Book 1 - Shadowline Read Online Free PDF Page A

family.
    Today his boys were protecting him from what they believed was
his biggest weakness. In his more bitter moments he was inclined to
agree. His life would be safer, smoother, and richer if he were to
assume a more pragmatic attitude toward Michael Dee.
    “Michael, Michael, I’ve had enemies who were better
brothers than you are.”
    He opened a desk drawer and stabbed a button. The summons
traveled throughout the Fortress of Iron. While awaiting
Cassius’s response he returned to his clarinet and
“Stranger on the Shore.”
     
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Nine: 3031 AD
    Mouse stepped into Colonel Walters’s office. “The
Colonel in?” he asked the orderly.
    “Yes, sir. You wanted to see him?”
    “If he isn’t busy.”
    The orderly spoke into a comm. “Masato Storm to see you,
Colonel.” To Mouse, “Go on in, sir.”
    Mouse stepped into the spartan room that served Thaddeus
Immanuel Walters as office and refuge. It was almost as barren as
his father’s study was cluttered.
    The Colonel was down on his knees with his back to the door,
eyes at tabletop level, watching a little plastic dump truck scoot
around a plastic track. The toy would dump a load of marbles, then
scoot back and, through a complicated series of steps, reload the
marbles and start over. The Colonel used a tiny screwdriver to
probe the device that lifted the marbles for reloading. Two of the
marbles had not gone up. “Mouse?”
    “In the flesh.”
    “When did you get in?”
    “Last night. Late.”
    “Seen your father yet?” Walters shimmed the lifter
with the screwdriver blade. It did no good.
    “I was just down there. Looked like he was in one of his
moods. I didn’t bother him.”
    “He is. Something’s up. He smells it.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Not sure yet. Damn! You’d think they’d have
built these things so you could fix them.” He dropped the
screwdriver and rose.
    Walters was decades older than Gneaus Storm. He was thin, dark,
cold of expression, aquiline, narrow of eye. He had been born
Thaddeus Immanuel Walters, but his friends called him Cassius. He
had received the nickname in his plebe year at Academy, for his
supposed “lean and hungry look.”
    He was a disturbing man. He had an intense, snakelike stare.
Mouse had known him all his life and still was not comfortable with
him.
A strange one
, he thought.
His profession is death. He’s
seen it all. Yet he takes pleasure in restoring these old-time
toys
.
    Cassius had only one hand, his left. The other he had lost long
ago, to Fearchild Dee, the son of Michael Dee, when he and Gneaus
had been involved in an operation on a world otherwise unmemorable.
Like Storm, he refused to have his handicaps surgically rectified.
He claimed they reminded him to be careful.
    Cassius had been with the Legion since its inception, before
Gneaus’s birth, on a world called Prefactlas.
    “Why did you want me to come home?” Mouse asked.
“Your message scared the hell out of me. Then I get here and
find out everything’s almost normal.”
    “Normalcy is an illusion. Especially here. Especially
now.”
    Mouse shuddered. Cassius spoke without inflection. He had lost
his natural larynx to a Ulantonid bullet on Sierra. His prosthesis
had just the one deep, burring tone, like that of a primitive
talking computer.
    “We feel the forces gathering. When you get as old as we
are you can smell it in the ether.”
    Cassius did something with his toy, then turned to Mouse. His
hand shot out.
    The blow could have killed. Mouse slid away, crouched, prepared
to defend himself.
    Cassius’s smile was a thin thing that looked alien on his
narrow, pale lips. “You’re good.”
    Mouse smiled back. “I keep in practice. I’ve put in
for Intelligence. What do you think?”
    “You’ll do. You’re your father’s son.
I’m sorry I missed you last time I was in Luna Command. I
wanted to introduce you to some people.”
    “I was in the Crab Nebula. A sunjammer race. My partner
and I won it. Even beat a