Starfishers Volume 1: Shadowline (37 page)

He thought Brightside was what the old Christians had had in mind for Hell. With the Legion here Blackworld certainly was a planet of the damned.

The charters returned two days later. They had found the way across the mountains, but did not know if the larger units could manage it.

“We’ll give it a try,” Cassius said. He had spent too much time with his thoughts and away from his command. He had to be moving, to be involved, soon, or he would go mad reliving his losses.

The pass was a tight, tortuous canyon, and the going was slow, but there were few real problems till they had crossed the Edge of the World. Then, after they had passed the limit of the original survey, they encountered a crack in the mountain which crossed and blocked the way. The crevasse threatened Cassius’s entire scheme.

He refused to turn back. “We’re going over these mountains here,” he growled, “or we’ll die here. One or the other. Let’s find out how deep the son-of-a-bitch is.”

His driver idled down. Cassius clambered out his escape hatch, approached the obstacle. The lead crawler had put lights on it, but they did nothing to illuminate its depths. He stared down into darkness. After a minute he fired his lasegun downward. The flash revealed a bottom much nearer than he expected.

He returned to his crawler. “Stray Dog One, this is Starfire. Maneuver your unit around parallel to the crevasse. Over.”

It took two hours for the charter to wriggle into a position that suited him. “Stray Dog One, abandon your unit. Stray Dog Three, Stray Dog Six, push it over. Over.”

The two surviving charters groaned and strained. The vibration of their effort shook the stone of the Thunder Mountains, made the big crawlers shudder. Their engines growled and whined, their tracks ripped at the earth. They injured themselves badly, but managed to topple the crawler into the crevasse.

Cassius offloaded his troops and had them gather loose rock. They dumped the detritus around the fallen charter. Hours crept away. The bridge grew, became level. Cassius sent a charter over to test and tamp, then an empty pumper. The fill held both times. One by one, the remaining units rolled.

That crevasse was the last serious obstacle. Abandoning the surviving charters because they could no longer keep pace, Cassius swung the big units onto the route between Twilight and Edgeward. He sped southward, maintaining radio silence. Near Edgeward he swung west, toward Michael Dee and the Whitlandsund.

His troops were exhausted. They had been cramped in their crawlers for days, racked by tension, constantly haunted by the fear that the next minute would be the one when a track went into heat erosion, or the mountain slid away beneath them. Even so, Cassius offloaded them at the eastern mouth of the Whitlandsund and sent them in. They made contact quickly.

Walters broke radio silence at last. “Andiron, Andiron, this is Wormdoom, do you read, over.”

Mouse came on net only minutes later. “Wormdoom, this is Andiron. Shift to the scrambled trunk, over.”

Cassius shifted. Mouse squeaked, “Cassius, where the hell are you? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for six days.”

“I’m right outside your door, Mouse. Moving into the Whitlandsund. I need Ceislak’s men.”

“You’re on this side of the Edge of the World?”

“That’s right. How soon can you get those men here?”

“How did you manage that?”

“Never mind. I did it. Send me those men. We can talk after we finish Dee.”

“All right. They’re on their way. I don’t know how you did it . . . ”

Cassius cut him off, turned to listen to the tactical nets once more.

He had been listening in since returning to Darkside, trying to assess the situation back in the Shadowline. It did not look good for those he had left behind.

Fifty-Five: 3032 AD

It was a very grim, very sour Masato Storm who watched the big board in the war room. It looked terrible.

Someone moved a chair into place beside him. He glanced up at at a commtech. He was holding the chair for Pollyanna.

Mouse smiled weakly. “How are you? Any better?”

“Ready for anything. Except I limp a little. They say it’ll go away. How is it going?”

“Not good. I haven’t heard from Cassius for days. I’m scared for him. And up there . . . ” He indicated the board showing the Whitlandsund. “We made some gains when the first wave came over, but it’s slowed down. Way down. We’re still pushing them back, but not fast enough.”

“But you outnumber them.”

“We’ve lost too many tractors. We can’t bring our people over fast enough. It looks like we’ve only got two chances. Either Cassius turns up or my uncle runs out of ammunition.”

“Sir!” one of the commtechs yelled. “Sir, I’ve got Colonel Walters on Tac One.”

“Put him on over here. Pollyanna, you’re a good-luck charm. Maybe I’ll strap you into that chair.”

She smiled wanly. “I wasn’t too lucky for Frog. Or Lucifer. Or . . . ”

“Can it.” Cassius’s grim face came on screen. They argued back and forth about Ceislak’s battalion, and Mouse tried to discover how Walters had gotten to Darkside. Cassius broke off.

“He’s in a foul mood, isn’t he?” Pollyanna asked.

“That he is. And he can be just as nasty as he wants as long as he does his job. I feel a thousand percent better now.”

“Sir,” commtech said a few minutes later, “I have Colonel Walters again.”

“Put him over here.”

“Mouse?” Cassius said, “Sorry about snapping. It’s the nerves, I guess. It’s grim out here. As your father would put it, the Oriflamme is up.”

Pollyanna frowned a question. Mouse whispered, “No quarter given or asked.”

Cassius continued, “We’re in a bad spot. Nobody can back down. It’s all or nothing, and the losers die the death-without-resurrection.”

“I understand, Cassius. We’re all under pressure.”

“Your uncle has got what he wanted. His battle to the death.” A nasty smile crossed Walters’s mouth. “I don’t think the fool counted on being part of it, though.”

“No. One thing. He doesn’t know about Father yet. I want to save that as a special surprise. Let him count on that last-minute protection till it’s too late.”

“But of course! That’s why I wanted to keep it quiet.”

“The Legion never fought this bitterly,” Mouse said.

“Never before. We’ve got an emotional stake in this one, Mouse.”

Had it not been for the topographical advantages, Michael’s crew would have been obliterated long since. Dee’s men were good fighters, but they were not soldiers, not in the sense that the Legionnaires were. They were unaccustomed to extensive teamwork and the complexities of large, enduring operations. Though largely of human origin, they were tainted with the Sangaree raid-and-run philosophy.

“Michael’s people aren’t doing bad.”

“They’re cornered. I’ve got to get back to it. I just wanted to say sorry for growling.”

“It’s all right.”

Cassius’s battalions shoved Dee deeper and deeper into the Whitlandsund. The lines facing Edgeward had been thin and unprepared for a heavy stroke.

The hours cranked along. Mouse sat that chair till his behind began to ache. Pollyanna remained beside him, partly because she was interested in events, partly because she sensed his need for a bridge to the Mouse that used to be.

Dee’s resistance stiffened.

“He’s figured it out,” Mouse said. “He’s shifting men now.”

Cassius kept the pressure on. At the far end of the pass Legionnaires from the Shadowline began to make headway against defenses weakened by the removal of men shifted to halt Cassius.

Pollyanna touched his hand lightly. “You think we’re going to do it?”

“Uhm? What?”

“Win.”

“I don’t know. Yet. I think the odds are shifting.” He caught fragments of tactical chatter. Cassius was moving Ceislak’s commando battalion into position.

Hours dragged on. Finally, Pollyanna whispered, “You’ve got to rest before you collapse.”

“But . . . ”

“Your being here or not won’t change anything, Mouse. They can tell you if they need you.”

“You’re right. I won’t be any good to anybody if I pass out from exhaustion. I’ll stagger over to the apartment . . . ”

Pollyanna went with him.

When he returned to the war room he carried a ravenshrike on his shoulder. The commtechs’ eyes widened. A secret understanding seemed to pass among them. Mouse surveyed the boards as the warhounds began their fruitless search for enemies.

He sensed the change in the men. They had accepted the shift in power. It was not a matter of humoring the Old Man’s kid anymore. He had become the Old Man.

The boards did not look good. Things had gone static.

“Sir,” one of the commtechs said, “Colonel Walters would like to speak with you at your convenience.”

“Okay. Get hold of him.”

Cassius was on the scrambled trunk in minutes. “Coming up with a few problems, Mouse. We’ve pushed them from both sides till we’ve got them surrounded in a big crater. They’ve dug in on the outside of the ringwalls, where they can fire down into the pass. They’ve pulled back into a small enough circle so that they can run men from one place to another faster than I can make surprise attacks. I was going to cut them up one place at a time. Slice off a little group and take them prisoner. They’ve managed to keep me from doing it. Looks like it could turn into an old-fashioned siege.”

“There’re thirty thousand people in the Shadowline who don’t have time for that, Cassius. They’re running out of air.”

“I’ve heard the reports.”

The breathables situation was becoming dangerous. Food and water were good for weeks yet, with rationing, but there was no way to cut back on a fighting man’s air. Recycling was never completely efficient, and lately the equipment had begun to deteriorate.

Mouse said, “I got the medical people started putting the wounded into cryo storage yesterday. We can resurrect them when we open the pass. They suggested we do the same to Meacham’s people.”

“They have the cryo storage facilities?”

“No. Not enough.”

“I may start using some of Hawksblood’s people. If I can get them over to this side.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes you run out of ways to finesse. Then the only thing left is the hammer. Hit hard, with everything you got, and grit your teeth about the casualties.”

“Your munitions picture don’t look good for something like that.”

“That doesn’t bother me as much as the air situation. It looks like Michael will run dry first. His fire patterns show he’s trying to conserve ammunition.”

“That’s a plus.”

“I don’t know. What I’m afraid of is having to offer terms so we can save the people across the way. I think that’s what he’s doing now. Trying to hold on till we’re ready to trade his outfit for ours.”

Mouse glanced at a depressing visual from Blake’s shade station. The station was surrounded by a tide of emergency domes occupied by men waiting to be evacuated or sent into action. The encampment grew steadily as Hawksblood’s men and Twilight’s miners filtered in. Dee could lose his war and still win a Pyrrhic victory.

Mouse looked over at charts listing the various crawlers and their status. “Cassius, we’re going to be in trouble no matter what. We don’t have enough crawlers to get everybody out.”

“So don’t be proud. Ask your neighbors for help. Have Blake call the City of Night and Darkside Landing and beg for help if he has to.”

“We’ve tried once. They say they won’t risk their equipment if there’s fighting going on.”

“Keep trying, boy. I’m looking it over here. I’m going to try one more big push, then see what Michael is willing to dicker about.”

“Don’t deal. Not unless there’s no choice.”

“Of course not. I saw the trap that got your father into.”

Mouse summoned one of the techs. “See if you can find Mr. Blake. Ask him to come down.”

Blake joined him a half-hour later. Pollyanna accompanied him.

“Mr. Blake, could you try Darkside Landing and City of Night again? You can tell them the fighting will be over before they can get their equipment here.”

The worn wreck of a man in the wheelchair showed a sudden interest in life. “Really? You’ve finally got them?”

“Not exactly. We’re going to try one more push, then negotiate if it fails.”

Blake protested. Boiling anger resurrected the man who had ruled the Corporation till the impact of the Shadowline War had driven him into hiding.

“My feelings exactly,” Mouse agreed. “I don’t want any of them getting away. But we may have no choice. It could be negotiate or let the men in the Shadowline die.”

“Damn! All this slaughter for nothing.”

“Almost. We could console ourselves with the thought that my uncle isn’t getting what he wants, either. In a way, even if he negotiates his way out of the Whitelandsund, he’ll have lost more than we have. He’ll be on the run for the rest of his life. He used nuclears. He served the Sangaree. Navy won’t forgive that. They’ll confiscate his property . . . ”

Pollyanna had been rubbing Mouse’s shoulders. Now her fingers tightened in a surprisingly strong grip. “You negotiate if you want. You make a deal for the Legion. You make a deal for Blake and Edgeward. But don’t count me in, Mouse. Don’t make any deal for me. August Plainfield got away once. He won’t again.”

Mouse leaned back, looked up. Her face betrayed pure hatred.

“You been drinking snake venom again?”

She squeezed so hard his shoulders ached. “Yes. I drink a liter with every meal.”

“Wait.” Mouse indicated the boards.

Cassius was starting his attack.

“Sir, he’s sending in everybody this time,” one of the techs reported. “He’s even stripped the crawlers of their crews.”

Mouse stood up. “Mr. Blake, find me a crawler. Anything that will run. I’m going out there.”

Fifty-Six: 3032 AD

Cassius found himself a laserifle and climbed the crater ringwall.

The fighting was close, grim, and positional. Rock by rock, bunker by foxhole, his men flushed Dee’s and drove them back. Man by man, they broke the Sangaree defense. The Legionnaires invested all their skill and fury. Dee nearly fought them to a standstill.