David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

The Arcanan's eyes were ugly, and he slowly and carefully pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves.

"I've thought and thought about how I might be able to express my gratitude to you," he continued as the smoothed the leather across the backs of his hands. "Unfortunately, even with the assistance of my PC

here, I don't think I have the words. So I've decided the best way to tell you-" he held out one gloved hand, and the nearer guard handed him his truncheon "-is to show you."

Hundred Geyrsof's fingers were steady in the control grooves as Graycloud led the 3012th Strike through the portal.

The yellow dragon flew strongly, steadily, sharing his pilot's eagerness as Geyrsof lay stretched out in the cockpit, watching the imagery displayed on his helmet's visor. Ahead of them, the eastern sky glowed with the approach of dawn, but the shadows shrouding the ground below was were still dense enough to make him a tiny bit nervous. The mountains about them weren't all that high, compared to many another, more impressive range, but he'd been impressed-almost awed-by the incredible cliffs his dragons had been forced to climb over just to get here. And if there were taller mountains in the multiverse, the rugged slopes of these mountains were more than solid enough to flatten any dragon careless enough to fly into them.

The mission planners were right to insist on waiting for dawn. The thought ran below the surface of Geyrsof's concentration on the steep, barren, poorly visible mountainsides streaking past beyond Graycloud's wingtips. We probably could have done this with less light … but I wouldn't have enjoyed it!

The old cliche about the dearth of "old, bold pilots" flickered in the back of his brain. Then he felt himself tightening inside as they reached the last waypoint and turned onto their final approach.

There! Geyrsof's eyes narrowed behind his visor as he saw the fort lying ahead of him, exactly where the maps said it should be. He looked through Graycloud's eyes, moving the crosshair while he prepared to climb high enough to gain a clear line of fire onto the fort's parade ground. But then something jabbed at the corner of his attention, and his eyes moved back to the shadows below the fort's wall.

What the hells? That's not supposed to be there … whatever the hells it is. It's-

He was still peering into the shadows, using Graycloud's vision to try to figure out what those dimly visible shapes and scars on the earth were, as the two yellows and their accompanying reds entered the final stretch of their approach valley … and the four Faraika II machine guns dug in on either side, just below the summit, opened fire.

Janaki chan Calirath had been standing on the raised gun platform between the gate bastions with Taleena on his shoulder for the last two hours. He'd stood there, almost motionless, gazing steadily into the west, and Rof chan Skrithik had stood equally silent at his other shoulder, with Senior-Armsman Orek Isia, Fort Salby's senior Flicker, by his side.

The regiment-captain felt … uncomfortable. Which, he reflected, was a pitifully pale word to describe his emotions at this moment. Part of him wished desperately that he'd gone ahead and ordered Janaki to the rear. Another part of him-the part charged with defending twelve hundred civilians, including his own wife-was desperately glad the prince and his Talent were here. And yet another part wondered if Janaki would have gone, even if he'd been ordered to.

And just who the hells would you have used to make him go if he'd refused, Rof? he asked himself wryly, glancing at the Marine standing respectfully behind the two officers. Chief-Armsman chan Braikal looked most unhappy, but chan Skrithik had no doubt whose orders the Marine would have followed if it had come to a choice between him and the Crown Prince of Ternathia.

Besides, when it came right down to it, Rof chan Skrithik was a Ternathian himself. He knew how valuable Janaki's life was. He also recalled the Caliraths' motto … and the quotation attributed to Emperor Halian over fifteen hundred years ago, when he'd rejected all of the arguments in favor of withdrawing from the defense of his Bolakini allies.

"It takes twenty years' training to make an Emperor," Halian had said. "It takes twenty centuries to make an Empire the world can trust."

Janaki chan Calirath understood what his ancestor had said all those centuries ago, chan Skrithik thought.

"What's that?" chan Braikal said suddenly. "There-above the southern hilltop?"

Chan Skrithik couldn't make out what the Marine was talking about, but Janaki answered him. The prince didn't even turn his head to look. He didn't have to … just as chan Skrithik didn't have to look into Janaki's gray eyes to see the shadows moving in their depths.

"It's starting, Chief," the crown prince said quietly.

"Still think it's a stupid place to put a machine gun?!" Paras chan Barsak shouted in Kardan Verais' right ear.

"Fuck, no!" Verais shouted back.

They had to shout, even though their heads were barely a foot apart, and even then they could scarcely hear one another. The cacophonous bellow of four .54-caliber machine guns tended to make it difficult to carry on a conversation. The heavy Faraikas couldn't sustain maximum-rate fire for very long without overheating catastrophically, but they didn't have to, either.

Each of the four machine gun emplacements on each side of the valley poured at least two hundred rounds at the monstrous beasts leading that airborne onslaught, and none of their targets even tried to dodge.

Cerlohs Myr watched in utter horror as both his remaining yellows ran straight into the massed fire of the Sharonian weapons which shouldn't have been there. Geyrsof and his wingman had been concentrating on their assigned target, not looking for machine guns on the tops of mountains a good mile and a half short of the target that didn't know they were coming. Myr had no idea what those guns were doing there. Indeed, he could hardly even find them! The brilliant flames of their muzzle flashes illuminated the shadows wrapped around their positions like chain-lightning, but they were so solidly dug-in, with so many sandbags and so much earth piled on top of their positions, that the muzzle flashes were all he could see.

Well, that and the consequences of those muzzle flashes.

Graycloud and Skykill seemed to stagger in midair. The fire wasn't even coming in from below, where their scales were thickest, and the massive bullets punched through their sides like white-hot awls. One of them-Myr had no idea which-managed to scream in mortal agony, and then both of them went smashing down out of the heavens in bloody, shattered ruin that bounced and skidded onward along the valley floor like toys that flailed broken wings like pitiful, tattered banners.

The three reds behind them went the same way before their pilots could react. The rest of the attack flight responded instinctively, rocketing steeply upward. But the deadly flanking fire tracked them as they climbed, and another red and one of the blacks went down, as well, before they could clear the threat zone.

Myr looked back from his own dragon as Razorwing bounded upward, and saw the broken bodies of seven-seven!-of his precious dragons and their pilots sprawled grotesquely across the valley floor.

The cheers were deafening.

Rof chan Skrithik found himself shouting right along with the rest of his men, bellowing his triumph, and he knew he was shouting even louder because of his reaction to the sheer size of the Arcanans'

winged monstrosities.

But Janaki wasn't cheering.

The crown prince reached out and caught chan Skrithik by the front of his uniform tunic. The regimentcaptain's eyes widened in surprise at the strength with which Janaki grabbed him and literally yanked him forward. He started to say something, but then Janaki turned his head to look at him, and chan Skrithik's mouth closed with a click.