Free Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline by Glen Cook

flame scarred the deep space night two light seconds from the Fortress. A swarm of hyper-capable seeker missiles went looking for Commander Abhoussi’s cruiser.
    The vessel had not traveled far.
    Alarms screamed aboard the warship. Automatic weapons responded.
    Constellations vanished behind a veil of fire. Abhoussi’s engineers seized their only chance. They kicked in the damaged generators. The cruiser twisted away into hyperspace, leaving fragments of itself behind. The seekers, unaware of the cruiser’s destination, began cutting lazy search patterns over half-light-year quadrants.
    Homer’s faint and seldom reliable psi touched upon a remote, short-lived scream. He leaned back and smiled at an aghast Benjamin. “It’s done.”
    “Ah, Homer . . . ” Benjamin could not think of anything to say. He could not meet the eyes of the watch-standers.
    Their faces were long and grey. Storm was going to cut their hearts out for not stopping this.
    The ravenshrike shuddered as it sensed the psionic scream and the pure disgust of the Center watch. It wrapped itself in wings and shadow, closed its eyes, and awaited its master’s return.
     
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Fifteen: 3020 AD
    Frog’s rescue became high drama. Blake’s crews reached him only after he had idled down and gone on intravenous and drugs in an extended, deep sleep free of the distress and pain of radiation sickness. He had emptied his oxygen tanks.
    His rescuers had to tunnel under his crawler to reach his belly hatch. They found it fouled with splash scale. They stung a heated hose through his tractor skin into his oxy main. A couple of Blake hogs chipped the scale off his hatch. Others sprayed the tunnel walls with a quick-setting epoxy. They scabbed a pumper trunk over the tunnel mouth and flooded it with breathables.
    They had to do it the hard way. Near the end, too pained to think straight, Frog had shed his hotsuit again. His stupidity came near costing him his life.
    The expenses of the rescue came out of Blake’s PR budget. The holonetnews snoops were on the scene, their cameras purring. The head office saw itself picking up a lot of cheap advertising. The name Blake Mining and Metals would get exposure all over Confederation.
    Old Frog had gotten more than he had bargained for. He had not impressed just a little girl and the people of his home town. He was a seven-day news wonder Confederation-wide. His adventure was being broadcast live from Edgeward. Taping crews braved the Shadowline to get his rescue recorded for later broadcast.
    He would have been amused and disgusted had he known about it. It was not quite the notoriety he had been seeking.
     
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Sixteen: 3031 AD
    Mouse hovered on the fringes of Pollyanna’s welcome-home party, attracted by the gaiety, repelled by Benjamin and Homer and what they had tried to do. Academy was all grey discipline and the absence of humor. He needed a little singing and dancing. The younger people were doing both, and building some mighty hangovers while they were at it.
    Their elders frowned around the party’s edges like thunderheads grumbling on grey horizons. Their faces were marked by an uneasiness bordering on dread. They’re standing there like brooding guardian idols in some Bronze Age temple , Mouse thought. Like the tongueless crows of doom .
    He tried to laugh at his own gloomy perception. His father’s moods must be catching.
    Storm, Cassius, and the other old ones had just come from a staff meeting. Mouse had not been permitted to attend. He guessed they had discussed the twins first.
    There had been one hell of a traffic load through Instel Communications. Hawksblood had, apparently, been consulted. He could not guess what had been decided. Cassius had had only enough time to whisper the news that the cruiser had survived. Barely.
    Then the Vice President for Procurement of Blake Mining and Metals, of Edgeward City on Blackworld, had made a contract presentation.
    Mouse could guess the drift. Everyone