Was Once a Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

else disappeared, until all that was
left was her face, her voice, and her laugh.   They created a minor scandal by disappearing from the party into the
gardens.  
    “More
idle playboy nonsense from my spoiled son,” his father had growled when he
learned of their relationship.   He was
wrong.   Lisa differed from everyone else
he had known.   She held a commission in
the Confederate Space Forces, Field Intelligence Section.  
    His
father opposed the romance.   Fenaday’s
hands unconsciously clenched as he remembered the fury his father’s belittling
of Lisa brought out in him, a rage that daunted even his domineering father,
“The Fenaday.”
    “Well
and enough,” the elder Fenaday said, just before it came to blows.   “I should know better than to cross a man
where his woman is concerned.”
    Not
many people stood up to the elder Fenaday and his son had been late in
starting.   Robert came to suspect that
his father was secretly pleased with the changes Lisa wrought in his son.  
    They
married in the fall of their second year together.   Lisa stayed in the military despite his
wealth.   He accepted it as the price of
having her.   Then, humans and the six
other member races of the loose Confederacy collided with the Conchirri, a
nightmarish species of intelligent carnivores, implacably hostile to all other
life.   Scientists speculated the behavior
was sociological or religious.   The
explanation was what sophisticated people afraid to believe in true evil fell
back on.
    When Lisa
left for combat duty, Fenaday stayed to help his father keep the Shamrock Line
afloat.   Losses in ships and lives
mounted.   The elder Fenaday, in bad
health from a lifetime of hard living, aged rapidly before his son’s eyes.   Decisions fell to Robert more and more often.
    In
the second year of the war, Fenaday saw a Confed aircar land and raced to the
door, reaching it before the butler.   A
nervous young officer in dress-blacks stood there.
    “Lt.
Commander Elizabeth Fenaday,” he said, voice cracking with strain, “is three
months overdue and presumed lost on a classified mission.   The Blackbird left a forward base just before a Conchirri cruiser attacked the outpost.   The base and the reasons she left charted
space are gone.  
    “The
Secretary of War wishes to express….”
    Fenaday
stared at him.   This isn’t real, he said to himself.   I’ll
wake up any second now.   I always do.
    The
young officer left the letter and a neatly folded gold flag with the
butler.  
    Fenaday’s
father died two weeks later.   Robert buried
him on the estate.   A few friends came by
and offered useless advice and hollow comforts.   Most had gone, fled to the safer inner worlds.   Fenaday had no brothers or sisters; his
mother had died when he was three.   A
throng of lesser relations came to the estate seeking advantages under the
cover of consolation.   He sent them
away.  
    His
Uncle Patrick had glared in contempt before leaving.   “Aye, go sulk.   Your old man would have got a gun and bagged
a Xeno.”  
    The
words raced round and round in his mind till the early hours of the next
morning when he stood on the veranda where they first met.   “Lisa,” he said finally, “I think I’ll go get
that gun now.”
    At
sunrise he put everything up for sale.   The government and the Shamrock board tried to stop him, but now he was
“The Fenaday” and forced the sale through.   He learned of a captured starship languishing in a Confed yard, a
Conchirri Tokkoro class
Frigate-leader taken in a raid.   Fenaday
christened her Sidhe , after the
ancient elvish sprits of Ireland.   He
ordered her painted in the cheapest color the dockyard had.   In bitter irony, the color was blood-red.
    Letters
of Marque and Reprisal followed and Robert Xavier Fenaday became a
privateer.   Fenaday, who had rarely gone
without anything, learned about want as everything went for the ship.   He signed whomever he could,