David Weber - Hell's Gate

"Sir Jasak attacked?" Morikan demanded as he fumbled his way into the saddle on the already-moving dragon. "Attacked what, in the gods' names? There's nothing out there!"

Salmeer bit his tongue to keep himself from pointing out that there obviously was something out there, since Sir Jasak Olderhan had gotten into a blood-and-guts fight with whatever it was. The pilot found it impossible to believe it really had been representatives of another trans-universal civilization. That was simply too preposterous for him to wrap his mind around without a lot more evidence. But he didn't have any better explanation for what it might have been than anyone else at Fort Rycharn did, and he reminded himself that Morikan was Olderhan's company healer. He knew every one of the men of Fifty Garlath's platoon personally. Of course the noncom was worried half out of his mind.

"I have no idea, Sword," he said instead. "Be sure your safety straps are buckled tight."

"Yes, Sir," Morikan replied. "Ready when you are, Squire," he added after a moment, and Salmeer gave Windclaw the signal.

The dragon launched quickly, as if he'd caught his pilot's urgency, and he probably had. Windclaw was a fine old beast, a century old last month, and as smart as a transport ever got. Of course, that wasn't much compared to a battle dragon, but Windclaw was no mental midget, and his experience made him doubly valuable in the field, particularly in an emergency. A canny old beast like Windclaw knew every trick in the book for coaxing extra speed during an emergency flight.

Salmeer wished bitterly that they'd had even one more dragon available to send with Windclaw, but this universe was at the ass-end of nowhere, almost ninety thousand miles from Old Arcana. Worse, it was over twenty-six thousand miles back to the nearest sliderhead at the Green Haven portal, and almost ten thousand of those miles were over-water. A transport dragon like Windclaw could cover prodigious distances?up to a thousand miles, or possibly a bit more in a single day's flight?but then he had to rest. That meant landing on something, and the water gaps between Fort Rycharn and Green Haven were all wider than a dragon could manage in a single leg.

That made getting anything all the way to the fort an unmitigated pain in the ass. But Salmeer was used to that, just as he was used to the fact that Transport Command promotion was slow to the point of nonexistence. Muthok Salmeer himself had almost thirty years in, but he was never going to be a combat pilot, and he still hadn't been promoted as high as a fifty. Taken for granted, overworked, underappreciated, and underpaid: that was a Transport Command pilot's lot in life, and most of them took the same sort of perverse pride in it that Salmeer did.

None of which made his current problem any more palatable.

The Arcanan military?and the UTTTA civilian infrastructure, for that matter?were notoriously casual about extending the slide rails out into the boondocks. It was hard to fault their sense of priorities, Salmeer supposed in his more charitable moments. After all, even Green Haven boasted a total population of considerably less than eight hundred thousand. That wasn't a lot of people, spread over the surface of an entire virgin planet the size of Arcana itself, and it wasn't as if other portals, much closer to Arcana, couldn't supply anything the home world really needed. Exploration and expansion were worthwhile in their own right, of course, and there were always homesteaders, eager to stake claims to places of their own. But simple economic realities meant the inner portals were far more heavily developed and populated and invariably received a far greater proportion of the Transit Authority's maintenance resources as a result.

And it's the poor bloody transport pilots who make it all possible, Salmeer thought bitterly. Not that anyone ever notices.

He supposed it was inevitable, but every bureaucrat, whether uniformed or civilian, seemed to assume there would always be a transport dragon around when he needed one. The sheer range a dragon made possible was addictive, despite the fact that even a big, powerful, fully mature beast like Windclaw could carry only a fraction of the load a slider car could manage. Most of the freight that needed moving on the frontiers was relatively light, after all. But the demands placed upon the Air Force's Transport Command were still brutal. The Command was always short of suitable dragons, and Cloudsail, Windclaw's partner in the two-dragon teams which were supposed to be deployed, had torn three of the sails in his right wing colliding with a treetop. They'd had to ship him back to the main portal for treatment, and, of course, there'd been no replacement in the pipeline.

All of which explained why Windclaw was the only dragon currently assigned to Fort Rycharn when Salmeer was desperately afraid that Sir Jasak Olderhan might well need far more than a single beast.

He glanced back, craning around in the saddle which ran securely around the base of Windclaw's neck, to be sure his passengers were still with him. Straps passed behind the dragon's forelegs, as well, to keep the saddle from slipping sideways. It put Salmeer in the best position to see where Windclaw was going and to communicate his orders to the dragon. Behind the saddle, Windclaw's back supported the emergency medical lift platform?a low-slung, aerodynamically streamlined lozenge made of canvas, leather, and steel tubing.

The platform was broad enough to accommodate two people lying flat beside one another, and deep enough to allow for a bottom shelf and top shelf for the storage of reasonably small items of cargo. It also ran most of the way down Windclaw's spine, which made it long enough to permit the transport of up to twenty critically injured people on stretchers laid end-to-end. A turtle-backed windbreak of taut canvas was stretched over the front two thirds of the framework to keep the slipstream off the medical casualties during transport.

Passengers who weren't incapacitated could ride in one of three saddles strapped in front of the lozenge, and both surgeons and the Gifted healer had opted to do so. All three wore helmets with full-length visors to keep the wind?and insects?out of their faces during flight. The herbalists, the most junior members of the medical team, rode inside the transport lozenge itself.

The terrain below them was a morass of mud, standing water, low-growing swamp forest, and vast stretches of reed-filled marsh. Waterbirds by the hundreds of thousands?probably by the millions, if he'd been able to count them?were visible below, some winging their way above the swamps, some dotting the marshes like a variegated carpet in shades of gray, white, brown, and pink. Still others rested among the trees, in what Salmeer suspected were vast rookeries, given the season in this part of this particular universe.

It was a breathtaking sight, even for a man accustomed to piloting transport dragons through empty universes. He loved the vast sweep of nature at its pristine best, and vistas like this one still raised his spirits. A wry grin formed behind the wind shield fastened to his leather-padded steel riding helmet. Despite all of his complaining about overwork and lack of respect, there was a reason he'd signed up for the Air Force, after all! He always felt sorry for the soldiers who had to slog across most universes on foot, like the Andaran Scouts did.

Shaylar walked in a daze, stumbling forward at Jathmar's side. He lay so still she would have been afraid he was dead if not for the faintest of flutters under her fingertips, where his pulse beat against the skin. It was the only way she could tell he wasn't, because she couldn't sense him through the marriage bond at all. Black acid lay at the core of her brain, preventing anything?even Jathmar?from connecting.