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."

Twenty-Eight: 3052 AD

I said my father had enemies of whom he was unaware. The same was true of friends. He was a hard man, but had a strong sense of justice. It did not move him as often as it might have, but when it did, it made him friends who remained loyal forever. Such friends were the High Seiners, the Starfishers, whom he saved from enslavement on Gales.

—Masato Igarashi Storm

Twenty-Nine: 2973 AD

It was pure one-in-a-quadrillion chance. Glowworm and her sister raiders had jumped into the gulf and gone doggo, hoping they could lose Navy, which had destroyed one of their band already. It had been a long, hard chase. The three ship's commanders were scared and desperate. On Glowworm the group leader nearly panicked when detection picked up approaching ships.

Almost, but not quite. Powered-down vessels are hard to spot unless a hunter gets close. He decided to see what Navy did.

His detection operator soon said, "That's not them, sir. Too big. I mean, we're getting them from too far out, and they're moving too slow."

The group leader studied the patterns. He had seen nothing like this before. In time, he murmured, "Holy Christ! There ain't nothing that big. Nothing but... "

Nothing but Starfisher harvestships.

Navy was forgotten. "Track. Get a fix on their course. And nobody does anything to show them we're here. Understood?" He took his own advice. Ship to ship messages were hand carried by suited couriers till the harvestfleet left detection.

Eight great vessels shouldering along at minuscule velocities... The group leader was tempted to abandon his employer then and there. A man could name his price for what he had found.

The Starfishers controlled production of an element critical to interstellar communications systems. There was no other source, and the source was terribly limited. He who won control of a harvest fleet won control of fabulous wealth and power.

In the end, fear drove the group leader to his master.

Michael Dee did the obvious. He gathered ships and went after the harvestfleet. The operation remained his secret alone. He saw not only the obvious profit but a chance to make himself master of his own destiny.

He gambled on a surprise attack. His forces were insufficient for a plain face-to-face showdown with eight harvestships. He gambled, and he lost. He squandered his raiders and barely escaped with his life. In his fury at being thwarted he left three harvestships broken, derelict—and a nation which would do him evil gleefully whenever the opportunity arose.