Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

Nine: 3031 AD

Mouse stepped into Colonel Walters's office. "The Colonel in?" he asked the orderly.

"Yes, sir. You wanted to see him?"

"If he isn't busy."

The orderly spoke into a comm. "Masato Storm to see you, Colonel." To Mouse, "Go on in, sir."

Mouse stepped into the spartan room that served Thaddeus Immanuel Walters as office and refuge. It was almost as barren as his father's study was cluttered.

The Colonel was down on his knees with his back to the door, eyes at tabletop level, watching a little plastic dump truck scoot around a plastic track. The toy would dump a load of marbles, then scoot back and, through a complicated series of steps, reload the marbles and start over. The Colonel used a tiny screwdriver to probe the device that lifted the marbles for reloading. Two of the marbles had not gone up. "Mouse?"

"In the flesh."

"When did you get in?"

"Last night. Late."

"Seen your father yet?" Walters shimmed the lifter with the screwdriver blade. It did no good.

"I was just down there. Looked like he was in one of his moods. I didn't bother him."

"He is. Something's up. He smells it."

"What's that?"

"Not sure yet. Damn! You'd think they'd have built these things so you could fix them." He dropped the screwdriver and rose.

Walters was decades older than Gneaus Storm. He was thin, dark, cold of expression, aquiline, narrow of eye. He had been born Thaddeus Immanuel Walters, but his friends called him Cassius. He had received the nickname in his plebe year at Academy, for his supposed "lean and hungry look."

He was a disturbing man. He had an intense, snakelike stare. Mouse had known him all his life and still was not comfortable with him. A strange one, he thought. His profession is death. He's seen it all. Yet he takes pleasure in restoring these old-time toys.

Cassius had only one hand, his left. The other he had lost long ago, to Fearchild Dee, the son of Michael Dee, when he and Gneaus had been involved in an operation on a world otherwise unmemorable. Like Storm, he refused to have his handicaps surgically rectified. He claimed they reminded him to be careful.

Cassius had been with the Legion since its inception, before Gneaus's birth, on a world called Prefactlas.

"Why did you want me to come home?" Mouse asked. "Your message scared the hell out of me. Then I get here and find out everything's almost normal."

"Normalcy is an illusion. Especially here. Especially now."

Mouse shuddered. Cassius spoke without inflection. He had lost his natural larynx to a Ulantonid bullet on Sierra. His prosthesis had just the one deep, burring tone, like that of a primitive talking computer.

"We feel the forces gathering. When you get as old as we are you can smell it in the ether."

Cassius did something with his toy, then turned to Mouse. His hand shot out.

The blow could have killed. Mouse slid away, crouched, prepared to defend himself.

Cassius's smile was a thin thing that looked alien on his narrow, pale lips. "You're good."

Mouse smiled back. "I keep in practice. I've put in for Intelligence. What do you think?"

"You'll do. You're your father's son. I'm sorry I missed you last time I was in Luna Command. I wanted to introduce you to some people."

"I was in the Crab Nebula. A sunjammer race. My partner and I won it. Even beat a Starfisher crew. And they know the starwinds like fish know their rivers. They'd won four regattas running." Mouse was justifiably proud of his accomplishment. Starfishers were all but invincible at their own games.

"I heard the talk. Congratulations."

Cassius was the Legion's theoretical tactician as well as its second in command and its master's confidant. Some said he knew more about the art of war than anyone living, Gneaus Storm and Richard Hawksblood notwithstanding. War College in Luna Command employed him occasionally, on a fee lecture basis, to chair seminars. Storm's weakest campaigns had been fought when Cassius had been unable to assist him. Hawksblood had beaten their combined talents only once.

A buzzer sounded. Cassius glanced at a winking light. "That's your father. Let's go."