
her own closet. “That dress,” Jenner said, “isn’t even close. It would be fine
on a comedian. Who picked this material out for you? Was your briefing no
better than this?”

Rigg shrugged. “Best guess I imagine. It’s not a secret to you that we
came with less preparation than these missions usually get.”

Shasti chose a black, form-fitting body suit and a jade green jacket to
match her eyes. “Am I all right?” she asked uncertainly. She had little
experience of even Olympian civilian society.

“Aristos can wear anything,” Jenner replied. “A woman of your breeding
would display your physique with pride, so you are quite in fashion. That’s
good. You’re far too big for anything of mine to be alterable. My jacket won’t
even cover your shoulders. I can take in this other for Minaravitch.”

“Good,” Rigg said. “Everybody else get some sack time. We have a lot of
ground to cover in the morning.”

*****

Morning dawned over the desert. Shasti greeted it alone. She’d been
suffering a mix of emotions since returning to her homeworld. Sleep eluded her,
so she’d opted for guard duty. It gave her time to think, to remember things
she usually blocked from her conscious mind.

Her life on Olympia had been hard, the training strict, but it had not
been all bad. She remembered enjoying the animals in the K-9 Corp. She’d
excelled with all weapons, including her hands. Even as a child, Shasti knew
she was something special from Jalgren Pard’s interest in her. At fifteen, Pard
introduced her to sex. Shasti did not question it and had taken to the physical
pleasure eagerly. She’d felt honored when told of her impending marriage to
Pard. It never occurred to her that she had a choice. All her life she’d obeyed
orders without question.

Pard finished teaching her normal lovemaking. Then the trouble began. He
enjoyed using force, inflicting pain. He’d taught her to enjoy sex but could
not teach her to enjoy such games. With that, everything between them came
undone. She no longer saw him as a god-like force of genetics and power but as
a degenerate.

She finally recognized their marriage for a mockery, his public claim of
ownership. Worse still, she saw herself as an expensive, beautifully made toy,
held for his exclusive use. Her training as an assassin and bodyguard gave her
pride. Life with Pard denied her that pride. She began to learn of the world
outside Pard’s domain, enough to realize what she’d been cheated of.

Shasti waited her chance, enduring his abuse as best she could. Until
one night, overconfident, he did not have her drugged or partially bound. Her
hands tensed on her weapon as she remembered that night…

*****

Shasti had secreted a kubaton in Pard’s bedchamber, slipping it between
the pillow and headboard. She hadn’t struggled the last few times he had taken
her, or rather had struggled feebly, letting him think that he had at last
dominated her.

“On the bed,” Pard said, his eyes roaming over her slender body. She
feigned submission, stretching out on the bed and buying time to reach under
the pillow for the small metal spike of the kubaton. She felt the bed sink
under his weight as he positioned himself above her. Her hand seized on the
kubaton and Shasti exploded into action. Pard, not anticipating a fight, missed
his block, and the weapon slammed into his temple. Any other man would have
died. It only knocked Pard on his side, though blood splattered on the sheets.
He even managed a swing that knocked her off the bed. Like a tigress, she’d
sprang
back at him. He staggered upright just as she crashed
into him.

Shasti was two hundred pounds of perfectly engineered, organic killing
machine, the latest model. Her bones bent and gradually reshaped. Pard, for all
his massive size and strength was First Generation Engineered. His bones broke.
Her system pumped adrenaline and painkiller into her body. Cuts ceased bleeding
almost instantly. Pard, powerful as he was, couldn’t shake off the blow to the
temple and he was too slow to catch the decades-younger Rainhell, powered by
her frenzy of loathing.

Shasti feinted left and then drove low, catching his groin in her right
hand and straining it through her fingers. Pard’s agonized howl finally alerted
the exterior guards. They began to yell through the door. Shasti abandoned
piling killing blows on Pard, who still weakly warded her
off,
to leap to the doorway just as the door crashed open. The first guard plunged
past her. Shasti landed a knife-edged palm on the second guard’s neck, snatched
his weapon out of the air and shot the first guard. Shasti whirled to finish
Pard, only to see him disappearing behind a secret door. The weapon bucked in
her hands on full auto. Blood splashed on the door as it sealed, but she
couldn’t tell if she had killed him.

Shuddering with reaction and loathing, Shasti pulled herself together.
She had only minutes to make her escape. Shasti pulled a dead guard’s jacket
over the bedroom things Pard forced her to wear, grabbed both weapons and fled.
She killed everyone she encountered: guards, visitors, servants,
a
terrified maid. They were all apparatus of her rapist. All
his things. Nothing in her life had introduced her to the concept of
noncombatant,
and the greater the confusion, the more chance
of escape. Shasti started fires with her weapons, caused explosions. She hoped
much of the encampment would react to the attack as if it were an exterior
threat, never dreaming she was the cause. She shot a young valet in the garage,
leapt into an aircar and disappeared into the night.