He did not often run on his own emotions. He almost always ran on the feelings and ideals of his dead commander. His own inclination, at that instant, was to let the bombs blow and send the Legion off in one huge, dramatic stroke. It would be like the ancients sending their dead out to sea in a burning ship.
He had very little purpose left in life, he thought. Since leaving the Shadowline he had not looked ahead, beyond surviving long enough to exact revenge. He was no longer a man with tomorrows.
"Tell me about those bombs, Michael. Or I'll kill you now, here."
"You can't." Sly smile. "Gneaus wouldn't permit it."
"Oh, my poor foolish friend," Cassius said, wearing his cruelest, most self-satisfied smile. "Have I got news for you. Gneaus Julius Storm died leading a successful assault on Twilight Town. You and yours are all mine now."
Dee became more aguey and pallid. "No! You're lying."
"Sorry, boy. He died at Twilight, along with Helmut, Thurston, Lucifer, and your wife and sons." Metallic chuckle. "It was a classic bloodletting. And now you've got no exits."
Dee fainted.
"The circle closes, Michael," Cassius said when Dee recovered. "The cycle completes itself. The last revenges are in the wind. Then it begins anew." Wearily, Cassius drew the back of his handless wrist across his forehead. "Those were some of your brother's last thoughts."
Mouse picked it up. "A revenge raid on Prefactlas to even scores with the Sangaree, and from the ruins a survivor returned like a phoenix to exact a revenge of his own. Now Cassius is the only survivor of the Prefactlas raiders. And of Deeth's people there's only you."
The word had come, while Michael was unconscious, that Navy had caught up with the remnants of the fleet that had attacked the Fortress. No quarter had been given. None ever was.
Though there was no physical proof, Cassius wanted to believe that the Sangaree Deeth had died there. But there was no justice in this universe. His hope might prove mere wishful thinking.
"You and me, Michael," Cassius said. He laid a gentle hand on Mouse's shoulder. "Then it begins anew, with Gneaus's phoenix."
He was sad for Mouse. The boy was filled with hatred for his father's killers. He had done some tall and frightful promising during Michael's unconsciousness. "Mouse, I wish you wouldn't. I wish you'd just let it be," he said.
A stubborn, angry expression fixed itself on Mouse's face. He shook his head.
"Michael? About the bombs?"
Fifty-Seven: 3032 AD
Deeth waited till the woman was a step away, swinging her knife. He blocked the blow, stepped inside, sank his own blade into her chest. She clawed at his face as she went down.
He stood over her, watching her die. His stroke had been the only one he had struck himself. This was the first death he had dealt personally since he had killed the old man in the cave.
He felt no special satisfaction or joy. He felt almost nothing. The lack surprised him for only an instant. He never had been enthusiastic about fulfilling his father's plans.
What now? The Norbon revenge was nearly complete. The debt was almost paid. The final act, under Michael's direction, was beyond his participation. There was nothing left but to evade the fleet now passing the Fortress, pursuing his raidships.
Nothing remained but the mundanity of Norbon directorship. A huge loathing welled up within him. He never had wanted to be Head. He no longer needed the position's power. And without Rhafu, feeling the way he felt now, he might not be able to hold on.
He stalked through the Fortress of Iron, a thoughtful specter silently prowling a tomb. He paused in Storm's study, slowly poked through his enemy's effects. He began to feel a sense of spiritual kinship, to scent out a kindred loneliness. The man was not entirely alien. He was as much out of tune with humanity as his enemy was with his own people.
He found several undamaged, space-ready singleships on the shiplock level. He considered them. They were slow, but could travel almost indefinitely, seizing their power from the binding energy of the universe itself. A man who had the time could ride one forever.
Deeth summoned his remaining raidmaster, gave him a letter for his cousin Taake. It assigned Taake the duties of Head till his own return. The raidmaster glanced at it. "Where will you be, sir?"
"I'm going to make a pilgrimage."
"Sir?"
Deeth waved him away. "Go. Go on. Get out before they send someone back to check this place out."
Still not sure what he would do, Deeth boarded the ship he had chosen. It was a fat, slow vessel that had done small-time raven work. It carried both medicare cradles and cryobiological storage units. But no instel. Even the Legion had been unable to afford instel for all its ships.
The raidmaster spaced. Deeth spent more hours wandering the ruins of his enemy's home, wondering, at times, if Boris Storm and Thaddeus Walters had done the same after silencing the Norbon station. He finally took space himself, cutting a hyper arc for the center of the galaxy. He had no intention of going that far, only of running along till he had come to some understanding with and of himself.
His course sloped through the Centerward March of Ulant. He dropped hyper long enough to gather news of what had happened on Blackworld.
He could not be sure. It sounded like he had failed.
Without Rhafu there to push him he could not care. It no longer seemed to matter.
He apologized to his father's ghost, set his drives on auto, sealed himself into a cryo storage unit.
Someday the drive would fail and he would fall into normspace. Then he would waken and look out at a whole new universe... Or the ship might plow through the heart of a sun, where the field stresses were so great they would yank the vessel out of hyper. Or...
He did not care.
Staying alive did not much matter either.
Fifty-Eight: 3032 AD
Mouse sat in the crawler operator's seat, watching Cassius and Pollyanna. Polly kept zigging round, unable to stand still. She kept looking at Cassius strangely. And Cassius kept smiling that funny, boyish, embarrassed smile.
Mouse was a little surprised at Walters too. Cassius never thought out loud. Not about the way he felt.
Walters asked Pollyanna, "You know the character in The Merchant of Venice, the Jew, who does the soliloquy about his right to hurt like anybody else?"
"Shylock."
"Yeah. Shylock. That's me. I'm like him. I've got a right to be human too. It's just that I'm so old and been in this business so long that I don't show it anymore."
"But that wasn't what Shylock was really talking about. He was just trying to rationalize the revenge he was taking on... " She shut up.
Mouse did not know Shakespeare, but he got the feeling Pollyanna had reached the sudden conclusion that Cassius and this Shylock were alike after all. He lifted a leg onto the control panel, leaned back, chewed the corner of a fingernail. "You're not going to start singing your death song, are you?" he asked Cassius.
"Me? Never. I may not be completely happy with my life, but I sure as hell plan to stick around as long as I can. No, I've been thinking about getting out of the mainstream. If this kind of life has been in it. I might become a crazy old hermit on a mountain somewhere, coming down to prophesy at the villagers once a year. Or run off to the Starfishers. Or become a McGraw or a Freehauler. Anything to get away from the past. I'd just as soon do my fade before Confederation starts investigating the Shadowline, too. I don't have the patience to deal with those people. That's why I left the Corps."