by David Weber
The company-captain returned his attention to the sketch and shook his head mentally as he absorbed the details.
Maybe I was just a bit hasty there, he thought as he studied the drawing. If this sketch is as accurate as I think it is, then Loumas damned well has a point about what these people use for brains!
"You say your chief-armsman made the sketch?" he asked Arthag, never looking up from the map.
"Yes, Sir." Something about Arthag's voice made chan Tesh look up. The Arpathian acting platoon-captain was actually grinning, and chan Tesh raised one eyebrow.
"Chief-Armsman chan Hathas is a much better sketcher than I am, Sir. When Loumas and his scouting party got back and described what they'd seen, I decided I needed to take a look for myself. I did, but I didn't feel my own artistic abilities could do justice to it, so I got the Chief-Armsman to do the job. As nearly as I can tell you from my own observation, he got the details just about perfect."
"Vothan," chan Tesh muttered. "Maybe they really are all idiots."
Whoever was in command on the other side clearly wasn't very well versed in portal tactics. To be fair, portals?even relatively small ones like the one on the map in chan Tesh's hands?were always difficult to defend. The bizarre physics involved made that inevitable. On the other hand, there were intelligent ways to go about defending one, and then there was … this.
The chief-armsman had sketched the portal from both aspects, which the combination of the portal's relatively small size and the other side's failure to picket this side had made much simpler for him to do. And from the sketch, it appeared that the opposing commander was either terminally overconfident or else incredibly stupid.
Unless, chan Tesh conscientiously reminded himself, he really does have some kind of god weapon over there.
Which, given the fireballs and lightning bolts he'd already used on the Chalgyn Consortium crew, certainly wasn't impossible. But still …
The enemy had thrown up fieldworks?palisades, with what were obviously firing loopholes, protected with shallow earthen berms?to cover both aspects of his side of the portal. Because the portal itself separated them, he'd been forced to dig in two totally separate forces which were hopelessly out of visual contact and support range of one another, despite the fact that they were less than a hundred yards "apart." That much chan Tesh could readily understand, since every portal defender faced the same problem.
But the earthworks themselves puzzled him. They looked like something left over from the days of muzzleloading muskets and smoothbore cannon, he thought, except that they seemed a bit flimsy even for that. He didn't see a single bunker, and it was obvious from chan Hathas' sketch that there were no dugouts, either. In fact, chan Tesh didn't see any overhead cover.
"These ramparts of theirs don't look very … substantial," he commented. "You got a good enough look to confirm the berms are really that shallow?"
"Yes, Sir." Arthag shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I think Voice Kinlafia may have come up with an explanation for why everything over there looks so insubstantial."
"Indeed?" chan Tesh looked up from the sketch once more, turning his attention to the one man in civilian clothing.
He hadn't ignored Kinlafia up to this point out of discourtesy, but rather because the Voice looked so bad. His face was tightly clenched around a mixture of anguish, fury, and gnawing impatience which chan Tesh needed no Talent to recognize. Kinlafia's eyes were like burnt holes in his face, and chan Tesh wondered if the man's jaw muscles had truly relaxed even once since the rest of his crew was butchered. chan Tesh had no desire to intrude upon the man's obvious pain, but if Kinlafia had a theory to help explain what chan Tesh was seeing in this sketch, he wanted to hear it.
"You have a theory, Voice Kinlafia?" he asked courteously, and Kinlafia nodded. It was a jerky, almost convulsive nod, and his expression was taut as he waved back towards the fallen timber chan Tesh hadn't actually seen yet.
"I'm not sure what they use for 'artillery,' Company-Captain," he said, "but whatever it is, it isn't anything like ours. I know Voice Traygan has relayed Whiffer Parcanthi's and Tracer Hilovar's reports about the odd residues they've picked up to you. We still don't have any sort of explanation for what could have created them, but during the time Voice Nargra-Kolmayr?" his voice went flat and dead for a moment as he used Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's formal title, chan Tesh noted "?and I were linked, I Saw their heavy weapons in action. They have a lot of blast effect, and the … 'lightning bolts,' for want of a better word, they throw seem to affect targets in a remarkably deep zone. But neither of them seems to have very much in the way of penetrative effect."
"No?" chan Tesh cocked his head, one eyebrow raised, and Kinlafia shrugged.
"They seem to rely entirely on the direct effect of the heat or lightning they generate. The 'fireballs,' in particular have a pronounced blast effect, but I think it's actually secondary. And they seem to … detonate the instant they encounter any sort of target or resistance, even if it's only a tree limb or a screen of brush."
"Obviously, none of us?" Arthag's micrometric nod indicated the troopers of his platoon "?actually saw the battle, Company-Captain. But after examining the damage patterns out there, I'd have to say I think Voice Kinlafia's onto something. There's no sign anywhere of the sort of punch-through effect you'd get from our own artillery. And no shell splinters or shrapnel, either. Their artillery seems to be spectacular as hell, and it's certainly devastating to anyone actually caught in what Voice Kinlafia calls its 'zone of effect,' but that zone is smaller than we originally thought, and I don't believe their 'guns' are going to be able to punch through very much in the way of serious cover."
"So you and the Voice think the reason their fortifications seem so … spindly is that their own weapons wouldn't be able to penetrate them and they've assumed that since theirs wouldn't, ours can't?"
"Something along those lines, Sir," Kinlafia said, and surprised chan Tesh with a tight smile. "I've noticed that people?whether they're military or civilians?tend to think in terms of the things they 'know' are true. It's called relying on experience, and in general, it's a pretty good idea, I suppose. But in this case, no one has any experience. Not really."
"A very good?and valid?point, Voice Kinlafia," chan Tesh said, impressed by the other man's ability to think when he was so obviously on fire with grief and fury. The company-captain nodded respectfully to the Voice, then turned back to Arthag.
"These here," he said, tapping the sketch with his forefinger. "These are those tube things?the artillery?Voice Kinlafia's just been describing?"
"Yes, Sir," Arthag agreed, and chan Tesh nodded.
There were, he conceded, a dismayingly large number of the odd artillery pieces. Some of them were also clearly larger than others, which to chan Tesh's mind suggested that they were probably more powerful and longer ranged. From the way they were positioned, he suspected they'd been emplaced to sweep the relatively flat ground on the far side of the portal with fire. Given their demonstrated potency, even without the secondary fragmentation effect of Sharonian artillery, that probably made sense. But why in the gods' names had they put them right on top of the portal that way? And with no better cover than they had?
"I think they're going to have a little problem here, Platoon-Captain Arthag," chan Tesh said after a few seconds. He looked up with a thin smile. "I've brought along a mortar company."
Arthag's eyes narrowed. Kinlafia's, on the other hand, began to glitter with fierce satisfaction, and chan Tesh nodded.
"There's a spot right here, Sir," Arthag said, indicating a point on the sketch map. "There's a nice little ravine on our side of the portal, deep enough to give cover to a standing man. It doesn't have a direct line of sight to the portal, but I think it would do just fine for mortars."
"Good." chan Tesh gave the map another look, then folded up.
"I believe you said something about supper, Platoon-Captain," he observed. "We're going to need to rest the horses for at
least several hours, and I don't mind admitting that I could use a little sleep myself. Let's go find that food, and while I eat, I'd like to talk with your Whiffer and Tracer and Voice Kinlafia."
"Of course, Sir. Right this way."
* * *
Once the animals had been picketed for the night, chan Tesh's weary men devoured the supper Arthag's troopers had held ready for them, then fell into their sleeping bags, dead to the world within minutes. chan Tesh would desperately have liked to join them, but he had other duties to discharge first. So he sat propped against a tree at Arthag's campfire, finishing his second bowl of stew, and listened quietly to the reports from Arthag, Kinlafia, Parcanthi, and Hilovar.
It wasn't a pretty story. chan Tesh had already heard Kinlafia's report of the initial attack, relayed by Rokam Traygan, but it was different hearing it directly from Kinlafia himself. As the Chalgyn Consortium Voice made himself recount every detail of the horrendous attack, chan Tesh could literally taste the man's anguish and hatred. He wanted to reassure Kinlafia that they would do everything in their power to track down any survivors, but the chances of there being any survivors didn't sound good. None of these men?himself included, he admitted?really hoped to find anyone alive, but they were determined to try.
And failing that, Balkar chan Tesh reflected grimly, I want the opportunity to exact some serious vengeance.
The company-captain was Ternathian by birth and rearing, but his family hadn't always been. In fact, his father had immigrated to Ternathia with his own parents as a youth. Emigrated, in fact, from Shurkhal. chan Tesh didn't normally think of himself as Shurkhali, but he'd just discovered, over the last five days, that the blood of his father's people still ran in his veins. If Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had died in that blood-stained clearing over there, there wasn't a hell deep enough for the enemy to hide in.
Watch yourself, Balkar! he chastised himself dutifully. You're not really some Shurkhali nomad out stalking another clan for vengeance. You're also an imperial Army officer, with a responsibility not just to the Authority, but to His Imperial Majesty, as well. Neither of them need a hotheaded, out-of-control junior officer at the other end of the multiverse committing them to all-out war with another trans-universal civilization!
All of which was true enough, but didn't change a thing about the way he felt. Or about his determination to seek punishment for the individual responsible for this debacle. He was honest enough to admit that he would prefer to squeeze the life out of the bastard himself, with his own bare hands, but he'd settle for having the butcher's own rulers, whoever the hell they were, hang him for the murderer he was. And Balkar chan Tesh was grimly certain that punishment exactly like that would be one of Sharona's demands whenever diplomatic relations were finally established.
"The one thing that really worries me," he said at length, having absorbed everything as well as his weary mind was able to, "is how close they may be to reinforcements of their own. We have no idea how far this fortified swamp portal of theirs is from their own next entry portal. Or of how long a transit chain they may be dangling from."
"You don't think they could be native to that universe?" Kinlafia asked, twitching his head in the general direction of the swamp portal.
"I suppose it's remotely possible," chan Tesh replied. "I think it's extremely unlikely, though. That's an exploration camp over there, Voice Kinlafia. They?"
"Please, Company-Captain," Kinlafia interrupted with another of those pain-filled but genuine smiles, "I'm not really all that fond of formal titles, and I'm a civilian. I don't have any formal standing in your chain of command, and I fully realize how out of my depth I am when it comes to any sort of military operations. So it seems a little silly to be going all formal when you talk to me. My name's Darcel."
"Of course … Darcel," chan Tesh said. "And mine's Balkar."
He smiled back at the voice for a moment, then continued.
"As I was saying, Darcel, that's a small, very crude camp on the other side of that portal. They're still sleeping in tents, and that indicates they've only recently arrived at the portal site. If that were their home world on the other side, surely they'd already have known about the portal and explored it long since. I realize from Platoon-Captain Arthag's scouts' reports that this isn't a very old portal, but it didn't just come into existence last week, either, so?"
He shrugged, and Kinlafia nodded slowly.
"That's pretty much what I've been thinking," he admitted.
"Which brings me back to my original point," chan Tesh said. "How close are they to the next node in their transit chain? For that matter, how quickly did they get their report of what happened back to higher authority? Do they have a relief force on its way already, the same way we're responding to Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's cry for help?"
"I suppose that depends on whether or not they had a Voice of their own with them," Kinlafia said, but chan Tesh shook his head.
"It depends on a more fundamental question that, Darcel." Kinlafia looked at him, and the company-captain shrugged. "It depends on whether or not they have Voices at all."
"Surely they do?they must!" Kinlafia said, but chan Tesh only shook his head again.
"You're the one who just pointed out to me?quite rightly?that people tend to operate on the basis of what experience tells them is true," he said. "Well, our experience tells us that there have to be Voices on the other side. But do there?"
"I?" Kinlafia paused, then grimaced. "All right, I see your point. I can't conceive of how they couldn't have Talents, but I suppose it's possible. On the other hand, can we risk assuming they don't?"
"Oh, no." chan Tesh shook his head vigorously. "I intend to assume they do?I'll be a hell of a lot happier to find out I was wrong about that than I would be to find out I was wrong about assuming they didn't! But how quickly they can respond is the question that worries me the most. Well, that and the fact that they don't know any more about us than we know about them."
Kinlafia looked puzzled, and chan Tesh snorted. It was too harsh to be called a laugh.
"The only thing we know about these people is that they've encountered another party scouting an obviously virgin universe and killed or captured them all." Kinlafia winced, but chan Tesh continued calmly. "And that's all they know about us, too. I'll bet you my last pair of boots that they're wondering whether or not our people got a message out, and for a lot of the same reasons. But we're both only groping in the dark out here, and that makes me nervous as hell. People who don't know what's going on have a tendency to make worst-case assumptions … and then act on them."
"I agree, Sir." Hulmok Arthag nodded. "They're going to be nervous, too, if not downright spooked. Our people hit these bastards hard. It's obvious from their trail that they had a lot of wounded to transport. You should see all the bandages at the bivouac site we found earlier today! They've got to be wondering what's going to come after them next?and how much worse it's going to be. The fact that they've dug in shows they're at least taking precautions. They're probably ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Just like they did last time," he added bitterly.
"Exactly," chan Tesh agreed. "And let's be honest here?so are we." He looked around the faces in the firelight. "None of us is going to be inclined to take any chances. And, frankly, I'm not going to be exactly brokenhearted if these bastards give us an excuse to blow them straight to hell. Not after what they did to our people. And that worries me, too."
Kinlafia didn't say anything, but the sudden tightening of his face made his reaction to chan Tesh's last few sentences abundantly clear. The company-captain looked at him for a moment, then leaned forward.
"I know you want revenge, Darcel," he said quietly. "Well, so do I. And, as I say, I'm not going to be taking any chances. But if we just charge in there shooting, we're going to make any possibility of establishing real contact with these people even more difficult. And?" he raised his voice slightly as rebellion flickered in Kinlafia's eyes "?if there are any of
our people still alive over there, charging in shooting is probably the best way to get them killed after all."
Kinlafia sat back abruptly, and chan Tesh looked at Arthag.
"Our first responsibility is to get any survivors back alive and unharmed. Or, at least, without their suffering any additional harm. If there aren't any survivors," he continued unflinchingly, "then our primary responsibility becomes establishing contact?hopefully without still more violence?and demanding that whoever ordered the attack on our people be held accountable and punished for it. I'm not going to risk any of our people if I can help it, but I'd far rather see the son-of-a-bitch responsible for this arrested and hanged than see this turn into some sort of general war."
Kinlafia looked at him for a long, silent moment, then shook his head.
"I understand what you're saying. Intellectually, I even agree with you. But my heart?" He shook his head again. "Whatever my head says, my heart hopes to hell that these bastards do something?anything?else to give us the excuse to shoot every godsdamned one of them."
He rose, and stood looking down at chan Tesh and Arthag. His expression wasn't really challenging, but it was definitely unyielding, and chan Tesh couldn't blame him a bit for that.
"I'm going to try to get some sleep," the civilian said after a moment. "Goodnight."
It was said courteously, even pleasantly, but behind the courtesy, Balkar chan Tesh sensed the iron portcullis of the Voice's hatred. The company-captain watched Kinlafia walk away, and wished he didn't understand the Voice's feelings quite as well as he did.
"Sir!"
chan Tesh reined up as one of Arthag's troopers came cantering back towards the column. The cavalryman reported to his own platoon commander, not chan Tesh, exactly as he should have.
"Yes, Wirtha?" Arthag said as the trooper saluted.
"Sir, we've found another bit they dropped," Wirtha said, and Arthag's eyes narrowed. Then he looked at Parcanthi and Hilovar.