The brothers Darksword looked like regimental file clerks. They
wore that look of perpetual bewilderment of the innocent repeatedly
slapped in the face by reality. Wizards of the data banks. Easy
prey for the monsters in the human jungle.
They were short, slim, thin-faced, and watery-eyed. They had
pallid skin and stringy brown hair so sparse it belonged on an
endangered species list. Helmut affected a pair of pince-nez. The
more bold Wulf had had his vision surgically corrected.
They were antsy little men who could not stand still. Outsiders
pegged them as chronic hand-wringers, nervous little people who
faced even petty troubles with the trepidation of an old maid bound
for an orgy.
It was an act they had lived so long they almost believed it
themselves.
There was as much ice and iron in them as in Cassius or Storm.
Had Storm meant it, they would have killed the mining official
without qualm or second thought. Disobedience was an alien
concept.
A matched set of stringy old assassins.
Their lives, emotions, and loyalties had been narrowly focused
for two hundred forty years. They had followed Boris Storm as boys,
in the old Palisarian Directorate. They had attended military
school with him, joined Confederation Navy with him, and became
part of Prefactlas Corporation with him. When Ulant struck they
returned to service with him, and afterward helped him create the
Iron Legion. Following Boris’s death they had transferred
their devotion to his son.
They had been born on Old Earth and taken to the Directorate
young. They had learned the motherworld’s harsh lessons in
Europe’s worst slums.
Two things matter. Sign on with the gang with the most guns.
Serve it with absolute devotion as long as it serves faithfully in
return.
The centuries had garbled those truths a tad. They could not
abandon the Legion now, biggest guns or no. One occasionally
reminded the other that it looked like time to get out. Neither
moved. They continued serving Gneaus Storm with the implacability
of natural law.
Storm had left them in command of the Fortress. The simple fact
of his absence presented them with enough problems, Wulf claimed,
to frustrate a saint into a deal with the devil.
The Darkswords were curious in yet another way. They were that
rare animal, the true believer in an age of infidels. Only they
understood how they squared their actions with the moral demands of
a Christian faith.
Michael Dee was human quicksilver. Pollyanna, without Lucifer
there to compel discretion, seemed to have set herself the task of
engulfing every functional penis in the Fortress. She had become a
crude joke.
Lucifer had been gone only two days when she lured Benjamin back
to her bed, with such indiscretion that everyone in the Fortress
knew. Frieda became a volcano constantly on the edge of
erupting.
The traditional morality had little weight in the Fortress of
Iron, but one tried to avoid needless friction.
Pollyanna did not seem to care. Her behavior was almost
consciously self-destructive.
Bets were being made. Would Lucifer return so incensed as to
repeat the blood-spill he had attempted earlier? Would
Benjamin’s wife finally decide that she had taken enough and
cut off his balls? It was a crackling tense situation made to order
for a Michael Dee.
The preparations for Blackworld lagged. The Legion had no heavy
equipment designed for use in an airless environment. For use in
poisonous atmospheres, yes, but not for no atmosphere at all.
At least Richard Hawksblood faced the same problem.
Frieda’s passion for the occult had become obsession. She
spent hour upon hour closeted with her Madame Endor. She was
convinced of the precognitive validity of Benjamin’s
nightmares. She was making herself obnoxious in her efforts to
protect him. A dozen times a day she ran him down to make sure he
was wearing the protective suit she had forced the armorers to
prepare.
His dalliance with Pollyanna became his sole escape from, and
defiance of, her insufferable mothering.
Among the troops there were dissensions explicable only in terms
of the presence of Michael Dee. Rumors stalked the barracks levels.
There were fist fights. There was a stabbing. The companies and
battalions feuded in a manner unrelated to healthy, edge-honing
competition.
Storm had been gone ten days. His stabilizing influence was
severely missed.
Desperate, Wulf and Helmut decreed that any man not on duty had
to report to the gymnasium for intensified physical fitness
training. They established a round-the-clock roster of instructors.
Exhausted Legionnaires had less energy for squabbling.
Wulf trailed Helmut by a step. They entered the gym. He growled,
“The bastard don’t have to do anything but be here to
muck things up.” He glared at Michael Dee. “Look at the
damned trouble-monger. Sitting there smug as Solomon on his
throne.”
Helmut grunted affirmatively. “Would anybody yell if we
shoved him out a lock?”
“Not till the Colonel got home. Ah. Look. There’s
Pollyanna. Want to help me with her?”
Pollyanna stood in a corridor mouth, watching the group around
Dee. Her doe eyes were fixed on Michael.
They were filled with a surprising animation. It seemed to be
hatred.
Homer and Frieda hovered over Benjamin, Frieda silently daring
Pollyanna to come closer. Benjamin was directing the physical
drill. The soldiers were not enthusiastic.
Michael watched in silence, unaware of Pollyanna’s stare.
He wore a contemplative smile.
“You handle her,” Helmut said. “I’ll
take Benjamin and Dee.” His voice carried overtones of
distaste. Wulf might have asked if he wanted to share a swim in a
sewer. Pollyanna flushed when she saw Wulf approaching. He was
pleased. He hoped she saw the thunderheads dancing on his brow.
Cassius, with his computerlike voice and metallic absence of
emotion, was the one man Pollyanna normally feared. She seemed
unable to remain afraid of a man who had been to her bed.
She had made advances to both Darkswords. They had not
responded. She could fear them too. Wulf tried to look as grim as a
suicide singleshipper. What he wanted to do took the same intense
determination. Her amorality baffled and intimidated him.
“We walk!” he snapped, seizing her arm. She winced.
He was stronger than he looked, and wanted to impress her with the
fact. “You’ve got a lot to learn,” he growled,
propelling her along the corridor. “Only Michael Dee plays
Dee games here. He can get away with them. He has Storm’s
safe-conduct. You’ve got nothing. You’re just another
daughter-in-law.”
She sputtered. His anger hit her like crashing breakers,
drowning what she wanted to say.
“I could put you into detention. I will if you don’t
start making like a nun. Stay away from Benjamin. And Homer.
I’ve seen you sizing him up. Your pants come down again,
it’d better be for Lucifer. Understand? You want to play
games, get a deck of cards. This one the rest of us were playing
before your grandma crapped her first diaper.” They reached
her apartment. Wulf pushed her inside.
“One more trick, girl, and you go in the can till the
Colonel gets back. That’s as plain as I can make
it.”
She relaxed. He sensed it. “Think you know him, eh? Count
your beads. With him it’s always the Legion first. A man
who’s had to kill his own children wouldn’t hesitate to
send an amateur Dee to Helga’s World the way he did with that
metal grubber.”
His belief in his commander was so apparent that she had to
accept its truth. He left her shaking and, he hoped, wondering why
she had gotten involved with such terrible men.
Helmut approached the group observing the physical drills. He
was only slightly less forbidding than his brother. Dee’s
smile became uncertain. Benjamin’s charm aura faltered.
Homer’s sightless eyes turned his way, grim as the eyes of
death. Frieda glared suspiciously.
She was a raw-boned, stringy-haired blonde, reminiscent of her
father, without Cassius’s self-confidence. She was alarmed by
the purpose evident in Helmut’s stride. Storm she could read
and handle. Her father she could manipulate. The Darkswords,
though, were beyond reach.
That was the impression they liked to give. Helmut threw himself
into an empty chair with apparent violence. He glared at them in
turn. “Captain Ceislak. Take over here. Benjamin, I’ve
got a job for you. Directing vacuum drills. You start after morning
muster tomorrow. Check with Wong. He’ll fill you in on what
you’ll be doing.”
Understanding passed between them. Benjamin was about to be
moved out of temptation’s reach. Putting the Legion through
vacuum drills required weeks.
A man could do a lot of thinking if he was alone with himself in
a spacesuit, Helmut reflected.
“But he could . . . ” Frieda
began.
“Get hurt?” Helmut snapped, bludgeoning her line.
“Crap. He’ll be safer outside. He’s not suicidal,
is he?” He glanced at Michael Dee, smiling a thin, bitter
smile.
Benjamin reddened.
“Accidents happen!” Frieda had become neurotic about
her son’s safety.
“Relax, Mother,” Homer said with heavy sarcasm.
“You’d still have me to dote on.”
Frieda winced. She forced a smile while coloring guiltily.
Homer’s dead eyes glared at the floor. He knew. Even from
his mother affection had to be forced.
“Accidents, yes,” Helmut mused, smiling at Dee
again. “I’ve been giving accidents a certain amount of
thought. They’re like mutations. Once in a while one can be
beneficial. Wulf and I were discussing the possibilities a bit
ago.”
Dee’s smile vanished. He had gotten the message. And he
had noted the marks strain had left on Helmut. It was time he
became more circumspect. Helmut had declared, albeit obliquely,
that he no longer considered the interests of Gneaus Julius Storm
and those of the Legion to be congruent. The hint that he and his
brother were ready to eliminate Dee indicated a revolution in
thought that could spread throughout the organization. When the old
lap dogs stood on their hind legs and
growled . . .
Helmut sat there and smiled as if reading Michael’s every
thought.
Frieda went on nagging. Helmut finally exploded. “You
question my orders, madam? Complain to the colonel when he returns.
Meantime, hold your tongue.”
It was as harsh an admonition as ever he had given a woman. She
shut up. Storm always supported those upon whom he bestowed the
proconsular power.
Having delivered his messages, Helmut went to waken Thurston
Storm. Thurston was his relief. Initially, Thurston’s sole
task had been to birddog Michael. With tension mounting, the
Darkswords had been forced to saddle him with part of their burden.
They worked staggered sixteen-hour shifts, one sleeping while the
other two held chaos at bay.
“Friendly today, isn’t he?” Michael observed
as Helmut stalked away. “He’d turn on the gloom at a
wedding. Put the groom to work before the party started.”
Ah, his words were subtle. Benjamin was blind to their snare.
“A party. That’s an idea, Michael. We need to liven
this place up. I’ll put me on a going-outside
party.”
Michael smiled and nodded.
The party, through Benjamin’s efforts, shed some of its
early artificiality and turned fun. With the help of a few drinks
the younger people forgot the pressures that had been building so
swiftly and mysteriously. The occasional tentative spurt of
laughter erupted from their midst.
Benjamin’s mother hovered in the background, as grim as an
old raven. She had opposed the party from its inception, purely on
feeling. She had been unable to sway Benjamin. Madame Endor had
failed. He was in revolt against mothering. He would not let them
save him.
He could be as stubborn as his father.
Where were her husband and father? Frieda wondered. The Fortress
was going to hell and they were off God knew where chasing women or
something.
Dee watched the partiers with a disdainful, mocking smile.
Thurston Storm observed from a doorway. He was a huge, sullen,
muscular redhead who looked too simple for even the most obvious
subtleties. His appearance was an illusion. He was a dangerous
man.
He resented having been left off the guest list. They thought
him too boisterous. It did not occur to him that he could simply
abandon his duties and invite himself in. He just stood there with
his arms folded across his chest. His right hand clutched a
needlegun made tiny by the size of his fist. It tracked Michael Dee
as if computer-aimed.
Thurston puzzled everyone. He seemed almost a hollow man,
entirely an appearance. He had the disquieting vacuity of a
Pollyanna Eight. The appearances he presented sometimes conflicted.
Occasionally he was a reflection of his father. Most of the time he
appeared to be what people took him for, a big, dull, happy fellow
who drank as if there were no future, ate for a company, brawled,
bragged, and bullied his way through life. A mass of strength
without a brain to guide it.
Wulf had absented himself from the party, pleading his work
load. Pollyanna was sulking in her apartment. Helmut was asleep.
Everyone else was there.
Benjamin looked splendid in a uniform of his own design. It was
too ruffled and gaudy for the Legion. His father would not have
approved. He was not pleased with it himself. His protective armor
softened its effect.
That armor was the finest available. Energy weapons would feed
its shields. Anything moving at high velocity would pillow out in
its fields. Those fields would seize and wrench aside the metal of
an assassin’s blade. In a truly hostile environment he could
button up and survive on his own air, water, and nutrient soup. He
could not be touched. His mother bragged about his invulnerability
when she was not being afraid he would find a way to get himself
killed despite his protection.
Benjamin invented a game. He had his friends take turns
shooting, hacking, and stabbing him. They ruined his uniform
without harming him. He laughed a lot.
The point was to aggravate his mother.
Homer, alone in his blindness, shunned for his ugliness, sat and
brooded. Another party, strong with the laughter of the beautiful
women who gravitated to the Legion. Were they mocking him again?
Women always laughed at him. Even that madwoman Pollyanna. Her real
purpose for tempting him, surely, had been to mock him. And Frieda,
that bitch who claimed to be his
mother . . . She would like nothing better than
to have him put away somewhere where she would not be embarrassed
by him. She tried hard to pretend, but she could not hide from his
flashes of psi.
No one cared. No one understood. Except Ben, his father, and
sometimes that young, strange one, Mouse. And his father he could
never forgive for having given him life. Surely, with all his power
and money, he could have done something. Sight. Corrective surgery
for his physical defects . . .
He knew his father had tried. The human mind in despair seldom
responds to the soft persuasion of reason.
In fits, Homer hated Gneaus Julius Storm.
“Homer. You’re unhappy,” said a voice nearby.
He was startled. It contained more compassion than he had ever
before heard. He was primed to take advantage of someone’s
pity.
Odd that he had not sensed the speaker’s approach. His
eyes were dead, but his other senses were strong. This man was a
ghost.
“Who is it?” He did not recognize the voice.
“Michael.”
Of course. The sneaking and voice-changing should have cued him.
“What do you want?”
“Only to cheer you up. The Fortress is becoming so
terribly grim.”
Homer nodded. He did not believe a word, of course. Dee was the
Prince of Liars, and always oblique. He might indeed do some
cheering up, but only as a means to an end.
Homer’s suspicion was solidly grounded. His handicap
betrayed him. Without vision he could not detect the evil Michael
planned. Only on Dee’s face was the wickedness obvious, and
that for but an instant.
Dee had discovered Benjamin’s Achilles’ heel. He had
gotten the information from the man’s staunchest defender,
his mother, simply by listening to her brag and worry.
“Would you like to get into the game, Homer? Benjamin is
dueling. Maybe he’d give you a go.”
“Duel a blind man? You’re a fool, Dee.”
“Oh, I’ll help you. Here. Benjamin. Homer wants a
try.” Dee glanced over his shoulder. A droplet of sweat
dribbled down one temple. Thurston’s weapon still tracked him
with deadly precision.
“Hell, why not?” Benjamin replied. “Come on,
Homer. You’ll probably do better than these
clowns.”
As was customary, the healthy stepped aside, condescending to
allow the cripple his moment.
Glibly, smoothly, Dee talked Homer to his feet, placed a dueling
knife in his hand, positioned him facing his twin. The gallery
watched with amused smiles. Homer sensed their amusement. His
temper soared.
“Count of three,” Michael said, easing back, trying
to place someone between himself and Thurston.
“One . . . ”
Benjamin, playing to his audience, presented his chest to
Homer’s blade. He could not be hurt. No known hand weapon
could penetrate the protection of his armor.
“Two . . . ”
Guided by Benjamin’s breathing, Homer lunged. He wanted to
knock Ben onto his showoff ass.
For a long moment after the drugged tip of the wooden blade
slipped through armor proof against any metal there was absolute
silence. The tableau became a freezeframe from an old-time movie.
Then Benjamin and Homer screamed with one voice. Their psi forces
locked. Their rage and pain reached out to envelop the Fortress.
Benjamin folded slowly. Homer fainted, toppled onto Benjamin. His
mind could not withstand the psi backwash from his twin. Women
shrieked. Men shouted.
And as quietly as he had come to the blind brother, while even
Thurston’s attention was diverted, Michael Dee slipped
away.
Pandemonium invaded the hall.
When Wulf arrived he found Thurston raging among a group of
young officers trying to avenge Benjamin on Homer. The big man laid
them out left and right while screaming for somebody to for
God’s sake get the twins down to Medical.
A man slipped around Thurston and, with the guilty wooden blade,
as Homer recovered consciousness, exacted vengeance. Thurston
whirled and cracked the man’s skull.
Homer welcomed death with a smile. That dark lady was the only
woman who could love him.
Wulf ignored the drama. With Medical a minute away nobody needed
die the death-without-resurrection. He was looking for people
notable for their absence.
Helmut roared in clad in nothing but underwear. He had a gun in
each hand. “What happened?”
“Find Dee!” Wulf ordered. “Kill him. Cut him
up and shove the pieces out different locks. The Colonel
can’t stop it this time.”
Helmut looked at the bodies. He needed no more clues.
They separated, seeking a trail. They were hounds who would not
be satisfied till the blood of their quarry stained their
muzzles.
Wulf was too angry. He missed the most outstanding absence.
Frieda. She should have been in the middle of things, screaming and
weeping over her poor baby, preventing anything sensible from
getting done.
Within minutes the entire Fortress was mobilized for the sole
purpose of locating Michael Dee. But somehow, despite the
planetoid’s limitations, he managed to evade capture.
The brothers Darksword conquered their emotions, repaired to
Combat, directed the search from there.
They arrived as the man on instel communications ripped off a
printout. It was a frantic message from Storm. Wulf read it first,
bowed his head in despair. “Twenty minutes, that’s all
it would have taken.”
“Signal too late. Twenty minutes too late. Sign my
name,” Helmut said.
“I want Dee,” Wulf grumbled.
“Set the hounds on him.”
“Yes.”
In minutes they had Storm’s Sirian warhounds seeking a
trail. They found it on Residential Level. It led to the ingress
locks. Their questions baffled the duty section. They had seen no
one but the Colonel’s wife in hours. She and two corpsmen had
loaded a pair of medical-support cradles aboard an old
singleship . . .
“Oh, hell!” Wulf swore. “You
think . . . ?”
Helmut nodded. He grabbed a comm.
It took two calls to confirm the worst. Dee, following
Homer’s killing thrust, had seized Frieda and dragged her to
her apartment. He had stripped and bound and gagged her, and had
assumed her clothing and identity. From there he had gone to
Medical and, playing on Frieda’s neurotic concern from
Benjamin, had convinced the duty corpsmen to transfer the dead to a
hospital with planetary resources backing it. Dee had played his
part to such perfection that the unsuspecting corpsmen had helped
move and load the cryo coffins.
Even those who had known the Darkswords for decades were awed by
the rage they displayed.
“He isn’t away yet,” Helmut remarked after
regaining his composure. “He didn’t know where the
Colonel went when he pulled this. Let’s see what they say in
Combat. We might have a shot at him yet.”
They commenced the counter game backed by Combat’s
resources.
“He’s headed straight out,” Wulf said,
indicating the Dee blip in the main global display. “Putting
on a lot of inherent velocity while he’s getting up influence
to go hyper.” He picked up a pointer and indicated each of a
half-dozen blips chasing Dee. “They scrambled
fast.”
The senior watchstander said, “I sent everybody who was on
maneuvers when I heard what the situation was, sir.” He
happened to be the man who had disappointed Storm and Cassius in
the Abhoussi and Dee incident.
“Very good,” Helmut replied. “That’s
thinking on your feet.”
“I scrambled everything in dock, too, sir. I
assumed . . . ”
“You assumed correctly,” Wulf said. “Anything
that will space. They’re starting to come on display,
Helmut.”
A wild spray of diverging tracks began to spread behind the Dee
blip. Wulf glanced to one side. “Tactical computer have
control?”
“Yes, sir. You can input whatever the situation seems to
call for.”
“Basal strategy?”
“Build a plane of no return behind Dee, sir. Put the
fastest ships on the rim and move them forward to make a
pocket.”
“Very good. Helmut, looks like we’ve got him. It
might take a while, though.”
“We’re going to have to get a command ship out. We
won’t be able to direct it from here for long.”
The senior watchstander said, “I held the Robert Knottys,
sir. I’ve given them a direct feed. They’re running a
parallel program. You can board and shift control.”
“Good. That’s a good start,” Wulf said.
“I believe we have him,” Helmut said, peering into
the display tank. “Unless he’s headed somewhere damned
close. That’s a damned slow boat he’s
running.”
“What’s the nearest planetfall that
direction?” Wulf asked. If Dee made planetfall before the
jaws of pursuit closed he would become impossible to find. He would
vanish amid the population and marshal his own resources in the
time it took to track him down. His resources were not
inconsiderable.
“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.”
The brothers Darksword looked like regimental file clerks. They
wore that look of perpetual bewilderment of the innocent repeatedly
slapped in the face by reality. Wizards of the data banks. Easy
prey for the monsters in the human jungle.
They were short, slim, thin-faced, and watery-eyed. They had
pallid skin and stringy brown hair so sparse it belonged on an
endangered species list. Helmut affected a pair of pince-nez. The
more bold Wulf had had his vision surgically corrected.
They were antsy little men who could not stand still. Outsiders
pegged them as chronic hand-wringers, nervous little people who
faced even petty troubles with the trepidation of an old maid bound
for an orgy.
It was an act they had lived so long they almost believed it
themselves.
There was as much ice and iron in them as in Cassius or Storm.
Had Storm meant it, they would have killed the mining official
without qualm or second thought. Disobedience was an alien
concept.
A matched set of stringy old assassins.
Their lives, emotions, and loyalties had been narrowly focused
for two hundred forty years. They had followed Boris Storm as boys,
in the old Palisarian Directorate. They had attended military
school with him, joined Confederation Navy with him, and became
part of Prefactlas Corporation with him. When Ulant struck they
returned to service with him, and afterward helped him create the
Iron Legion. Following Boris’s death they had transferred
their devotion to his son.
They had been born on Old Earth and taken to the Directorate
young. They had learned the motherworld’s harsh lessons in
Europe’s worst slums.
Two things matter. Sign on with the gang with the most guns.
Serve it with absolute devotion as long as it serves faithfully in
return.
The centuries had garbled those truths a tad. They could not
abandon the Legion now, biggest guns or no. One occasionally
reminded the other that it looked like time to get out. Neither
moved. They continued serving Gneaus Storm with the implacability
of natural law.
Storm had left them in command of the Fortress. The simple fact
of his absence presented them with enough problems, Wulf claimed,
to frustrate a saint into a deal with the devil.
The Darkswords were curious in yet another way. They were that
rare animal, the true believer in an age of infidels. Only they
understood how they squared their actions with the moral demands of
a Christian faith.
Michael Dee was human quicksilver. Pollyanna, without Lucifer
there to compel discretion, seemed to have set herself the task of
engulfing every functional penis in the Fortress. She had become a
crude joke.
Lucifer had been gone only two days when she lured Benjamin back
to her bed, with such indiscretion that everyone in the Fortress
knew. Frieda became a volcano constantly on the edge of
erupting.
The traditional morality had little weight in the Fortress of
Iron, but one tried to avoid needless friction.
Pollyanna did not seem to care. Her behavior was almost
consciously self-destructive.
Bets were being made. Would Lucifer return so incensed as to
repeat the blood-spill he had attempted earlier? Would
Benjamin’s wife finally decide that she had taken enough and
cut off his balls? It was a crackling tense situation made to order
for a Michael Dee.
The preparations for Blackworld lagged. The Legion had no heavy
equipment designed for use in an airless environment. For use in
poisonous atmospheres, yes, but not for no atmosphere at all.
At least Richard Hawksblood faced the same problem.
Frieda’s passion for the occult had become obsession. She
spent hour upon hour closeted with her Madame Endor. She was
convinced of the precognitive validity of Benjamin’s
nightmares. She was making herself obnoxious in her efforts to
protect him. A dozen times a day she ran him down to make sure he
was wearing the protective suit she had forced the armorers to
prepare.
His dalliance with Pollyanna became his sole escape from, and
defiance of, her insufferable mothering.
Among the troops there were dissensions explicable only in terms
of the presence of Michael Dee. Rumors stalked the barracks levels.
There were fist fights. There was a stabbing. The companies and
battalions feuded in a manner unrelated to healthy, edge-honing
competition.
Storm had been gone ten days. His stabilizing influence was
severely missed.
Desperate, Wulf and Helmut decreed that any man not on duty had
to report to the gymnasium for intensified physical fitness
training. They established a round-the-clock roster of instructors.
Exhausted Legionnaires had less energy for squabbling.
Wulf trailed Helmut by a step. They entered the gym. He growled,
“The bastard don’t have to do anything but be here to
muck things up.” He glared at Michael Dee. “Look at the
damned trouble-monger. Sitting there smug as Solomon on his
throne.”
Helmut grunted affirmatively. “Would anybody yell if we
shoved him out a lock?”
“Not till the Colonel got home. Ah. Look. There’s
Pollyanna. Want to help me with her?”
Pollyanna stood in a corridor mouth, watching the group around
Dee. Her doe eyes were fixed on Michael.
They were filled with a surprising animation. It seemed to be
hatred.
Homer and Frieda hovered over Benjamin, Frieda silently daring
Pollyanna to come closer. Benjamin was directing the physical
drill. The soldiers were not enthusiastic.
Michael watched in silence, unaware of Pollyanna’s stare.
He wore a contemplative smile.
“You handle her,” Helmut said. “I’ll
take Benjamin and Dee.” His voice carried overtones of
distaste. Wulf might have asked if he wanted to share a swim in a
sewer. Pollyanna flushed when she saw Wulf approaching. He was
pleased. He hoped she saw the thunderheads dancing on his brow.
Cassius, with his computerlike voice and metallic absence of
emotion, was the one man Pollyanna normally feared. She seemed
unable to remain afraid of a man who had been to her bed.
She had made advances to both Darkswords. They had not
responded. She could fear them too. Wulf tried to look as grim as a
suicide singleshipper. What he wanted to do took the same intense
determination. Her amorality baffled and intimidated him.
“We walk!” he snapped, seizing her arm. She winced.
He was stronger than he looked, and wanted to impress her with the
fact. “You’ve got a lot to learn,” he growled,
propelling her along the corridor. “Only Michael Dee plays
Dee games here. He can get away with them. He has Storm’s
safe-conduct. You’ve got nothing. You’re just another
daughter-in-law.”
She sputtered. His anger hit her like crashing breakers,
drowning what she wanted to say.
“I could put you into detention. I will if you don’t
start making like a nun. Stay away from Benjamin. And Homer.
I’ve seen you sizing him up. Your pants come down again,
it’d better be for Lucifer. Understand? You want to play
games, get a deck of cards. This one the rest of us were playing
before your grandma crapped her first diaper.” They reached
her apartment. Wulf pushed her inside.
“One more trick, girl, and you go in the can till the
Colonel gets back. That’s as plain as I can make
it.”
She relaxed. He sensed it. “Think you know him, eh? Count
your beads. With him it’s always the Legion first. A man
who’s had to kill his own children wouldn’t hesitate to
send an amateur Dee to Helga’s World the way he did with that
metal grubber.”
His belief in his commander was so apparent that she had to
accept its truth. He left her shaking and, he hoped, wondering why
she had gotten involved with such terrible men.
Helmut approached the group observing the physical drills. He
was only slightly less forbidding than his brother. Dee’s
smile became uncertain. Benjamin’s charm aura faltered.
Homer’s sightless eyes turned his way, grim as the eyes of
death. Frieda glared suspiciously.
She was a raw-boned, stringy-haired blonde, reminiscent of her
father, without Cassius’s self-confidence. She was alarmed by
the purpose evident in Helmut’s stride. Storm she could read
and handle. Her father she could manipulate. The Darkswords,
though, were beyond reach.
That was the impression they liked to give. Helmut threw himself
into an empty chair with apparent violence. He glared at them in
turn. “Captain Ceislak. Take over here. Benjamin, I’ve
got a job for you. Directing vacuum drills. You start after morning
muster tomorrow. Check with Wong. He’ll fill you in on what
you’ll be doing.”
Understanding passed between them. Benjamin was about to be
moved out of temptation’s reach. Putting the Legion through
vacuum drills required weeks.
A man could do a lot of thinking if he was alone with himself in
a spacesuit, Helmut reflected.
“But he could . . . ” Frieda
began.
“Get hurt?” Helmut snapped, bludgeoning her line.
“Crap. He’ll be safer outside. He’s not suicidal,
is he?” He glanced at Michael Dee, smiling a thin, bitter
smile.
Benjamin reddened.
“Accidents happen!” Frieda had become neurotic about
her son’s safety.
“Relax, Mother,” Homer said with heavy sarcasm.
“You’d still have me to dote on.”
Frieda winced. She forced a smile while coloring guiltily.
Homer’s dead eyes glared at the floor. He knew. Even from
his mother affection had to be forced.
“Accidents, yes,” Helmut mused, smiling at Dee
again. “I’ve been giving accidents a certain amount of
thought. They’re like mutations. Once in a while one can be
beneficial. Wulf and I were discussing the possibilities a bit
ago.”
Dee’s smile vanished. He had gotten the message. And he
had noted the marks strain had left on Helmut. It was time he
became more circumspect. Helmut had declared, albeit obliquely,
that he no longer considered the interests of Gneaus Julius Storm
and those of the Legion to be congruent. The hint that he and his
brother were ready to eliminate Dee indicated a revolution in
thought that could spread throughout the organization. When the old
lap dogs stood on their hind legs and
growled . . .
Helmut sat there and smiled as if reading Michael’s every
thought.
Frieda went on nagging. Helmut finally exploded. “You
question my orders, madam? Complain to the colonel when he returns.
Meantime, hold your tongue.”
It was as harsh an admonition as ever he had given a woman. She
shut up. Storm always supported those upon whom he bestowed the
proconsular power.
Having delivered his messages, Helmut went to waken Thurston
Storm. Thurston was his relief. Initially, Thurston’s sole
task had been to birddog Michael. With tension mounting, the
Darkswords had been forced to saddle him with part of their burden.
They worked staggered sixteen-hour shifts, one sleeping while the
other two held chaos at bay.
“Friendly today, isn’t he?” Michael observed
as Helmut stalked away. “He’d turn on the gloom at a
wedding. Put the groom to work before the party started.”
Ah, his words were subtle. Benjamin was blind to their snare.
“A party. That’s an idea, Michael. We need to liven
this place up. I’ll put me on a going-outside
party.”
Michael smiled and nodded.
The party, through Benjamin’s efforts, shed some of its
early artificiality and turned fun. With the help of a few drinks
the younger people forgot the pressures that had been building so
swiftly and mysteriously. The occasional tentative spurt of
laughter erupted from their midst.
Benjamin’s mother hovered in the background, as grim as an
old raven. She had opposed the party from its inception, purely on
feeling. She had been unable to sway Benjamin. Madame Endor had
failed. He was in revolt against mothering. He would not let them
save him.
He could be as stubborn as his father.
Where were her husband and father? Frieda wondered. The Fortress
was going to hell and they were off God knew where chasing women or
something.
Dee watched the partiers with a disdainful, mocking smile.
Thurston Storm observed from a doorway. He was a huge, sullen,
muscular redhead who looked too simple for even the most obvious
subtleties. His appearance was an illusion. He was a dangerous
man.
He resented having been left off the guest list. They thought
him too boisterous. It did not occur to him that he could simply
abandon his duties and invite himself in. He just stood there with
his arms folded across his chest. His right hand clutched a
needlegun made tiny by the size of his fist. It tracked Michael Dee
as if computer-aimed.
Thurston puzzled everyone. He seemed almost a hollow man,
entirely an appearance. He had the disquieting vacuity of a
Pollyanna Eight. The appearances he presented sometimes conflicted.
Occasionally he was a reflection of his father. Most of the time he
appeared to be what people took him for, a big, dull, happy fellow
who drank as if there were no future, ate for a company, brawled,
bragged, and bullied his way through life. A mass of strength
without a brain to guide it.
Wulf had absented himself from the party, pleading his work
load. Pollyanna was sulking in her apartment. Helmut was asleep.
Everyone else was there.
Benjamin looked splendid in a uniform of his own design. It was
too ruffled and gaudy for the Legion. His father would not have
approved. He was not pleased with it himself. His protective armor
softened its effect.
That armor was the finest available. Energy weapons would feed
its shields. Anything moving at high velocity would pillow out in
its fields. Those fields would seize and wrench aside the metal of
an assassin’s blade. In a truly hostile environment he could
button up and survive on his own air, water, and nutrient soup. He
could not be touched. His mother bragged about his invulnerability
when she was not being afraid he would find a way to get himself
killed despite his protection.
Benjamin invented a game. He had his friends take turns
shooting, hacking, and stabbing him. They ruined his uniform
without harming him. He laughed a lot.
The point was to aggravate his mother.
Homer, alone in his blindness, shunned for his ugliness, sat and
brooded. Another party, strong with the laughter of the beautiful
women who gravitated to the Legion. Were they mocking him again?
Women always laughed at him. Even that madwoman Pollyanna. Her real
purpose for tempting him, surely, had been to mock him. And Frieda,
that bitch who claimed to be his
mother . . . She would like nothing better than
to have him put away somewhere where she would not be embarrassed
by him. She tried hard to pretend, but she could not hide from his
flashes of psi.
No one cared. No one understood. Except Ben, his father, and
sometimes that young, strange one, Mouse. And his father he could
never forgive for having given him life. Surely, with all his power
and money, he could have done something. Sight. Corrective surgery
for his physical defects . . .
He knew his father had tried. The human mind in despair seldom
responds to the soft persuasion of reason.
In fits, Homer hated Gneaus Julius Storm.
“Homer. You’re unhappy,” said a voice nearby.
He was startled. It contained more compassion than he had ever
before heard. He was primed to take advantage of someone’s
pity.
Odd that he had not sensed the speaker’s approach. His
eyes were dead, but his other senses were strong. This man was a
ghost.
“Who is it?” He did not recognize the voice.
“Michael.”
Of course. The sneaking and voice-changing should have cued him.
“What do you want?”
“Only to cheer you up. The Fortress is becoming so
terribly grim.”
Homer nodded. He did not believe a word, of course. Dee was the
Prince of Liars, and always oblique. He might indeed do some
cheering up, but only as a means to an end.
Homer’s suspicion was solidly grounded. His handicap
betrayed him. Without vision he could not detect the evil Michael
planned. Only on Dee’s face was the wickedness obvious, and
that for but an instant.
Dee had discovered Benjamin’s Achilles’ heel. He had
gotten the information from the man’s staunchest defender,
his mother, simply by listening to her brag and worry.
“Would you like to get into the game, Homer? Benjamin is
dueling. Maybe he’d give you a go.”
“Duel a blind man? You’re a fool, Dee.”
“Oh, I’ll help you. Here. Benjamin. Homer wants a
try.” Dee glanced over his shoulder. A droplet of sweat
dribbled down one temple. Thurston’s weapon still tracked him
with deadly precision.
“Hell, why not?” Benjamin replied. “Come on,
Homer. You’ll probably do better than these
clowns.”
As was customary, the healthy stepped aside, condescending to
allow the cripple his moment.
Glibly, smoothly, Dee talked Homer to his feet, placed a dueling
knife in his hand, positioned him facing his twin. The gallery
watched with amused smiles. Homer sensed their amusement. His
temper soared.
“Count of three,” Michael said, easing back, trying
to place someone between himself and Thurston.
“One . . . ”
Benjamin, playing to his audience, presented his chest to
Homer’s blade. He could not be hurt. No known hand weapon
could penetrate the protection of his armor.
“Two . . . ”
Guided by Benjamin’s breathing, Homer lunged. He wanted to
knock Ben onto his showoff ass.
For a long moment after the drugged tip of the wooden blade
slipped through armor proof against any metal there was absolute
silence. The tableau became a freezeframe from an old-time movie.
Then Benjamin and Homer screamed with one voice. Their psi forces
locked. Their rage and pain reached out to envelop the Fortress.
Benjamin folded slowly. Homer fainted, toppled onto Benjamin. His
mind could not withstand the psi backwash from his twin. Women
shrieked. Men shouted.
And as quietly as he had come to the blind brother, while even
Thurston’s attention was diverted, Michael Dee slipped
away.
Pandemonium invaded the hall.
When Wulf arrived he found Thurston raging among a group of
young officers trying to avenge Benjamin on Homer. The big man laid
them out left and right while screaming for somebody to for
God’s sake get the twins down to Medical.
A man slipped around Thurston and, with the guilty wooden blade,
as Homer recovered consciousness, exacted vengeance. Thurston
whirled and cracked the man’s skull.
Homer welcomed death with a smile. That dark lady was the only
woman who could love him.
Wulf ignored the drama. With Medical a minute away nobody needed
die the death-without-resurrection. He was looking for people
notable for their absence.
Helmut roared in clad in nothing but underwear. He had a gun in
each hand. “What happened?”
“Find Dee!” Wulf ordered. “Kill him. Cut him
up and shove the pieces out different locks. The Colonel
can’t stop it this time.”
Helmut looked at the bodies. He needed no more clues.
They separated, seeking a trail. They were hounds who would not
be satisfied till the blood of their quarry stained their
muzzles.
Wulf was too angry. He missed the most outstanding absence.
Frieda. She should have been in the middle of things, screaming and
weeping over her poor baby, preventing anything sensible from
getting done.
Within minutes the entire Fortress was mobilized for the sole
purpose of locating Michael Dee. But somehow, despite the
planetoid’s limitations, he managed to evade capture.
The brothers Darksword conquered their emotions, repaired to
Combat, directed the search from there.
They arrived as the man on instel communications ripped off a
printout. It was a frantic message from Storm. Wulf read it first,
bowed his head in despair. “Twenty minutes, that’s all
it would have taken.”
“Signal too late. Twenty minutes too late. Sign my
name,” Helmut said.
“I want Dee,” Wulf grumbled.
“Set the hounds on him.”
“Yes.”
In minutes they had Storm’s Sirian warhounds seeking a
trail. They found it on Residential Level. It led to the ingress
locks. Their questions baffled the duty section. They had seen no
one but the Colonel’s wife in hours. She and two corpsmen had
loaded a pair of medical-support cradles aboard an old
singleship . . .
“Oh, hell!” Wulf swore. “You
think . . . ?”
Helmut nodded. He grabbed a comm.
It took two calls to confirm the worst. Dee, following
Homer’s killing thrust, had seized Frieda and dragged her to
her apartment. He had stripped and bound and gagged her, and had
assumed her clothing and identity. From there he had gone to
Medical and, playing on Frieda’s neurotic concern from
Benjamin, had convinced the duty corpsmen to transfer the dead to a
hospital with planetary resources backing it. Dee had played his
part to such perfection that the unsuspecting corpsmen had helped
move and load the cryo coffins.
Even those who had known the Darkswords for decades were awed by
the rage they displayed.
“He isn’t away yet,” Helmut remarked after
regaining his composure. “He didn’t know where the
Colonel went when he pulled this. Let’s see what they say in
Combat. We might have a shot at him yet.”
They commenced the counter game backed by Combat’s
resources.
“He’s headed straight out,” Wulf said,
indicating the Dee blip in the main global display. “Putting
on a lot of inherent velocity while he’s getting up influence
to go hyper.” He picked up a pointer and indicated each of a
half-dozen blips chasing Dee. “They scrambled
fast.”
The senior watchstander said, “I sent everybody who was on
maneuvers when I heard what the situation was, sir.” He
happened to be the man who had disappointed Storm and Cassius in
the Abhoussi and Dee incident.
“Very good,” Helmut replied. “That’s
thinking on your feet.”
“I scrambled everything in dock, too, sir. I
assumed . . . ”
“You assumed correctly,” Wulf said. “Anything
that will space. They’re starting to come on display,
Helmut.”
A wild spray of diverging tracks began to spread behind the Dee
blip. Wulf glanced to one side. “Tactical computer have
control?”
“Yes, sir. You can input whatever the situation seems to
call for.”
“Basal strategy?”
“Build a plane of no return behind Dee, sir. Put the
fastest ships on the rim and move them forward to make a
pocket.”
“Very good. Helmut, looks like we’ve got him. It
might take a while, though.”
“We’re going to have to get a command ship out. We
won’t be able to direct it from here for long.”
The senior watchstander said, “I held the Robert Knottys,
sir. I’ve given them a direct feed. They’re running a
parallel program. You can board and shift control.”
“Good. That’s a good start,” Wulf said.
“I believe we have him,” Helmut said, peering into
the display tank. “Unless he’s headed somewhere damned
close. That’s a damned slow boat he’s
running.”
“What’s the nearest planetfall that
direction?” Wulf asked. If Dee made planetfall before the
jaws of pursuit closed he would become impossible to find. He would
vanish amid the population and marshal his own resources in the
time it took to track him down. His resources were not
inconsiderable.
“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.”