Hell's Gate-ARC

by David Weber

  She hesitated for a moment, looking at him. Part of it was surprise at the offered courtesy, but there was more to it. She wanted—needed—to touch him, to use her Talent to acquire any information she could. But at the same time, she was almost afraid to. Despite his disciplined exterior, there was too much pain behind his eyes, too much pain waiting for her if she dared to sample it.

  Gadrial had halted a few feet up the gangway, looking back with those bruised, swollen eyes, and Shaylar felt of fresh stab of confused shame. Despite Gadrial's own obvious anguish, she was still capable of worrying about the prisoners placed in her charge, capable of looking back because she sensed Shaylar's hesitation, even if she didn't begin to understand all the reasons for it.

  That realization was enough to galvanize Shaylar, and she opened her Talent wide and reached for Jasak's waiting hand.

  It was a mistake.

  Shaylar knew that the instant she touched Jasak. She bit down on a hiss of shock and stumbled heavily, as if someone had just hit her in the back of the head with a hammer. Jasak's self-control was so rigid that she'd seriously misjudged the actual depth of his anguish, and she'd pushed her Talent hard, prepared to strain for any detail she might have been able to pick up.

  What she got was death. Massive amounts of violent death, coupled with a sense of desertion, a tidal wave of helpless guilt. The fact that Jasak had been relieved by the other officer, the one who'd wanted to hurt her and Jathmar, had already been obvious to both of them, but that wasn't enough to absolve Jasak of that terrible, crushing sense of guilt. Or, perhaps, of responsibility. It didn't matter what she called it; what mattered was the raw, bitter poison of its strength.

  She felt herself falling—falling physically, as she stumbled, and falling psychically, as she toppled into the dreadful abyss of Jasak Olderhan's pain—and she gasped as Jasak's powerful arms caught her before she could tumble to the dock's splintery planking. It was all she could do to keep from crying out as he lifted her, as if she were child, and his genuine concern for her cut through the churning vortex of his darker emotions.

  Shaylar fought her way up and out of the darkness, frantically shutting down her own receptiveness, backing away from the contact she'd sought as a means to gather information. It took her two or three heartbeats to pull far enough back to regain her own sense of self, and even as she did, she sensed Jasak's consternation and worry over her reaction.

  She managed to shake her head, smile up at him with a mixture of apology for her "clumsiness" and thanks for his quickness in catching her. And then Gadrial reached out, as well.

  The other woman's gesture was oddly hesitant, almost halfhearted, unlike anything Shaylar had seen from her before. It was almost as if she were fighting a war with herself, making herself offer that token of assistance.

  Warned by her experience with Jasak, and again by Gadrial's uncharacteristic hesitation, Shaylar braced herself for the contact shock before she reached out for the offered hand. Instead of opening herself wide, she buttressed herself, and even so, her nostrils flared and her face went white as her fingers closed on Gadrial's.

  Jasak's pain had been terrible enough; Gadrial's was worse, and Halathyn's name burned so hotly through her chaotic, grief-torn emotions that Shaylar actually heard it. She'd never done that with a non-telepath before, and she had to bite down hard on an impulse to fling both arms around the other woman. Gadrial had done so much to comfort her, had somehow kept Jathmar alive long enough to reach this fort. Now her agony cried out to Shaylar, and the Sharonian woman felt a desperate need to repay some of that comfort. Yet she couldn't, not without risking the revelation of her Talent, and for now, that must remain secret. And so she managed not to, managed to simply take Gadrial's hand as the two of them made their way up the steep, swaying gangway together.

  They reached the ship's deck, and Shaylar released Gadrial's hand. She stood beside the other, grieving woman, looking back across the wharf at the land they were leaving, and wrapped both arms around herself to hold in the shivers while she tried to make sense of what she'd just sensed.

  Halathyn was dead.

  She was utterly certain of that individual death, but there were others, too. So many others. That was clear from Jasak's churning emotions, not to mention the way she and Jathmar were being treated. Company-Captain Halifu must have attacked their base camp at the swamp portal, and it was obvious he'd blown it straight to hell when he did.

  Which Shaylar found a terrifying thought. She and Jathmar were helpless, prisoners of war in a society that would undoubtedly see Sharonians as far more warlike than they really were after this second violent contact.

  She didn't believe Jasak would retaliate against her and Jathmar, despite the fact that it was his men who had just become the latest casualties. She couldn't believe he would, not after the other things she'd already sensed out of him. But Jasak Olderhan was only one officer, and a relatively low ranking one, at that, unless she was seriously mistaken. Shaylar had been around enough military units since joining the field teams to develop a fairly good sense of the military pecking order, and Jasak clearly wasn't at the top of his. In fact, she suspected she was actually older than he was, given his apparent rank and assuming that his military worked at all like the PAAF and other Sharonian armies.

  If events were escalating even remotely as quickly as she feared they were, it was unlikely that an officer of his junior rank would be able to protect them. Even if he was inclined to make the effort after his own men had suffered such brutal casualties.

  The commandant of the fort—which looked strangely small from here, silhouetted against the endless miles of virgin swamp that stretched to the horizon—was obviously of much higher rank than Jasak, and considerably older, as well. He'd visited her and Jathmar in their quarters in his fort only once, and he hadn't spoken to them at all when he had. He'd simply looked at them for long, silent moments—studying first Jathmar, then Shaylar. Whatever he'd been looking for, it hadn't shown in his face. And whatever conclusions he'd drawn would remain a mystery, because he'd merely nodded to them once, then departed.

  Shaylar would not—dared not—assume that other officers would show equal leniency. Especially not now. So she stood, holding in the shivers until Jathmar joined her on the deck. He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, and she turned toward him, wrapping both her own arms around him and holding on tight while the rest of the passengers passed them.

  A half-dozen men who were obviously members of the ship's crew sorted out the new arrivals as they reached the deck. Like Jasak and the other soldiers, the sailors were uniformed, although their uniforms—composed of red jerseys for most of them, although one wore a red tunic with gold braid, over white trousers—were quite different from Jasak's. The one in the tunic was obviously a junior officer or petty officer of some sort. He and Jasak exchanged salutes, and the naval officer said something to one of his own men, then nodded towards Shaylar and Jathmar. The sailor started towards them, but Jasak said something, and the sailor stopped, looking back at his own officer. Again, the conversation was too quick for Shaylar's embryonic Andaran to follow, but it wasn't hard to guess what was being said.

  Once again, Jasak was intervening on their behalf, asking the ship's officer to let them remain on deck at least a little longer before they were sent below to whatever quarters or confinement awaited them. After a moment, the other officer nodded in agreement and turned his attention back to more immediate duties.

  The last few passengers trooped up the gangway, and the officer gave an order to one of the sailors. An instant later, the gangway began to rise. The sailors didn't haul it up. They didn't use a winch or a crane to lift it. It simply rose, detaching itself smoothly from both the side of the ship and the wharf below, turning until it was parallel with the centerline of the ship, and then rising still higher. It lifted until it was a good ten feet higher than even Jasak's head, and then nestled itself neatly into what were obviously waiting mounti
ng brackets on the side of the ship's superstructure, one deck level above them.

  Shaylar stared at it in disbelief as it drifted across above them, and she heard Jathmar's gasp of surprise when its shadow fell over them.

  "How in all the Uromathian hells did they do that?" he demanded as a pair of sailors made the gangway fast in its new position. Shaylar was as startled as he was, but her memory flashed to that ghastly moment in the toppled timber when they'd first lifted Jathmar's stretcher.

  "It's more of that levitation of theirs," she said wonderingly. "Remember your stretcher, or the ones they used for their own wounded?"

  "Those little glassy cubes you were talking about?" Jathmar looked at her for a moment, then twitched his shoulders in a half-shrug. "I suppose if you can levitate stretchers, there's no reason you couldn't levitate gangplanks, as well, at that," he admitted. Then he snorted with a grimace. "Probably explains why they don't have any cargo derricks on this ship of theirs, for that matter. Why bother with cranes when you can just stick a little glass bead on your cargo pallets and fly them to where you want them?"

  He shook his head wonderingly, then turned away as Jasak called his name quietly.

  "Go to quarters now," Jasak said.

  The quarters to which they were led were a pleasant surprise . . . and a far cry from the damp, dark, undoubtedly rat-infested cell Shaylar's imagination had pictured.

  The cabin to which she and Jathmar were assigned lay one deck up in the superstructure, above the ship's weapons ports, on the outboard side and directly between Jasak's assigned quarters and Gadrial's. The older man with the iron-gray hair, was given quarters on the other side of Jasak's, and the man in chains disappeared somewhere below—probably to the cell she and Jathmar weren't in after all.

  It was a small cabin, but that was true of every shipboard cabin Shaylar had ever used. It might be even a bit smaller than what they might have received aboard one of TTE's Voyagers, but if she was right, and this was a warship, that was probably inevitable. At any rate, she'd always assumed accommodations would be more cramped aboard a man-of-war than aboard a civilian-crewed vessel.

  It was also heartlessly utilitarian, but that didn't matter. It was clean, reasonably comfortable, with white-painted bulkheads and neat built-in storage compartments under its pair of bunks, and it had a porthole. It wasn't large enough to wiggle through, even for Shaylar, but it allowed them a view of the sea and—more important—it let in daylight, which was even more welcome for its contrast with the windowless cell she'd feared.

  At night, they would even be able to see the moon.

  She held back a sigh as she settled herself on the nearer bunk. It wasn't the softest bed she'd ever sat on, but it was softer than a sleeping bag on the ground. Then she looked up again at the sound of a cleared throat.

  "Stay," Jasak said from the open doorway. "I come soon."

  Shaylar nodded, knowing what came next. Then their door closed, but not before she'd caught a glimpse of the armed guard who'd taken up his station outside. A lock clicked, and Jathmar crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the door.

  "We're in a room on a ship that will shortly be in the middle of the ocean," he growled. "That's a remarkably solid looking door, and it's locked tight. And that window isn't big enough for you to crawl through, let alone me! Why the hells do they bother with a guard?"

  Shaylar felt the worry, fear, and frustration beating like a ragged headache under his sour mood. She went to him, brushed her lips against his, circled his chest with her arms, and rested her head against his heart.

  "We must have hurt them badly," she murmured.

  "I hope so!" he snarled.

  "Shhh." She leaned far enough back to gaze up into his wounded eyes. "What's done is done. We have to live with the consequences. That means we'd better figure out what we're going to say when they ask how we got a message out. I'm learning their language, Jathmar, and even though it's maddeningly slow without another telepath to help, it won't be long before I know enough for them to ask that question—and expect an answer."

  Muscles bunched along his jaw, but he didn't speak.

  "Jathmar," she said gently, "you have to let go of at least some of the hatred and put your energy into figuring out ways to keep them guessing without making them suspicious enough to treat us worse than they have so far."

  She thought for a moment that he would flare up at her, but he didn't. Instead, he bit back the surge of anger beating through him.

  "They have treated us . . . decently," he muttered grudgingly, reluctantly. "All things considered."

  "Yes," she murmured, "they have."

  "But I can't stop hating, Shaylar. They've smashed everything we had, everything we ever wanted. Killed our friends, nearly killed us . . ."

  He sucked down a deep breath, fighting to bring himself under control, but it was hard. Hard.

  "I don't even dare try to love you," he whispered finally, miserably. "We don't even control the lock on our own door, can't know when someone's going to open it, drag us out of here! And what if you got pregnant?" He shook his head, teeth gritted. "Before, it would've meant dropping out of the survey crews, and that would have been bad enough. But now, what would they do with—or to—our child if they thought it would make us tell them things they want to know?"

  He squeezed his eyes shut, tightened his grip on her, and buried his face in her hair. His aching need for her burned hot as lava through the bond, shot through with ripples and tremors of anger, fear, and despair, and she had absolutely no answer for him. She could only hold him, blinded by tears. They stood in the center of their comfortable little prison, and just held on while the awareness of their total helplessness and vulnerability burned through them.

  Shaylar never knew exactly how long they stood there. Without their confiscated watches, it was difficult to gauge the passage of time, and so she didn't even try. She simply leaned against Jathmar, her cheek nestled against his chest and the strong steady beat of his heart, while she listened to the dim sounds beyond the locked door and the even more distant sounds drifting through the opened porthole.

  Then the ship began to move, and once again she was reminded of the yawning gap between any previous experience and their present reality. There was no deep rumble of machinery, no throbbing vibration from engines. There wasn't even the flap of canvas, or the creak of masts and cordage. In fact, there was nothing at all except steady movement as the ship backed silently away from the wharf.

  It halted once more, and she looked out the porthole as it rotated smoothly in place, swinging its bow away from the land. The motion swung the fort back into the porthole's field of view, giving her a last glimpse of the land, and tears stung Shaylar's eyes again. She gave Jathmar another squeeze, then wiped her eyes impatiently and moved to the window to look back at the vast sweep of marsh that ran along the coastline.

  The ship began to move again, forward this time, still silently. Its speed built steadily, quickly, and there was sound at last—the ripple and wash of water and the creaking sound of wooden timbers flexing as they moved, but still not so much as a whisper to betray whatever power sent it slicing through the waves.

  The fort where they had stayed for such a short time grew smaller by the minute as the ship accelerated quickly and smoothly. They were already moving faster than any of Trans-Temporal Express' freighters. It was hard for Shaylar to estimate, but they had to be moving at least as quickly as any of the great high-speed passenger ships, maybe even as fast as the new turbine-engined warships she'd heard about. Yet still there was that eerie lack of vibration, that silence. No funnel smoke, no noise, just this smooth, effortless sense of speed.

  She pressed a hand to her lips, staring back through the porthole. That vast marsh and that tiny log fort looked inexpressibly lonely, kissed by the rising sun and populated only by great clouds of water birds and a tiny handful of people. Or perhaps it was only she who felt such unbearable loneliness.

 
Then Jathmar's arms tightened about her from behind.

  "I'm here, love," he murmured. "Whatever else, I'm here."

  She pulled his arms more tightly around herself and held onto them silently, her throat too constricted to speak. At the moment it was hard—so very hard—to remember that they'd come out here to see new sights, new places. Things no other Sharonian had ever seen, or even imagined. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would be able to remember that, but not just yet.

  For the moment, she could only grieve . . . and hold tight to those loving arms which were all she had left in any universe.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Balkar chan Tesh looked up as someone tapped lightly on the small gong hanging from the peak of his tent. He recognized the towering, youthful Marine officer instantly, although they'd never met. The youngster looked exhausted, as well he might after what had to have been an even longer forced march than chan Tesh's own, but he was also the spitting image of his father. Even if he hadn't been, the blue-gray peregrine falcon on the far-from-regulation leather pad covering the left shoulder of his uniform tunic would have been a powerful clue. The bird was huge even for a peregrine—easily over twenty inches long, with a wingspan which must have been well over four feet—and it was neither hooded nor jessed, which was . . . unusual, to say the very least. Its powerful talons gripped the shoulder pad securely, but it was obvious they were also delicately aware of—and restraining—their own strength. Its dark eyes were bright and alert, and they focused on the company-captain with unnerving intensity.