Hero! Read Online Free PDF Page A

would fold down into a couch just barely large enough for two. Even a regulation K47 would fly a ballistic trajectory at the limits of the atmosphere, and a surprising number of girls were interested in trying things weightless.
    He took off on manual, blasting straight up at max climb. The sonic boom would rattle Arkady a little. Admirals were expected to do things like that, and Maeve would learn that he had departed before Security told her so. She must already know of his encounter with the pepod, of course. Bitch! If she hadn’t made him so mad, he wouldn’t have been so cretinly stupid.
    He set course for Valhal, seeing the Commonwealth spread out below him, ghostly blue in the Angellight, under a spooky sky of slate-colored velvet. The lights of Hiport gleamed to the north. Usually when he came this way, he would stop in there; that was why he had not known of Arkady, and Maeve.
    Less than a dozen other stars were visible, the few that could compete with Angel. One day Angel would go supernova and take half the Bubble with it. Somewhere high off to the left was mythical Earth, three thousand elwies away. Sol was a nondescript star, visible at such a distance only through major telescopes. No one had heard from Earth in a long, long tune, or from any of the first worlds. Inside the Bubble was the Silence.
    Scyth had gone silent thirty-odd years ago. But it had sent out the Q ship afterward, and that was very unusual. Tham said…
    Krantz!
    Like an echo of thunder came memory of the insight that the pepod had interrupted. Why should Tham suddenly withdraw, just when he was most needed? Yes, the galaxy was full of coincidences…It was full of trickery, too.
    And anyway, what was Vaun doing, heading home to an empty bed when he hadn’t completed the task he’d set out on? What sort of famous hero ran from a few alarm signals? He reached for the controls again.
    The party beacons would all be turned off now. There would be no girl tonight he could dazzle with thoughts of hostessing the famous Valhal and comforting the famous hero. No naked little redhead in his arms tonight. Nights without sex brought bad dreams.
    He had more important things to do than sleep.
    He banked as tightly as the safeties would let him and laid in a return course for Forhil, Tham’s place.
    Famous hero…Vaun had killed Abbot and defeated the Brotherhood. This invading Q ship might be the Brotherhood’s revenge.
    Scyth had gone silent thirty years ago—which meant about forty if you allowed for the time lag—and Tham believed that the Brotherhood had been responsible. Vaun had heard him say so more than once. True, Prior had come from Avalon. Abbot and Unity had come from Avalon, but Avalon had not succumbed to the Brotherhood yet—probably. A couple of years ago, when the Avalonian Patrol had finally answered Ultian Command’s urgent queries, Tham had passed the news to Vaun. The war had been won, the message said, the brethren on Avalon defeated and wiped out—and Avalonian Command had congratulated its Ultian comrades on their own victory against the infestation.
    That message could have been a fake.
    Scyth was part of the Brotherhood problem, too. Scyth’s sudden silence had come later, long after Unity had arrived at Ult, and this new, deadly Q ship had certainly originated from Scyth after that. So what was the Patrol up to? What was Roker up to? The high admiral was a prick of the first water, but he did not usually allow personalities to interfere with business. Why was Planetary Command not consulting its great hero, Admiral Vaun?
    He was the expert on the Brotherhood, wasn’t he?
    Despite Vaun’s brave lies to Maeve, he had no idea of the Patrol’s thinking on the threatening Q ship. He had tried to get through to Roker, but his calls had been refused.
    And was Tham’s withdrawal at this critical moment mere coincidence, or was it Roker’s handiwork…or even the Brotherhood’s? The brethren had subverted the Patrol once