Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (36 page)

Mouse had not informed anyone that he was returning, but the word was out by the time he entered Edgeward. Blake was waiting for him.

“Where’s Colonel Storm?” Blake asked. His face was drawn. He feared the worst.

“My father was killed in action against Sangaree . . . ” Mouse stopped to look inside himself. Somehow, for the outside world, he was removing himself from his feelings. He was reporting it as if it had happened to a stranger.

“And Albin Korando?”

“Killed in action, Mr. Blake. I’m sorry.”

“No. That’s terrible. I’d hoped . . . What about Colonel Darksword?”

“Dead, sir. If you don’t see someone with me, he’s dead. The cruiser is full of bodies. It was rough up there.”

“Your brother Thurston, too?”

Mouse nodded.

“Who’s going to take charge? Colonel Walters is cut off in the Shadowline . . . ”

“I speak for the Legion, Mr. Blake. We have a new commander. Nothing else changes. If you’ll excuse me?”

Blake struggled to roll along with Mouse. “What happened?” There was an almost whining, pleading note in his voice. The Shadowline War was tearing him to pieces.

For a moment Mouse could sense the man’s feelings. Blake was thinking,
What have I wrought? What have I unleashed? What did I do that reduced Blackworld to this state?

Mouse shut everything out. He strode toward City Hall, unconsciously imitating the walk of Gneaus Julius Storm. Knifing through his pain was a driving need to demonstrate his competence, to show everyone that he could step into his father’s role.

Heads turned when he entered the war room. He checked the boards. Dee now held the Whitlandsund. Cassius’s marker had reached the shade station. The unit markers were dense there. Only a handful lay more than five hundred kilometers west of the station. Those were all small units meant to aid the Twilighters in their withdrawal from the Shadowline’s end.

The situation was in balance, in tension. Cassius was ready to jump off. It was discussion time.

“Get Colonel Walters on the scrambled clear trunk,” Mouse ordered.

The man responsible, who seemed on the edge of exhaustion, gave him a brief who-in-the-hell-are-you? look before turning to his equipment.

Cassius came on quickly.

“Masato, Colonel.”

“Mouse. How are you?” Then Walters got a better look at his face. “What happened?”

“Father’s dead. And Helmut. And Thurston and Lucifer. Both younger Dees. And Richard Hawksblood. They murdered him and his staff.”

Cassius frowned.

“All beyond-the-resurrection.”

Cassius’s features grew taut, grim.

“Cassius, we’re the only ones left.”

“It’s ending, then. But first there’s Michael Dee. And his Sangaree.”

“Dee is trapped. We cleaned out Twilight. He can’t go back.”

“He doesn’t know? Don’t let him find out.”

“Ceislak’s here now. I’m taking over at this end. I can squeeze him . . . ”

“Keep Ceislak at Edgeward. Protect the city. Don’t let Dee hold it hostage. And get your ships off the ground. Don’t give Dee any way out. Make him stand and fight. But let me take care of that part. I’ll make the wasting of the Legion useful.”

Mouse had never seen Cassius’s face so expressive. His grief and hatred were primal.

“As you wish. I’ll make my dispositions right away.”

“Did your father . . . say anything?”

“Not much. He did it on purpose, Cassius. To give me a chance to get the Dees from behind. He left a letter. He wrote it before he went up. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I have a feeling he knew he wasn’t coming back.”

“Let me know what he had to say. Soon. We’ll be jumping off in a few hours.”

“Right.”

Blake, with his wife’s help, arrived. The head of the Corporation seemed to have shrunk into a tiny old cripple. Before he could begin condolences that would only aggravate, despite their sincerity. Mouse told him, “It’ll be over soon, Mr. Blake. We’ll start clearing the Whitlandsund in a few hours. I’ll be holding Ceislak’s battalion in reserve in case Dee turns on Edgeward.”

Blake started to say something. Grace touched his hand lightly.

“Pollyanna’s in the hospital, Mr. Blake. I expect she’d appreciate a friendly face. I think her heart has been hurt worse than her body. She lost Lucifer and Korando both, and she was very fond of my father.” He turned away from Blake. “Ceislak. I want a screen of pickets around the crater. I want all the listening devices out there doublechecked. If Dee turns on us, we’ll need all the warning we can get. Donnerman. Where’s Donnerman? Donnerman, I want your ships off planet as soon as possible. Gentlemen, I’ll be in my father’s apartment if I’m needed.” He pushed out of the war room and went to Storm’s quarters.

Geri and Freki whined pathetically. They rushed into the hall, ran back and forth anxiously, searching for their master. Finally, they turned on him with sorrowful eyes.

“He won’t be coming back,” Mouse whispered. “I’m sorry.”

They seemed to understand. The whining grew louder. One let out what sounded like a low moan.

Mouse looked at the ravenshrikes. They had retreated into their little nest, into a tight, intertwined tangle from which they refused to be drawn. They knew. He tried coaxing them with canned meat from the store of delicacies his father had kept. They would not open their devil eyes.

He sighed, looked for the letter.

It lay on his father’s desk, page after page of hasty scrawl beneath a plain sheet bearing nothing but the name Masato. Storm’s Bible and clarinet weighted them down. The Bible lay open at Ecclesiastes, the clarinet book-marking.

“I should’ve guessed when he didn’t take them with him,” he whispered.

The letter, though addressed to him, sounded like an ecclesiastical missive from Gneaus Storm. It began: “Today I hazard the Plain of Armageddon, the blood-drenched field of Ragnarok, to play my part in a destined Gotterdamerung . . . ”

Mouse read it three times before he returned to the war room, the Sirian warhounds tagging his heels apathetically. Their tails were between their legs and their noses were down, and they made strange snuffling sounds in their throats, but they stayed with him.

A whisper ran around the room. Technicians turned to watch his entrance. The Legionnaires took the behavior of the dogs as somehow symbolic, as a seal on the transfer of the mantle of power.

“Cassius,” Mouse said, “he knew he was going to die. He planned it. So there wouldn’t be any reason for the rest of us to coddle Michael Dee anymore. It was the only way he could keep from breaking his word.”

Cassius’s laugh was both harsh and sad. “He always found a way to slide around that promise. Too bad he couldn’t find it in him to go back on it.” Walters’s mad humor faded. “Don’t let Michael find out. That’s got to be our most important secret.” Walters’s face became dreadful, something inhuman, something demigodly. Something archetypal. “It’s time to jump off. Take care, Mouse.” He switched off before Mouse could question him as to his intentions.

What is he going to do?
Mouse wondered. He knew Cassius. It would be something unusual, something nobody would expect. Quite possibly something impossible . . . He settled into the chair his father had been wont to occupy. His gaze seldom strayed from the situation boards.

At times one or another of the technicians would glance his way and shudder. A slim, oriental youth of small stature filled the Colonel’s chair, yet . . . Yet there was an aura about him, as if a ghost sat in the chair with him. The body of Gneaus Julius Storm had perished, but the spirit lived on in his youngest son.

Fifty-Four: 3032 AD

The man called Cassius, through holonet exposure in Michael Dee’s merc war documentaries, was more widely known than Confederation’s Premier. Yet he was a figure of mystery, an unknown even to his intimates. What made him tick? What made him laugh or cry? No one really knew.

He surveyed the Legion. He considered his public image, and reflected that he probably knew Cassius less well than did all those billions who watched the holocasts. They had an image of Thaddeus Immanuel Walters, and the tape editors maintained its consistency. But the Walters self-image rambled around centuries, and he had not had time to discover who and what he was.

The massed crawlers showed up well on infrared. There were thirty-five of them, in two long lines, idling, awaiting his commands. The longer line of twenty-five, led by eight captured battle crawlers, would run for the Whitlandsund. They would do so without benefit of shade, which would warn Dee that they were coming.

The remaining ten units would follow Cassius himself.

No point in delaying any longer
, Walters thought. He picked up a mike, said, “White Knight, White Knight, this is Charlemagne. Go. I say again, go. Over.”

“Charlemagne, Charlemagne, this is White Knight. Acknowledge go. Out.”

“Charlemagne, out.”

The larger force began rolling.

Cassius’s group consisted of six long-range charters, three pumpers, and his own command combat crawler. The charters, carrying minimum crews, were expendable. They would find the way. The four big rigs were crammed with men and equipment.

Cassius shifted comm nets. “Babylon, Babylon, this is Starfire. Signals follow. Stray Dog One, go. Stray Dog One, go. Over.”

A charter rumbled into sunlight.

The formations Cassius used crossing uncharted territory, once he entered it a few hours north-northeast of the Shadowline, he adapted from those of ancient surface navies. The charters ran in a broad screen ahead of the four important crawlers, ready to relay warning of any danger.

They ran far faster than was customary for explorers. The run Cassius was making was dangerously long. If the crawlers escaped sunlight at all, it would be with screens severely weakened.

He kept the crawlers rolling, knowing his chances were grim.

Maximum computation capacity and power in each vehicle was devoted to keeping in touch with Walters. He wanted to know what was happening every instant, hoping he could keep up speed and still not lose two crawlers to the same trap. Like a spider in hiding, waiting for something to disturb her web, he sat amid his comm gear, listening. Hour upon hour passed. He said not a word. His crewmen began checking to see if he was all right.

The bad part of warmaking
, he thought,
is the ’tween-battles. There’s too much time to think, to remember
.

He could do nothing but endure the pain, the care, the fear. He tried to banish the ghosts that came to haunt him, and could not. He discovered that he had acquired a new squad. His wife and daughter. The Fortress of Iron. Gneaus, Wulf. Helmut. Big, dull Thurston, who may have been the only happy man in the Legion. Richard Hawksblood, the ancient enemy, with whom he had felt a bond of spirit. He had not seen Hawksblood in so long he could not remember the man’s face. Homer. Benjamin. Lucifer. The younger Dees, long might they burn in torment. Doskal Mennike, who had been his protégé at Academy. Someday he would have to explain to Mennike’s father. What could he tell the old man? Only that, one and all, they had been played for pawns and fools by Sangaree. It was not an admission that would come easily.

A long-ago ghost came. Tamara Walters, a favorite niece whose ship had vanished without trace during the Ulantonid War. Why was he remembering that far back?

Hadn’t he made his peace with the elder terrors? Were all his losses, injuries, and sins going to return and parade?

“Starfire, Starfire, this is Stray Dog Four. I’ve hit heat erosion. Can’t back free.” The voice was tight and rigid. The man talking knew there would be no rescue attempt. There was not enough time. To try would seal the fate of everyone else. But he had accepted the risks when he had volunteered. “My instruments show a streak running zero five seven relative, eighty meters wide at least six meters deep. Good luck, Starfire. Stray Dog Four, out.”

Cassius did not respond to the signal, merely passed the warning to the other crawlers, each of which slowed to skirt the danger. What could he say to a man he was leaving to die? He could do nothing but add a face and name to the list of men he had, through his own doing, outlived.

The media and his colleagues called him the ultimate commander. None but he realized that the ultimate commander was a pose, an image behind which Thaddeus Immanuel Walters concealed himself. Sometimes he managed to delude himself with the illusion.

Life, it would seem on remote observation, was something Cassius held no more holy than did the universe itself. Yet, like certain forgotten gods, he noted the fall of every sparrow, and put himself through silent, private purgatories for each. And still he went on, from battle to battle, without thought of becoming anything but what he was. Like Gneaus Storm, like so many mercenaries, he was a fatalist, moved by convictions of personal predestination. Unlike Storm, he did not fight and mock Fate, merely accepted it and sailed dispiritedly toward his final encounter with it.

At least a touch of solipsist madness was a must at every level of the freecorps.

Once past the heat erosion he redistributed his screen to fill the gap left by the lost crawler.

He lost another charter before he reached the Thunder Mountains three hundred kilometers north of the Whitlandsund, and yet another, through screen failure, while searching for a shadowed valley where the unit could hide from the demon sun. The crucial four heavy crawlers remained unharmed.

As soon as the charters had cooled down and loaded some gas snow, he sent them out again. Somewhere up here, according to the surveys done before the orbitals burned out, there was a possibility of slipping over the Edge of the World. A way to sweep around and beat Michael’s game of Thermopylae. The pass had shown as a small, dark trace on a few photo printouts . . . 

It was a long shot. The darkness might not be a pass at all . . . 

While he waited on the charters Cassius played with the command nets, hoping to intercept something from the war zone. He got nothing but static, which was all he really expected in that cove of darkness on the shores of the sea of fire.