David Weber - Hell's Gate

Shaylar watched, her eyes wide. Then she sagged to her knees, gasping as she panted for breath, and Gadrial knelt beside her.

"It's all right, Shaylar," she said gently, reassuringly. "It's all right. We're not going to hurt him. It'll just pick him up. See, it lifts the log."

She pointed, pantomiming moving the accumulator back to Jathmar's litter, then lifting Jathmar the same way. Shaylar trembled violently in the circle of Gadrial' left arm, and the magister glanced over her shoulder at Jasak.

"For the love of God, lift the other wounded men. She's half crazed with terror!"

"Get them airborne!" Jasak barked to the other handlers, who were watching with open mouths. "Damn it, get them airborne now!"

Wilthy's subordinates obeyed quickly, lifting all of the critically wounded. Shaylar watched them, her body taut, her eyes wide. But the wildness was fading from them, and she began to relax again, ever so slowly.

"It's all right," Gadrial told her again and again. "Let us help him, Shaylar. Let us help Jathmar. Please."

Jasak watched as Shaylar's obvious terror began to ease. The furious fear for Jathmar which had given her strength seemed to flow out of her. Her mouth went unsteady, and her eyes overflowed. Then she crumpled, and Gadrial caught her, held her close, rocked her like a frightened child, stroking her hair and soothing her.

A badly shaken Jasak turned back to Wilthy.

"Lift Jathmar's stretcher, Erdar. But move carefully, whatever you do. She's not strong enough to take many more shocks like that one."

"Yes, Sir. I'll be gentle as a butterfly, Sir."

Gadrial urged Shaylar to her feet as Wilthy slowly and carefully, pausing between each movement to let Shaylar see every step of the process, lifted Jathmar's litter until it floated just above waist level.

Shaylar watched, still panting, and Gadrial wiped the other woman's cheeks dry with the corner of her own shirt. Then the magister gave her a smile and squeezed her hand for just a moment, before moving it to rest on Jathmar's. Wilthy had tucked the injured man's arms down at his sides, which was an awkward placement, but better than leaving them hanging over the edges of the litter.

Shaylar curled her slender fingers carefully, delicately, around her husband's. Then she drew a deep breath. Her chin came up, and she met Jasak's gaze once again.

"All right, People." Jasak gave the order. "Move out."

"What?" Company-Captain Balkar chan Tesh stared at Petty Captain Rokam Traygan in total disbelief. "You can't be serious!"

"I wish to all the Uromathian hells I wasn't, Sir," Traygan said harshly. The Ricathian Voice's face was the color of old ashes, and his hands shook visibly. He looked away from chan Tesh and swallowed hard.

"I?" He swallowed again. "I threw up twice receiving the message, Sir," he admitted. "It was … ugly."

chan Tesh stared at the petty-captain, then shook himself. He didn't know Traygan as well as he might have wished, hadn't even met the man before the Voice caught up with his column in Thermyn. But they'd traveled over a thousand miles together on horseback since then, from the rolling grasslands of what would have been central New Ternathia and across the continent's deserts and rocky western spine. The heavyset, powerfully muscled Voice hadn't struck chan Tesh as a weakling, yet he was obviously shaken?badly shaken?and chan Tesh was suddenly glad that he wasn't a Voice.

"Tell me," he said quietly, almost gently, and Traygan turned back to face him.

"Company-Captain Halifu didn't know exactly where we were," the Voice said, "and I've never worked with the Chalgyn Voice, Kinlafia. So instead of trying to contact us directly, he had Kinlafia pass the report straight up the chain with a request that Fort Mosanik relay to us. I got Kinlafia's entire transmission."

He swallowed again and shook his head.

"I never imagined anything like it, Sir," he said, his voice a bit hoarse around the edges. "It was?It was like Hell come to life. Fireballs, explosions, lightning bolts, for the gods' sake! And Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband caught right in the middle of it."

chan Tesh felt his own face turn pale. He was Ternathian, himself, not Harkalian, but Nargra-Kolmayr was virtually a Sharona-wide icon. The first woman to win the battle for a place on a temporal survey crew; one of the most powerful Voices Sharona had ever produced; daughter of one of Sharona's most renowned cetacean ambassadors; half of one of Sharona's storybook, larger than life romantic sagas. The fact that she was beautiful enough to be cast to play herself in any of the (inevitable) dramatizations of her own life had simply been icing on the cake.

"Was she hurt?" he asked urgently.

"Yes," Traygan half-groaned. "She was linked with Kinlafia, and somehow she held the link to the end. Held it even while whoever the bastards were slaughtered her crew?even her husband!?all around her. And then?"

His face twisted with what chan Tesh realized was the actual physical memory of the last moments of Nargra-Kolmayr's transmission.

"She's dead?" chan Tesh almost whispered.

"We don't know. We think she hit her head, so she might just be unconscious." Traygan sounded like a man whose emotions clung desperately to what his intellect knew was false hope, chan Tesh thought grimly.

"All right, Rokam," he said. "Tell me exactly what you know. Take your time. Make sure you tell me everything."

It was the news a transport pilot least wanted to hear.

Squire Muthok Salmeer's quarters, such as they were, were almost adjacent to the hummer tower. The handler on watch had handed the message straight to Salmeer, and Salmeer had run all the way from his quarters to the CO's office to deliver the ghastly news.

"Combat casualties? Combat with what?" Commander of Five Hundred Sarr Klian demanded incredulously as he scanned the message transcript the duty communications tech had pulled off the incoming hummer's crystal. It was, Salmeer recognized, what was known as a rhetorical question, and the pilot waited tensely for the five hundred to finish reading.

By the time he was done, Klian was swearing blisters into Fort Rycharn's roughly finished wooden walls. He glared at the authorizing sigil at the foot of the message, then shook his head, looked up, and glared at Salmeer.

"He met someone from another universe and attacked? Has Hundred Olderhan lost his blue-blooded mind?"

"Sir," Salmeer said, leaning forward and jabbing a finger at the two words in the entire message which had meant the most to him, "I don't know who attacked who, but he says he's got heavy casualties, Sir. Whatever his reasons, whatever's going on out there, he needs a med team. We've got to scramble one now, Five Hundred. My dragon's got seven hundred miles to fly just to reach the portal."

The pilot was almost dancing in impatience. Sarr Klian swore once more, explosively. Then, as Salmeer opened his mouth to protest the delay, Fort Rycharn's commander shook his head savagely.

"Yes, yes, of course! Throw a medical team into the saddle and go," he said sharply.

Salmeer paused just long enough to throw an abbreviated salute. The five hundred returned it with equal brevity, and Salmeer whipped around. He was already back up to a run by the time he hit the door, but even so, he heard Klian muttering behind him before the door closed.

"He attacked them? What the fuck is Olderhan doing out there?"

Twenty minutes later, Fort Rycharn's sole permanently assigned transport dragon was lumbering out to the flightline, loaded with an emergency medical transport platform, several canvas bags of medical supplies, two surgeons, four herbalists, and Sword Naf Morikan, Charlie Company's journeyman Gifted healer, whose R amp;R had just been cut brutally short.