Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

Twenty-Seven: 3031 AD

The brothers Darksword looked like regimental file clerks. They wore that look of perpetual bewilderment of the innocent repeatedly slapped in the face by reality. Wizards of the data banks. Easy prey for the monsters in the human jungle.

They were short, slim, thin-faced, and watery-eyed. They had pallid skin and stringy brown hair so sparse it belonged on an endangered species list. Helmut affected a pair of pince-nez. The more bold Wulf had had his vision surgically corrected.

They were antsy little men who could not stand still. Outsiders pegged them as chronic hand-wringers, nervous little people who faced even petty troubles with the trepidation of an old maid bound for an orgy.

It was an act they had lived so long they almost believed it themselves.

There was as much ice and iron in them as in Cassius or Storm. Had Storm meant it, they would have killed the mining official without qualm or second thought. Disobedience was an alien concept.

A matched set of stringy old assassins.

Their lives, emotions, and loyalties had been narrowly focused for two hundred forty years. They had followed Boris Storm as boys, in the old Palisarian Directorate. They had attended military school with him, joined Confederation Navy with him, and became part of Prefactlas Corporation with him. When Ulant struck they returned to service with him, and afterward helped him create the Iron Legion. Following Boris's death they had transferred their devotion to his son.

They had been born on Old Earth and taken to the Directorate young. They had learned the motherworld's harsh lessons in Europe's worst slums.

Two things matter. Sign on with the gang with the most guns. Serve it with absolute devotion as long as it serves faithfully in return.

The centuries had garbled those truths a tad. They could not abandon the Legion now, biggest guns or no. One occasionally reminded the other that it looked like time to get out. Neither moved. They continued serving Gneaus Storm with the implacability of natural law.

Storm had left them in command of the Fortress. The simple fact of his absence presented them with enough problems, Wulf claimed, to frustrate a saint into a deal with the devil.

The Darkswords were curious in yet another way. They were that rare animal, the true believer in an age of infidels. Only they understood how they squared their actions with the moral demands of a Christian faith.

Michael Dee was human quicksilver. Pollyanna, without Lucifer there to compel discretion, seemed to have set herself the task of engulfing every functional penis in the Fortress. She had become a crude joke.

Lucifer had been gone only two days when she lured Benjamin back to her bed, with such indiscretion that everyone in the Fortress knew. Frieda became a volcano constantly on the edge of erupting.

The traditional morality had little weight in the Fortress of Iron, but one tried to avoid needless friction.

Pollyanna did not seem to care. Her behavior was almost consciously self-destructive.

Bets were being made. Would Lucifer return so incensed as to repeat the blood-spill he had attempted earlier? Would Benjamin's wife finally decide that she had taken enough and cut off his balls? It was a crackling tense situation made to order for a Michael Dee.

The preparations for Blackworld lagged. The Legion had no heavy equipment designed for use in an airless environment. For use in poisonous atmospheres, yes, but not for no atmosphere at all.

At least Richard Hawksblood faced the same problem.

Frieda's passion for the occult had become obsession. She spent hour upon hour closeted with her Madame Endor. She was convinced of the precognitive validity of Benjamin's nightmares. She was making herself obnoxious in her efforts to protect him. A dozen times a day she ran him down to make sure he was wearing the protective suit she had forced the armorers to prepare.

His dalliance with Pollyanna became his sole escape from, and defiance of, her insufferable mothering.

Among the troops there were dissensions explicable only in terms of the presence of Michael Dee. Rumors stalked the barracks levels. There were fist fights. There was a stabbing. The companies and battalions feuded in a manner unrelated to healthy, edge-honing competition.

Storm had been gone ten days. His stabilizing influence was severely missed.

Desperate, Wulf and Helmut decreed that any man not on duty had to report to the gymnasium for intensified physical fitness training. They established a round-the-clock roster of instructors. Exhausted Legionnaires had less energy for squabbling.

Wulf trailed Helmut by a step. They entered the gym. He growled, "The bastard don't have to do anything but be here to muck things up." He glared at Michael Dee. "Look at the damned trouble-monger. Sitting there smug as Solomon on his throne."

Helmut grunted affirmatively. "Would anybody yell if we shoved him out a lock?"

"Not till the Colonel got home. Ah. Look. There's Pollyanna. Want to help me with her?"

Pollyanna stood in a corridor mouth, watching the group around Dee. Her doe eyes were fixed on Michael.

They were filled with a surprising animation. It seemed to be hatred.

Homer and Frieda hovered over Benjamin, Frieda silently daring Pollyanna to come closer. Benjamin was directing the physical drill. The soldiers were not enthusiastic.

Michael watched in silence, unaware of Pollyanna's stare. He wore a contemplative smile.

"You handle her," Helmut said. "I'll take Benjamin and Dee." His voice carried overtones of distaste. Wulf might have asked if he wanted to share a swim in a sewer. Pollyanna flushed when she saw Wulf approaching. He was pleased. He hoped she saw the thunderheads dancing on his brow.

Cassius, with his computerlike voice and metallic absence of emotion, was the one man Pollyanna normally feared. She seemed unable to remain afraid of a man who had been to her bed.

She had made advances to both Darkswords. They had not responded. She could fear them too. Wulf tried to look as grim as a suicide singleshipper. What he wanted to do took the same intense determination. Her amorality baffled and intimidated him.

"We walk!" he snapped, seizing her arm. She winced. He was stronger than he looked, and wanted to impress her with the fact. "You've got a lot to learn," he growled, propelling her along the corridor. "Only Michael Dee plays Dee games here. He can get away with them. He has Storm's safe-conduct. You've got nothing. You're just another daughter-in-law."

She sputtered. His anger hit her like crashing breakers, drowning what she wanted to say.

"I could put you into detention. I will if you don't start making like a nun. Stay away from Benjamin. And Homer. I've seen you sizing him up. Your pants come down again, it'd better be for Lucifer. Understand? You want to play games, get a deck of cards. This one the rest of us were playing before your grandma crapped her first diaper." They reached her apartment. Wulf pushed her inside.

"One more trick, girl, and you go in the can till the Colonel gets back. That's as plain as I can make it."

She relaxed. He sensed it. "Think you know him, eh? Count your beads. With him it's always the Legion first. A man who's had to kill his own children wouldn't hesitate to send an amateur Dee to Helga's World the way he did with that metal grubber."

His belief in his commander was so apparent that she had to accept its truth. He left her shaking and, he hoped, wondering why she had gotten involved with such terrible men.

Helmut approached the group observing the physical drills. He was only slightly less forbidding than his brother. Dee's smile became uncertain. Benjamin's charm aura faltered. Homer's sightless eyes turned his way, grim as the eyes of death. Frieda glared suspiciously.

She was a raw-boned, stringy-haired blonde, reminiscent of her father, without Cassius's self-confidence. She was alarmed by the purpose evident in Helmut's stride. Storm she could read and handle. Her father she could manipulate. The Darkswords, though, were beyond reach.

That was the impression they liked to give. Helmut threw himself into an empty chair with apparent violence. He glared at them in turn. "Captain Ceislak. Take over here. Benjamin, I've got a job for you. Directing vacuum drills. You start after morning muster tomorrow. Check with Wong. He'll fill you in on what you'll be doing."

Understanding passed between them. Benjamin was about to be moved out of temptation's reach. Putting the Legion through vacuum drills required weeks.

A man could do a lot of thinking if he was alone with himself in a spacesuit, Helmut reflected.

"But he could... " Frieda began.

"Get hurt?" Helmut snapped, bludgeoning her line. "Crap. He'll be safer outside. He's not suicidal, is he?" He glanced at Michael Dee, smiling a thin, bitter smile.

Benjamin reddened.

"Accidents happen!" Frieda had become neurotic about her son's safety.

"Relax, Mother," Homer said with heavy sarcasm. "You'd still have me to dote on."

Frieda winced. She forced a smile while coloring guiltily.

Homer's dead eyes glared at the floor. He knew. Even from his mother affection had to be forced.

"Accidents, yes," Helmut mused, smiling at Dee again. "I've been giving accidents a certain amount of thought. They're like mutations. Once in a while one can be beneficial. Wulf and I were discussing the possibilities a bit ago."

Dee's smile vanished. He had gotten the message. And he had noted the marks strain had left on Helmut. It was time he became more circumspect. Helmut had declared, albeit obliquely, that he no longer considered the interests of Gneaus Julius Storm and those of the Legion to be congruent. The hint that he and his brother were ready to eliminate Dee indicated a revolution in thought that could spread throughout the organization. When the old lap dogs stood on their hind legs and growled...

Helmut sat there and smiled as if reading Michael's every thought.

Frieda went on nagging. Helmut finally exploded. "You question my orders, madam? Complain to the colonel when he returns. Meantime, hold your tongue."

It was as harsh an admonition as ever he had given a woman. She shut up. Storm always supported those upon whom he bestowed the proconsular power.

Having delivered his messages, Helmut went to waken Thurston Storm. Thurston was his relief. Initially, Thurston's sole task had been to birddog Michael. With tension mounting, the Darkswords had been forced to saddle him with part of their burden. They worked staggered sixteen-hour shifts, one sleeping while the other two held chaos at bay.

"Friendly today, isn't he?" Michael observed as Helmut stalked away. "He'd turn on the gloom at a wedding. Put the groom to work before the party started."

Ah, his words were subtle. Benjamin was blind to their snare. "A party. That's an idea, Michael. We need to liven this place up. I'll put me on a going-outside party."

Michael smiled and nodded.

The party, through Benjamin's efforts, shed some of its early artificiality and turned fun. With the help of a few drinks the younger people forgot the pressures that had been building so swiftly and mysteriously. The occasional tentative spurt of laughter erupted from their midst.

Benjamin's mother hovered in the background, as grim as an old raven. She had opposed the party from its inception, purely on feeling. She had been unable to sway Benjamin. Madame Endor had failed. He was in revolt against mothering. He would not let them save him.

He could be as stubborn as his father.

Where were her husband and father? Frieda wondered. The Fortress was going to hell and they were off God knew where chasing women or something.

Dee watched the partiers with a disdainful, mocking smile.

Thurston Storm observed from a doorway. He was a huge, sullen, muscular redhead who looked too simple for even the most obvious subtleties. His appearance was an illusion. He was a dangerous man.

He resented having been left off the guest list. They thought him too boisterous. It did not occur to him that he could simply abandon his duties and invite himself in. He just stood there with his arms folded across his chest. His right hand clutched a needlegun made tiny by the size of his fist. It tracked Michael Dee as if computer-aimed.

Thurston puzzled everyone. He seemed almost a hollow man, entirely an appearance. He had the disquieting vacuity of a Pollyanna Eight. The appearances he presented sometimes conflicted. Occasionally he was a reflection of his father. Most of the time he appeared to be what people took him for, a big, dull, happy fellow who drank as if there were no future, ate for a company, brawled, bragged, and bullied his way through life. A mass of strength without a brain to guide it.

Wulf had absented himself from the party, pleading his work load. Pollyanna was sulking in her apartment. Helmut was asleep. Everyone else was there.

Benjamin looked splendid in a uniform of his own design. It was too ruffled and gaudy for the Legion. His father would not have approved. He was not pleased with it himself. His protective armor softened its effect.

That armor was the finest available. Energy weapons would feed its shields. Anything moving at high velocity would pillow out in its fields. Those fields would seize and wrench aside the metal of an assassin's blade. In a truly hostile environment he could button up and survive on his own air, water, and nutrient soup. He could not be touched. His mother bragged about his invulnerability when she was not being afraid he would find a way to get himself killed despite his protection.

Benjamin invented a game. He had his friends take turns shooting, hacking, and stabbing him. They ruined his uniform without harming him. He laughed a lot.

The point was to aggravate his mother.

Homer, alone in his blindness, shunned for his ugliness, sat and brooded. Another party, strong with the laughter of the beautiful women who gravitated to the Legion. Were they mocking him again? Women always laughed at him. Even that madwoman Pollyanna. Her real purpose for tempting him, surely, had been to mock him. And Frieda, that bitch who claimed to be his mother... She would like nothing better than to have him put away somewhere where she would not be embarrassed by him. She tried hard to pretend, but she could not hide from his flashes of psi.

No one cared. No one understood. Except Ben, his father, and sometimes that young, strange one, Mouse. And his father he could never forgive for having given him life. Surely, with all his power and money, he could have done something. Sight. Corrective surgery for his physical defects...

He knew his father had tried. The human mind in despair seldom responds to the soft persuasion of reason.

In fits, Homer hated Gneaus Julius Storm.

"Homer. You're unhappy," said a voice nearby. He was startled. It contained more compassion than he had ever before heard. He was primed to take advantage of someone's pity.

Odd that he had not sensed the speaker's approach. His eyes were dead, but his other senses were strong. This man was a ghost.

"Who is it?" He did not recognize the voice.

"Michael."

Of course. The sneaking and voice-changing should have cued him. "What do you want?"

"Only to cheer you up. The Fortress is becoming so terribly grim."

Homer nodded. He did not believe a word, of course. Dee was the Prince of Liars, and always oblique. He might indeed do some cheering up, but only as a means to an end.

Homer's suspicion was solidly grounded. His handicap betrayed him. Without vision he could not detect the evil Michael planned. Only on Dee's face was the wickedness obvious, and that for but an instant.

Dee had discovered Benjamin's Achilles' heel. He had gotten the information from the man's staunchest defender, his mother, simply by listening to her brag and worry.

"Would you like to get into the game, Homer? Benjamin is dueling. Maybe he'd give you a go."

"Duel a blind man? You're a fool, Dee."

"Oh, I'll help you. Here. Benjamin. Homer wants a try." Dee glanced over his shoulder. A droplet of sweat dribbled down one temple. Thurston's weapon still tracked him with deadly precision.

"Hell, why not?" Benjamin replied. "Come on, Homer. You'll probably do better than these clowns."

As was customary, the healthy stepped aside, condescending to allow the cripple his moment.

Glibly, smoothly, Dee talked Homer to his feet, placed a dueling knife in his hand, positioned him facing his twin. The gallery watched with amused smiles. Homer sensed their amusement. His temper soared.

"Count of three," Michael said, easing back, trying to place someone between himself and Thurston. "One... "

Benjamin, playing to his audience, presented his chest to Homer's blade. He could not be hurt. No known hand weapon could penetrate the protection of his armor.

"Two... "

Guided by Benjamin's breathing, Homer lunged. He wanted to knock Ben onto his showoff ass.

For a long moment after the drugged tip of the wooden blade slipped through armor proof against any metal there was absolute silence. The tableau became a freezeframe from an old-time movie. Then Benjamin and Homer screamed with one voice. Their psi forces locked. Their rage and pain reached out to envelop the Fortress. Benjamin folded slowly. Homer fainted, toppled onto Benjamin. His mind could not withstand the psi backwash from his twin. Women shrieked. Men shouted.

And as quietly as he had come to the blind brother, while even Thurston's attention was diverted, Michael Dee slipped away.

Pandemonium invaded the hall.

When Wulf arrived he found Thurston raging among a group of young officers trying to avenge Benjamin on Homer. The big man laid them out left and right while screaming for somebody to for God's sake get the twins down to Medical.

A man slipped around Thurston and, with the guilty wooden blade, as Homer recovered consciousness, exacted vengeance. Thurston whirled and cracked the man's skull.

Homer welcomed death with a smile. That dark lady was the only woman who could love him.

Wulf ignored the drama. With Medical a minute away nobody needed die the death-without-resurrection. He was looking for people notable for their absence.

Helmut roared in clad in nothing but underwear. He had a gun in each hand. "What happened?"

"Find Dee!" Wulf ordered. "Kill him. Cut him up and shove the pieces out different locks. The Colonel can't stop it this time."

Helmut looked at the bodies. He needed no more clues.

They separated, seeking a trail. They were hounds who would not be satisfied till the blood of their quarry stained their muzzles.

Wulf was too angry. He missed the most outstanding absence. Frieda. She should have been in the middle of things, screaming and weeping over her poor baby, preventing anything sensible from getting done.

Within minutes the entire Fortress was mobilized for the sole purpose of locating Michael Dee. But somehow, despite the planetoid's limitations, he managed to evade capture.

The brothers Darksword conquered their emotions, repaired to Combat, directed the search from there.

They arrived as the man on instel communications ripped off a printout. It was a frantic message from Storm. Wulf read it first, bowed his head in despair. "Twenty minutes, that's all it would have taken."

"Signal too late. Twenty minutes too late. Sign my name," Helmut said.

"I want Dee," Wulf grumbled.

"Set the hounds on him."

"Yes."

In minutes they had Storm's Sirian warhounds seeking a trail. They found it on Residential Level. It led to the ingress locks. Their questions baffled the duty section. They had seen no one but the Colonel's wife in hours. She and two corpsmen had loaded a pair of medical-support cradles aboard an old singleship...

"Oh, hell!" Wulf swore. "You think... ?"

Helmut nodded. He grabbed a comm.

It took two calls to confirm the worst. Dee, following Homer's killing thrust, had seized Frieda and dragged her to her apartment. He had stripped and bound and gagged her, and had assumed her clothing and identity. From there he had gone to Medical and, playing on Frieda's neurotic concern from Benjamin, had convinced the duty corpsmen to transfer the dead to a hospital with planetary resources backing it. Dee had played his part to such perfection that the unsuspecting corpsmen had helped move and load the cryo coffins.

Even those who had known the Darkswords for decades were awed by the rage they displayed.

"He isn't away yet," Helmut remarked after regaining his composure. "He didn't know where the Colonel went when he pulled this. Let's see what they say in Combat. We might have a shot at him yet."

They commenced the counter game backed by Combat's resources.

"He's headed straight out," Wulf said, indicating the Dee blip in the main global display. "Putting on a lot of inherent velocity while he's getting up influence to go hyper." He picked up a pointer and indicated each of a half-dozen blips chasing Dee. "They scrambled fast."

The senior watchstander said, "I sent everybody who was on maneuvers when I heard what the situation was, sir." He happened to be the man who had disappointed Storm and Cassius in the Abhoussi and Dee incident.

"Very good," Helmut replied. "That's thinking on your feet."

"I scrambled everything in dock, too, sir. I assumed... "

"You assumed correctly," Wulf said. "Anything that will space. They're starting to come on display, Helmut."

A wild spray of diverging tracks began to spread behind the Dee blip. Wulf glanced to one side. "Tactical computer have control?"

"Yes, sir. You can input whatever the situation seems to call for."

"Basal strategy?"

"Build a plane of no return behind Dee, sir. Put the fastest ships on the rim and move them forward to make a pocket."

"Very good. Helmut, looks like we've got him. It might take a while, though."

"We're going to have to get a command ship out. We won't be able to direct it from here for long."

The senior watchstander said, "I held the Robert Knottys, sir. I've given them a direct feed. They're running a parallel program. You can board and shift control."

"Good. That's a good start," Wulf said.

"I believe we have him," Helmut said, peering into the display tank. "Unless he's headed somewhere damned close. That's a damned slow boat he's running."

"What's the nearest planetfall that direction?" Wulf asked. If Dee made planetfall before the jaws of pursuit closed he would become impossible to find. He would vanish amid the population and marshal his own resources in the time it took to track him down. His resources were not inconsiderable.

"Helga's World, sir."

"Ah!" Wulf began to smile. He and the Colonel definitely had aces up their sleeves.

Helmut said, "Communications are the problem. The control. There's a lot of space out there."

"And?"

"So it's time to call in old debts. See if there's a Starfisher who can relay for us. They don't love Michael either."

Wulf turned to his instel operator. "Go on the thirty-seven band with a loop. ‘Storm for Gales.' "

"They'll answer if they're out there," Helmut said.

Wulf shrugged. "Maybe. People can be damned ungrateful." He told the tech, "Let us know if there's a response."