Starfishers Triology - Shadowline Part 29

"I don't know. Some people slide right through. They never have any bad times, never hit that tough piece of road. Or so it seems."

"Can you play something on that funny black thing? Whenever you do, you know, I get this image of this lonely old man way up on a mountain...A hermit, I guess. He sits there looking down at this city wondering if maybe he missed something. But he can't figure out what it is because he used to live in the city and he did everything there was to do...Aw, you're laughing at me."

"No. I'm just a little surprised."

"Anyway, hearing it always makes me sad. I guess I want to be sad now. Because I guess I'm feeling like that guy on the mountain. I was there but I missed something."

"You've still got a lot of years to find it."

"It wouldn't be the same. I'm not the same Pollyanna anymore. I've done a lot of things I don't like me very much for. I hurt people. Frog taught me never to hurt people."

Storm moistened the reed of his clarinet, startled Pollyanna with a couple of rollicking Hoagie Carmichael pieces.

She smiled when he finished. "I didn't know that thing could be happy. You never..."

"It could be happier. I didn't have my heart in it."

"That was really strange music. Kind of wild and primitive."

"It's very old. More than a thousand years."

"Thanks. I feel better. Come here."

They made love once more, and fell asleep lying side by side, reading Ecclesiastes.

His comm's shriek wakened him. An almost incoherent Helmut blurted, "They took the Fortress! It just came in, Gneaus. From Frieda. She sent a personal message...You'd better come here..."

Grimly, Storm began dressing.

"What is it?" Pollyanna asked, frightened by the sudden hardness of him.

"We lost the Fortress."

"Oh no! Not...Your wife! And your children..."

"Be quiet. Please." Feeling numb, he finished dressing. He did not remember the walk to the war room. Suddenly, he was there. Something within him would not allow him to react completely to the news. It felt like another in a parade of disasters that had happened to somebody else.

"Bring me Frieda's tape, Helmut," he said when he realized where he was.

"Gneaus?"

He looked up. Helmut was standing beside his chair, holding the microtape. Time had stolen away on him again.

He loaded the cartridge with the exaggeratedly careful motions of a drunk. It began with a continuous status report from Fortress Combat. He advanced it till Frieda's pale face formed on screen. Her thin, severe, colorless mouth writhed, but he did not hear anything.

What's happened to Mouse? he wondered. He had not been visible in the Combat views. he wondered. He had not been visible in the Combat views.

Don't take him, too, Storm prayed. He's our only tomorrow He's our only tomorrow.

Frieda was saying something about there being fighting on Dock Level. He upped the sound.

"...penetrate Residential. They're tough, Gneaus. Primitives, I think. Definitely human. I've put the kids into the Ehrhardt Ehrhardt. She's set to boost whenever the computer decides she has her best shot at breaking through.

The Seiners say they'll try to cover her. We'll lose contact with them soon. The raiders are getting close to our wave guides. There it goes. The cruiser. Wish them luck getting through.

"Gneaus, I'm going to cut this short. I want you to remember me as a good soldier, but I'm so d.a.m.ned scared I might make a fool of myself. Forgive me now for whatever hurt I may have done you over the years. Remember my love, such as it was. And remember me to Father.

"We'll hold them as long as we can. Tell Navy to come get them."

She smiled weakly, pursed her lips in a last long-range kiss, then secured her screen. The instel relay continued. An old man calmly chanted ordnance data from the Fortress's Combat Information Center.

Storm sighed and closed his eyes. Getting the youngsters out was something, anyway. He shuffled around the dark places of his mind, collecting the old sc.r.a.ps of rage and hatred and hiding them in an out-of-the-way dust bin for nonproductive emotions. More than ever, now, he needed to keep a tight rein on his feelings.

"Helmut, give me an update on the situation here."

The news from the Whitlandsund was little better than that from home. Havik faced virtual human wave a.s.saults. Michael appeared to be growing desperate.

The shade station was sending reinforcements, but only in driblets. Most of the functional crawlers were still far out the Shadowline.

Helga's World was the bright spot. The Fishers said the Sangaree raiders had been obliterated. Marines were taking over for Ceislak's commandos. The latter were taking s.h.i.+p for Blackworld. Already.

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 s.h.i.+ps 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 Ca.s.sius is going to have any chance to break through and save your a.s.s, 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 Ca.s.sius. In order to survive, he'll have to take Twilight or Edgeward. Either way, he'll have to pull me out of the pa.s.s. Enough, hopefully, so Ca.s.sius 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Ca.s.sius. 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 a.s.semble 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 Ca.s.sius 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 d.a.m.ned 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 Ca.s.sius 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 Ca.s.sius. Storm antic.i.p.ated a cla.s.sic 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 Ehrhardt rumbled into Edgeward's crude little s.p.a.ce port. Storm went out to greet her. rumbled into Edgeward's crude little s.p.a.ce port. Storm went out to greet her.

The pilot was one of his granddaughters. No one else aboard was conscious. He walked along the pa.s.senger 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 s.h.i.+p 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 Ca.s.sius 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 Ca.s.sius might if ever Walters found himself a mission with special personal relevance. Much as Ca.s.sius 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. Sh.e.l.lguns bit at the stressgla.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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!