Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

Forty-Seven: 3032 AD

Storm, wearing a standard infantry combat suit, stood on a hill overlooking the place where his men would fight. Silence and darkness surrounded him. To the west there was a hint of glow limning the Thunder Mountains, illuminated ions blowing on the solar wind. Before him, invisible to the eye, stretched a long, narrow plain flanked by the ringwalls of two immense meteor craters. The hill on which he stood was the wall of a third and smaller crater, which narrowed the nearer end of the plain to little more than road width. It was a nice tight place to defend.

The region had suffered intense meteoric bombardment over the ages. The plain, over which the customary Twilight-Edgeward route ran, was the only safe passage through the craters—unless Michael swung hundreds of kilometers eastward to come in along the route from The City of Night. Storm was sure Michael would be too arrogantly self-certain to come in by the less obvious path.

And he would be too arrogantly sure of himself to charge south as fast as he should. While he was tootling along, smirking about having put one over on the best, his brother would have anticipated him and would have chosen their place of battle.

My brother, Storm thought. That's what it comes down to out here. A fight between me and my brother.

He now knew that Michael was coming. Dee's convoy had been detected by remotes an hour ago, ten kilometers to the north, rolling south at a steady eight kilometers per.

Storm smiled grimly when he saw the first running lights appear at the far end of the plain. The battle crawlers were leading. Michael had six of the monsters. If those could be wrecked...

Though it was pointless, he turned to survey his dispositions. He could see nothing, of course, though he could vaguely sense the presence of the gun crew in front of him and Thurston there beside him.

Here I stand, he thought. The Black Prince once stood like this on the hill at Poitiers. I know my soldiers are the best that ever were, but... He wondered how sure Edward had been. From the literature it seemed that he had known his Englishmen could handle ten times their weight in French, but those histories had been written after the fact, with the outcome no longer in doubt, and mainly by Englishmen. The Black Prince had stalled for days, trying to negotiate his way out of the mess.

There would be no negotiation today. And these enemies would be no gentlemen burdened by generations of chivalric tradition. If, as he had begun to suspect when he had learned the size of Michael's force, these were Sangaree troops spirited in through some city other than Twilight, he faced some rough fighters. They would not be familiar with the terrain or their equipment, but they would be as case-hardened as his own people.

The fifteen-minute wait seemed endless. Storm caressed his lasegun. It felt cold and hard through his suit gloves. He hummed "Stranger on the Shore," and wondered why he had never learned to loaf through these final minutes. He had had a long life in which to grow calloused, yet he was as nervous today as he had been while waiting for the opening shot of his first battle.

"A time for living and a time for dying," he murmured. The leading Meacham crawler had entered the narrows between ringwalls.

His one lasecannon flashed blindingly, drilling a neat hole through the face of the lead tractor. It was a point-blank shot. In the second flash Storm saw frozen air spewing from the wound.

His artillery opened up. His armor, using radar and the enemy lights as guides, began scratching deadly graffiti on the crawlers' flanks. Their tracks were favored targets. His infantrymen, bouncing in on their jump packs, concentrated completely on tracks. Their guns and roeket launchers scrawled a thousand bright lines on the face of a startled night.

A secondary explosion ripped the guts out of a slave in the third crawler in line.

"A complete surprise!" Storm growled happily. He descended the hill in hundred-meter bounds, the compressed gas of his jump-pack rockets rippling the back of his suit stingingly. To his right Thurston was bouncing mightily despite the heavy load of satchel charges he carried. Thurston veered across Storm's path, heading for the stalled lead crawler. Storm followed him. The lead vehicle was the most important target. Properly wrecked, it would block Michael's advance for a long time.

The Twilighters started shooting back. Their fire was wild. Storm chuckled. They must have been riding along like tourists, bored, sleeping, completely indifferent to the world outside.

One of his tanks took a bad hit. The crew scrambled out before the ammunition blew. They joined the infantry, going to skirmish with bewildered enemy troops disembarking from the transports up the line.

The lasecannon disabled another battle crawler before dying of its own illnesses. That put the lead three out. The others put their solar screens up. The energy of the small arms could do nothing against those.

Storm stayed close to Thurston. Almost fifty men converged on the lead crawler. Though stalled, the machine was far from dead. Its weapons spit shells and coherent light. Storm's rocket men concentrated on suppressing that fire.

He and Thurston reached the tractor. His son cut his jump pack, tossed him a charge, then ran along the monster's flank, below its fire, limpeting charges to each slave. Storm attached his own over the hole drilled by the lasecannon, dove for cover.

He felt the explosion in his hands and feet. There was no sound and almost no concussion. He leaped up, yanked himself through the hole he had blown. He used his weapon like a firehose.

The cabin was an undefended shambles. Storm sabotaged the power controls. The men who followed him in moved to the hatch connecting with the first trailer. Storm began moving from chair to chair, peering into the faces of dead crewmen.

He could not tell. They looked human enough. He would have to take a few back for dissection.

Would Michael really take that risk? he wondered. The provable presence of Sangaree would bring Navy and the Corps whooping in here as if they were a day late for Armageddon. It probably would not be worth the trouble of lugging the bodies around.

Then he found the blue man.

"What the hell?"

He had seen blue men before, a long time ago. A lot more of them than he had wanted during the Ulantonid War. There were no Ulantonid in Richard's forces, nor did any reside on Blackworld. Cassius had said that the Sangaree Deeth employed men of several races.

The crawler rocked as Thurston's charges exploded in series. His men burst through into the first slave. There was a brief bit of gunplay. Storm ignored it. He pitched a corpse out of the cabin, broke radio silence long enough to call a crawler in to pick it up. He returned for another.

What would be going on in Michael's head right now? Would he be raging against the fates, the way he always did when things went bad? Or would he be wondering why resistance was so light?

He chose a half-dozen corpses all told. His men loaded them aboard the same crawler that had done passenger duty on the Edgeward-to-Twilight run. The operator became increasingly nervous as Dee's infantry pushed closer and closer, but held on even after spears of light began stabbing all around.

Storm's force got mauled, as he expected. But even his clerks and commtechs were Legionnaires. They delivered far more damage than they took. When Storm had his corpse collection and was satisfied that the lead battle crawlers were thoroughly disabled, he withdrew in good order.

The mass of armor and infantry that poured around the lead crawler, pursuing Storm, suddenly ceased to be, as a garden of mine explosions devoured them. Dee's caution afterward allowed Storm to finish disengaging.

"Now we'll see what Michael's made of," he told Thurston.

"Father?"

"We'll find out if he can control his temper. If he can, he'll go after the Whitlandsund. If he can't, he'll come after Edgeward to get even."

"He wouldn't have much trouble taking the city."

"No. But he'd have to spend a week making sure it was pacified. And he doesn't have a day to waste. Go up and tell the driver to stop at the top of the crater wall. We'll sit up there and see what Michael decides."

Storm sat on that hill for a long, long time. He had done a superb job of blocking Dee's path.

Thurston wakened him. "He's coming, Father."

Storm went to the control cabin to watch the screens and displays. Crawler after crawler came from the north, lumbered past, and turned west. "Good. He had time to think it out."

"I feel sorry for Havik," Thurston said.

"So do I, Son. But he's got a better chance now than before. Driver, take us in to Edgeward."

An antsy Helmut awaited him at the depot. "Looks like trouble," Storm told Thurston.

"Gneaus, we've got trouble," Helmut said when Storm went to him.

"What now?"

"Ceislak has his ass in a bind. A Sangaree bind. They ran a big raidfleet in on him. Our ships had to haul out. He's holding them off with the captured batteries, but he says they can force a landing if they want to push it."

"Looks like Cassius got his wish, then. We've pulled the head spider into the game. Any word from Navy or Luna Command?"

"Not peep one. Cassius is on his way in."

"Eh? Why?"

"He said that if Dee means Richard's people to be trapped out there, he's cut the line to Twilight, so there's no need for us to hold on west of the shade station. They'll come to us. He's just leaving a few men to help them evacuate."

"I wonder... You think Michael figured Cassius would think that way? That this Darkside thrust is just a feint to pull him in?"

"No. The nuclear... "

"Of course. That changed everything. He's playing for all the marbles, not just the Shadowline."

They reached the war room in time to receive Ceislak's message that he was being attacked by Sangaree. Storm connected Cassius, brought him up to date on Helga's World, Havik, and his own recent action.

"Gneaus," Cassius burred, "I have a suggestion about those corpses. Send them over to Darkside Landing or The City of Night for the autopsy. The more you spread the proof around, the harder it'll be for Dee to eliminate all the witnesses. And they'll pressure Meacham to stop backing him."

"Good thinking. I'll do it. Got to go. Havik's in action now."

"Father," Thurston called across the room, "Instel from Helga's World. Ceislak has Sangaree on the ground now. Any special instructions?"

"Tell him to hold out as long as he can. Cassius's buddy will turn up one of these days. Helmut. Bring down the scale on the Whitlandsund there. Michael's dispositions look a little strange."

A half-hour later Thurston bellowed, "Yahoo! Hey, Father! Hakes says he's got ships in detection. They show Navy IFF, and there's a skillion of them."

Storm chuckled at his son's enthusiasm. "Calm down and keep an eye on it. Tell Ceislak to keep the comm open." He felt like whooping himself. "Helmut, this friend of Cassius's is as crafty as a Dee. He had me scared, but he knew what he was doing. Caught them with their pants down, making an assault. Bet none of them get away." Darksword's face lit with grim pleasure. Storm reveiwed the Whitlandsund situation again.

Michael's dispositions were not unusual after all, just unimaginative. Havik would not be in bad trouble for a while.

Thurston called, "Ceislak says he has contact with Navy. They brought in a full battle fleet. They've got them bastards nailed to the wall."

"Good. Good. Everything looks beautiful. I'm going to my quarters. Before I collapse."

He dreamed awful dreams. Something was nagging him. He had forgotten something. He had overlooked something, and one dared not do that when dealing with Sangaree and Dees.

Thurston shook his father. "Dad. Come on. Wake up."

Storm opened his eyes. "What is it? You look awful."

"They're attacking the Fortress. The Sangaree are. Another raidfleet. The Fishers just told me. They're watching and can't do anything to help. They've lost touch with Mouse."