Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (19 page)

“But . . . ”

“She’ll take it. More if she has to. Check the register. I need the
c
-relative on the boat Dee swiped.”

Mouse punched it up. “Old Mister Smart, my uncle Michael. He grabbed the slowest damned ship we had. Almost, anyway. Here’re a couple of trainers she can outrun.”

“One break for the good guys. About time we got one. Well. Look here. We’re going to get him. About an hour before he sneaks under Helga’s missile umbrella. Sooner if he has to maneuver to get around your father. Start a check down on the weapons systems.”

Mouse fidgeted.

“What’s the matter?”

“Uh . . . You think there’ll be any shooting?”

Cassius smiled a broad, wicked smile. “Goddamned right, boy. There’s going to be beaucoup shooting. First time for you, right? You just hang on and do what I tell you. We’ll be all right.”

The waiting bothered Mouse. He was not afraid, much. The hours piled up, and the hours piled up, and they seemed no closer than before . . . 

“Here we go,” Cassius said, almost cheerfully. “Got your father on screen. And there’s your idiot uncle, hopping around like a barefoot man in a sandbrier patch. Give your guns a burst.”

The hours became minutes. Cassius kept boring in. “Ah, damn!” he swore suddenly. “Gneaus, what the hell did you have to go and do that for?”

“What?” Mouse demanded. He shed bis harness and leaned over. “What did he do?”

“Sit down, shithead. It’s going to get rough.”

It got rougher than Mouse could imagine.

Thirty-Two: 3052 AD

My father was not a religious man. Nevertheless, he did have an unshakable faith in predestination. Till the very end he thought he was battling the invincible forces of Fate. You could sense that he expected no victory, but you never despaired. You knew that Gneaus Storm would never surrender.

—Masato Igarashi Storm

Thirty-Three: 3031 AD

The Seiner got through just after Storm left the atmosphere of Helga’s World.

“He’s gone? Already?” The tension he had been riding like a nightmare suddenly dissipated. He found himself emotionally limp, hanging out to dry. His right hand snaked out, secured the instel receiver.

The limpness did not last. Rage and sorrow smashed down on him. It was a crushing emotional avalanche. The feelings were so powerful that a small, stunned part of him recoiled in amazement.

There in the privacy of his ship, locked away from all human eyes, he could safely open the flood gates. He did so, venting not only emotions engendered by his failure to save Benjamin and Homer, but his responses to all the frustrations that had been building since first he had heard of Blackworld and the Shadowline. He wept, cursed, asked the gods what justice there was in a universe where a man could not control his own fate.

The universe and gods, of course, did not reply.

There was no justice in that momentary eddy in chaos. There never had been or would be. A man made his own justice if he wanted any at all.

Storm knew that. But sometimes even the most strongly anchored mind slips its cables and refuses to accept reality. Once in a while, at least, it seemed the gods or universe ought to care.

Storm vowed, “I’ll get a bit of justice of my own.” He had been making a lot of vows lately, he realized. Would he survive long enough to see any of them fulfilled?

The shakes were going. The tears had dried. His voice was losing its tightness. He opened instel communications again. “Starfisher? Are you there? Why are you nosing into this?” Those people did not get involved in the troubles of outsiders.

There was a long delay. “Lady Prudence of Gales, Colonel. And other reasons involving the man you’re chasing. Not subject to discussion. Do you wish a relay?”

“Yes. Fortress of Iron.”

“Ready when you are, Colonel.”

“Wulf? Are you there?”

In time, “Here, Colonel.”

“Recall Cassius.”

“He’s finished already. He’s on his way. I’ve inserted him into the pursuit pattern.”

“Good. Anything new?”

“Dee is running for Helga’s World. The Seiners have given us a projected course. He’ll be coming right down your throat. I’m using box and plane and I’m tightening it up to keep him headed your way. I’ve got Cassius on an intercept that should catch Dee just after he spots you and sheers off Helga’s World. The trap should close before he recognizes it.”

The trap’s mouth closed slowly. Even at velocities many times that of light it took a long ledger of days before the scale of action tightened enough to warrant Storm’s taking his ship off auto control. For a while he lay motionless in relation to the nearest stars, listening to the Seiner’s reports. He kept influence up so he could make a quick snake-strike at Dee as he came up. Essentially, he was pretending to be a singularity.

Michael did not fall for it. He could not know who was waiting to ambush him, but he did know that there were no singularities near his daughter’s world. He shifted course into the one gap apparently open to him.

And there was Cassius, playing a trick not unlike Storm’s but remaining in normspace with an inherent velocity approaching that of light.

Dee’s nose swung toward the tiniest of cracks in the closing walls of the trap. He attacked it with every erg his ship could give.

Storm put way on. Cassius skipped into hyper. The quiet dance, that might but likely would not end in a blaze of weaponry, began. Storm wondered if his brother were desperate enough to fight. It was not Michael’s style, but he might panic, not knowing who had blocked his flight.

Maneuver. Counter-maneuver. Feint and lunge. Dee tried to fake Storm out of position for the vital few seconds he needed to whip past and streak for the safety of Helga’s World.

Wulf’s pursuing box closed in while Dee surrendered straight-line velocity for maneuver.

Cassius arrowed in on a spear of a course, riding the fastest ship involved. His sprint would put him across Dee’s bows if Michael took too long getting past Storm. Even separated by light-hours and without direct communication, Cassius and Storm worked as a team.

Storm became satisfied that his singleship would outperform his brother’s. He could commit one narrow error and still not lose his man. In dealing with Michael a second was a treasure to be hoarded against the unpredictable, but Gneaus no longer felt like playing safe. He wanted Dee, and wanted him quick. He decided to risk his advantage.

Pushing as hard as his ship would endure without breaking up under hyper stress, he darted toward where he expected Michael to be next. He fed max power to his influential field. Dee’s ship had the stronger generator and would take his under control, but then it would take Michael precious minutes in norm to disentangle the fields. Cassius would arrive. He would mesh his field with the others long enough for Wulf to slam the lid on the box.

Michael recognized his intention. He sheered off. Too late. The tracks of the singleships continued to converge.

Storm pulled closer and closer, at a steadily decreasing relative velocity, till his influential sphere just brushed his brother’s.

His singleship screamed. Alarms hooted. An effect that could only be described as fifth-dimensional precession took place as both ships tried to twist away in a direction that did not exist. Storm’s shipboard computer calmly murmured portents of disaster.

Swift as lightning and as jagged, hairline cracks scurried across his control-room walls. Even before he heard a sound Storm knew that his engine room’s stressteel frame members were snapping, that his generators were crawling free of their mounts. His hand darted toward the manual override, to cancel his approach program, but he knew it was too late. Either his drive or Michael’s was badly out of synch.

Dee had won again.     

This might be the death-without-resurrection, his hope no more than a chance at a clone. It was no solace that Michael might share his fate.

His hand changed course and shot toward the disaster escape release.

Crystals and fog formed before his vision went. His skin protested the nibbling of a thousand hot little needles as vacuum gulped the contents of his control room. The locked vessels had processed into norm space. Their conflicting inherent velocities were tearing them apart.

Before the darkness came there was a moment in which he wished he had been a better father and husband. And had had the sense to wear a combat suit going into a combat situation.

Thirty-Four: 2853-2880 AD

Deeth had thought he was immune to pain. Hell, the girl wasn’t even Sangaree . . . He walked. And walked, without paying any attention to where he was going. His feet responded to some instinct for the debts he owed. They carried him to the spaceport.

It had grown during the human occupation. Prefactlas Corporation involved itself in far more shipping than ever the Sangaree had. The port was furiously busy. The Corporation was gutting the world.

He paused to watch the stevedores unloading a big Star Line freight lighter. The Corporation employed natives and former slaves because human muscle power was less expensive than imported lading machinery.

A familiar face turned his way.

“Holy Sant!” he whispered, spinning away. “It can’t be.” He looked again. Rhafu’s weathered face seemed to swell till it occupied his whole field of vision. The breeding master had aged terribly, but Deeth did not doubt his identity for an instant.

The old man did not seem to notice one curious boy. Back-country kids came in to stare at the wondrous port all the time.

It took all Deeth’s will power not to run and hug Rhafu, to seize this one scrap that had survived a devastated past.

He fled instead, his mind a riot. The possibilities!

Rhafu’s very existence set off the alarm bells. Was he a human agent, either human himself or someone who had made an accommodation to the animals? Someone had betrayed Prefactlas. The perfect timing of the attack on the Norbon station reflected possession of solid inside information.

If Rhafu were guilty why was he now a laborer, mildewing on the ass of the social scale? The humans would have killed their traitor the instant he was no longer useful. Or would have rewarded him better.

Deeth locked himself into the crude shack where he and Emily lived. Where he lived. Emily was no longer a part of his poverty. He would never see her again. He wrestled with his fears and suspicions.

Someone knocked. He had few acquaintances. Police? Emily?

Expecting a blow from the hammer of fate, he opened the door.

Rhafu pushed through, seized his left wrist, glared at the tattoo still visible there. The stony hardness left his face. He slammed the door, enveloped Deeth in a ferocious hug. “Sant be praised, Sant be praised,” he murmured.

Deeth wriggled free and stepped back. There were tears in the old man’s eyes.

“Deeth. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you at the pits. Thought my mind was playing tricks. I gave up years ago. Lad, what’s been keeping you? Where’ve you been?”

Deeth babbled his own questions.

They hugged again.

The past had come home. He was Norbon w’Deeth again. He was Sangaree. He was a Head . . . Of a one-man Family?

“Hold it. Hold it,” Rhafu said. “Let’s get organized. You tell me your story, then I’ll tell you mine.”

“You make me green with anticipation,” Deeth complained.

“And compel you to be brief if you want your questions answered,” Rhafu countered.

Deeth wasted few words. When he mentioned finding the remains of the Dharvon heir, Rhafu chuckled but withheld comment.

“The girl,” he asked when Deeth finished. “You’re sure you can trust her? We can reach her.”

“She’ll keep her mouth shut.” He saw murder in Rhafu’s eyes.

“It’s wisest to take no chances.”

“She won’t say anything.”

“You’re the Norbon.” Rhafu shrugged as if to say he was acceding to Deeth against his better judgment.

“Tell me your damned story, you old scoundrel. How the hell did you manage to live through the raid?”

“Your father’s orders. He had second thoughts about sending you off alone. Said he wanted you to have a bodyguard and adviser during the hard times after the raid.”

“How you survived is what stumps me.”

“It was grim. By then the Marines were dropping their perimeter. We killed all the breeders and field hands who knew me. I dressed up as a wild one. The first Marines in found me leading an attack on one of the guest cottages, howling and screaming and throwing spears around like a rabid caveman.”

Deeth frowned.

“It was the Dharvon cottage, Deeth. By then your father had determined that they were behind the raid. They were supposed to get ten points in the Prefactlas Corporation, and all the Norbon holdings. They thought they could get Osiris that way. The animals might have gone through with the deal, too. Boris Storm is an honorable man. I suppose I saved him a lot of soul-searching by killing his Sangaree partners.”

“All this because my father couldn’t bring himself to share Osiris.”

“Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind. Your father was too jealous of his wealth, in hand or in prospect. Though he did judge the Dharvon correctly when he foresaw that a Wholar would be wasted on them.”

“Where do we stand? As a Family.”

“In vendetta with the Dharvon. I’ve resumed communication with your House on Homeworld. The Dharvon have recovered under a cadet line. The Norbon remain a House divided. There is a dwindling Deeth faction still hoping you’ll return and lead them to Osiris. The other faction, naturally getting stronger by the month, want a new Head declared so they can control what the House has now. The human and Ulantonid spheres will collide before long. They want to develop a strong raid force and cash in.”

“I see.” As he remembered talk overheard during childhood, it sounded like typical in-House politics. Neither faction would be overjoyed by his reappearance. “But back to your escape. It couldn’t have been that simple. These animals aren’t fools.”