Starfishers Triology - Shadowline Part 35

"I'm on the rimwall right now. Tell him he'll be contacted as soon as possible. And don't let on about the Colonel. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

With Mouse and Pollyanna tagging along, Walters descended to his crawler. He ran through the command nets, ordering his officers to keep the pressure on hard. Several units reported the surrender of individual human, Toke, and Ulantonid soldiers.

One commander reported, "Their munitions situation is so desperate they're taking small arms ammo from their troops and saving it for Sangaree officers."

"Good old Michael," Ca.s.sius said. "Really knows how to make and keep friends."

He started to signal Dee, suddenly stopped. "I just had a nasty idea." He went across the command net again. "Wormdoom. Gentlemen. I want a radiation scan on that crater. These guys used a nuke on us once before."

In two minutes he knew. There were two radiation sources not identifiable as tractor piles. They were nowhere near any of Dee's heavy units.

"Looks like my dear old uncle was going to close the pa.s.s after he made terms with Father."

Ca.s.sius smiled. "He's in for a surprise."

"He'll be asking merc terms, won't he?" Mouse asked.

"Of course. But he's not going to get them. If I end up dealing at all. I'm going to be against the wall hard before I let Sangaree get out."

"Better get hold of him before he panics."

Ca.s.sius found the band on which Michael was waiting. "Dee?"

"Gneaus? Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" Only Dee's word choices betrayed his anxiety. His voice was cheerful. "I've been waiting half an hour."

Ca.s.sius silently mouthed, "He hasn't caught on about Twilight yet. That gives us the angle on him."

"Set the hook and reel him in," Mouse suggested.

"Been out directing artillery," Ca.s.sius said into the pickup. He kept the visual off so he would not correct Dee's presumption that he was speaking with Gneaus Storm. "What you want?"

"Keep it on the edge of the band or he'll recognize your voice," Mouse whispered. Ca.s.sius nodded, made a fine adjustment.

"Terms. We're beaten. I admit it. It's time to stop the bloodshed."

Ca.s.sius controlled a snort. "What reason do I have for giving them? We're winning. We'll have you wiped out in a couple hours."

"You promised..."

"I didn't promise your people anything. They aren't covered by any of the usual conventions anyway. They're not merc. They're Sangaree hired guns."

"But..."

"If you want to talk, come to my crawler. We'll sit down face to face."

Dee crawfished. He wriggled. He squirmed. But Legionnaires now held all the heights. Their artillery made an ever more convincing argument.

"You think he'll come in?" Mouse asked.

"Yep." Ca.s.sius nodded. "He isn't finished, though. He's got a trick or two up his sleeve yet. Besides the bombs. If he wants to have any men left to help pull whatever it is off, he's got to get them out. He'll come trotting over like a bad little boy expecting to get his hand slapped."

"I'm going to call Blake." Mouse cleared another channel, spoke with the city. "Ca.s.sius, he did it. City of Night and Darkside Landing are sending crawlers."

Ca.s.sius felt a century younger, knowing there was a chance.

"What about those nuclears?"

"I've got a plan. Stand back and be quiet. I'm going to call him again. Michael? You coming over here or not?"

"All right. But you make sure n.o.body shoots me on the way."

"You're clear. I'll leave the carrier on as a homer." Walters gave orders for one crawler to be allowed to leave the crater.

"Better watch him close," Mouse said. "He could have those bombs rigged to blow on signal. He won't give a d.a.m.n if he loses his army."

"Maybe not. But he'll parlay first. Now listen close. Here's what I want. You two just be hanging around here when he comes in. I'll be back in the next section. You cover him and make him get out of his suit. Make him get out of everything, just in case. You don't know what he might be carrying."

Which was exactly what Mouse and Pollyanna did while Walters watched through the cracked door to the slave section. Stripping with a great show of wounded dignity, Dee kept demanding, "Where's your father?"

Michael had grown gaunt during his sojourn on Blackworld. He had spent so long in-suit that he was emaciated and pale. He shook noticeably. His nerves seemed to have been stretched to their limits.

Ca.s.sius watched, and searched his soul. He could find no sympathy for Michael Dee. Dee had made this bed of thorns himself.

He stepped into the command cabin. "Michael, you've got one chance to live out the day."

"Ca.s.sius!" Dee was startled and frightened. "How the h.e.l.l did you get over here? You're supposed to be in the Shadowline." He whirled to face Mouse. "And you're supposed to be at the Fortress. What's going on? Where's your father?"

"Tell us about the nuclears you've got planted up there," Ca.s.sius suggested. "And I might give you your life."

And immediately Walters found himself fighting an intense desire to kill Dee. Wulf. Helmut. Gneaus. All the others who had died because of this fool...But Storm's ghost whispered to him of his duty to his men, to the thousands still trapped in the Shadowline.

He did not often run on his own emotions. He almost always ran on the feelings and ideals of his dead commander. His own inclination, at that instant, was to let the bombs blow and send the Legion off in one huge, dramatic stroke. It would be like the ancients sending their dead out to sea in a burning s.h.i.+p.

He had very little purpose left in life, he thought. Since leaving the Shadowline he had not looked ahead, beyond surviving long enough to exact revenge. He was no longer a man with tomorrows.

"Tell me about those bombs, Michael. Or I'll kill you now, here."

"You can't." Sly smile. "Gneaus wouldn't permit it."

"Oh, my poor foolish friend," Ca.s.sius said, wearing his cruelest, most self-satisfied smile. "Have I got news for you. Gneaus Julius Storm died leading a successful a.s.sault on Twilight Town. You and yours are all mine now."

Dee became more aguey and pallid. "No! You're lying."

"Sorry, boy. He died at Twilight, along with Helmut, Thurston, Lucifer, and your wife and sons." Metallic chuckle. "It was a cla.s.sic bloodletting. And now you've got no exits."

Dee fainted.

"The circle closes, Michael," Ca.s.sius said when Dee recovered. "The cycle completes itself. The last revenges are in the wind. Then it begins anew." Wearily, Ca.s.sius drew the back of his handless wrist across his forehead. "Those were some of your brother's last thoughts."

Mouse picked it up. "A revenge raid on Prefactlas to even scores with the Sangaree, and from the ruins a survivor returned like a phoenix to exact a revenge of his own. Now Ca.s.sius is the only survivor of the Prefactlas raiders. And of Deeth's people there's only you."

The word had come, while Michael was unconscious, that Navy had caught up with the remnants of the fleet that had attacked the Fortress. No quarter had been given. None ever was.

Though there was no physical proof, Ca.s.sius wanted to believe that the Sangaree Deeth had died there. But there was no justice in this universe. His hope might prove mere wishful thinking.

"You and me, Michael," Ca.s.sius said. He laid a gentle hand on Mouse's shoulder. "Then it begins anew, with Gneaus's phoenix."

He was sad for Mouse. The boy was filled with hatred for his father's killers. He had done some tall and frightful promising during Michael's unconsciousness. "Mouse, I wish you wouldn't. I wish you'd just let it be," he said.

A stubborn, angry expression fixed itself on Mouse's face. He shook his head.

"Michael? About the bombs?"

Fifty-Seven: 3032 AD

Deeth waited till the woman was a step away, swinging her knife. He blocked the blow, stepped inside, sank his own blade into her chest. She clawed at his face as she went down.

He stood over her, watching her die. His stroke had been the only one he had struck himself. This was the first death he had dealt personally since he had killed the old man in the cave.

He felt no special satisfaction or joy. He felt almost nothing. The lack surprised him for only an instant. He never had been enthusiastic about fulfilling his father's plans.

What now? The Norbon revenge was nearly complete. The debt was almost paid. The final act, under Michael's direction, was beyond his partic.i.p.ation. There was nothing left but to evade the fleet now pa.s.sing the Fortress, pursuing his raids.h.i.+ps.

Nothing remained but the mundanity of Norbon directors.h.i.+p. A huge loathing welled up within him. He never had wanted to be Head. He no longer needed the position's power. And without Rhafu, feeling the way he felt now, he might not be able to hold on.

He stalked through the Fortress of Iron, a thoughtful specter silently prowling a tomb. He paused in Storm's study, slowly poked through his enemy's effects. He began to feel a sense of spiritual kins.h.i.+p, to scent out a kindred loneliness. The man was not entirely alien. He was as much out of tune with humanity as his enemy was with his own people.

He found several undamaged, s.p.a.ce-ready singles.h.i.+ps on the s.h.i.+plock level. He considered them. They were slow, but could travel almost indefinitely, seizing their power from the binding energy of the universe itself. A man who had the time could ride one forever.

Deeth summoned his remaining raidmaster, gave him a letter for his cousin Taake. It a.s.signed Taake the duties of Head till his own return. The raidmaster glanced at it. "Where will you be, sir?"

"I'm going to make a pilgrimage."

"Sir?"

Deeth waved him away. "Go. Go on. Get out before they send someone back to check this place out."

Still not sure what he would do, Deeth boarded the s.h.i.+p he had chosen. It was a fat, slow vessel that had done small-time raven work. It carried both medicare cradles and cryobiological storage units. But no instel. Even the Legion had been unable to afford instel for all its s.h.i.+ps.

The raidmaster s.p.a.ced. Deeth spent more hours wandering the ruins of his enemy's home, wondering, at times, if Boris Storm and Thaddeus Walters had done the same after silencing the Norbon station. He finally took s.p.a.ce himself, cutting a hyper arc for the center of the galaxy. He had no intention of going that far, only of running along till he had come to some understanding with and of himself.

His course sloped through the Centerward March of Ulant. He dropped hyper long enough to gather news of what had happened on Blackworld.

He could not be sure. It sounded like he had failed.

Without Rhafu there to push him he could not care. It no longer seemed to matter.

He apologized to his father's ghost, set his drives on auto, sealed himself into a cryo storage unit.

Someday the drive would fail and he would fall into norms.p.a.ce. Then he would waken and look out at a whole new universe...Or the s.h.i.+p might plow through the heart of a sun, where the field stresses were so great they would yank the vessel out of hyper. Or...

He did not care.

Staying alive did not much matter either.

Fifty-Eight: 3032 AD

Mouse sat in the crawler operator's seat, watching Ca.s.sius and Pollyanna. Polly kept zigging round, unable to stand still. She kept looking at Ca.s.sius strangely. And Ca.s.sius kept smiling that funny, boyish, embarra.s.sed smile.

Mouse was a little surprised at Walters too. Ca.s.sius never thought out loud. Not about the way he felt.

Walters asked Pollyanna, "You know the character in The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice, the Jew, who does the soliloquy about his right to hurt like anybody else?"

"Shylock."

"Yeah. Shylock. That's me. I'm like him. I've got a right to be human too. It's just that I'm so old and been in this business so long that I don't show it anymore."

"But that wasn't what Shylock was really talking about. He was just trying to rationalize the revenge he was taking on..." She shut up.

Mouse did not know Shakespeare, but he got the feeling Pollyanna had reached the sudden conclusion that Ca.s.sius and this Shylock were alike after all. He lifted a leg onto the control panel, leaned back, chewed the corner of a fingernail. "You're not going to start singing your death song, are you?" he asked Ca.s.sius.

"Me? Never. I may not be completely happy with my life, but I sure as h.e.l.l plan to stick around as long as I can. No, I've been thinking about getting out of the mainstream. If this kind of life has been in it. I might become a crazy old hermit on a mountain somewhere, coming down to prophesy at the villagers once a year. Or run off to the Starfishers. Or become a McGraw or a Freehauler. Anything to get away from the past. I'd just as soon do my fade before Confederation starts investigating the Shadowline, too. I don't have the patience to deal with those people. That's why I left the Corps."

"Somehow," Mouse said, "I can't picture you being anything but what you are. What about those bombs? Wouldn't you say Michael's had enough time to decide?"

Dee, still standing in the middle of the cabin, had not spoken for a long tune. Only his eyes had moved, watching every muscle in Ca.s.sius, Mouse, and Pollyanna. And the weapon hanging with such apparent negligence in Ca.s.sius's hand. "What're you going to do?" he whimpered.

"Now, if it was up to me and I could do what I want," Ca.s.sius replied, "I'd kill you. But I won't. Unless you don't start talking about those d.a.m.ned bombs. You've had your time. Talk. And talk straight, because you're going to be out there beside me when we disarm them. How are they armed? How did you plan to set them off?"

The tractor's comm buzzed, demanding attention. "Mouse, get that. Michael, start talking."

"Guarantees, Ca.s.sius. I want guarantees," Dee countered. "You don't know what he's like. You don't know what he'll do if I don't set them off."

"Who?" Mouse asked.