"Not now. It's too early in the morning for a squabble."
He and Cassius 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 Cassius. Storm anticipated a classic 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 rumbled into Edgeward's crude little space port. Storm went out to greet her.
The pilot was one of his granddaughters. No one else aboard was conscious. He walked along the passenger 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 ship 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 Cassius 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 Cassius might if ever Walters found himself a mission with special personal relevance. Much as Cassius 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. Shellguns bit at the stressglass 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 massive 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!
Storm clambered through the wreckage, checked the inner door. It was not secured. "Rig something over that outer doorway," he ordered.
Mouse and Lucifer scrounged plastic panels and pounded them into place. "They'll still leak, Father," Mouse said.
"They'll prevent complete decompression. That's all I'm worried about now."
He did not want to hurt civilians. The ordinary people of Twilight, like those of nations at war at any time, were simply victims of their leadership.
He was in a generous mood. In other times and places he had been heard to say that people were guilty of their leadership.
Storm and Thurston poised themselves, ready for the inner door. "Go!" Thurston growled. Storm kicked. Thurston went through on his jump pack, rocketing at an angle across a chamber twenty meters by thirty. Laseguns probed for him. Their beams went wide.
Thurston let go an antitank rocket. Before the debris settled, Storm, Lucifer, and Mouse moved in, firing, and spread out behind furniture. Pollyanna and Korando had enough sense to stay out of action for which they had no training. They indulged only in a little supportive sniping.
Thurston's second rocket, accompanied by grenades from the others, convinced the opposition. They surrendered. They wore no combat suits. Only four of fifteen had survived the exchange.
Korando sealed the inner door before more atmosphere escaped.
"Where're the big people?" Storm demanded of the prisoners, after folding his faceplate back. "Where's Meacham?"
He received surly looks in reply.
"All right. Be that way. Lucifer. Shoot them one at a time till somebody answers me."
They looked into his one grim eye and believed him. He was not bluffing. He no longer cared, especially about Michael's men. The lives he valued most had been wasted already.
"Upstairs. Fourth level. Communications center. Yelling for help."
"Thank you. You're true gentlemen. Lead the way."
They balked.
A twitch of his trigger finger got them moving.
The elevators were dead. Storm shrugged, unsurprised. His guides led him to an emergency stairwell. Thurston blew the locked fire door. The big man could have achieved his end with a lasegun bolt, but he enjoyed the bangs.