David Weber - The Road to Hell

If they can, they may be slower than we are, but they’ve got the godsdamned railroad built all the way to the portal. Once whatever they have in the pipeline starts arriving in Traisum, they’ll be able to build up quickly-probably even more quickly than we could if we had as many levitation accumulators as we wanted! Each load’ll take longer to make the trip, but a single “train” as long as the work trains that pulled out of Karys after the prisoner exchange can carry as much as all my transports together. And that’s assuming the transports have the accumulators to double up!

That, he decided, was a very unpleasant thought indeed.

* * *

Commander of Five Hundred (acting) Alivar Neshok looked up from the report in his PC as Shield Lisaro Porath knocked once, opened his office door, and stepped through it. The one good thing about the abrupt check in the AEF’s advance was that there’d been time for the engineers to throw up quarters a bit more substantial than tents. The chansyu huts, named for the legendary immortal Ransaran two-headed, winged lion which died and was reborn in a flash of lightning, couldn’t be erected quite as quickly as their name suggested, but now that the AEF looked like spending at least several months in one spot, more durable quarters were in order.

Neshok didn’t like the fact that their advance had come to such a screeching halt, but he was grateful for the solid roof and walls-and the warmth-the chansyus provided. The privacy that came with walls less permeable to sound than canvas was also welcome, and so was the rather more comfortable set of quarters attached to the chansyu which housed his office.

Now the shield braced to attention in front of his field desk and touched his chest in salute.

“Sorry to disturb you, Five Hundred, but Thousand Gahnyr is here to see you,” he said.

Porath-a black-haired, brown-eyed Hilmaran with a thin mustache-was a solid, chunky, broad shouldered fellow whose hard face hinted at the flinty soul of the man who wore it. He’d been Javelin Porath up until about last week, when Neshok had finally managed to get him the promotion he’d so amply earned. It was a mark of the way Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk were busy pushing Neshok into obscurity now that they felt they no longer needed him that it had taken so long for Porath’s promotion to come through.

That thought sent a familiar trickle of resentment through the five hundred, and his lips thinned as he recalled how different Harshu’s attitude had been when the AEF’s advance had begun. No one had expressed any qualms then about how Neshok and his handful of interrogators got the intelligence Harshu needed to plan his movements or Toralk needed to plan specific attacks. Oh, no! All that had mattered then was that the information continue to flow!

He treasured the heat of his anger for a moment, warming the hands of his soul’s bitterness above the furnace of his fury, then made himself take a mental step back. The truth was that Toralk had always looked down that long, Andaran nose of his at Neshok. In fact, he’d protested to Harshu about the five hundred’s methods several times. Hadn’t kept him from making use of the information Neshok and Porath and the others like them had obtained for him, though, had it? But now that the brilliant tacticians like Harshu and Toralk were bogged down in front of a bottleneck they couldn’t find a way through, now that they might have to start answering awkward questions from their own superiors, now they were ready to throw the despised “intelligence puke” who’d brought them this far to the dragon to cover their own arses. They weren’t even accepting personal briefings from Neshok any longer. Instead, they sent middlemen like Commander of One Thousand Faildym Gahnyr to see if Neshok had obtained any additional intelligence that might let them somehow crawl out of the pit into which their advance had fallen.

The five hundred squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply, and nodded to Porath.

“Show the Thousand in, Lisaro.”

He was rather pleased with how calmly the sentence came out, and he shut down his PC, climbed out of his chair, and straightened his tunic. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored surface of the PC and allowed himself a brief lip twitch of satisfaction. As an intelligence officer, he theoretically ought to have worn the Office of Army Intelligence’s gray trousers and maroon tunic with the OAI’s unsleeping eye shoulder flash. Instead, he wore the standard camouflage pattern tunic-still the mottled green, black, and brown of summer-of a line Infantry or Cavalry officer. That was more than sufficient to frost the chops of any hard-nosed operational type like Toralk, and Neshok took a certain degree of pleasure in rubbing those aforesaid hard noses in it. He’d been instructed by Two Thousand mul Gurthak himself to avoid OAI uniform, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it as long as he was following the governor’s instructions.

He looked up from the reflection and came to attention as Thousand Gahnyr followed Porath back into Neshok’s workspace.

“Thousand,” he said, saluting briskly, and Gahnyr nodded back with rather less formality.

“Five Hundred,” he responded, and accepted Neshok’s gestured invitation to seat himself in the chair floating in front of the desk.

Neshok dismissed Porath with a flick of his head, then resumed his own chair and leaned back in it ever so slightly, regarding Gahnyr with an attentive expression.

“How can I help you, Sir?” he inquired as the door closed behind Porath.

“I’m on my way to a meeting with Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk,” Gahnyr said. “It’s mostly just a routine base-touching, but I wondered if you’d had time to go over those dispatches from Thousand Carthos? If you’ve turned up anything new, I thought I’d take it along with me.”

“Of course, Sir.” Neshok’s reply was as crisp as the nod which accompanied it, despite a fresh stab of resentment. Of course Gahnyr would “take it along” with him. It wouldn’t do to have Alivar Neshok’s pariah presence cast its shadow across Commander of Two Thousand Harshu’s latest meeting, would it? Why, if that happened, somebody might actually think Harshu had authorized Neshok’s actions!

“There isn’t really anything new-certainly not anything earthshaking-in Thousand Carthos’ reports, Sir,” he continued. “I could wish there were more prisoner interrogations”-his opaque eyes flicked up to meet Gahnyr’s briefly-“since that’s proven our best source of intelligence, but apparently not many prisoners were actually taken. On the other hand, he’d only gotten about halfway across Resym before he was recalled to join us here, and aside from the fort at the Nairsom-Resym portal, he hadn’t encountered anything remotely like resistance, so he probably had less opportunity to secure prisoners than we’ve had.”

“Probably not,” Gahnyr agreed in a neutral tone.

The infantry thousand wasn’t as imaginative as Klayrman Toralk, his Air Force counterpart, but he couldn’t have missed the implication of Neshok’s remarks, and the intelligence officer felt a flicker of satisfaction. They’d find it a bit more difficult to dodge the crap Carthos’ lack of prisoners was going to splash all over everyone in sight. None of Carthos’ reports said so in so many words, but it was obvious he hadn’t bothered to take any prisoners, and it was difficult to believe every single Sharonian he’d encountered had died fighting.

Not going to be able to sweep that under the rug, are you? the five hundred thought coldly. And Carthos is a regular Infantry officer, not one of those Office of Intelligence types you can shove all your own responsibility off onto, isn’t he?