Starfishers Triology - Shadowline Part 10

In 3031 the dead did not always stay down.

Human brains were in demand in an exploding cryocyborgic data-processing industry. Personality-scrubbed and inplugged to computation and data-storage systems, a few kilos of human nervous tissue could replace tons of specialized control and volitional systems.

No remedy for degradation in nervous tissue had yet been found. The cryocyborgic environment sometimes accelerated decay.

Nerve life had become the practical span limit for men like Gneaus Storm, who had power, money, and access to the finest rejuvenation and resurrection technology.

The number of brains available for cryocyborging never filled demand. The shortfall was filled in a variety of ways. Old Earth sold the brains of criminals in exchange for hard outworlds currency. A few were available through underworld channels. The bulk came of involuntary salvage.

There were a dozen entrepreneurs who jackaled around the edges of disasters and armed conflicts, snapping up loose bodies to resell organs. Confederation's armed forces often left their lower grade enlisted men where they fell. The soldiers themselves were indifferent to the fate of their corpses, Most were desperate men willing to risk anything to earn a long retirement outside the slums of their birth.

Gneaus Storm's agents dogged the service battlegrounds too, selecting men who had died well. Cryonically preserved, they were revived later and asked to join the Legion.

Most accepted with a childlike grat.i.tude. A rise from a slum to the imaginary glory and high life of the Iron Legion, after having escaped the Reaper by Storm's grace, seemed an elevation to paradise. The holonets called them the Legion of the Dead.

Helga Dee used hundreds of scavenged brains in her business. Only the Dees themselves knew the capacity of her Helga's World "information warehouse." Publicly, Helga admitted only to capabilities in keeping with brain acquisitions that were a matter of public record.

Storm was sure she controlled a capacity twice what she admitted.

Helga's World was a dead planet. The human contagion had touched it only once, to create and occupy the vast installation called Festung Todesangst. The heart of Helga's far-reaching Corporation lay there, deep beneath the surface of that remote rock cold in the claws of entropy, orbiting a dying star. No one went in but family, the dead, and that occasional person the Dees wanted to disappear. No one came out but Dees.

The defenses at Festung Todesangst were legend. They were as quirky and perverse as Helga herself.

Men who went down to Helga's World were like last year's mayflies: gone forever. And Gneaus Storm meant to penetrate that ice-masked h.e.l.l hole.

He did not expect Helga to welcome him. She hated him with a hatred archetypal in its depth and fury. Michael's children all hated Storm. Each had compelled him to recognize his or her existence and respond. His crime was that he had come out on top every time.

The Dee offspring were worse than their father.

Fearchild had raised his fuss, costing Ca.s.sius a hand. Storm and Ca.s.sius now kept him confined in a place only they knew. He was a hostage guaranteeing restraint by the others. The Dees were, unfortunately, all irrational, pa.s.sionate people, apt to forget in heated moments.

Helga had tried to avenge Fearchild by capturing Storm's daughter Valerie and using her as part of Festung Todesangst.

Storm's response had been to capture Helga and deliver her to her own fortress so badly mauled that she had been able to survive only by cyborging in to her own machines. Forever d.a.m.ned to a mechanical half-life, she calculated and brooded and awaited a day when she could requite his cruelties.

Seth-Infinite, too, had given frequent offense. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, appearing openly some place like Luna Command, then disappearing before the swiftest hunters closed in. Half the things he did were nose-thumbings at the Storms. Like his father, he was slippery, and he always had several schemes in the air. Like Michael, he did nothing for a simple, linear reason.

It would be a fine, serendipitous thing, Storm reflected, if Ca.s.sius surprised Seth-Infinite on The Mountain.

Twenty-Four: 2354-3031 AD

Michael Dee's moments of happiness were tiny islands scattered in a vast sea. His life was a swift one. He had so much in the air that, when he found time to look around, he seemed to have surfaced in an alien universe. In the year of the Shadowline he had nothing but his schemes.

He always had been a little outside. His earliest memory was of a fight with Gneaus over his being different.

Gneaus eventually accepted him. He had less luck accepting himself.

Down on the bottom line Michael Dee did not like Michael Dee very much. There was something wrong with him.

That he was different he first inferred from his mother's att.i.tude. She was too protective, too fearful.

Boris Storm, the man he thought was his father, was seldom around. Boris was preoccupied with his work. He had few chances to be with his family. Michael developed no bond with the paterfamilias.

Emily Storm hovered over her firstborn. She corrected and protected, corrected and protected, till Michael was convinced that there was an evil in him that scared her silly.

What was this dark thing? He agonized over it by the hour and could find nothing.

Other children sensed it. They withdrew. He studied people, seeking his reflection. He found ways to manipulate others, but the real secret eluded him.

Only Gneaus accepted him. Poor bullheaded Gneaus, who would take a beating rather than admit that his brother was strange.

Poor health complicated Michael's childhood. Boris spent fortunes on doctors. Bad genes, they would hazard, after finding nothing specifically wrong.

He was weak, pale, and sickly into his teens. His brother fought his battles. Gneaus was so strong, so stubborn, and so feared that the other children ignored Michael rather than risk a fight.

So Michael began spinning tall tales as an attention-getting device. He was amazed. His stories were believed! He had a talent. When he recognized the power he had to shape the truth, he used it.

In time he came to weigh every word, every gesture, before revealing it. He calculated its effect on his audience carefully. He reached the point where he could not be direct. In time even the simplest end had to be accomplished by complex means.

He never found his way out of that self-made trap.

He was blessed, or cursed, with brilliance and an almost eidetic memory. He used those tools to keep his webs of deceit taut and strong. He became a master liar, deceiver, and schemer. He lived at the eye of a hurricane of falsehood and discord.

In those days Academy's minimum-age requirement was fourteen standard years. As Gneaus's eligibility year approached, Boris Storm maneuvered to obtain favorable consideration for his son and stepson.

Boris was the scion of an old military family. His ancestors had been career people with the Palisarian Directorate, one of the founder-states of Confederation. He had departed service himself, but could conceive of no higher goal toward which to direct his offspring. He aimed them at commissions all their lives. Their early education took place in a private, militarily oriented special school he set up for the children of Prefactlas Corporation's officers.

Michael and Gneaus first encountered Richard Hawksblood there. He was Richard Woracek at the time. He took the name Hawksblood when he became a mercenary.

Richard was the son of a management consultant Boris brought in to improve his profit margin. The family had no service background. Richard was an outsider among children who saw civilians as a lower life form. Richard was, at the outset, smaller and more sickly than Michael. He was Dee's favorite victim.

Richard accepted slings and arrows with calm dignity and a refusal to be aroused. His imperturbability infuriated his cla.s.smates. He fought back by being better than anyone at everything. Only Gneaus was able, on occasion, to rise to the rarefied airs where Woracek soared.

His excellence only compounded his troubles with his peers. Gneaus, who was his closest acquaintance, often became exasperated because Richard would not fight back.

"The scores will even themselves," Woracek promised.

They did.

Eligibility time arrived, and with it Academy's grueling compet.i.tive exams. The youths flashed like spearpoints toward the target at which their parents had aimed their young lives. They streaked toward their chances to become card-carrying members of the established elite.

The battery lasted six exhausting days. Part was physical and psychological. A substantial fraction sampled general knowledge and tested problem-solving abilities. The candidates knew Richard would ace those forms. They were surprised to see Michael finish them almost as quickly.

Richard turned in his final test sheet and calmly announced that he had been deliberately answering incorrectly. The monitor asked why. Richard told him that someone had copied some of his answers. Could he retest in isolation?

Computer a.n.a.lysis indicated an unnatural relations.h.i.+p between Woracek's answers and those of Michael Dee. Richard was allowed his retest. He came in with the highest scores ever recorded.

Michael tried it the lazy way. The snake turned on him. He watched his dreams collapse like the topless towers.

He knew it was his own fault. Still, he had a perverse streak. Richard shared the blame. It was Woracek's fault, if you saw it from the right angle.

That was Michael Dee's watershed point. He had begun deceiving himself. His last bulwark of reality gone, he went adrift. He became a one-man universe whose ties to the larger existence were bonds of falsehood and hatred founded on untruth. He had chained himself in fetters so intangible and cunningly forged that even he could not define them.

He did bounce back from rejection. He found a new direction, in a field which valued men with his ability to restructure reality. He became a journalist.

The holonets, ratings foremost in the moguls' minds, had abandoned all pretense to objective reporting long ago. When Michael entered the trade drama was the bait that got the audiences to switch on. The bloodier the report the better.

Michael wanted to make it as an independent. He straggled hard for years. Then the Ulantonid War broke.

He showed a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He produced the best coverage repeatedly. His colleagues made tape after tape of disaster after disaster as the Ulantonid blitz smashed toward the Inner Worlds. Michael found the bright spots, the little victories and heroic stands. His coverage elbowed to the top.

While Boris, Gneaus, Ca.s.sius, and Richard fought for their lives in what looked a foredoomed effort to stall Ulant, Michael had fun making tapes. The Storms were impoverished by Ulant's occupation of Prefactlas. He grew rich. He set his own price for his material. In the wartime confusion he evaded taxation deftly and invested brilliantly. He bought huge chunks of instel stocks when commercial faster-than-light communication seemed nothing but wishful thinking. He got into interstellar data warehousing, a sideline that would lead to the creation of Festung Todesangst.

Everything he touched turned to gold.

He never forgave Richard. Though his fortunes soared, he was always the outsider at the party. Without that Academy diploma he could not rise above the second social rank. Service officers were the aristocrats of the age.

The war ended. Its chaos continued. Grand Admiral McGraw went rogue. Sangaree raiders continued to harry the s.p.a.ceways. There were people to blame. Michael got into piracy.

He was careful. Hardly anyone ever suspected. He creamed information from his instel and data corporations to parlay a pair of broken-down destroyers into another fortune.

His extralegal adventures led him into another life-trap.

Twenty-Five: 3031 AD

Helga's World orbitted far from its primary. Raging methane winds screamed across its surface. They were as cold as its mistress's heart, as unremitting in their savagery. Storm searched for the telltale heat concentration. Festung Todesangst was dug in deep, tapping the core's remaining heat.

He sent the stolen recognition codes, then injected his singles.h.i.+p into a low polar orbit. He went around three times before detecting the thermal anomaly. He took a fix and hit methane in a penetration ran.

Spy-eyes above and below ignored him. No missiles rose to greet him.

He had the right codes.

He smiled tightly, already worrying about the harder task of getting out.

He regretted spending an advantage that could be used but once. He h.o.a.rded those with a miser's touch. This one could be saved no longer, and could not be used again. Helga would eliminate the gaps in her protection following his visit.

He touched down. Already in EVA gear, he plunged into a violent methane wind. There was one instant of incredible cold while his suit heaters lagged in their effort to warm him.

"Poor navigation," he muttered. The doorway he wanted lay a kilometer away. The wind-chill might kill him before he got there.

It was too late to cry. Moving s.h.i.+p would tempt fate too much. Hobson's choice.

He started walking.

This lock had been an access portal during construction, a workmen's convenience that had not been sealed. One of Helga's weird guardians would be stationed inside, but she should be a half-century unwary. He thought he could surprise her.

He leaned into the gale, ignoring the bitter cold. Each few hundred steps he examined the glove covering his suit's left hand. He was not sure it would withstand the chill.

His odyssey went on and on. The wind and oxygen snow were gleefully malicious conspirators trying to contrive a disaster. Then there was a slackening of the gale's force. He glanced up. He had entered the lee of the lock housing.

The outer lock door stood slightly ajar. He forced himself through the gap and initiated the lock cycle.

Would the carelessness that had left the door open have allowed icing in the mechanism? The door shuddered, groaned, protesting. It whined shrilly. It broke loose and sealed. Frost formed on his suit and faceplate as breathable air flooded the chamber.

He batted the haze from his faceplate and found himself facing one of the more grotesque products of genetic engineering.

Helga's guardian was an amazon of skeletal thinness, with translucent skin, completely hairless and breathless. She was human and female only by virtue of her navel and the virgin slit between her sticklike thighs. And in her confusion at this unexpected apparition stepping from the lock.

Face-plate frosting made Storm briefly vulnerable but she wasted those seconds. She finally responded by switching on subsonics that caused an increasing dread as he approached her.

There was no humanity in her death's-head face. The little muscles under that deathlike skin never twitched in expression. Storm fought the mesmeric a.s.sault of the sonics, forced his fear to work for him. "Dead," he told himself.

He felt an instant of compa.s.sion, and knew it a waste. This thing was less alive than his most often resurrected soldier.

Storm approached the guardian, left hand reaching.

She looked frail and powerless. The impression was false. No man living could best her without special equipment. Pain, injury, and the normal limits of human strength meant nothing to her. She had been bred to one purpose, to attack till victorious or destroyed.

Storm's glove touched her arm lightly, discharged. The shock was supposed to scramble her neural signals and make her amenable.

It worked, but not as well as he hoped. She became less truculent, but far from docile. He took control, stripped her of her sonics, force-marched her down stairs and inclines. Every ten minutes he gave her another shock, expending more of the glove's power.

He worried. He was squandering his best weapon. If the charge went too soon he would have to kill her. He needed live bait to pa.s.s the next obstacle.

His path, as did all corridors from the surface, debouched in a dark, stadium-vast chamber, the ceiling of which was natural cavern. The floor had been machined smooth and covered with a half-meter of sand.

This, Storm thought as he crouched at the tunnel's end, is the real gateway to Festung Todesangst. This is the real guardhouse is the real gateway to Festung Todesangst. This is the real guardhouse. Here the most powerful weapons were all but useless. The watchman was of a size in keeping with that of his kiosk.

Helga Dee had a bizarre sense of humor, a c.o.c.keyed way of looking at the universe. Her gateman was a reptilian thing, tyrannosaur-sized, from a world so ma.s.sive that here it was as agile as a kitten. Only Helga herself, who had raised it from an egg and lovingly called it her "puppy," could control it. Through its love for her, she claimed. Storm believed she used implanted controls.

The thing subsisted on the flesh of brain donors and Helga's enemies.

As a defense it was primitive, crude, and devastatingly effective. And it was a gla.s.s-clear ill.u.s.tration of a facet of Helga Dee. Using it to back her sophisticated surface defenses was her idea of a joke.

The thing's bellow smashed at Storm. His ears ached. He saw nothing but a suggestion of s.h.i.+fting immensity inside the poorly illuminated cavern.