Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline by Glen Cook
Authors: Glen Cook
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fantasy - General, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Space warfare, Fantasy - Short Stories
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treacherous ground. When he was safe he paused to watch the humans tumble off their boat and link up with the craft that had landed to either side. The burning station splashed them with eerie light.
Deeth recognized them. They were Force Recon, the cream of the Confederation Marines, the humans’ best and meanest. Nothing would escape their circle.
He cried for his parents, and Rhafu, then wiped the tears away with the backs of his fists. He trudged toward the forest, indifferent to the fact that the humans might spot him on anti-personnel radar. Each hundred steps he paused to look back.
Dawn was near when he passed the first trees. They rose like a sudden palisade, crowding a straight line decreed by the station’s planners. He felt as though he had stepped behind a bulwark against doom.
Once his ears had recovered he had heard stealthy movements around him. He was not alone in his flight. He avoided contact. He was too shaken, and had too poor a command of the slave tongue, to handle questions from animals. The wild ones used a different language. He expected to have less trouble passing with them. If he could find them.
One found him.
He was a quarter-mile into the forest when a raggedy, smelly old man with a crippled leg pounced on him. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that Deeth had no chance. His struggles earned him nothing but a fist in the face. The blow calmed him. He bit down on a tongue that had been damning the old man in High Sangaree.
“What are you doing, please?” he ventured in the animal language.
The old man hit him again. Before he could do more than groan, a sack had been flung over his head, skinned down to his ankles, and tied shut. A moment later, head downward and miserable, he was hoisted onto a bony shoulder.
He had become booty.
----
Thirteen: 3052 AD
My father had an unusual philosophy. It was oblique, pessimistic, fatalistic. Judge its tenor by the fact that he read Ecclesiastes every day.
He believed all existence was a rigged game. Good strove with Evil in vain. Good could achieve occasional localized tactical victories, but only because Evil was toying with it, certain of final victory. Evil knew no limits. In the end, when the scores were tallied, Evil would be the big winner. All a man could do was face it with courage, fight though defeat was inevitable, and delay the hour of defeat as long as possible.
He did not see Good and Evil in standard terms. The Good and Evil most of us see he simply considered matters of viewpoint. The “I” is always on the side of the angels. The “They” are always wicked. He thought an absolute Islamic-Judeo-Christian Evil a weak, irrational joke.
Entropy is an approximate cognate for what Gneaus Julius Storm called Evil. An anthropomorphic, diabolic sort of entropy with a malign lust for devouring love and creativity, which, I think, he considered to be the main constituents of Good.
It was an unusual outlook, but you have to accept that it was valid for him before you can follow him through the maze called the Shadowline.
—Masato Igarashi Storm
----
Fourteen: 3031 AD
Storm, Cassius, and the dogs crowded into an elevator. It dropped away toward the Traffic Control and Combat Information Center at the planetoid’s heart.
Benjamin, Homer, and Lucifer whirled when their father entered the Center. Storm surveyed their faces grimly. The glow of the spatial display globes, overplayed by the changing light keys of the tactical computer’s situation boards, splashed them with ever-changing color. No one spoke.
Storm’s sons stared at their feet like shamed boys caught playing with matches. Storm half turned to Cassius, eye on the senior watchstander. Cassius inclined his head. The officer would have to explain his failure to report ships in detection. He would be reminded of his debt to Gneaus Storm. It would be a tempestuous admonition.
The officer’s failure was beyond Cassius’s comprehension. He never let his
Deeth recognized them. They were Force Recon, the cream of the Confederation Marines, the humans’ best and meanest. Nothing would escape their circle.
He cried for his parents, and Rhafu, then wiped the tears away with the backs of his fists. He trudged toward the forest, indifferent to the fact that the humans might spot him on anti-personnel radar. Each hundred steps he paused to look back.
Dawn was near when he passed the first trees. They rose like a sudden palisade, crowding a straight line decreed by the station’s planners. He felt as though he had stepped behind a bulwark against doom.
Once his ears had recovered he had heard stealthy movements around him. He was not alone in his flight. He avoided contact. He was too shaken, and had too poor a command of the slave tongue, to handle questions from animals. The wild ones used a different language. He expected to have less trouble passing with them. If he could find them.
One found him.
He was a quarter-mile into the forest when a raggedy, smelly old man with a crippled leg pounced on him. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that Deeth had no chance. His struggles earned him nothing but a fist in the face. The blow calmed him. He bit down on a tongue that had been damning the old man in High Sangaree.
“What are you doing, please?” he ventured in the animal language.
The old man hit him again. Before he could do more than groan, a sack had been flung over his head, skinned down to his ankles, and tied shut. A moment later, head downward and miserable, he was hoisted onto a bony shoulder.
He had become booty.
----
Thirteen: 3052 AD
My father had an unusual philosophy. It was oblique, pessimistic, fatalistic. Judge its tenor by the fact that he read Ecclesiastes every day.
He believed all existence was a rigged game. Good strove with Evil in vain. Good could achieve occasional localized tactical victories, but only because Evil was toying with it, certain of final victory. Evil knew no limits. In the end, when the scores were tallied, Evil would be the big winner. All a man could do was face it with courage, fight though defeat was inevitable, and delay the hour of defeat as long as possible.
He did not see Good and Evil in standard terms. The Good and Evil most of us see he simply considered matters of viewpoint. The “I” is always on the side of the angels. The “They” are always wicked. He thought an absolute Islamic-Judeo-Christian Evil a weak, irrational joke.
Entropy is an approximate cognate for what Gneaus Julius Storm called Evil. An anthropomorphic, diabolic sort of entropy with a malign lust for devouring love and creativity, which, I think, he considered to be the main constituents of Good.
It was an unusual outlook, but you have to accept that it was valid for him before you can follow him through the maze called the Shadowline.
—Masato Igarashi Storm
----
Fourteen: 3031 AD
Storm, Cassius, and the dogs crowded into an elevator. It dropped away toward the Traffic Control and Combat Information Center at the planetoid’s heart.
Benjamin, Homer, and Lucifer whirled when their father entered the Center. Storm surveyed their faces grimly. The glow of the spatial display globes, overplayed by the changing light keys of the tactical computer’s situation boards, splashed them with ever-changing color. No one spoke.
Storm’s sons stared at their feet like shamed boys caught playing with matches. Storm half turned to Cassius, eye on the senior watchstander. Cassius inclined his head. The officer would have to explain his failure to report ships in detection. He would be reminded of his debt to Gneaus Storm. It would be a tempestuous admonition.
The officer’s failure was beyond Cassius’s comprehension. He never let his
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