Authors: David Weber,Linda Evans
own mind that those "favors" constituted the true interest on his past-due loans. He was quite certain the IG would see it that way, at any rate. And if the private memos mul Gurthak had sent to him at the same time the Mythalan two thousand had ordered him forward to join Harshu ever came under public scrutiny, things would get very, very ugly.
And if Harshu had already become aware of them … .
Stop it, Tayrgal! the thousand told himself sharply. If he knows, he knows. And if he did know, he probably wouldn't have settled for just sending you off to the backside of nowhere.
"Sir! Welcome to Nairsom!"
"Thank you, Five Hundred Eswayr." Carthos returned Commander of Five Hundred Pahkrys Eswayr's salute. Eswayr-a wiry, fair-haired Inkaran-was his senior ground forces battalion commander.
Carthos found his accent rather hard to follow (the islanders seemed to take a perverse delight in massacring the pronunciation of Andaran), but the five hundred seemed a reasonably competent sort, if a bit on the overenthusiastic side.
"I see Hundred Helika's reds were reasonably effective," Carthos continued dryly, looking past Eswayr at the blazing wreckage Commander of One Hundred Faryx Helika's 5001st Strike had left where the small Sharonian portal fort used to be.
"Yes, Sir." Eswayr turned to survey the same scene, and grimaced. "I know you wanted it intact, Thousand. I'm afraid it was just a bit more flammable than our pilots assumed it would be."
"I see." Carthos hid a grimace of his own. Somehow, he doubted the Air Force would have made the same mistake if Toralk had been here to ride herd on them. On the other hand, to be fair (not that he particularly wanted to be), Carthos himself had emphasized to Five Hundred Karth Mala, his senior Air Force officer, that it was essential that the fort be taken out fast and hard. And since Harshu had retained both of Toralk's yellows … .
"May I assume the Voice chain has been cut?" the thousand asked after a moment.
"Yes, Sir. The strike teams located the relay station and took it out last night. And it appears that the portal Voice was killed in the initial strike on the fort."
"So there's something to be said for overkill, after all," Carthos observed with a desert-dry smile. Then he shrugged. "To be honest, Pahkrys, I'm just as glad Hundred Halika's opening strike leveled the place."
He twitched his head at the demolished fort. "I was never too happy about the distance to the next portal.
I know there was a relay station, but it's only about six hundred miles. If the information we have on these Voices is accurate, quite a few of them could reach that far without a relay."
"I know, Sir." Eswayr seemed to relax just a little.
"Well, then!" Carthos said, straightening briskly and planting his hands on his hips. "I suppose it's time I had a few words with Five Hundred Mala and we started getting the troops forward again."
"Yes, Sir," Eswayr said once more. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment. "Uh, Sir, I did have one other question."
"Question?" Carthos looked back at the infantry officer, one eyebrow arched.
"Yes, Sir. We have a few prisoners, Sir. I was just wondering what you wanted me to do about them."
"Prisoners?" Carthos repeated with a frown. "What sort of prisoners? How many of them?"
"There are only about fifteen of them," Eswayr said. "Three of them are pretty badly burned."
"Any officers?"
"No, Sir. Mostly enlisted, with a couple of noncoms."
"I see." Carthos gazed unseeingly into the crackling flames consuming the fort for several heartbeats, then returned his gaze to Eswayr.
"Has anyone questioned them?"
"Yes, Sir. They … didn't seem to know very much."
"And you believed them?"
"According to the verifier spells they were telling the truth, Sir."
"Then they're not very useful, are they?" Carthos observed.
"Apparently not," Eswayr agreed. "On the other hand, Five Hundred Neshok might be able to get more out of them by asking the right questions."
"But Five Hundred Neshok is the better part of three thousand miles from here with Two Thousand Harshu," Carthos pointed out. "It would take us just a while to get the prisoners to him. And by the time any information he got out of them got back to us, it would probably be hopelessly out of date."
Eswayr nodded, and Carthos' nostrils flared. He didn't much care for these Sharonians. He wouldn't have under any circumstances, but even if he'd been inclined to, there were those memos from mul Gurthak to consider.
"I don't see any point tying up a transport on that sort of useless shuttle mission, Five Hundred," he said.
"It's not like we have all that many of them to spare, after all."
"No, Sir," Eswayr agreed.
"And if they don't have any useful information for us, then I don't really see much point in hauling them along with us, either."
Carthos looked levelly into Eswayr's eyes. For a moment, he thought the five hundred was going to balk.
But then the Inkaran drew a deep breath.
"Yes, Sir. I'll … take care of it."
"Good." Carthos patted the smaller man on the shoulder with a smile. "I'll leave it in your hands, then.
Now, where can I find Five Hundred Mala?"
Chapter Twenty-One
"Come in Klayrman! Come in."
Klayrman Toralk obeyed the invitation and stepped into Two Thousand Harshu's command tent. He'd half-expected a summons like this one. In fact, he wondered what had taken so long. More than two days had passed since the revelations of his supper with Harshu. Tayrgal Carthos had been sent upon his way forty-eight hours previously, but Harshu had yet to move towards his own next objective, and so far, at least, Toralk had no idea why he hadn't.
Hopefully, that's about to change, he told himself as he approached the map table floating in midair at the center of the outsized tent.
Aside from himself and Harshu, the only other person present was Commander of Five Hundred Herak Mahrkrai, Harshu's Chief of Staff. Mahrkrai-old for his rank, with iron-gray hair and oddly colorless eyes-was the sort of officer who seemed to have specialized in unobtrusiveness throughout his entire career. Toralk had worked with him enough in planning the Expeditionary Force's operations to know he was a highly competent, even an imaginative man, but he didn't project that. His apparent … blandness, for want of a better word, was the most striking thing about him, and Toralk wondered why. He supposed it might have owed something to the fact that Mahrkrai's less showy personality was simply lost in the shadow of Harshu's far more extroverted and aggressive impact on everyone about him.
Of course, it's always possible Harshu picked him expressly because he has that sort of personality. But if he did, the question is whether it was because Harshu was smart enough to know he needed a balance wheel like Mahrkrai? Or was it because he wanted to make sure his chief of staff wouldn't challenge him for the spotlight?
"Thank you for getting here so promptly, Klayrman," Harshu continued, reaching out to offer the Air Force officer his hand.
"I'd say you were welcome, if there were any particular reason why I shouldn't have come promptly, Sir," Toralk replied, and Harshu snorted.
"What a polite way of saying we've been sitting here on our arses too long!" the two thousand said.
Toralk opened his mouth, but Harshu shook his head before he could speak. "No, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to be thinking, actually. Especially given how heavily all of our preliminary planning emphasized the need to move quickly once we got through the initial Sharonian defenses.
Unfortunately, Five Hundred Neshok has turned up some intelligence which Herak and I have been kicking around for the better part of twelve hours now."
"What sort of intelligence, Sir, if I may ask?" Toralk said cautiously.
"According to two or three of our prisoners, there are Arcanan prisoners being held in our next objective, Sir," Five Hundred Mahrkrai answered for his boss.
"What?" Astonishment startled the question out of Toralk. The instant it was out of his mouth, though, he wondered just why he was surprised. They'd known all along that the survivors of the Second Andarans had been taken prisoner, which meant, logically, that they had to be being held somewhere.
I suppose I simply assumed they'd have done the same things with their prisoners that we did with ours-
gotten them moved to the rear for proper interrogation as quickly as possible. Except, of course, that we haven't been doing that since we launched this attack, have we?
That last thought suggested some potentially grim reasons for holding prisoners closer to the front, so he decided not to think about it any more just at the moment.
"We've confirmed it," Harshu told him. "At least, the verifier spells have confirmed that the prisoners giving us the information believe it's accurate. According to the best information Neshok's been able to put together, the worst wounded of our people were held at this Fort Ghartoun,or Fort Raylthar, or whatever the hells it's named these days."
"It makes sense, Sir," Mahrkrai put in. "As far as we can tell, they don't have anything like our magistrons. They're pretty much limited to natural healing times, and transporting badly wounded men without even dragons must be a nightmare. So they probably parked the most badly hurt of our people at this Fort Ghartoun. Since they didn't know a thing about our aerial capability, they must have figured Ghartoun was far enough from our point of contact to be secure."
"But you see our problem, don't you, Klayrman?" Harshu said, waving one hand at the sketch map on the table. "We can't exactly use the yellows-or even the reds-in a surprise attack if our own people are being held inside the fort."
"No, we can't, Sir," Toralk agreed, stepping closer to the table and gazing down at the map.
"At least it's on this side of the next portal," Harshu pointed out. "As long as we exercise a little caution, there's not too much chance of anyone spotting us moving into attack position."
"I'm not sure how significant that really is, Sir," Toralk replied. Harshu raised an eyebrow, and the Air Force thousand shrugged. "Obviously, there's always a greater chance of being spotted moving through a portal-one of the more irritating things about them is the way they bottleneck your movement options to at least some extent, after all. But we've pretty much swept the area between here and the next portal.
There weren't any civilian settlements-" thank the gods, he very carefully did not say aloud, thinking about Neshok "-and we'd neutralized the Voice relay even before we hit Fort Brithik. So we can move with virtual impunity right up until the instant we jumpoff for the attack. All of that's true. But from the outset, one of our primary planning considerations has been the neutralization of their Voice chain's next link, the one immediately beyond whatever might be our current objective. So we're still going to have to get our long-range penetration teams through the portal before the attack, which is going to take us right back to that bottleneck situation."
"Maybe not, Sir," Mahrkrai put in diffidently. He tapped the sketch map. "From this, it looks as if their fort is a good mile or mile-and-a-half inside the portal. If we can get people on the ground, maybe a talon or two of dragons in the air, between the fort and the portal, they won't be able to get a Voice through to the other side. Not, at least, until we can get our people through to take their next Voice relay station."
"And you know roughly where that is?" Toralk asked.
"Yes, Sir. We do."
"I see."
Toralk fell silent, pursing his lips as he moved his gaze to the sketched floor plan pinned to the table beside the map. He wasn't about to invest too much confidence in that sketch's accuracy-not knowing how Neshok obtained his information. Still, it was probably fairly close. The Sharonians, like the Union of Arcana itself, seemed to stick to fairly standardized designs for things like portal forts.
He ran a fingertip across the sketch, thinking hard, then looked back up at Harshu.
"I could wish we had some SpecOps troopers to spearhead this thing, Sir. Still, I think we could probably do it without an opening air strike. Assuming, of course, that we still have the advantage of surprise." His expression was sober, and his voice took on a warning note as he continued. "With their weapons, if they figure out we're coming and get themselves stood-to in time, even a relatively small garrison is going to inflict heavy casualties if we don't hammer them with a surprise air strike first."
"Understood." Harshu stepped over close beside the Air Force officer, gazing at the same sketch.
"To be honest," the two thousand went on, after a moment, "I never expected that we'd get much farther than we already have without taking substantial casualties of our own. I'm inclined to think now that I was overly pessimistic in that respect, given how decisively your combat strikes have been shutting them down before we ever have to go in on the ground. I don't really want to do anything to change that, like sending in some sort of conventional assault instead. But if they do have any of our people inside, then we can't justify not trying to get them out-or, even worse, possibly killing them ourselves-
simply because we might risk a few more casualties in a rescue attempt."
"I agree, Sir," Toralk said firmly, although he was strongly tempted to point out that even if they hadn't suffered very many casualties in human terms, the dragons they'd lost had been more than merely painful. The diversion of both transports and battle dragons he'd been forced to make to Five Hundred Mala to support Carthos' independent advance hadn't helped his force availability any either, of course.
"How soon can you give me an operations plan?" Harshu asked.
"Probably by lunchtime, Sir." Toralk shrugged. "As I say, I'd feel better with a SpecOps company to lead the way, but this is a fairly standard scenario. We spend a lot of time planning and executing these on the fly in our normal training exercises, and we've learned a lot about these people, too."
"Good. It's going to take us a full day to get our transports moved into striking range and rested, anyway.
Can you do your planning while we're actually in the air?"
"No, Sir," Toralk said with fairly massive understatement. "But what I can do is hold a small planning staff right where we are while we put the ops plan together. Then I can load them all onto a single transport and catch up with you sometime this evening. We'll have to leave the transport behind to rest while the rest of the attack kicks off, but the availability of a single transport dragon either way isn't going to make or break the op."
"Good," Harshu repeated. "Good! I'll be looking forward to seeing your plan."
"Good, Syrail. Good!" Folsar chan Tergis Said enthusiastically as he Watched the crystal-clear imagery of something physically seen through someone else's eyes. "I've known Voices three times your age who wouldn't have gotten it that clear. I think you're finally getting the hang of it."
The Fort Ghartoun Voice could Feel Syrail Targal's pleasure at the compliment. A pleasure due in no small part to the fact that the thirteen-year-old boy knew that it was deserved.
"You know, Folsar," Syrail Said back, "you really are a pretty good teacher."
"Am I?" chan Tergis chuckled. "Just between you and me? I'd rather be sitting in a school somewhere a lot closer to Sharona than being stuck out here."
"Well, I'm just as happy you're here."
"Thanks … I think," chan Tergis Said dryly.
The truth was that chan Tergis had been a teacher-and a good one-in one of the private Talent academies before his weakness for distilled grain products landed him in the uniform of the PAAF. He wasn't above occasionally bewailing the change in his fortunes, although-while he wasn't prepared to admit it to anyone (including himself, most of the time)-he actually rather enjoyed his present life. Oh, he really did miss the amenities of the home universe or the more developed of the colonized universes.
But he also knew that his drinking problem-and the fact that it was a problem simply could not be denied-was far more difficult for him to deal with in those universes.
Funny, he thought on a level carefully shielded from young Syrail. Two-thirds of the drinking problems in the military happen out here in one of the frontier postings. I guess some folks miss the bright lights enough that sheer boredom gets them. Me, I think seeing all this empty, unspoiled breathing space takes the pressure off, somehow.
He didn't know if that was the truth, or if he was fooling himself, and it didn't really matter. He'd been sober for almost a full year this time, and he'd discovered that he really liked Regiment-Captain Velvelig. There was a lot more humor and warmth hidden behind that Arpathian facade than most people would ever realize. Besides, the "can't-make-me-a-soldier" game was ever so much more fun with a CO who understood the rules!
"Mom's calling me, Folsar," Syrail Said, and the imagery of the view from his window which he'd been sending to chan Tergis disappeared abruptly. "I think I may have left a few chores undone this morning.
"
"Haven't you figured out yet that you can't fib to another Voice?" chan Tergis replied with a chuckle.
"You don't just think you left them undone."
"Well, maybe not," Syrail admitted sheepishly. "Bye!"
The boy withdrew, and chan Tergis sat up in the straight backed chair beside his small desk and opened his eyes.
Syrail was a good kid. He reminded chan Tergis of his own youngest cousin, as a matter of fact, although Syrail's Talent was considerably stronger. In fact, it was a shame, bordering on something worse than that, that he was stuck out here in Thermyn. There weren't more than a couple of thousand people in and around Fort Ghartoun and the surrounding countryside. No one-unless it was Regiment- Captain Velvelig-had any hard and fast official numbers for Thermyn's population, but however many people there were, there weren't enough to have a proper Talent academy, and Syrail's Voice really needed training.
Fortunately, the boy's family's cabin was less than thirty miles from Fort Ghartoun. That was close enough that chan Tergis had caught the telltale involuntary Voice transmissions of an extraordinarily powerful Talent just coming into its own. It hadn't taken him long to track down the source, although he had been a bit surprised by Syrail's youth. Generally, a Talent as strong as Syrail's didn't truly begin manifesting until its possessor was at least fifteen or sixteen years old. Which probably explained why his parents hadn't worried about having him tested for Talent before they headed out to Thermyn. After all, Syrail had been only twelve when they set out, and they were due to return to Sharona in only a few more months.
Syrail's father, who was also named Syrail, although he usually went by his nickname, "Kersai," which meant "redhead" in his native Tadewian, was a geologist, employed by the Fairnos Consortium, who'd been assigned to the preliminary survey of the Sky Blood Lode in Thermyn. Even though the basic geology was identical in every universe, there were almost always minor variations. Landslides limited to individual universes, or forest fires, or floods, or any number of purely local factors could affect plans to develop something like the huge silver deposits.