Glen Cook - Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

"No. The nuclear... "

"Of course. That changed everything. He's playing for all the marbles, not just the Shadowline."

They reached the war room in time to receive Ceislak's message that he was being attacked by Sangaree. Storm connected Cassius, brought him up to date on Helga's World, Havik, and his own recent action.

"Gneaus," Cassius burred, "I have a suggestion about those corpses. Send them over to Darkside Landing or The City of Night for the autopsy. The more you spread the proof around, the harder it'll be for Dee to eliminate all the witnesses. And they'll pressure Meacham to stop backing him."

"Good thinking. I'll do it. Got to go. Havik's in action now."

"Father," Thurston called across the room, "Instel from Helga's World. Ceislak has Sangaree on the ground now. Any special instructions?"

"Tell him to hold out as long as he can. Cassius's buddy will turn up one of these days. Helmut. Bring down the scale on the Whitlandsund there. Michael's dispositions look a little strange."

A half-hour later Thurston bellowed, "Yahoo! Hey, Father! Hakes says he's got ships in detection. They show Navy IFF, and there's a skillion of them."

Storm chuckled at his son's enthusiasm. "Calm down and keep an eye on it. Tell Ceislak to keep the comm open." He felt like whooping himself. "Helmut, this friend of Cassius's is as crafty as a Dee. He had me scared, but he knew what he was doing. Caught them with their pants down, making an assault. Bet none of them get away." Darksword's face lit with grim pleasure. Storm reveiwed the Whitlandsund situation again.

Michael's dispositions were not unusual after all, just unimaginative. Havik would not be in bad trouble for a while.

Thurston called, "Ceislak says he has contact with Navy. They brought in a full battle fleet. They've got them bastards nailed to the wall."

"Good. Good. Everything looks beautiful. I'm going to my quarters. Before I collapse."

He dreamed awful dreams. Something was nagging him. He had forgotten something. He had overlooked something, and one dared not do that when dealing with Sangaree and Dees.

Thurston shook his father. "Dad. Come on. Wake up."

Storm opened his eyes. "What is it? You look awful."

"They're attacking the Fortress. The Sangaree are. Another raidfleet. The Fishers just told me. They're watching and can't do anything to help. They've lost touch with Mouse."

Forty-Eight: 3032 AD

Mouse sat in his father's chair, behind his father's desk. His eyes were closed. He felt much as his father looked the day he had returned from Academy. How long ago? Just a few months... It seemed like half a lifetime.

So much had happened. So much had changed. The Fortress had slipped quietly over some unseen boundary into a foreign universe, a hateful, actively hostile universe.

He had changed with his home. He had seen things. He had helped do things. None of them left him proud. He had turned a sharp corner on the yellow-brick road and had caught a corner-of-the-eye glimpse of a side of his family he had not known existed when he had gone off to Academy.

"I was a child then," he murmured. "This is just growing-up pain. Just reaction to a head-on with reality."

With reality. With a special reality unique to the family and Legion, with their bizarre array of problems and enemies.

He opened his father's comm drawer, punched for Combat. "Anything new?" he asked.

"Ah, negative, sir. Situations appear static."

"Keep me informed."

"Will do, sir."

"You're very good," Mouse whispered after breaking the connection. "If I were you I would've lost patience with me last week." He rose and began prowling the study.

He could not shake a subtle conviction that something dreadful was about to happen. He was restless all day. He had been unable to sleep well the past several nights.

"If there was just something to do around here."

He began strolling from cabinet to cabinet, looking into each, re-examining his father's collections. He did the rounds at least once a day. The circuit had a curiously calming effect.

He wondered if his father used them for the same talismanic purpose.

The coins, the dolls, the china, the books—they were all evidence of a past, of a connection with and a part in a vast, ongoing process. You could reach out and touch them and feel that you were touching part of something larger than yourself. You pulled in endless, invisible strands of humanity and spun yourself a chrysalis... It was all very subjective and emotional.

Still restless, he quit the study and went up to Cassius's office. He met no one along the way.

The tiny, empty world of the Iron Legion made him think of still, abandoned cities, deserted for no reason history bothered to remember. Take twenty thousand people out of the Fortress and it became a self-contained desolation almost timidly murmuring to itself.

These days he heard sounds he had never noticed before, all the background noises of supportive machines that had been drowned in the chatter and clatter of human presence. The sounds left him with an eerie, spooky feeling. Sometimes, as he strolled the empty hallways of the office levels, he would freeze suddenly, for a fraction of a second completely convinced that he was alone, trapped in an empty structure seven light-years from the nearest human being.

In those instants he staggered with the impact of a very vacant, very hollow feeling, inevitably followed by an instant of panic. Alienation was not the same as being alone. The alienated man moved in a bubble, but could see other human beings outside. The soul of him knew they were there, accessible if he could find the enchanted key. The separation was emotional, not physical. The truly alone man was barred from human intercourse by insuperable physical barriers...

Mouse would never forget the look on Fearchild's face when he had entered the torture chamber in that asteroid—such pathetic joy at the appearance of another being, an almost eager anticipation of torment that would reaffirm his membership in a fundamentally gregarious species.

Mouse decided that he had had an insight into the human animal. The bad marriages that went on, the cruel relationships that persevered beyond all logic—most people preferred pain to being alone. Even pain was an affirmation of belonging.

"The beast isn't really a solipsist," he muttered. Cassius's toy purchases from The Mountain were still in their shipping packs. He considered unwrapping them, setting them up, abandoned the idea. They were Cassius's private pleasure. He had no right to interfere.

He spent an hour playing with an ancient electric train, just running it around and around its track, making switches, stopping at stations, restacking the boxcars, wondering how the original owner had differed from people of his own age.

Beliefs and values made him think of his Academy classmates. Drawn from Confederation's farthest reaches, they had brought with them an incredible range of ideas and attitudes, some of which he had found wholly alien.

Tommy McClennon, with whom he had crewed and miraculously won in the Crab Nebula Sunjam Regatta two years ago... Tommy was Old Earther and more alien than most of the racial aliens attending Academy. Those aliens were of the same caste, the warrior, as the Storms. Tommy's ancestors had been nonproductive wards of the state for centuries. Tommy's different ideas went right to the bone.

A beep-beep-beep sounded from a silver button on the breast of his tunic. An elf's voice repeated a number three times. Mouse opened Cassius's desk and punched it on Walters's comm. "Masato Storm."

"Sir, word from Ceislak. He's just had a Sangaree raidfleet drop hyper... "

"I'll be right down." He ran to the nearest elevator, feeling foolish as he did. What could he do, really? Nothing but listen while this Helga's World disaster developed.