Harking shook his head, this time trying to work up some emotion for the hapless native beings down there who had been enslaved by the Sjonntae. But he didn't have anything left for them either. "There must be something we can send down to help them," he ground out. "Some kind of weapon that'll work in the middle of the Shadow field."

Tsu snorted. "Hey, you invent one and the war will be over in a week," he pointed out. "But what are you going to use? Technology's what draws the Shadows; and any weapon worth a damn against the Sjonntae will have to have some technology to it."

"I know, I know," Harking said, an edge of impatience stirring within him. Like everyone else in the Expansion, he'd gone over this whole thing a thousand times. Any weapon more advanced than a crossbow gathered the inexplicable, insubstantial Shadows around it. And in the presence of enough Shadow, sentient beings became desperately ill.

In the presence of more than enough Shadow, they died.

"What about explosives?" he suggested. "I seem to remember hearing a news report a while back about them using explosive crossbow bolts on Heimdal and Canis Seven. I never heard how it came out, though."

Tsu shrugged. "It worked fine for a time, only then the Sjonntae got explosives sniffers set up. They're probably still using them, at least off and on. Problem is, that kind of weapon only works against individual Sjonntae soldiers."

"Right," Harking said, the brief twinge of hope fading away. "And we don't care all that much about killing single Sjonntae soldiers."

"They care about it," Tsu said dryly. "But as far as breaking the stalemant goes, we need to find a way to take out the heavier stuff."

Harking nodded. The frustrating thing was that the Shadows didn't bother the technology itself. They could send a self-guided nuclear missile down to the surface, and even though every Minkter within miles of the thing would die from the concentration of Shadow it would quickly gather around itself, the missile itself would function just fine.