Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (14 page)

Poor Valerie. She went into mechanical/cerebral bondage believing her father had abandoned her, that he had used her cruelly.

Storm had been working on Helga ever since. His vengeance thus far he deemed only token repayment for the destruction of a daughter’s love.

They were hard, cruel, anachronistic men and women, the Storms and Dees, and Hawksbloods, and those who served them.

Enough, he told himself. He had crucified himself on this cross too often already. Hand trembling, he jacked his comm plug into a direct verbal input.

“Valerie?”

Came a sense of stirring into wakefulness. An electronic rustling. Then a return his equipment interpreted as “Who’s there?” It contained overtones of surprise.

There was just one answer he dared give, just one that would not spark an explosion of bitterness. “Richard Hawksblood.”

“Richard? What are you doing here?”

He felt her uncertainty, her hope, her fear. It hit him hard. He had an instant of nausea. Some foul worm was trying to gnaw its way out of his gut.

If he and Richard agreed on anything, it was that Helga should be punished for this.

Richard had loved Valerie. That love was one more unbridgeable gap between them.

“I came to see you. To free you. And to find out what Helga is doing to your father and me.”

There was a long, long silence. He began to fear that he had lost her. Finally, “Who calls? I’ve slept here so long. So peacefully.”

He could taste the agony of her lie. There was no peace for Valerie Storm. Helga made sure of that.

Storm replied, “Richard Hawksblood.” He wished he knew their love talk, the pet names they had called one another in the night, or the all-important trivia that pass between a man and woman in love. “Valerie, what was that new complex I saw on my way down?” Between Helga’s puppy and Valerie’s pit he had encountered little but endless sterility and silence, except on the last few levels, where he had to slip through a construction zone as softly as a prowling kitten.

He wondered if Helga’s zombie workers would have noticed if he had strutted through their midst. Personality-scrubbed, they were little more than robots. But they might be robots programed to report anomalies.

“Cryocrypts for the sons of my father, whose deaths will be the first step of my mistress’s revenge.”

Storm subdued his anger response. “How? Why?”

“Helga and her father have decided that my father will fight on Blackworld. They intend to capture some of my brothers and hold them here till the fighting is done.”

“Helga would never release them.”

“No. Her father doesn’t know that.”

“How?”

“Michael Dee will capture them.”

Storm recalled Benjamin’s nightmares. Were they a valid precognition? Could both twins have the psi touch? Could the Faceless Man be Michael Dee? “How will they kill Benjamin?” he blurted.

He grimaced as he spoke Benjamin’s name. Richard Hawksblood could not have known that anything of the sort was planned. He could not have done the sums.

“You! You didn’t sound like Richard. So cold. He would’ve . . . Storm. My father. Here. Only he could suspect . . . ”

She seemed too stunned to give an alarm—or did not want to sound one. Perhaps she had forgiven him just a little.

“Valeric, I’m sorry. I was a fool.” The words came hard. He did not admit error easily.

He had to move fast. Helga would have made sure Valerie could keep no secrets. “Honeyhair . . . Forgive me.” He had to do the thing that, when first they had learned of Valerie’s enslavement, he and Richard had agreed had to be done.

There could be but one escape for Valerie Storm. He could free her no other way.

Flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood . . . He had trouble seeing. There was water in his eye.

Shaking, he reached for the large red lever prominent in the center of the terminal. The worm within his gut metamorphosed, became an angry, clawing dragon.

He had thought himself too old, too calloused to feel such pain.

He hesitated for just an instant. Then he pulled the safety pin and yanked the lever.

His helmet rilled with a sound not unlike that of someone slowly strangling. His hand strayed toward the comm jack. He forced it away. He had to listen, to remember. This dread moment would never have been were he not a bullheaded idiot.

One must savor the bitter taste of folly as well as the sweetness of wisdom, for wisdom is born of folly well remembered.

She was going. Faintly, she murmured, “Peace. Father, tell Richard . . . Please. Tell Richard I . . . I . . . ”

“I will, Valerie. Honeyhair. I will.”

“Father . . . Play something . . . the way you used to.”

A tear forced itself from his eye as he remembered a tune he used to tootle for her when she was a child. He unslung the case on his back, praying the cold and encounter with Helga’s guardian had not ruined his instrument. He wet the reed, closed his eye, began to play. It squealed a little, but yielded its child-memory. “That one, Honeyhair?”

Silence. The voiceless, bellowing silence of death.

He indulged in a frenzy of rage that masked a deeper, more painful emotion. For one long minute he let his grief take him. His music became an agonized howl.

Valerie was not the first of his blood he had slain. She might not be the last. Practice did not ease the agony. He could not do it without crying in the night forever afterward.

This Storm, the Storm of tears and grief and fury, was the Storm no one ever saw, the Storm unknown to anyone but Frieda, who held him while the sobs racked him.

He took hold. There were things to do. He had learned something. He had to move fast.

He used the dead face of Helga Dee as a will-o’-the-wisp to follow from Festung Todesangst’s deeps. He stalked it with the intensity of a fanatic assassin.

He had thought that he hated Richard Hawksblood. That odium was a child’s fleeting passion compared to what he felt now. His feelings toward Helga had become a torch he would follow through the darkness all the rest of his days.

He had not asked the questions that had brought him to Helga’s World. But their answers were implicit in what he had learned.

They had come to the end of Michael’s game. Dee was pulling out the stops, laying everything on the line, risking it all to get whatever he wanted. The Legion and Hawksblood were being pushed into Blackworld like cocks into the pit, to fight and this time die the death-without-resurrection.

Whatever obsession compelled Michael, it was about to be satisfied. Michael was about to attain his El Dorado. There would be war, and there would be feeling in it. The hatreds were being pumped up. The Gotterdammerung could not be averted.

The twilight of the Legion lay just beyond a near horizon. It might mean the end of all mercenary armies . . . 

Storm made a vow. He and Richard might fight, and both lose, but they would go to the shadows with one victory to light their paths to Hell.

The Dees would go down with them. Every last one.

Twenty-Six: 2845 AD

The last snow was melting in the forest shade when Deeth made his second bid for freedom. He had prepared for months. First he concentrated on convincing Jackson that he had resigned himself to his fate. He faithfully did all he was told, and cared for the old man beyond what was demanded. He made no effort to flee when apparent opportunities arose. Nor did he struggle much against perversions or the incessant maltreatment. He suffered in silence, stoically waiting.

He began decorating the stage of his revenge in the fall, under the guise of caring for Jackson. During autumn he carpeted the cavern floor with leaves. When the chills moved in and it became necessary to keep a fire burning, he gathered piles of firewood. While foraging wood he collected small, sharp stones that he concealed around the cave.

On the night he chose he cut his neck rope with an edged rock. Hours passed while he sawed, painstakingly avoiding rustling the leaves of his bed. When he was done he did not immediately flee.

Holding the parted rope round his neck, he rose and stoked up the fire. The old man wakened, as he always did when Deeth stirred. He cursed Deeth for disturbing him. Deeth bowed his head and went on with his work. Jackson settled back into a grumbling snore.

Deeth built the fire higher and higher. It began to roar, and pull a breeze into the cave.

Concealed near the fire were the things he wanted to take: a hide blanket, steel for fire-starting, a package of dried fruit. He tossed them out the cave mouth.

Jackson snapped to awareness, suspicious and crabby. He jerked the rope. It flew into his face. He stared at the frayed end in dull-witted surprise.

Deeth seized a forked stick and shoveled fire onto the dry, powdery leaves. He skipped back and toppled the huge kindling stack, carefully prepared for the moment. It slid into the flames. The fire gnawed at it, leaping higher and crackling louder by the second.

Deeth dumped piles of larger wood.

The old man, cursing, terrified, staggered out of his chair and tried to charge through before the barrier became impassable.

Deeth floored him with a thrown stone.

The power of hatred was in his arm. He whistled that rock into Jackson’s chest with such force that he heard brittle old ribs crack.

Jackson rose for another try. The trap had closed. He retreated instead.

Deeth watched in fascination as Jackson screamed and danced in the fire. Eventually, crazed with pain, the old man flung himself at the barrier again. He crashed through and collapsed outside, twitching all over, feebly crawling toward his tormentor.

Deeth backed a step when necessary, and collected his supplies, but did not leave till Jackson died.

He felt no real emotion afterward. It had not been an execution, even, just an ending of misery.

He started toward the village.

The boy had been scarred. Something had been carved out of him in that cave. Never again would he feel true, whole, mortal emotion. He had become that fearful, wholly pragmatic monster which has no conscience, and no comprehension of emotion. Henceforth he would fake it, when necessary, as protective coloration, and would believe that everyone else was doing the same. The only things with meaning, most of the time, would be his own whims, fancies, and hatreds. Everyone else he would see as objects to be moved and used.

Deeth had acted now because the village chieftain had condemned the girl Emily to another week in the punishment pit. He could spirit her away without having to sneak her out of the chieftain’s house.

He had to enter and leave the village past a guard watching for a night raid by neighboring tribes. Going in, the sentry was asleep at his post. Deeth crept past. Keeping to the deepest darkness, he moved to the chieftain’s hut.

The pit had been covered with a lid made of hide on a wooden frame. Rocks weighted it down. Deeth removed it.

He lay on his stomach and whispered, “Emily! It’s time.” He could see nothing below, but knew she was awake. He heard her frightened breathing.

One of the village’s domesticated beasts snorted nearby. It sensed his presence, but was neither noisy nor excitable. It did not give him away.

“Emily! Come on. It’s Deeth.”

She did not respond.

“Come on!” Time was passing. He dared not waste much on a frightened slave. He reached down, tried to get hold of her hair. His arm was not long enough. “Come on, girl. Give me your hand. We’ve got to get moving.”

She whimpered.

He knew she had suffered, but hardly more than he. What was the matter with her? Was the spirit of these animals that easily broken?

“Your hand!” he snapped. He reached again.

And felt her touch and grab him. He braced himself and pulled. Wriggling and whimpering, naked, she slithered out of the pit.

“Now what?” he asked himself. She could not face the cold unclad, nor could she run through the woods naked. The underbrush would flay her. “Get something to wear,” he ordered, indicating the chieftain’s hut.

She shook her head.

“Move!” Deeth snarled.

Still she shook her head.

“Dammit, go!” He snapped fingertips against her cold bare buttocks. She yipped softly, then vanished into the house.

Deeth chewed his lip, crouched beside the hovel, watched the hills for the ghost of dawn. They had made noise. Had anyone heard?

The animal made more curiosity sounds, a kind of continuous questioning grunt. It could not leave its pen to investigate. The night creatures of the woods hooted and chattered and whistled.

What about those? He had heard of no large predators. That did not mean that they did not exist. He knew Prefactlas only by what he had seen. Jackson had not let him see much.

The girl returned. She had clothed herself in furs. “Yuloa’s things,” she whispered. She had stolen them from the chieftain’s son.

Deeth chuckled softly, nervously. “We’d better get started. It’ll be sunrise pretty soon.”

“Where’re we going?”

He did not know. He had not planned beyond getting her out of the pit. He just did not know enough about this world.

“Back to the station,” he told her. He set off before she could protest. They had to go somewhere, if only to get away from here. She followed after a moment’s hesitation.

The sentry had moved, but was asleep again. They passed him carefully.

Deeth stopped after another hundred yards. He did not know the way. The direction, yes, but not the paths.

Pride would not permit him to confess ignorance to an animal. He resumed walking before Emily asked questions.

An hour later, while they were struggling through underbrush on a steep hillside, she asked, “Why don’t we use the trail? It’s just over there.” Panting, she added, “Doing it this way takes a lot of time. They’ll be after us pretty soon.”

Deeth frowned. Was she going to be a talker, all the time questioning and nagging?

She had a point. And had presented it without questioning his reasons for doing things his way. “You could be right.”

He went in the direction she indicated. He encountered a narrow track. The going became easier. They reached the forest’s edge as dawn began painting bold strokes of crimson and gold on a canvas of indigo clouds.