Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (17 page)

“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.”

Twenty-Eight: 3052 AD

I said my father had enemies of whom he was unaware. The same was true of friends. He was a hard man, but had a strong sense of justice. It did not move him as often as it might have, but when it did, it made him friends who remained loyal forever. Such friends were the High Seiners, the Starfishers, whom he saved from enslavement on Gales.

—Masato Igarashi Storm

Twenty-Nine: 2973 AD

It was pure one-in-a-quadrillion chance.
Glowworm
and her sister raiders had jumped into the gulf and gone doggo, hoping they could lose Navy, which had destroyed one of their band already. It had been a long, hard chase. The three ship’s commanders were scared and desperate. On
Glowworm
the group leader nearly panicked when detection picked up approaching ships.

Almost, but not quite. Powered-down vessels are hard to spot unless a hunter gets close. He decided to see what Navy did.

His detection operator soon said, “That’s not them, sir. Too big. I mean, we’re getting them from too far out, and they’re moving too slow.”

The group leader studied the patterns. He had seen nothing like this before. In time, he murmured, “Holy Christ! There ain’t nothing that big. Nothing but . . . ”

Nothing but Starfisher harvestships.

Navy was forgotten. “Track. Get a fix on their course. And nobody does anything to show them we’re here. Understood?” He took his own advice. Ship to ship messages were hand carried by suited couriers till the harvestfleet left detection.

Eight great vessels shouldering along at minuscule velocities . . . The group leader was tempted to abandon his employer then and there. A man could name his price for what he had found.

The Starfishers controlled production of an element critical to interstellar communications systems. There was no other source, and the source was terribly limited. He who won control of a harvest fleet won control of fabulous wealth and power.

In the end, fear drove the group leader to his master.

Michael Dee did the obvious. He gathered ships and went after the harvestfleet. The operation remained his secret alone. He saw not only the obvious profit but a chance to make himself master of his own destiny.

He gambled on a surprise attack. His forces were insufficient for a plain face-to-face showdown with eight harvestships. He gambled, and he lost. He squandered his raiders and barely escaped with his life. In his fury at being thwarted he left three harvestships broken, derelict—and a nation which would do him evil gleefully whenever the opportunity arose.

Poor Michael’s life was a trail of bitter enemies made. And some day the pigeons would come home to roost.

Thirty: 2878-3031 AD

The world wore the name Bronwen. It was far from the mainstream. Its claim to fame was that it had been the first human world occupied by Ulant. It would be the last reabsorbed by Confederation. In the interim it resembled one of those gaudy, chaotic eighteenth-century pirate havens on the north coast of Africa. Sangaree, McGraws, and free-lance pirates made planetfall and auctioned their booty. The barons of commerce came looking for bargains in goods worth the cost of interstellar shipment. Freehaulers came looking for cargo to fill their tramp freighter holds. Lonely Starfishers came down from their rivers of night for their rare intercourse with the worlds of men. Millions changed hands daily. The state was not there to watchdog and steal a cut. Those were brawling, violent days, but Bronwen’s rulers were not displeased. Fortunes stuck.

Michael Dee should not have visited the world. He should not have risked having his name connected with the rogues he employed. Success had made him overconfident. He did not believe anything could break his run of luck.

The Sangaree came to his flagship, the old
Glowworm
, that Michael had acquired through straw parties when war’s end had thrown scores of obsolete ships onto the salvage market. The man did not pretend to be anything but what he was. Michael found him vaguely familiar. Where had he seen the man? In the background in press rooms during the war, he thought. And, possibly, once when he was a child.

Dee did not like puzzles. He did not like not being able to remember clearly. Memory was his best weapon. But the man had never impinged directly upon his reality . . . The Sangaree initially claimed to be a buyer. Michael watched the man pass through his security screens, wondering. He did not look the type. Too fat, too self-confident in that intangible way powerful men have. Fencing stolen goods would be a chore for fourth-level underlings. Dee secured his observation screen and waited.

The man entered his cabin, extended a hand, said, “Norbon w’Deeth. The Norbon.”

Michael’s underworld connections now extended into the Sangaree sphere. He had dealt with the race directly on occasion. They were sharp, cautious, and carefully honest in their business arrangements. They were paranoiac in their efforts to protect the secrets of Homeworld, Family, and Head.

This was a Head! And his Family’s name was turning up everywhere these days. The Norbon had exploded into prominence wherever Sangaree operated.

He took the proffered hand. “An honor. How can I be of service?”

Michael masked his thinking well. He did not betray his consternation and curiosity. The Norbon was just another businessman for all the reaction he showed.

The man was damned young for a Head, he reflected. But you could never be sure in these days of rejuvenation and resurrection. He had the hard lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. The man inside was old in thought if not in his flesh.

The Norbon eyed him. “How’s your mother?”

The question took Michael by surprise. It came at him from the least expected angle. “Well enough, I suppose. I’ve been out of touch with the family.”

“Yes. The war did disrupt things, didn’t it? And helped some of us profit.”

The slightest of frowns crossed Michael’s vulpine face. He felt a case of nerves coming on.

“And the rest of your family?”

“Good enough. We Storms are hard to kill.”

“I’ve discovered that.”

Michael used a toe to caress an alarm button. In seconds a needlegun, in the hand of a reliable man, began tracking Dee’s visitor from behind an apparently solid bulkhead.

“None harder than I, sir. You make me uncomfortable. Can you get to your point?” Michael was surprised at himself. He was never this direct. The Sangaree had him shaking.

“We have Family business. With the big F. Your Family and mine. There’s an unsettled matter between the Norbon and Storms. No doubt you know the tale. I came to find out where you’ll stand.”

“You’ve lost me.” The man had Dee totally baffled. It broke through to his face.

“I see I’ll have to go back to the beginning. All right. Twenty-Eight Forty-Four. Acting on information received from Sangaree renegades, Commodore Boris Storm and Colonel of Marines Thaddeus Immanuel Walters invaded Prefactlas. They destroyed the Family stations and slaughtered any Sangaree they found. My mother, my father, and hundreds of Norbon dependents were among the dead. Only a handful of people escaped. Norbon w’Deeth was one of the survivors.”

Michael shrugged as if to say, “So what?” and did say, “Those are the breaks of the business.”

“Yes. That’s the human attitude toward risk and reward. Not that much different from our own except that those men felt compelled to make it a slaughter instead of a raid. It stopped being business when they took that attitude. It became vendetta. I survived. It’s my duty to exact retribution.”

Michael had begun to get the feel of it. His nerves were steadier. “There’s a needlegun on you.”

His visitor smiled. “I never doubted it. You’re a reasonably cautious man.”

“Then you’re not here to kill me?”

“Far from it. I’m here to sign you up for my side.”

Michael’s jaw dropped.

The Norbon laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve actually seen anybody do that.”

“What?”

The Norbon shook a hand in a gesture meaning never mind. “You’re in the middle, Michael. You’ve got one foot on each side. I want to get them both on mine.”

“You confuse me. I don’t have any special love for my family. That’s common knowledge. But I don’t have reason one to want them destroyed, either. In fact, it’s a valuable connection sometimes.”

“I understand. Yes. The problem is that I’ve been too obscure. I assumed you knew. Let’s go back to your mother. She was slave-born, as humans say. You know that much?”

“Yes. So?”

“She was born and trained at the Norbon facility on Prefactlas. She was its only female survivor. For ten years she and I fought barbarians, Confies, Corporation beekies, sickness, and plain old bad luck together. And we made it through. Our relationship became as deep as one can between a man and a woman. We even parented a child.”

Michael began to glimpse the shaggy edges of it. And it was a monster indeed. Yet . . . Yet it would explain so much that had puzzled him.

It was almost too simple an answer.

“You expect me to believe that crap?”

“It’s happened before. It’s genetically certain that human and Sangaree spring from the same ur-stock, sometime deep in proto-history. That both races are repelled by the idea doesn’t alter the facts. There were races here before ours, Michael. Who knows what experiments they performed, or why, before they faded from history’s stage?”

“And who cares?”

Deeth ignored his remark. “There’s a curious thing about Homeworld, Michael. It’s perfect for human habitation. A lot like Old Earth was before the Industrial Revolution. We Sangaree fill the human ecological niche there. But, and it’s a curious big but, there’s no archaeological or anthropological evidence of our presence before about the time Cro-Magnon appeared on Old Earth. There’s no evolutionary chain. Nothing to connect with. No other primates at all. And we sometimes crossbreed with humans. What conclusion has to be drawn?”

That conclusion was irrelevant in an essentially emotional context. And Michael was responding to feelings, not reason.

He had grown up with an absolute presumption that the Sangaree were racial enemies. They were to be exterminated—unless momentary intercourse offered profit or advantage.

I can’t be my own enemy
, Michael thought.

“That’s all I’ll say about it now,” his visitor said. “Think about it. It’s a big bit to chew on. And don’t forget. I’ll help you as much as you help me. Oh. For what it’s worth, you’re technically my heir. You’re my only child.”

Numb, Michael pressed a button. It released the lock on the cabin door. The Sangaree departed.

Michael did not encounter the Norbon again for years. He had ample time to forget. He could not. His character took over. He began to scheme, to find ways he could use the Sangaree.

What he could not see, till it was too late, was that he was the one being used. Norbon w’Deeth was a gentle, subtle spider. He spun his natural son into webs of intrigue so soft that Michael did not recognize the chrysalis of doom enveloping him. In the time of the Shadowline some of the cobwebs were lifted from his eyes. And he wept. By then he could do nothing but follow instructions and try to deceive himself as to who was the real spinner.

Even his best-laid schemes betrayed him now.

Old Frog laughed in his grave. Michael had risked everything to kill the dwarf and suppress his secret till he could exploit it himself. The riches at the Shadowline’s end would have gotten him out from under. They would have bought him a comfortable and anonymous new life free of the Sangaree and his family alike.

The Norbon found out. Somehow. And fed him orders that could encompass the destruction of the family Storm.

Dee squirmed. He writhed and tried to get away. The Norbon kept the pressure on, often through Michael’s children by a marriage he had arranged, often economically. Michael could not wriggle loose. Perhaps his final defeat came when Deeth compelled him to drop the name Storm and adopt the subtle mockery of Dee.

Michael did not overlook the obvious. He did think of going to his brother for help. He rejected the notion. He knew how his brother would respond. If he believed at all. Gneaus would tell him to stand on his hind legs and act like a man. He simply would not understand.

And by staying in line he could even scores with Richard. That damned Richard. His little moment of spite had started this whole damned thing.

Michael had spun the anchor silk himself, then had lost control of his web to a bigger, nastier spider. In the year of the Shadowline he was caught on the back of a galloping nightmare. His only hope was that she would not deal him too brutal a fall when she reached the end of her run.

He denied hope. In his way he was as convinced of his imminent doom as was Gneaus of his.

Thirty-One: 3031 AD

It was a very exclusive toy shop. It even served tiny cups of coffee or tea with cutesy little cookies. Cassius was in hog’s heaven.

“Not very exciting, is it?” he asked.

Mouse squeezed his eyes shut in a fierce squint. “No, it’s not.” He could not stay awake. They had been on The Big Rock Candy Mountain four days. Cassius had not given him much chance to sleep. “All we do is hunk around asking the same old questions.”

“That’s what intelligence work is, Mouse. You knock on doors and ask the same old questions till you get the right answers. Or you sit at headquarters and feed the computer the same old answers till it gives you the right question.” He wound the music box again. It played a tune neither of them knew. A tiny porcelain mouse twirled and danced to the music. “Isn’t that cute?”