Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

Fifty-One: 3023-3032 AD

One of the Osirian commtechs called out, "Lord Rhafu, I've got a red light on something from Todesangst."

The old man limped across the huge communcfations center whence the Norbon empire was directed. "Get me a printout."

A machine whirled and rattled. Paper spewed forth. Rhafu caught the end and read as it appeared. "Uhm!" he grunted. He balled the whole thing up and carried it into a seldom-used office where he studied and researched it for several hours. He came to a decision. He picked up a phone. "Number One." A moment later, "Deeth, I've got a critical here from Todesangst. I'm bringing it up."

Deeth looked up from the printout. Rhafu was old. Probably older than any Sangaree alive, and near the time when rejuvenation would no longer take. The shakiness of massive nerve degeneration had set in.

Deeth frowned. He would not have Rhafu much longer. How would he manage without the man?

He scanned the report again. "I must be missing the point. I'don't see anything remarkable here."

"It came red-tagged. I wondered what Michael is up to, that's all."

"Send someone to check."

"I already have. Deeth, if I may?"

Deeth smiled a soft smile. That was Rhafu's bad news tone. "Yes?"

"It looks to me like he's trying to bail out on us."

"What makes you say that?"

"The figures. What they add up to. A hell of a lot of wealth if this thing can be tamed. That and the risks he took."

"I don't see... "

"Sir, your son is Sangaree by your will only. If the truth were known, I expect, he wishes you weren't his father. He grew up a Storm. Inside he still wants to be a Storm. Or, second-best, some anonymous human. We're a closet skeleton he'd rather forget. He could disappear if he wanted, but he's hooked on money and power. If he could be somebody else and still have those... "

"He's got all the money and power anybody could want, Rhafu."

"Sangaree money. Sangaree power. Tainted. And shared. We can control him. We can destroy him by exposing him. With the wealth of this Blackworld thing he could assume any one of several identities we don't yet know and leave us standing around with our fingers in our noses wondering what happened. Except that he was stupid enough to use his own computation capacity to run this feasibility study."

Deeth leaned back, closed his eyes, tried to banish the pain. Rhafu was probably right...

"Deeth, there are indications he tried this once before. Nothing concrete, but he apparently went after a Starfisher harvestfleet years ago. He's never told us about it."

"And he might have achieved the ends you're arguing?"

"Yes. I hear it was an eight-ship harvestfleet. That's a lot of wealth, and a damned good place to hide."

How could Michael prefer anything else to being heir of the leading Sangaree house? That was not logical. What more could a man want? He put the question to Rhafu.

"Respectability. Acceptability in Luna Command. Rehabilitation from the sin of youth that got him rusticated in the first place. You can smell on him how badly he wants to get into the humans' elite club. He'll do anything, including selling us down the proverbial river if the payoff is big enough."

"Rhafu... I can't accept that. I refuse to accept that."

"I have the same emotional responses you do. Intellectually, I see how his emotions are driving him, but I don't understand." Rhafu stared over Deeth's shoulder, out a vast window, at Osiris. Deeth turned, also considering that slice of world.

"He wants to be loved. By the species which rejected him. Is that what it boils down to, Rhafu?"

"Perhaps. And does anybody love Michael Dee? Not really. Not unless it's Gneaus Storm. To everyone else he's a tool. Even us. And he knows it."

Deeth nibbled his lower lip. Put that way, he could feel some empathy... "Let me see that printout again." After a glance he said, "He won't evade his Family responsibilities."

Rhafu stared out the window while Deeth examined the numbers for the third time. After a time, he said, "Deeth, this Blackworld thing may be what we've been looking for. I checked it out before I came here." He dropped a chart onto Deeth's desk.

"It has some peculiar physical characteristics. Look how it lays out. A pot of gold here. In this Twilight Town's territory, but it's accessible only from this Edgeward City's territory. The pot's big enough to fight over. I would if I were in their shoes. And engineered right, we might end up controlling it. Here's my thinking. We engineer a war. We manipulate it so these cities hire Storm and Hawksblood. If the fighting is confined here on the dayside, we might trap both gangs. Suddenly, no Storms, no Thaddeus Immanuel Walters. And no Hawksblood, which would be Michael's payoff for running the show. That's just rough thinking, of course. It would take a long time and a lot of money and research to set it up right."

Deeth smiled. "I see it. I think you're right." He scrawled his name across a piece of paper, wrote a few words. "Take this to Finance and get whatever you need to do your own feasibility study. I'll cut loose whichever people you want. But don't get carried away. Just map it out and see how it looks. If it'll go, then we'll set up a special organization."

"All right."

"Rhafu? Go as carefully with this as you did with the Dharvon. For the same reasons. If there's that much power metal there, let's come out on the far end not only finished with the Storms but controlling that mine."

Rhafu smiled, apparently considering the Homeworld impact of yet another quantum jump in Norbon wealth. "Don't overreach, Deeth."

Deeth was not listening. The possibilities had revivified his childhood dream of restructuring Sangaree society to suit himself. "Call Michael in before you do anything. It's tune for face-to-face. And you'll want his first-hand impressions."

If there had been any doubt that Dee was up to something, it vanished when Rhafu tried to summon him to Osiris. Michael dodged messengers the way lesser men dodged process servers. Rhafu had to collect him in person.

Deeth was appalled by the sullen creature Rhafu brought in. Michael snarled, "I've had enough. I didn't want to get involved with you in the first place."

"You're part of the Family."

"I don't give a damn about your Family. All I want is for it to stay out of my life."

"Michael... Look at all we've done. We've made you one of the richest men alive."

"Yes. Look what you've done to me. My children... belong in asylums. My people hate me. They think I'm a monster. And they're probably right... "

Deeth snapped, "We're you're people."

The usually evasive, cowardly Michael looked him straight in the eye. He did not speak.

He did not have to. Deeth recognized his failure. He did not have a son. He had an unwilling accomplice. "All right, Michael. What do you want?"

"I want out. OUT. Nothing to do with you, and you nothing to do with me or mine, now or ever."

"It's not that simple. I still haven't settled with the Storms. That's why I brought you here. This thing on Blackworld... "

"Not that simple. Forget it. They're not that simple. Your buttboy here explained on the way. The scheme won't work. You're not dealing with some First Expansion primitives or tenth-generation pleasure slaves. You're talking about people even tougher and nastier than you. And smarter."

Deeth bolted up from behind his desk, face puffing with anger. He swung hard. Dee leaned out of the way. "You see? You can't control your temper."

"Rhafu!"

"Sir?"

"Explain it to him again. I'll come back when I calm down."

When Deeth returned he found Dee no more receptive. "Michael, I've considered everything. Here's my offer. Help us put this thing through and we're quits. We'll divvy up the organizations and go our own ways."

"Sure," Michael replied, voice dripping sarcasm. "Till the next time I'm a handy tool."

"Quits, I said. My word. The word of the Norbon, Michael. I even keep it with animals."

Dee gave him an odd look. Deeth realized that by tone or expression he had betrayed his secret pain. He massaged his face and forehead. Michael wanted to break all ties. He wanted a son. They could not both have their way.

"That's the deal, Michael. You're either with me or against me. No in between. Help me destroy the people who destroyed Prefactlas, or be destroyed with them."

Michael stared at him with that defiant, fearless look once more. Very, very slowly, he nodded. Then he turned and started toward the door.

He paused, took a priceless piece of Homeworld carved jade off a shelf, examined it. It was better than two thousand years old, and so finely carved that in places it was paper thin. He held it at arm's length and let it fall. Fragments scattered across the tile floor. "Damn. Am I clumsy."

Deeth sealed his eyes, fought his anger.

"That's going to be a very difficult tool to control," Rhafu observed.

"Very. Answer this. Was that bit of vandalism a message, or just the spite of the moment?"

"I don't think we'll know till the dust settles. And that's probably why he did it."

"Watch him. Every minute. Every damned minute."

"As you will."

Rhafu put the operation together with his usual genius. It rolled along with such perfection, for so many years, piling and building like the growing crescendo of a great orchestra, that Deeth became convinced of the inevitability of a Norbon success. The little setbacks were there, but carefully accounted for in a program put together with all the information and computation capacity of Helga's World. An absolute and unavoidable doom loomed darker and darker above the murderers of Prefactlas.

Then word came to the hidden headquarters chalet on The Big Rock Candy Mountain. A puzzled Rhafu announced, "The man called Cassius is here. Asking questions about Michael."

"I don't understand. How could they have gotten wind of us?"

"I don't know. Unless... "

"Michael?"

"Does anyone else know we're directing it from here?"

"Not a soul." Deeth considered. He had monitored Dee's dealings with Storm. Michael had kept his mouth shut. "Maybe we left tracks without knowing it."

"Possibly."

"Cut off his sources of information. We'll tend to friend Cassius ourselves."

"Deeth... Never mind."

Deeth studied the old man. Rhafu's nervous degeneration was so advanced he had trouble managing a drinking glass.

"I want this one, Rhafu. We'll hit them and move somewhere else."

"As you wish."

They entered the hotel by separate doors. Unfortunately Rhafu had the only clear shot.

The old man's nerves betrayed him. He missed.

Cassius did not.

Deeth's nerve betrayed him. He froze. He never touched his weapon.

Deeth found himself aboard his escape vessel without remembering how he had gotten there. Just one image remained clear in his mind. Meeting the eyes of Cassius's companion in the street, over Rhafu's body.

It went sour after that. He did not have Rhafu's enchanted touch.

Storm stunned Deeth by attacking Helga's World. He gathered the Norbon forces. His raidships blundered into a trap more disasterous than that at Amon-Ra.

Blackworld was becoming a debacle. Michael just could not handle his half of the chore.

Deeth remembered a shattered piece of jade and wondered.

He lost his temper. He ordered the attack on the Fortress of Iron, "I may not get them all," he told himself, "but they'll know they paid the price of Prefactlas."

He had abandoned hope of profiting from Blackworld. And he had abandoned Michael Dee.

"My son, if you've done your best, you deserve an apology. But I suspect you've subtly sabotaged the whole thing. Enjoy the trap you've built yourself."

His last few fighting ships reached the Fortress's surface. His troopships went in. His men forced the entry locks.

The fighting continued for days, cubicle to cubicle, corridor to corridor, level to level. His soldiers encountered only women and old people, but they too were Legionnaires.

Near the end one of his people told him. "Lord Deeth, enemy scoutships have been detected... "

"Damn!" The Fortress was almost clear. Only a handful of defenders remained, holding out in the old Combat Information Center. "Very well." He could not run now. He had to finish. For Rhafu. For his father. For his mother and the Prefactlas dead.

"All right. I want everyone out but the crew of Lota's raidship. Take space like you're in a panic. Let them intercept messages that will convince them that there's no one left alive here."

"Yes sir."

Deeth joined the one raidship crew in the final attack. His participation brought him face to face with Storm's wife, Frieda.