Was Once a Hero Read Free Page A

return with another glass of amber liquid.   “Drinking Olde Henley, huh?” he asked.   “That stuff will kill you.”
    “I’m
not that lucky,” Fenaday said.  
    A
couple of businessmen came in.   The
bartender, apparently smelling better tips, moved off, leaving Fenaday to his
drink.   He lifted the glass and held it
at eye level, studying its shifting amber color in the low light of the bar,
but didn’t raise it to his lips.   It
wasn’t alcohol he wanted; it was distance and numbness.   Distance from the memories of a lost home and
a lost love.   Thoughts of Lisa crowded
close and jagged tonight, and the traditional medicine of the Irish wasn’t
helping him.   Maybe the ancient spirits
of the island he knew only from books were having fun at his expense.   The Sidhe loved tragedy and the struggle of
mortals.  
    They must love me , he thought, a lost
man searching all of space for his wife.   Show’s over, he thought to the
spirits.   His ship, the Sidhe , sat in dock, probably never to
fly again.   The end of the Conchirri war
and the bounties it generated made it impossible to run a private warship.   Backers in the syndicate that financed the
privateer dropped off.   Sidhe had made port on Mars with barely
enough to pay off her crew.
    Fenaday
had spent the last few days looking for work in the bars and haunts of the huge
spaceport, refusing to give up.   Now he
found himself alone in a Marsport bar, staring at the turgid liquor.  
    People
began to fill in, office workers and maybe more prosperous spacers.   Fenaday had posed as one of those more
prosperous.   The deception had
failed.   His last hope had just left.   The shipping agent for a small firm plying
part of the Fringe Star sector had expressed her regrets.   With the war over and the navy free to patrol
again, her company no longer needed a privateer escort.
    God, he thought, putting the glass back
down, there has to be some way.   Pick yourself up, man.   Find something.   Think.
    Nothing
came to him.   A warship or exploring service
would not take him on as a passenger.   He
was only thirty, but there were hundreds of younger regular navy captains
looking for berths in the rapidly contracting Confederate Space Force.   Merchants rarely traveled in the Fringe
Stars, and then only to the settled worlds he’d already searched for any sign
of Lisa or her ship, the Blackbird .   Sidhe was the only instrument for his search.   Now he and the ship lay useless on Mars.
    Fenaday
dropped his head on the table so no one could see his face.   “You can’t cry,” he whispered.   “You can’t start; you’re a tough pirate
captain.”   It didn’t help.   Hot tears slid down his nose.   Lost in his own private misery, it took him a
while to notice the being who walked up to his table, to react to the sudden
drop in the noise level of the bar.   Only
the rare and bizarre drew attention in a place as blasé as Luchow’s
Marsport.   The hush finally drew
Fenaday’s head up from the table.   He met
the alien’s stare with a startled expression.
    The
being stood slightly over a meter tall; resembling a large otter, save for the
face that suggested a human ancestor, Homo
Habilus .
    “You
grieve, human,” the alien said.   Its
voice was low for the small body and whistled in parts, but it spoke
Confederate Standard clearly.   “Enshari
understand grief.”
    “With
enough cause,” Fenaday said, regarding the small being with wonder.
    “Ah,
then you know the story of my people.”
    Fenaday
straightened in his seat, glad for the distraction.   “I can’t imagine that there’s anyone who
doesn’t.”
    “You
might be surprised by the shortness of memory for tragedy,” the Enshari
said.   “Tell me of what you have
heard.”   It seated itself unbidden at
Fenaday’s table in a fluid motion that heightened its resemblance to an
otter.   “Please.”
    “All
right,” Fenaday replied slowly, trying to guess