Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (33 page)

Storm sent Thurston to find Blake.

“Mr. Blake,” he said when the man arrived, “I’m down to my last gasp. The one option I have left is to scratch Dee’s base of operations.”

“Colonel . . . ”

“It’s not open to debate this time. We’re not going to argue about it. It’s past that stage. I’m going to do it. I’m telling you so we can observe the proprieties. I’m going to do it even if you insist on a vote. Remember, I control the proxies. One of my ships will be here soon. When it shows, I’ll use it to jump to Twilight.”

“Colonel . . . ”

“Blake, it looks like we’re going to lose the Whitlandsund. If Cassius is going to have any chance to break through and save your ass, I’m going to have to destroy Dee’s logistics. Can’t you understand that?”

“Won’t he just grab Edgeward?”

“He might try. I can’t guarantee that he won’t. He’ll have a lot of trouble doing it now. You’re ready for him. And he’s been outside a long time, without much coming down from Twilight to support him. Yet. He didn’t count on heavy resistance.”

“So?”

“So he’s going to run low on munitions before he gets new stocks. I think he’s going to take the Whitlandsund no matter what we do. But if we do hit Twilight, then we have him in the same position he has Cassius. In order to survive, he’ll have to take Twilight or Edgeward. Either way, he’ll have to pull me out of the pass. Enough, hopefully, so Cassius can break through. If we manage that, Dee is done for. Unless he uses nuclears again. Which I doubt he has with him, but which he’ll have on tap up north. So from our viewpoint, taking Twilight has become an imperative.”

Storm did not admit just how much he was guessing and hoping. Michael, even in predictable circumstances, could be unpredictable. There was a good chance he would go the easy way and spread nuclears around, if he had them. Or he might take a cue from Hawksblood and sit tight till his ammo was gone, hoping he could outlast Cassius. Walters’s supply situation was just as iffy as Dee’s.

Days groaned past. Men and arms trickled over from the Shadowline, but never enough to halt Dee’s gradual conquest of the Whitlandsund.

There was a tremendous inertia in the westward flow of men and materiel in the Shadowline. It had to be overcome and turned around before a large and effective force could be mustered against Michael . . . 

“Father, Havik wants to talk to you,” Thurston said one morning.

“Bring him up over here.” Storm faced a screen. “Yes, Colonel?”

“Colonel Storm, I can’t do the job. I’m sorry. I’m too bad shot up and this obsolete equipment . . . Crying won’t change it. Sorry, sir. What I’d like is permission to stop trying to be everywhere so I can concentrate on holding a bridgehead. We’ll need some place to assemble a counterattack once you’ve brought enough equipment back.”

Storm nodded. “I’ve been expecting it, Colonel. Go ahead and pull in your lines. And so you won’t feel too bad, I want you to know I think you’ve done all you could. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more support.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“Thurston, where’s Cassius now?” Storm asked.

“Still a long way to go, Father.” Thurston indicated a light on the big board. “He’s rolling around the clock, but those damned machines just don’t move very fast. Do you want me to link you through?”

“Not now. It’s too early in the morning for a squabble.”

He and Cassius had been conferring regularly. Every conference degenerated into an argument. The loss of the Fortress had hit Walters harder than had anything else in the whole time Storm had known him. Finally, after ages, warfare had become a personal thing for Cassius. Storm anticipated a classic bloodletting when he came to grips with Dee.

He checked Ceislak’s progress. It was a long fly from Helga’s World. The Blackworld business might be over before Hakes arrived.

Storm spent much of his time alone, writing. He had a lot of thoughts he wanted committed to writing. He hoped Mouse would understand what he was trying to convey.

The
Ehrhardt
rumbled into Edgeward’s crude little space port. Storm went out to greet her.

The pilot was one of his granddaughters. No one else aboard was conscious. He walked along the passenger aisles, looking down at Mouse, Lucifer, and others of his children and grandchildren, as well as the progeny of his men. He took a while, strolling along. This would be the last he saw them all.

Silly, lovely Frieda had surrendered her tomorrows on behalf of theirs. She was a soldier’s daughter indeed.

“She tricked us, Grandpapa,” his granddaughter told him. “We wanted to stay. Even the little ones. Grandmama drugged the water supply. I guess she cooked it up with the other old folks. They put us on the ship while we were out and sent us off on auto, with the Starfishers to cover us. It just isn’t fair!”

“Did you want to die, Goldilocks?”

“No. But they needed us there. We should be there right now . . . ”

“You’d be dead if you were. We haven’t been able to raise the Fortress for days. Even the automatic signals are out.” He did not entertain the slightest illusion. The Fortress had been taken, all the way down to the computers at its heart. And Deeth would have taken no more prisoners than had Boris and Cassius on Prefactlas.

“Oh.” His granddaughter started crying.

“Hey. Hey, Honey. No tears now. They chose . . . We’re the Iron Legion, remember?” He ground his teeth, afraid the tears would be infectious.

“I don’t care!”

“Now, now, there’re outsiders waiting out there.”

She tried to stifle the flood.

“What about you, Goldilocks? Why were you awake?”

“They fixed me to wake up after it was too late to turn back. Somebody had to bring her in. I’m the best pilot. Mouse isn’t rated on anything this big. What’re we going to do, Grandpapa?”

Storm strained at being cheerful. “We won one, we lost one, Honey. Now we’re going for best two out of three. We’re going to settle with them here.” His optimism fell flat. He could not force it through a very real despair. “They won’t get away with it cheap, Honeycakes. We’ll make them sorry they didn’t leave us alone.”

As with so many promises he had made lately, he did not see how he could make this one bear fruit.

The old shuttle crawler had to make three trips to carry all the youngsters into the city. Edgeward’s people welcomed them warmly, not understanding that the city and its problems were not the real reason they found themselves orphaned and homeless.

The fourth trip out the crawler carried Storm’s raiding party. Thurston. Lucifer. Helmut. Mouse. The best of the men who had survived the ambush of Michael’s convoy. Pollyanna, whom no argument had been able to dissuade from going along in pursuit of a rapprochement with her ex-husband. And then there was Albin Korando, who wanted to go home, to help impose order and reason on the city that had sent him into exile.

Storm examined Korando before he started the liftoff checkdown. The man was a lean black eagle, grimly trying to familiarize himself with his weapons. He looked, Storm thought, much as Cassius might if ever Walters found himself a mission with special personal relevance. Much as Cassius must look right now, in fact.

They made a silent, grim band of commandos. There was no small talk, no nervous joking, no murmured rehearsals. On the edge of this action each preferred to be isolated with his or her thoughts.

Storm hit the go.

Fifty: 3032 AD

Storm took the cruiser in low and fast and put her down a hundred meters from Twilight’s south lock. His weapons started talking while he was still aloft. Shafts of coherent light stabbed at everything outside the dome. Shellguns bit at the stressglass of the dome itself, chewing a hole through it two hundred meters west of the lock. Freezing atmosphere roared out, mixed with dust in violent clouds. His searchlights probed for enemies who never appeared.

The decompression was not explosive. The Twilighters would have time to get off the streets, into buildings that could be sealed. But time to insure personal survival was all Storm meant to allow them.

Helmut captured the lock before Storm finished cycling down. Darksword was moving the last of the raiders through it when Storm hit dirt himself. Accompanied by Korando, Pollyanna, Thurston, Lucifer, and Mouse, Gneaus set out for Twilight’s equivalent of City Hall.

He had given orders to shoot anything that moved. He wanted these Twilighters cowed fast. The tininess of his force compelled him to hit hard and keep on hitting. He dared allow his enemies no time to regain their balance.

The only resistance he encountered was a lone sniper who surrendered the moment he received counterfire.

The entry to Twilight’s City Hall, like Edgeward’s, was a massive airlock. The outer door was sealed. “Blow it,” Storm told Thurston.

His son placed the charges. “Stand back, people,” he shouted just before the Boom!

Storm clambered through the wreckage, checked the inner door. It was not secured. “Rig something over that outer doorway,” he ordered.

Mouse and Lucifer scrounged plastic panels and pounded them into place. “They’ll still leak, Father,” Mouse said.

“They’ll prevent complete decompression. That’s all I’m worried about now.”

He did not want to hurt civilians. The ordinary people of Twilight, like those of nations at war at any time, were simply victims of their leadership.

He was in a generous mood. In other times and places he had been heard to say that people were guilty of their leadership.

Storm and Thurston poised themselves, ready for the inner door. “Go!” Thurston growled. Storm kicked. Thurston went through on his jump pack, rocketing at an angle across a chamber twenty meters by thirty. Laseguns probed for him. Their beams went wide.

Thurston let go an antitank rocket. Before the debris settled, Storm, Lucifer, and Mouse moved in, firing, and spread out behind furniture. Pollyanna and Korando had enough sense to stay out of action for which they had no training. They indulged only in a little supportive sniping.

Thurston’s second rocket, accompanied by grenades from the others, convinced the opposition. They surrendered. They wore no combat suits. Only four of fifteen had survived the exchange.

Korando sealed the inner door before more atmosphere escaped.

“Where’re the big people?” Storm demanded of the prisoners, after folding his faceplate back. “Where’s Meacham?”

He received surly looks in reply.

“All right. Be that way. Lucifer. Shoot them one at a time till somebody answers me.”

They looked into his one grim eye and believed him. He was not bluffing. He no longer cared, especially about Michael’s men. The lives he valued most had been wasted already.

“Upstairs. Fourth level. Communications center. Yelling for help.”

“Thank you. You’re true gentlemen. Lead the way.”

They balked.

A twitch of his trigger finger got them moving.

The elevators were dead. Storm shrugged, unsurprised. His guides led him to an emergency stairwell. Thurston blew the locked fire door. The big man could have achieved his end with a lasegun bolt, but he enjoyed the bangs.

A bolt poked through the smoke, stabbing a small, neat hole through Lucifer’s right calf. The ambusher died before he could take a second shot.

“Pollyanna, take care of him,” Storm ordered. “You four. Up the stairs. Smartly now.”

Two went down before they reached the fourth floor. Three snipers joined them.

While Thurston prepared to blow the comm center door, Korando told Storm, “These men aren’t Twilighters. They’re not even Blackworlders.”

“I didn’t think they were. Blackworlders would be a little more careful about gunfighting in tight places. You spend your life worrying about vacuum, you don’t go shooting where you might put holes in the walls.”

“Exactly.”

“Stand back. When that door goes we’re going to get a lot of fire.”

Thurston set off his charges. The counterfire came. Storm and his sons hurled grenades around the door frame, frags first, then tear gas, then smoke. After a brief pause they moved in.

Through the haze, using his infrared filters, Storm could see men trying to get out other exits. “Mouse. Stop those men over there. Korando, over there.” He and Thurston bulled straight ahead, charging a group that looked like they could be troublesome. They were a tough-looking crew, and among them Storm saw his brother’s son Seth-Infinite.

Thurston announced his approach with a rocket. Hands flew up. In all the smoke and tear gas the Twilighters could not determine the number of their attackers.

Seth-Infinite managed to slide away in the confusion.

Storm herded the gagging prisoners to the center of the room. He posted Mouse, Thurston, and Korando at doors. When Pollyanna, supporting Lucifer, arrived, he left the main door to her. He sat down and waited for the air to clear, for Helmut to report how it was going elsewhere.

The comm boards around him chattered wildly as people all across the city demanded instructions.

The air cleared enough. Storm opened his face plate. “Which one’s Meacham?” he demanded.

A very sick old man, who fit Storm’s notion of an elderly brigand, timorously raised a hand. The gases and smoke had left him puked out and aguey. From the corner of his eye Storm caught Korando’s slight affirmative nod.

“Would you mind awfully, sir, explaining what the hell you’ve been trying to do? Would you kindly tell me why you broke your contract with Richard Hawksblood in favor of a deal with that bandit Michael Dee? Or Diebold Amelung, if you prefer? And, for the sake of heaven, why you’ve been using nuclears on my people in the Shadowline?”

Meacham’s jaw dropped. He peered up at Storm in unadulterated disbelief. Gradually, an air of cynicism crept over his tired old body.

“Ah. I see,” Storm said. “He’s done it to you, too. Believe it or not, old man. It’s true. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Briefly, he sketched what had happened to Wulf.

“I didn’t know . . . ” Meacham mumbled. Then, “We lost communications with the Shadowline weeks ago. Equipment failure is what they told me. Amelung’s son came back and said everything was going fine. He said our troops were holding you and work on the mohole was ahead of schedule.”