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.