Shadowline-The Starfishers Trilogy I Read online

  The preparatory barrages had begun. The station's defenders were trying to fend them off.

  The slave pens were utter chaos. Deeth heard the fighting and screaming long before he and Rhafu arrived on the observation balcony.

  Household troops were helping the slave handlers, and still the animals were not under control. Corpses littered the breeding dome. Most were field hands, but a sickening number wore Norbon blue. The troops and handlers were handicapped. They had to avoid damaging valuable property.

  "I don't see any wild ones, Rhafu."

  "That is curious. Why provide weapons without support?"

  "Tell them not to worry about saving the stock. They won't matter if the human ships break through."

  "Of course." After an introspective moment, Rhafu said, "It's time you went." He gave Deeth a hug as powerful as his father's had been. "Be careful, Deeth. Always think before you do anything. Always take the long view. Don't ever forget that you're the Family now." He ran the back of a wrist across his eyes. "Now, then. I've enjoyed having you here, young master. Don't forget old Rhafu. Kill one for me when you get back to Homeworld."

  Deeth saw death in Rhafu's watery eyes. The old adventurer did not expect to survive the night. "I will, Rhafu. I promise."

  Deeth gripped one leathery old hand. Rhafu was still a fighter. He would not run. He would die rather than let animals shatter his courage and the confidence of his own superiority.

  Deeth started to ask why he had to run away when everyone else was going to stand. Rhafu forestalled him.

  "Listen closely, Deeth. Go down the stairs at the end of the balcony. All the way down. There'll be two doors at the bottom. Use the one on your right. It opens into the corridor that passes the training area. There shouldn't be anyone in it. Go to the end of the hall. You'll find two more doors. Use the one marked Exit. It'll put you outside in one of the vegetable fields. Go to the sithlac dome and follow its long side. Keep going in a straight line out from its end. You should reach the forest in an hour. Keep on going and you'll run into an animal village. Stay with them till you find a way off planet. And for Sant's sake make sure you pretend you're one of them and they're equals. If you don't, you're dead. Never trust one of them, and never get close to any of them. Understand?"

  Deeth nodded. He knew what had to be done. But he did not want to go.

  "Go on. Scoot," Rhafu said, swatting him on the behind and pushing him toward the stair. "And be careful."

  Deeth walked to the stairwell slowly. He glanced back several times. Rhafu waved a last farewell, then turned away, hiding tears.

  "He'll die well," Deeth whispered.

  He reached the emergency exit. Cautiously, he peeped outside. The fields were not as dark as he had expected. Someone had left the lights on in the sithlac dome. And the slave barracks were burning. Had the animals fired them? Or had the bombardment done it?

  Little short-lived suns kept flaring between the stars overhead. A long, rolling thunder of chemical explosions came from the far side of the station. The launch pits had been hit. The shriek of rising missiles was replaced by secondary explosions.

  The humans were getting close. Deeth looked up into the heart of the constellation Rhafu had dubbed the Krath, after a rapacious bird of Homeworld. The human birthstar lay there somewhere.

  He could not distinguish the constellation. There were scores of new stars up there, all of them too bright, and visibly brightening.

  The humans were on the downward leg of their penetration run. He would have to hurry to clear the perimeter they would establish with their assault craft.

  He sprinted for the side of the sithlac dome.

  By the time he reached the dome's far end the new stars had swollen into small, bright suns. Missile exhausts rayed from them in angry swarms. He could hear the craft rumbling over the explosions stalking through the station.

  They were just a few thousand feet up now, and braking in. His escape would be close. If he made it at all.

  A flight of missiles darted toward the bright target of the dome. Deeth ran again, sprinting straight out into the darkness. Explosions tattooed behind him. Blasts hurled him forward, tumbled him over and over. The dome lights died. He rose, stumbled ahead, fell, rose, and went on. His nose was bleeding. He could not hear.

  He could not see where he was going. The flashing of explosions kept his eyes from adapting as quickly as they should.

  The assault craft touched down.

  The nearest landed so close Deeth was singed by the hot wash spreading beneath it. He kept shambling toward the forest, ignoring the treacherous ground. When he was safe he paused to watch the humans tumble off their boat and link up with the craft that had landed to either side. The burning station splashed them with eerie light.

  Deeth recognized them. They were Force Recon, the cream of the Confederation Marines, the humans' best and meanest. Nothing would escape their circle.

  He cried for his parents, and Rhafu, then wiped the tears away with the backs of his fists. He trudged toward the forest, indifferent to the fact that the humans might spot him on anti-personnel radar. Each hundred steps he paused to look back.

  Dawn was near when he passed the first trees. They rose like a sudden palisade, crowding a straight line decreed by the station's planners. He felt as though he had stepped behind a bulwark against doom.

  Once his ears had recovered he had heard stealthy movements around him. He was not alone in his flight. He avoided contact. He was too shaken, and had too poor a command of the slave tongue, to handle questions from animals. The wild ones used a different language. He expected to have less trouble passing with them. If he could find them.

  One found him.

  He was a quarter-mile into the forest when a raggedy, smelly old man with a crippled leg pounced on him. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that Deeth had no chance. His struggles earned him nothing but a fist in the face. The blow calmed him. He bit down on a tongue that had been damning the old man in High Sangaree.

  "What are you doing, please?" he ventured in the animal language.

  The old man hit him again. Before he could do more than groan, a sack had been flung over his head, skinned down to his ankles, and tied shut. A moment later, head downward and miserable, he was hoisted onto a bony shoulder.

  He had become booty.

  Thirteen: 3052 AD

  My father had an unusual philosophy. It was oblique, pessimistic, fatalistic. Judge its tenor by the fact that he read Ecclesiastes every day.

  He believed all existence was a rigged game. Good strove with Evil in vain. Good could achieve occasional localized tactical victories, but only because Evil was toying with it, certain of final victory. Evil knew no limits. In the end, when the scores were tallied, Evil would be the big winner. All a man could do was face it with courage, fight though defeat was inevitable, and delay the hour of defeat as long as possible.

  He did not see Good and Evil in standard terms. The Good and Evil most of us see he simply considered matters of viewpoint. The "I" is always on the side of the angels. The "They" are always wicked. He thought an absolute Islamic-Judeo-Christian Evil a weak, irrational joke.

  Entropy is an approximate cognate for what Gneaus Julius Storm called Evil. An anthropomorphic, diabolic sort of entropy with a malign lust for devouring love and creativity, which, I think, he considered to be the main constituents of Good.

  It was an unusual outlook, but you have to accept that it was valid for him before you can follow him through the maze called the Shadowline.

  —Masato Igarashi Storm

  Fourteen: 3031 AD

  Storm, Cassius, and the dogs crowded into an elevator. It dropped away toward the Traffic Control and Combat Information Center at the planetoid's heart.

  Benjamin, Homer, and Lucifer whirled when their father entered the Center. Storm surveyed their faces grimly. The glow of the spatial display globes, overplayed by the changing light keys of the tactical computer's situat
ion boards, splashed them with ever-changing color. No one spoke.

  Storm's sons stared at their feet like shamed boys caught playing with matches. Storm half turned to Cassius, eye on the senior watchstander. Cassius inclined his head. The officer would have to explain his failure to report ships in detection. He would be reminded of his debt to Gneaus Storm. It would be a tempestuous admonition.

  The officer's failure was beyond Cassius's comprehension. He never let his hatred of the Dees impair his trust. The Dees were a raggedy-assed gaggle of hypocritical thieves, boosters, and news managers. They were a waste of life-energy. But . . . Cassius suppressed his feelings because he had faith in Storm's judgment. This watch officer had not been with the Legion long enough to have developed that faith.

  Should Storm ever fail, openly and dramatically . . . Cassius did not know what he would do. He had been with Storm so long that, chances were, he would bull right along in the official line.

  Storm surveyed his sons again. He awarded Lucifer one of his rare smiles. The fool had been trying to kill his own wife.

  Storm thought of Pollyanna, shuddered.

  He had to let them off easy. This pocket revolt was his own fault. He should have passed the word about the woman.

  He did not think much of himself just then. He had done his usual trick, not letting anyone know what he was doing or why. He was screwing up too much lately. Maybe he was getting old. In this business survivors eliminated the margin of error.

  He locked gazes with Lucifer. His son stepped back as if physically shoved.

  Lucifer was just six years older than Mouse. He was large and well built, like his father, but his mind had his mother's bent.

  Lady Prudence of Gales had been a High Seiner poetess and musician in the days when her people, the mysterious Starfishers, had not completely retreated into the interstellar deeps. She had come to the Fortress as an emissary, recalling Prefactlas, begging for help to save her sparsely populated, remote homeworld from Sangaree domination.

  She had touched Storm with naked trust. No man knew where to find the elusive Seiners. She had given him that secret in the naive hope that that would move him to help. She had cast the dice, betting everything on a single roll . . . And she had won.

  And Storm had had no cause for regrets.

  He remembered Prudie better than most of his women. A hot, hungry little morsel in private. Cool, competent, and occasionally imperious in public, and daring. Bedazzlingly daring. Never before or since had anyone cozened the Iron Legion into fighting on spec.

  He had pulped the Sangaree on her world. She had given him a son. And they had gone their separate ways.

  Storm had known countless women, had fathered dozens of children. His parents had had no concept of fidelity either. Three of his brothers had had different mothers. Michael Dee had had a different and mysterious father.

  Frieda Storm was guilty of her indiscretions, too. She did not press Storm about his.

  So Lucifer had been an artist born. And he was good. His poetry had appeared with that of giants like Moreau and Czyzewski. The visualist Boroba Thring had done a kaleidoshow based on Lucifer's Legion epic, Soldaten, using one of Lucifer's Wagnerian scores as background music. But Lucifer considered writing and composing mere hobbies.

  He was determined to prove himself a soldier. It was a vain ambition. He did not, as they say, have the killer instinct.

  The free soldier had to act without thought or remorse. His antagonists were professionals. They were quick and deadly. They would permit him no time for regrets or reflection on the barbarity of it all.

  Storm forgave Lucifer's shortcomings more readily than he did those of sons with no talents. He had hopes for the boy. Lucifer might someday find and become true to himself.

  Benjamin and Homer were twins. Storm's only children by Frieda, they were, in theory and their own estimation, his favorites. They were rebels. Their mother defended them like an old bitch cat her kittens.

  Probably my fault they're delinquents, Storm thought. They've been men for decades and still I treat them like boys. Hell, they're grandfathers.

  This extended life leached a man's perspective. The twins were as unalike as night and day. Storm sometimes wondered if he had fathered both.

  Benjamin was a blond Apollo. He was the darling of the younger Legionnaires, who considered his father a historical relic. But did they turn to Benjamin in the tight places? They did not. Benjamin Storm tended to fold under pressure.

  His mother and friends believed he was the Legion's Crown Prince. His father thought not. If the Iron Legion survived Gneaus Storm, none of his children but Cassius's favorite had what it took to rule and fight a freecorps.

  Benjamin could win loyalties with a word, with a gesture. He had that knack for making each individual feel he was the only human being in the universe Benjamin cared about. But could he inspire faith?

  Benjamin might command the Legion one day if his father did not appoint a successor. For one commission. Storm could see his son taking over on force of personality. He could not see him succeeding in the field.

  Benjamin could play Piper of Hamelin to his own, but those hard cases across the battlefields, the Hawksbloods and van Breda Kolffs, would cut up his charisma and spread it on their breakfast toast.

  Homer was Benjamin's antithesis. He was dark of mind and body, ugly, malformed, and congenitally blind. He repelled everyone but his twin. Benjamin was his only friend. He followed his brother everywhere, as if only Benjamin could neutralize the blackness in his soul.

  In compensation for her cruelties Nature had given Homer a weak psionic ability that never did him any good. He was bitter, and not without just cause. He was as sharp as anyone in the family, yet was trapped in a body little better than a corpse.

  Storm's men saw the twins as living examples of the dualities in their father. Benjamin had received the looks and charm, Homer the hurt and rage and darkness of spirit.

  Benjamin met his father's eye and smiled his winningest smile. Homer stared sightlessly, unrepentant. He was unafraid. There was no way to punish him more than life had punished him already.

  He expected nothing but evil. He accepted it.

  Storm hurt for him. He knew the shadow that ruled Homer. It was an old, ultimate companion.

  At least once a day Storm turned to the book that time had forgotten, rereading and contemplating the message of a Storm dead four thousand years.

  Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

  What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

  Gneaus Storm, even more than had Homer, had watched the rivers run into the seas, and knew the seas would never fill. Rather, they grew shallower with the ages, and someday would disappear. What did a man profit if, in the end, all his deeds were illusion? The Enemy could not be overthrown. Its resources were infinite and eternal and Storm knew he would only lose the long struggle.

  Unlike the Preacher in Jerusalem, Storm refused to surrender. In spite of everything, there could be victory in the spirit. If he kept his courage he could scratch his memory on the cruel visage of defeat. Either to surrender, or to go to his fate with laughter on his lips. This was the only real choice he, or any man, was ever given in this life.

  "There's a ship coming in," he growled at last. He jerked his arm upward. The ravenshrike fluttered into the shadows. No one paid it any heed.

  No one argued. The truth was evident in the display globes.

  "Michael Dee's ship, I believe. Contact him. Clear him a path through the mine fields."

  The soldiers did not "yes sir" before returning to work. They would try to impress him with their efficiency now. Trouble lurked beyond the end of their watch.

  "Traffic, contact the cruiser too. I want to speak to her master. All defense systems, move to standby alert."

  "I have contact with Dee," said the man on Traffic Comm. "Clear channel, visual."

  "Thank you."
Storm seated himself at a visual pickup. Cassius moved in behind him. Michael Dee's fox face formed on screen. Worry lines faded away. A pearly-toothed smile broke through.

  "Gneaus! Am I glad to see you. I was beginning to think you wouldn't answer."

  "I had to think about it." Dee's smile faded. His was a con man's face, blandly honest, as reassuring as a priest's. But little folds uplifting the corners of his eyes gave him a sly look. "I could still change my mind. Did you bring my cargo?"

  Dee was wearing his natural face. No makeup. No disguise. His dark eyes, narrow face, pointy nose, and prominent, sharp teeth gave him a definite vulpine look. This is the true Michael, Storm thought.

  Dee was a man of countless faces. Seldom was he out of disguise, and his talent for shifting identities was preternatural. Given study time, he could adopt the speech habits and physical mannerisms of almost anyone. He found the talent useful in his trade. He was, supposedly, a free-lance newsman.

  "Of course. I said I would, didn't I?" Dee sneered as if to say he knew his brother would not throw him to Hawksblood's wolves.

  "Show me, Michael."

  Exasperated, Dee backed off pickup. Pollyanna Eight showed her pretty face. A little sigh ran through the Center.

  "All right. You're clear in. Out." Storm nudged the comm man. He took the hint. He secured the channel before Dee could come back on.

  Lucifer sputtered behind his father and Cassius. Storm turned. He forbore any remark but, "Lucifer, go take charge of the ingress locks. Don't let Michael wander. Get him out of his ship and search it."

  Dee was treacherous. From childhood he had thrived on sparking strife. The feud between Richard Hawksblood and his brother was his masterwork.

  He could not help himself. Meddling and deceit were compulsions. One day his weakness would kill him.

  Michael would be involved in more than just bringing Pollyanna home. He was not a one-track man. He always kept several balls in the air.

  Storm thought he knew what Dee was up to. Richard's being interested in Blackworld was the giveaway.