"Better get hold of him before he panics."
Cassius found the band on which Michael was waiting. "Dee?"
"Gneaus? Where the hell have you been?" Only Dee's word choices betrayed his anxiety. His voice was cheerful. "I've been waiting half an hour."
Cassius 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," Cassius 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. Cassius nodded, made a fine adjustment.
"Terms. We're beaten. I admit it. It's time to stop the bloodshed."
Cassius 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." Cassius 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. "Cassius, he did it. City of Night and Darkside Landing are sending crawlers."
Cassius 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 nobody 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 damn 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.
Cassius 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."
"Cassius!" Dee was startled and frightened. "How the hell 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," Cassius 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 ship.
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," Cassius said, wearing his cruelest, most self-satisfied smile. "Have I got news for you. Gneaus Julius Storm died leading a successful assault 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 classic bloodletting. And now you've got no exits."
Dee fainted.
"The circle closes, Michael," Cassius said when Dee recovered. "The cycle completes itself. The last revenges are in the wind. Then it begins anew." Wearily, Cassius 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 Cassius 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, Cassius 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," Cassius 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 participation. There was nothing left but to evade the fleet now passing the Fortress, pursuing his raidships.
Nothing remained but the mundanity of Norbon directorship. 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 kinship, 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, space-ready singleships on the shiplock 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.