Shadowline - Starfishers Triology - Book 1

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.

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.