Was Once a Hero Read Online Free PDF

any
accidents.”
    “You
think I’d do that?” Fenaday demanded, his lips drawn thin.  
    “No
one pays me to think or to guess,” Mandela said, his smile fading.   “My job is to know.   For what it’s worth, I don’t think you would
do it, but there are others on your ship who might.   One of them is very pretty and very tall.”
    “I
could fight you in court,” Fenaday said.   He walked to the window, looking out of it in feigned indifference, but
careful not to let Mandela see the knife in his belt.
    Mandela
looked amused.   “You got any friends
left, Fenaday?   Big friends with
influence?   You got money stashed away
for real lawyers?   You’ll be fighting us
in our courts.   I don’t even have to rig
it to convict you on stock and securities fraud, committed when you sold off
the Shamrock line.   Then there’s the less
savory stuff: gun running to Morokat, smuggling, illegal intelligence
gathering, sheltering deserters, taking that condemned Frokossi prince off-world.   He was declared a traitor.   Do you want to be extradited to a Frokossi
court on a political engineering charge and try out that defense?
    “Of
course you might win,” Mandela continued, “but you’ll be broke and
disgraced.   As for Rainhell, whatever she
is or isn’t to you, she goes away.   The
charges against her just start with murdering prisoners under parole.   Assuming she decides to surrender into
custody, which I doubt.”
    “Christ,”
Fenaday muttered, as Mandela put a data chip on the table.
    “There’s
a number on that chip.   Call it and say
the word ‘Faust’ if you’re going to accept.   Our specialists will find you.   You’ll still have to recruit your own crew, but we and Duna will advance
you sufficient funds to make it possible.”
    “Faust,”
Mandela repeated as he stood, “and we make all your problems go away.”
    “Lisa,”
Fenaday said suddenly.
    Mandela
looked back from the door.   “I won’t mess
with you.   You got everything we
had.   Lisa Fenaday was one of ours, one
of the best.   We looked and we still keep
an ear out.   Didn’t you ever wonder why
your bribes and wire-taps worked?”
    Fenaday
snapped around startled.
    Mandela
opened the door.
    “You
forgot your case,” Fenaday called.
    “It’s
yours,” Mandela said breezily, “your jamming equipment isn’t worth jack.   Instructions are in the case.”   He closed the door behind him.
    “Son
of bitch,” Fenaday said.   After a minute,
he went to the single window and sat on the ledge.   For a cheap room, the view was not bad.   He could see part of the sandy Martian
landscape, sere even in the weak sun.   A
hundred years of terraforming had raised pressure, temperature and oxygen
levels to where a small re-breather mask allowed humans to endure the outside
for short periods.   The Martian sky remained
pink in the daytime and the stars blazed brighter than in Earth’s night
sky.   Mars was still colder than hell.
    He
could also see the landing apron of the western edge of the port.   A small freighter lifted off, the type the
Shamrock Line used in another lifetime.   He sat there for three hours watching the rusty sand blow and the
occasional movement of ships and personnel in the distance.  
    Fenaday’s
thoughts roamed over the years, the ones past and the ones seeming to lie empty
before him.   He was broke and alone.   Family and friends had fallen away over the
years—due to the war, the bitter breakup over the Shamrock Line, or the natural
drift when one leaves the mainstream of life.
    “How
did I get here?” he asked the room.   “How
in the world did I get here?”
    Her
face came to him as if in answer, the details blurry, which frightened
him.   He’d first seen Lisa standing on
the verandah, at one of his father’s legendary business parties.   Slender, with blue-eyes and dark-red hair,
she wore a filmy white dress that floated around her in the summer breeze.   Everyone