by David Weber
Shaylar shivered at the sight, but it was one of the bizarre juxtapositionings one got used to traveling between universes. Which didn't make the thought of venturing into it any more pleasant.
Actually, she was much more interested in what she could see closer to hand as their vessel slid alongside the pilings.
This fort?Fort Wyvern, Jasak had called it?was considerably larger than the one they'd left behind. That didn't make it huge, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was clearly a more substantial, longer established structure. It had to have been here for a while, judging by the size of the town nestled up against its inland perimeter, but there was much less of the sense of bustle and frontier energy which would have clung to most Sharonian settlements.
At first glance, the entire town looked like some primitive farming village, with no sign of the steam- or water-powered local industry which would have sprung up in any Sharonian-explored universe. But as she and Jathmar continued to study it, they quickly realized just how deceiving first appearances could be.
They were close enough to get a decent look at what was obviously the local shipyard, for example. It wasn't very large, and there were only three vessels under construction, but Shaylar felt her eyes opening wide as she studied it. She'd seen enough Sharonian boatyards located in equivalent settlements to know what to look for, but there was no sign here of the steam or water-powered sawmills and forges she would have found in one of them, nor did she hear or see any axes or adzes.
Instead, she saw big timbers levitating themselves effortlessly into the air, hovering there while some unseen force slabbed them into neatly trimmed planks which stacked themselves to one side. Tearing her eyes away from that fascinating sight, she saw workmen engaged on an entire series of equally improbable activities.
Two men were shaping what were obviously framing timbers for the largest of the vessels under construction, but they were doing it without any tools Shaylar could recognize. Instead, each of them held what looked like simple hand grips at either end of a shaft of shining crystal. The grips were mounted at right angles to the shaft, which was about eight feet long and an inch in diameter. It swelled into a thicker cylinder?perhaps a foot long and seven or eight inches across?at its central point, and the workmen were moving that thicker cylinder carefully across the timber they were shaping while chips and sawdust flew away from it in bizarrely silent clouds.
Other pairs and small groups of workmen were dealing with other jobs?jobs which would have been accomplished with snorting steam or raw muscle in Sharona. Here, though, they were done with more of that eerie "magic" of Gadrial's, and the implications were frightening. There couldn't have been more than thirty men working in that shipyard, but the biggest of the three vessels they were constructing was probably three hundred feet long. That was smaller than the ship on which she and Jathmar presently stood, but it was still a substantial hull, and unlike the smaller ships being built beside it, it was not sail powered. Back in Sharona, the construction crews working on a project that size would have been far bigger. If Arcana's "magic" allowed that much greater productivity out of its workforce …
"We'll be going ashore shortly," Jasak announced, walking up behind them. "I'll have to report to Five Hundred Grantyl, the base commandant. I'm sure he'll want to … meet both of you. I don't imagine we'll stay long, though."
"That doesn't look very pleasant," Shaylar offered, waving one hand at the violent storm raging across the portal threhhold.
"No, it doesn't," he agreed. "The other side of the portal is in what I believe you call Uromathia in your home world. The temperature's not too bad there, but we'll have some mountains to cross to reach the next portal. We'll have to wait for the weather to clear before we can leave, and we'll have to bundle up for the flight."
"Flight?" Jathmar repeated, and Jasak nodded.
"We're going to be spending a lot of time on dragonback," he told them. "That's one reason I hope Windclaw's reaction to you had something to do with your head injury, Shaylar."
"So do I," she replied, just a bit tremulously, although she'd come to the conclusion that Windclaw had probably reacted less to her head injury than to her efforts to use her damaged Voice Talent to communicate with Darcel. Those efforts had coincided with both of the transport dragon's determined efforts to eat her, and she was just as grateful, in a guilty sort of way, that there couldn't be anyone within her range now.
"In case it didn't have anything to do with the concussion, though," she offered with a wan smile, "I'd personally vote for traveling on horseback!"
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Gadrial told her. Shaylar looked at the other woman, standing beside her with the hot breeze stirring her hair, and Gadrial made a face. "Believe me, I've already made this trip, and it's going to be a pain. They haven't extended the slider rail beyond Green Haven, and that's something like twenty thousand of your miles from here. And it's sixty thousand more miles from Green Haven to New Arcana, so even with dragons to get us as far as the sliders, it's going to take something like four months to get to Garth Showma. You don't even want to think about making that trip on horseback!"
"No, I don't imagine I would," Shaylar replied, trying to hide her shock at what Gadrial had just said. It was less than forty thousand miles from New Uromath to Sharona. She and Jathmar had already realized that the Arcanans had clearly been exploring the multiverse longer than Sharona had, but still …
"Well," Jasak said as the boarding gangway once again lifted itself out of its brackets and settled into place between the ship's deck and the pier, "I suppose we might as well tell the captain goodbye and get ourselves ashore."
Division-Captain Arlos chan Geraith broke off his conversation with Division-Captain chan Manthau as the conference room door opened. They turned away from the snowcapped mountains, visible along the northern horizon outside the window, and stood respectfully silent as Corps-Captain Fairlain chan Rowlan, commanding officer of the Fifth Corps of the Imperial Ternathian Army came through the open door, followed by his chief of staff and his senior logistics officer.
chan Rowlan headed directly for his chair at the head of the conference table. The corps-captain was of little more than moderate height for a nativeborn Ternathian, and he normally moved with a certain deliberation, as if to compensate for his lack of height. There was no sign of that today, however. His movements were quick, almost urgent, and his expression was grim.
Which doesn't exactly come as a tremendous surprise, now does it, Arlos? chan Geraith told himself sardonically. There was real, if trenchant, humor in the question, but he was entirely too well aware of his own grim worry?and anger?simmering away beneath it.
"Good morning," chan Rowlan said to chan Geraith and his companions. "I'm glad you were all on the base this afternoon, but time's short. So let's get seated and get to it."
chan Geraith crossed to the table and took his own seat. Fifth Corps' other two division-captains?Yarkowan chan Manthau of the Ninth Infantry and Ustace chan Jassian of the Twenty-First?seated themselves to his left and right respectively, and he reflected (not for the first time) on how different the Ternathian military was from that of its only true rival, Uromathia. Uromathians were much more addicted to flashy uniforms, rank insignia, and salutes?not to mention bowing and scraping properly to one's superiors. Ternathians, by and large, preferred to get on with the job in hand. They'd been doing it for a very long time, after all. There weren't very many current-service units in any army which could trace their battle honors in unbroken line of succession for over four thousand years.
The Third Dragoons was one of them … which made chan Geraith's division substantially older than the entire Uromathian Empire. Or, for that matter, the Uromathian language.
With that sort of history behind them, Ternathian officers felt no particular need to emphasize their own importance and prestige. Even division commanders like chan Geraith, with the next best thing to nine thousand men under his command, normally eschewed dre
ss uniform in favor of the comfortable, practical field uniform he wore at the moment. And while there was no question about chains of authority and military discipline, the Ternathian tradition was for senior officers to discuss military problems and strategy like reasonable adults. Unlike certain other empires whose relative youth caused them?and their senior officers?to act like touchy adolescents whose insecurity had them playing the bully on a playground somewhere.
chan Geraith knew he was being at least a little unfair to the Uromathians, but he didn't really care. The fact was that he didn't like Uromathians. He was always scrupulously polite in his dealings with them and in his public comments about them, but he saw no reason to waste fairness on them in the privacy of his own mind.
"I'm sure you're all as well aware as I am of events in the Karys Chain," chan Rowlan said.
For just a moment, the corps-captain's face twisted with a spasm of intense pain mingled with something far darker and uglier. Unlike chan Geraith, who wasn't Talented at all, chan Rowlan's wife was a Voice, and the corps-captain had a fairly powerful telepathic Talent of his own. chan Geraith hadn't often seen raw hatred on his corps commander's face, but he was seeing it now, and he didn't blame chan Rowlan one bit.
"What you don't know yet," the corps-captain went on a moment later, with a certain forced briskness, "is that I've just received orders from Captain-of-the-Army chan Gristhane, placing Fifth Corps on immediate notice to deploy forward."
chan Geraith felt his fellow division commanders coming upright in their chairs with him as if they'd rehearsed the choreography ahead of time.
"There are several reasons we were selected," chan Rowlan continued. "One of them is purely political, and not to be discussed outside this room. Specifically, Chava Busar has already placed the better part of two cavalry regiments at the Authority's disposal. They're being given absolute priority for transport forward on the basis that they're the closest non-PAAF force available. We don't want to see Chava get his military toe any further into that door than we can avoid, hence the offer of our own troops.
"Among the purely military reasons, we're the closest Ternathian corps HQ to Larakesh. For that matter, Fort Erthain is closer to Larakesh than any major non-Ternathian?" he very carefully did not say "Uromathian," chan Geraith noted "?military base, as well. We can entrain and get to the portal more rapidly than anyone else, and with a lot more combat power when we go. In addition, at the moment the railhead hasn't quite reached Fort Salby in Traisum. That leaves us almost four thousand miles?four thousand unimproved miles, all of them overland?from Hell's Gate."
He used the new, unofficial name for the contact portal without hesitation, chan Geraith noticed, and the division-captain raised two fingers in a request for attention.
"Yes, Arlos?"
"Should I assume that, for my sins, the Third gets to take point?"
"Yes, you should," chan Rowlan replied, and chan Geraith nodded.
Fort Emperor Erthain, on the mountain-ringed plains of Karmalia, was one of the Imperial Ternathian Army's largest military bases. In fact, it was by most measures the largest military base in the entire multiverse. Well, in our part of it, anyway, he reminded himself. It was also home to the Empire's major military proving grounds, and the place where the Imperial Army played with its newest toys to see what they could do.
For the last two years, Fifth Corps in general?and the Third Dragoon Division, in particular?had been experimenting with a radically new approach to military logistics. The basic concept had suggested itself following the improvements in heavy construction equipment produced by the Trans-Temporal Express's insatiably expanding rail net. There were those who believed the newfangled "internal combustion engine" was going to be the powerplant of the future because it was so much lighter and more efficient than steam, and chan Geraith wasn't prepared to tell them they were wrong. But those noisy, oil- and gasoline-burning contraptions were still taking the first, hesitant steps of infancy, and out in the field, where the TTE did most of its heavy construction work (and where the army might be called upon to maneuver), refined oil products might not be available. So TTE had specialized in developing ever more efficient steam-powered excavators, bulldozers, and tractors. Designed to burn just about any fuel which could be shoveled into their fire boxes, they'd grown steadily more powerful, lighter, and more reliable for over fifty years now.
In fact, they'd grown reliable enough for the Imperial Army to take a very close look at them. chan Geraith was one of the general officers who continued to nurse serious reservations about their maintainability in the field, but he'd seen enough over the past twenty-odd months to become convinced they were, indeed, the future of military transport.
Plans had called for the entire Fifth Corps to be provided with the new personnel carriers and freight haulers, but as was always the case (especially with peacetime budgets) procurement rates had run far behind schedule. Third Dragoons, tasked as Fifth Corps's quick-response division, was the smallest of the three divisions (horsed units always had lower manpower totals than infantry units), as well as the most mobile. It was also the only one which had received anything like its full allotted transport, even it was still a good twenty percent below the intended establishment. On the other hand, chan Geraith's mounted troopers wouldn't require anywhere near the personnel lift one of the infantry divisions would have demanded.
"In order to make Arlos up to strength," chan Rowlan went on, looking at chan Manthau and chan Jassian, "we're going to raid you two pretty heavily. In fact, we're going to focus on putting him as far over establishment as possible. All of us know we're going to have maintenance problems and breakdowns once we've got the steamers out there under real field conditions, so we're going to have to try to make up for lack of reliability with redundancy."
The two infantry commanders nodded. It was obvious neither of them was happy about the prospect, but, equally obviously, both of them understood it.
"Captain-of-the-Army chan Gristhane has also informed me that the procurement and development of additional steamers?and the alternate program, looking at the gasoline-powered versions?is about to get a brand new priority. In fact," the corps-captain produced his first genuine smile since Seeing the Voicenet reports from Hell's Gate, "the Navy's already been informed that it won't be getting two of those new battleships it wanted. It seems the Army's finally going to get first call on the Exchequer."
The smile vanished as abruptly as it had appeared as all four commanders remembered why that was. Then chan Rowlan cleared his throat.
"Arlos, your division is going to move out ASAP. Dust off your mobilization plans."
chan Geraith nodded without mentioning that he'd done that over thirty-six hours ago. Third Dragoons had been checking equipment, shoeing horses, drawing ammunition and supplies, and combat-loading its steamers since dawn yesterday.
"Can you move out within twenty-four hours?" chan Rowlan asked, which made it clear he was well aware chan Geraith had begun his preparations long since. "It's going to take almost that long for the railroad people to assemble the cars you're going to require."
"I can have my lead brigade ready to entrain in another twelve hours," chan Geraith promised. "It's short about fifteen percent of its assigned steamers, but if we're going to make up the shortfall from Yarkowan and Ustace, I can strip what First Brigade needs out of Second and Third. It'll probably slow Third down, since I'm guessing we'll get a ripple effect into its transport when I send Second out in the next echelon, but I suspect we can still have everybody ready to go by the time the quartermasters can put together the trains to get all of us on the rails, anyway."
"Good!" chan Rowlan said. Then he straightened his shoulders and inhaled visibly.
"At this time, we don't know what we're going to be called upon to do when we finally get to New Uromath," he said. "Arlos, we'll do our best to keep you informed of policy changes and strategic intentions via the Voice chain, but the time delay is going to mean you'll h
ave to use your own discretion?a lot. I'll come forward to join you as soon as we've got at least one of the infantry divisions en route, but until then, you're going to be the man on the spot, in more ways than one."
"Understood," chan Geraith said.
"Then understand this, too. Our primary responsibility is the protection of Sharonian civilians and the recovery of any of our people who may be still in enemy hands. I know we all hope we're talking about Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, but there are other civilians?and quite a few military dependents?in proximity to this point of contact, as well. Their safety is our first concern.
"Having said that, however, Captain-of-the-Army chan Gristhane has pointed out that there's a very important secondary consideration here. Specifically, Hell's Gate is a cluster, and according to the Authority's best guess, several of the portals in the Karys Chain are of relatively recent formation. That suggests this is an unusually active chain, which may be expanding even as we sit here talking. We cannot afford to leave a hostile?and these bastards have certainly demonstrated their hostility, I believe," chan Rowlan showed his teeth in grim amusement "?in possession of that cluster. Particularly not if it is expanding rapidly and might double back into one of our own chains at some point."
"So my orders are to secure control of that universe, as well?" chan Geraith wanted to be very certain he was clear on that point, and chan Rowlan nodded.
"It may be that eventually some sort of diplomatic solution can be arrived at. For that to happen, it will have to include severe punishment for the people responsible for this … assuming Company-Captain chan Tesh hasn't already taken care of that in full. But at this time, the very least we would find acceptable would be some form of shared control of this cluster. If it takes a mailed fist to accomplish that, then so be it. It's always possible that whatever comes out of this new Conclave in Tajvana may change those instructions, but I consider that highly unlikely. You'll have formal written orders to cover as many contingencies as we can envision, but the bottom line is that you will secure control of that cluster and hold it."