David Weber - Hell's Gate

Frankly, Loumas was beginning to wonder if there might actually be anything to the wild rumors about flying beasts. He wasn't certain where they'd started. The Arcanan prisoners had all been sent further back, safely beyond the possibility of any attempt to rescue them. Loumas would have preferred for at least some of them to have been kept closer to hand, where the local garrison might have been able to begin learning their language and possibly conduct some useful interrogations. On the other hand, he understood just how vital an intelligence resource those prisoners were, and he could hardly blame Company-Captain chan Tesh or Company-Captain Halifu for wanting to make sure nothing happened to them.

But if none of the prisoners had been spreading ridiculous stories about huge, winged creatures, Loumas had no idea where they might have come from.

Probably a combination of sheer boredom and the fact that we don't know diddily about these people?except that they've got some fucking dangerous weapons!

He snorted in what he wanted to be amusement but which was tinged with something entirely too much like fear for comfort. He reminded himself that the other side obviously didn't know anything more about Sharona and the capabilities of Sharonian weapons than he did about their weapons. The way they'd tried to defend this very portal was proof enough of that! But that didn't make him?or anyone else?any happier about confronting the completely unknown, and the eerie way these people had somehow managed to establish their base camp here without anything remotely like roads or leaving a single boat behind didn't make it any better.

Well, at least they won't be sneaking up on us, he told himself firmly. It may be boring, but I'm damned sure not?

His thoughts froze and he stiffened, focusing in tightly. Then he swore aloud.

Damn! I wish we had a decent Distance Viewer! he thought.

His Talent would let him spot living creatures, but what he Saw of them was always … fuzzy. The creatures themselves were clear enough, but exactly what they might be doing, or exactly what their surroundings were, was often almost impossible to discern. Half the time, he had to extrapolate, and like most Plotters, he was fairly good at that. But extrapolation depended on some sort of familiarity with what the people he was Plotting were likely to be doing, and who the hells knew what these people were likely to be up to? If he'd had a Distance Viewer to team with, he'd have been able to coach the other Talent into finding the proper distance and bearing, and the Distance Viewer would have been able to See exactly what was happening.

Loumas closed his eyes, concentrating hard, then punched chan Synarch's shoulder.

"Huh?" The wiry Marine snorted awake. His head snapped up, and his eyes cleared almost instantly as he looked a question at Loumas.

"We've got an incoming contact," Loumas said crisply. "I think it's a small boat, headed in from the east."

chan Synarch nodded sharply and reached into the cargo pocket on his right thigh and extracted a pad of paper and pencil.

"Shoot," he said tersely, pencil poised.

"It's not as clear as I'd like," Loumas admitted, knowing chan Synarch would understand why that was. "They're about four miles out. I can't get much of a feel for the boat, but it's moving damned fast?I make it at least twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, whatever that is in the 'knots' or whatever it is you Ternathian swabbies use."

The two of them grinned tensely at each other, and he continued.

"There's three of them. One of them's in some kind of uniform, but it doesn't look like anything we saw here. I don't think he's wearing a helmet, and his tunic or jacket is red, not the camouflage pattern they had." His hand stabbed in the direction of the wrecked Arcanan fortifications and camp. "I think the other two are in civilian clothes. Doesn't look like any uniform I ever heard of, and they aren't dressed alike. I don't See any weapons on any of them. None of those tube things, and no crossbows anywhere I can See, either." Loumas grimaced. "A Distance Viewer could probably tell us more, but that's all I've got right now."

"Understood." chan Synarch had been writing quickly and clearly in the shorthand every Flicker was trained to use while Loumas talked. Now he read back what he'd written, and Loumas listened carefully, then nodded.

"That's it," he agreed.

"Then I'd better get it off," chan Synarch said. He ripped off the sheet on which he'd written, folded it, put it into one of the metal carrier cartridges on his belt, and trotted briskly around the edge of the portal until he crossed over into the cool, forested depths of Hell's Gate and had a clear line of sight to Company-Captain chan Tesh's HQ bunker. As soon as he did, he Flicked the message cartridge directly to the company-captain's orderly.

"Sent," he reported laconically to Loumas as he jogged back around to the swamp side, and the Plotter nodded. He was still tracking the incoming boat. In the three minutes it had taken him and chan Synarch to get the message off, the boat had covered almost another mile and a half. It was going to be here in another three minutes?four, tops?and?

A bugle awoke suddenly from the far side of the portal, sounding the "Stand-To," and Loumas exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He watched men double-timing towards their assigned actions stations, and his lips skinned back from his teeth in a tight smile.

I might have missed some kind of super weapon in their frigging boat, he thought, but they aren't going to take us by surprise with whatever it is.

Balkar chan Tesh lowered his field glasses with a thoughtful frown. He'd gotten to Platoon-Captain Parai chan Dersal's forward observation post from the Hell's Gate side of the portal while the boat Loumas had detected was still a good mile out. He'd stood beside the Marine and watched it during its final approach, and he hoped his perplexity was less apparent to his men than it was to him.

How the hell do they make the thing move? he wondered. There was no sail, no oars, no paddle, and certainly no steam launch's tall spindly funnel or plume of smoke. Yet the boat?not more than fifteen feet long, at most?came sliding through the deeper channels of the swamp fast enough that its stern squatted and its bow planed across the water.

It's not natural … and isn't that a silly thing to be thinking after everything that's already happened out here?

He slowly and deliberately cased the field glasses, then folded his arms and stood waiting while the boat slowed abruptly as it slid the last few dozen yards to the raised hillock before the portal.

As Loumas had reported, there were three men in it. Two of them wore what was obviously civilian clothing of some sort, although?not surprisingly?chan Tesh had never seen garments cut that way. They were much more tightly tailored, more formfitting, than any current Sharonian fashion, and the civilian jackets were long-tailed, with broad, cutaway lapels and outsized silver buttons. Both jackets were dark colored?the larger, chestnut-haired fellow in the bow, who looked to be the older of the two, wore one that was the color of port wine, while the younger, Uromathian-looking one on the midships thwart wore one of a dark, rich green?but the tight trousers were light-colored, and tucked into pointy-toed dress boots which rose to midcalf. All in all, chan Tesh couldn't imagine a less practical outfit for wading around in swamps.

The man sitting in the stern of the boat and managing the simple rudder?at least I know what that's for, chan Tesh thought wryly?was obviously in uniform, although as Loumas had already informed him, it didn't match anything they'd seen yet. There was something about him which suggested a noncommissioned officer, chan Tesh decided, and his red jersey-like tunic reminded the company-captain vaguely of naval uniform, for some reason. Possibly, he thought, because the man seemed to be doing what one might expect a sailor to do.