Glen Cook - Starfishers 1 - Shadowline.pdf

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About the Author:
Glen Cook: (Pic by Chaz Boston Baden)
From The BSFAN - Balticon 31 Program Book (1997):
Glen Cook was born in New York in 1944. He grew up in northern California and began writing while
in seventh grade. He served in the U. S. Navy, spending time with the Force Recon unit of the 3rd
Marine Recon Battalion. He attended the University of Missouri and the Clarion Writers' Workshop. He
produced his first paid work in 1970.
Glen says, "Unlike most writers, I have not had a succession of strange jobs like chicken plucking and
swamping our health bars. The only full-time employer I've ever had is General Motors." Due to a change
of job location in 1988, Glen's writing decreased in volume. Fortunately, he has recently retired and is
devoting more time to his writing.
The long anticipated release of Bleak Seasons in his Black Company series finally occured in 1996. He
is also known for his " Garrett Files " detective/fantasy series, his Dread Empire series, and many others.
Glen's hobbies include stamp collecting, book collecting, and a passing interest in military history. Usually
Glen can be found behind a huckster table at those conventions he attends. So, if you are in the dealer's
room buying one of his books, and the man behind the table asks if you want it signed, chances are you
just met him.
About this book . . .
Shadowline
 
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Starfishers Triology - Book 1
They were the greatest fighting fleet in the universe -- battling betrayal and revenge, and the
terrible fate that awaited them on the edge of the
The Vendetta In Space...
had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born... with his grandfather's raid on the planet
Prefactlas, the blood bath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree
survived — the young Norbon heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their
soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill.
Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet
Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno
from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus half-brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called
Deeth pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all — as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.
Book One—ROPE
Who twists the rope that dangles from the gibbet?
One: 3052 AD
Who am I? What am I?
I am the bastard child of the Shadowline. That jagged rift of sun-broiled stone was my third parent.
You cannot begin to understand me, or the Shadowline, without knowing my father. And to know
Gneaus Julius Storm you have to know our family, in all its convolute interpersonal relationships and
history. To know our family . . .
There is no end to this. The ripples spread. And the story, which has the Shadowline and myself at one
end, is an immensely long river. It received the waters of scores of apparently insignificant tributary
events.
Focusing the lens at its narrowest, my father and Cassius (Colonel Walters) were the men who shaped
me most. This is their story. It is also the story of the men whose stamp upon them ultimately shaped their
stamp upon me.
—Masato Igarashi Storm
Two: 3031 AD
Deep in the Fortress of Iron, in the iron gloom of his study, Gneaus Storm slouched in a fat, deep chair.
 
His chin rested on his chest. His good eye was closed. Long grey hair cascaded down over his tired face.
The flames in the nearest fireplace leapt and swirled in an endless morisco. Light and shadow played out
sinister dramas over priceless carpeting hand-loomed in Old Earth’s ancient Orient. The shades of
might-have-been played tag among the darkwood beams supporting the stone ceiling.
Storm’s study was a stronghold within the greater Fortress. It was the citadel of his soul, the bastion of
his heart. Its walls were lined with shelves of rare editions. A flotilla of tables bore both his collectibles
and papers belonging to his staff. The occasional silent clerk came and went, updating a report before
one of the chairs.
Two Shetland-sized mutant Alsatians prowled the room, sniffing shadows. One rumbled softly deep in
its throat. The hunt for an enemy never ended.
Nor was it ever successful. Storm’s enemies did not hazard his planetoid home.
A black creature of falcon size flapped into the study. It landed clumsily in front of Storm. Papers
scattered, frightening it. An aura of shadow surrounded it momentarily, masking its toy pterodactyl body.
It was a ravenshrike, a nocturnal flying lizard from the swamps of The Broken Wings. Its dark umbra
was a psionically generated form of protective coloration.
The ravenshrike cocked one red night eye at its mate, nesting in a rock fissure behind Storm. It stared at
its master with the other.
Storm did not respond.
The ravenshrike waited.
Gneaus Julius Storm pictured himself as a man on the downhill side of life, coasting toward its end. He
was nearly two hundred years old. The ultimate in medical and rejuvenation technology kept him
physically forty-five, but doctors and machines could do nothing to refresh his spirit.
One finger marked his place in an old holy book. It had fallen shut when he had drifted off. “A time to be
born and a time to die . . . ”
A youth wearing Navy blacks slipped into the room. He was short and slight, and stood as stiff as a
spear. Though he had visited the study countless times, his oriental inscrutability gave way to an
expression of awe.
So many luxuries and treasures , Mouse thought. Are they anything more than Death, hidden
behind a mask of hammered gold?
And of his father he thought, He looks so tired. Why can’t they leave him alone?
They could not. Not while Richard Hawksblood lived. They did not dare. So someday, as all
mercenaries seemed to do, Gneaus Storm would find his last battlefield and his
death-without-resurrection.
Storm’s tired face rose. It remained square-jawed and strong. Grey hair stirred in a vagrant current from
an air vent.
 
Mouse left quietly, yielding to a moment of deep sadness. His feelings for his father bordered on
reverence. He ached because his father was boxed in and hurting.
He went looking for Colonel Walters.
Storm’s good eye opened. Grey as his hair, it surveyed the heart of his stateless kingdom. He did not
see a golden death mask. He saw a mirror that reflected the secret Storm.
His study contained more than books. One wall boasted a weapons collection, Sumerian bronze
standing beside the latest stressglass multi-purpose infantry small arms. Lighted cabinets contained rare
china, cut crystal, and silver services. Others contained ancient Wedgwood. Still more held a fortune in
old coins within their velvet-lined drawers.
He was intrigued by the ebb and flow of history. He took comfort in surrounding himself with the wrack
it left in passing.
He could not himself escape into yesterday. Time slipped through the fingers like old water.
A gust from the cranky air system riffled papers. The banners overhead stirred with the passage of
ghosts. Some were old. One had followed the Black Prince to Navarette. Another had fallen at the
high-water mark of the charge up Little Round Top. But most represented milemarks in Storm’s own
career.
Six were identical titan-cloth squares hanging all in a line. Upon them a golden hawk struck left to right
down a fall of scarlet raindrops, all on a field of sable. They were dull, unimaginative things compared to
the Plantagenet, yet they celebrated the mountaintop days of Storm’s Iron Legion.
He had wrested them from his own Henry of Trastamara, Richard Hawksblood, and each victory had
given him as little satisfaction as Edward had extracted from Pedro the Cruel.
Richard Hawksblood was the acknowledged master of the mercenary art.
Hawksblood had five Legion banners in a collection of his own. Three times they had fought to a draw.
Storm and Hawksblood were the best of the mercenary captain-kings, the princes of private war the
media called “The Robber Barons of the Thirty-First Century.” For a decade they had been fighting one
another exclusively.
Only Storm and his talented staff could beat Hawksblood. Only Hawksblood had the genius to
withstand the Iron Legion.
Hawksblood had caused Storm’s bleak mood. His Intelligence people said Richard was considering a
commission on Blackworld.
“Let them roast,” he muttered. “I’m tired.”
But he would fight again. If not this time, then the next. Richard would accept a commission. His
potential victim would know that his only chance of salvation was the Iron Legion. He would be a hard
man who had clawed his way to the top among a hard breed. He would be accustomed to using
 
mercenaries and assassins. He would look for ways to twist Storm’s arm. And he would find them, and
apply them relentlessly.
Storm had been through it all before.
He smelled it coming again.
A personal matter had taken him to Corporation Zone, on Old Earth, last month. He had made the party
rounds, refreshing his contacts. A couple of middle-management types had approached him, plying him
with tenuous hypotheses.
Blackworlders clearly lacked polish. Those apprentice Machiavellis had been obvious and unimpressive,
except in their hardness. But their master? Their employer was Blake Mining and Metals Corporation of
Edgeward City on Blackworld, they told him blandly.
Gneaus Julius Storm was a powerful man. His private army was better trained, motivated, and equipped
than Confederation’s remarkable Marines. But his Iron Legion was not just a band of freebooters. It was
a diversified holding company with minority interests in scores of major corporations. It did not just fight
and live high for a while on its take. Its investments were the long-term security of its people.
The Fortress of Iron stretched tentacles in a thousand directions, though in the world of business and
finance it was not a major power. Its interests could be manipulated by anyone with the money and
desire.
That was one lever the giants used to get their way.
In the past they had manipulated his personal conflicts with Richard Hawkblood, playing to his vanity
and hatred. But he had outgrown his susceptibility to emotional extortion.
“It’ll be something unique this time,” he whispered.
Vainly, he strove to think of a way to outmaneuver someone he did not yet know, someone whose
intentions were not yet clear.
He ignored the flying lizard. It waited patiently, accustomed to his brooding way.
Storm took an ancient clarinet from a case lying beside his chair. He examined the reed, wet it. He
began playing a piece not five men alive could have recognized.
He had come across the sheet music in a junk shop during his Old Earth visit. The title, “Stranger on the
Shore,” had caught his imagination. It fit so well. He felt like a stranger on the shore of time, born a
millennium and a half out of his natural era. He belonged more properly to the age of Knollys and
Hawkwood.
The lonely, haunting melody set his spirit free. Even with his family, with friends, or in crowds, Gneaus
Storm felt set apart, outside. He was comfortable only when sequestered here in his study, surrounded
by the things with which he had constructed a stronghold of the soul.
Yet he could not be without people. He had to have them there, in the Fortress, potentially available, or
he felt even more alone.
 

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