I think it was a load order issue, I was giving the *shortcut line before any dlls were loaded that could do anything witht that... so I added it to the main step.rc after the theme include... and it works now! though for some reason it's not working like I want it to for clicks...

*shortcut "master" -145 -281 "C:\LiteStep\images\Know_Thy_Master-icon.png" .none .none #77k .none .none !recycle