David Weber - The Road to Hell

Fatigue parties armed with mattocks and shovels had hacked machine gun and rifle pits into Mount Karek’s recalcitrant soil on either side of the portal even before chan Serahlyk and Banchu’s bulldozers-assisted by liberal applications of dynamite-had gouged out proper approach roads. They couldn’t be provided with overhead cover if the weapons in them were going to have sufficient elevation to cover the portal’s airspace against the Arcanan dragons, but judging from the attack on Fort Salby, the heavy machine guns outranged the dragons’ weapons significantly. Nonetheless, chan Geraith had regarded rifles and machine guns as a purely interim stopgap until better arrangements could be made, which was precisely what chan Serahlyk was doing at the moment. His engineers were emplacing dozens of two-point-five inch Yerthak pedestal guns in permanent concrete-footed and protected positions placed to sweep the portal faces. The four-barreled Yerthaks had become at best obsolescent in their designed role as light anti-torpedo boat weapons for the Navy’s capital ships, but they had a maximum range of over six thousand yards and a vertical range of twenty-four hundred. They also had a peak firing rate of forty-five rounds per minute, and if their explosive six-pound shells were too light to stop warships, the Arcanans had discovered the hard way what they could do to dragons .

If there’d been any doubt in their minds on that point, it had probably been resolved last week when a trio of dragons attempted to pass through from Karys. One of them had slammed to earth less than half a mile east of the portal, killing its pilot and nine of the twelve Arcanan infantry aboard when it crashed. A second, obviously badly wounded had made it back through the portal despite a savagely shredded wing. It had plunged through the opening in obvious distress and clearly out of control, yet somehow avoided plummeting to earth-undoubtedly thanks to yet another of the Arcanans’ unnatural magical spells-and staggered in to a clumsy, just-short-of-disaster landing. The third, made wise by its companions’ misfortune, had wheeled and fled before it ever crossed the portal threshold into the Yerthaks’ range.

Ultimately, the pedestal guns would be augmented or even completely replaced by the heavier “Ternathian 37.” Formally the Cannon of 5037, from the year of its introduction, the 3.4 inch weapon was the most deadly field gun in the world, using cased ammunition and firing a nineteen-pound shell at a maximum rate of twenty rounds per minute. It had been in service less than twenty years, but the “37’s” reputation for reliability, toughness, and lethality had already attained legendary proportions. The Model 1, the lightweight version designed for high mobility with mounted units like the 3rd Dragoons, had an effective range of nine thousand yards; the Model 2, with a split trail to permit greater elevation and a slightly longer barrel, could reach eleven thousand. First Brigade’s artillery had been reinforced when it was dispatched from Sharona, and Division-Captain chan Geraith had peeled off enough of its guns to cover both sides of the portal. Figuring out how to mount even the handy 37 to engage rapidly moving aerial targets offered a nontrivial challenge, but chan Skrithik was confident the Imperial Ternathian Army’s artillerists were up to the task, and Windlord Garsal had already demonstrated what shrapnel shells could do to dragons.

On the other hand…

“What about eagle-lions?” he asked, and chan Serahlyk grimaced.

“They got one of those through yesterday,” he acknowledged sourly, “but the sniper teams bring down about half of them, and it doesn’t look like the bastards have an unlimited supply of the things. They seem to be getting more sensitive to losses, anyway. I just wish we knew why they’re sending them through.”

Chan Skrithik nodded, although he suspected Battalion-Captain chan Gayrahn was probably right about that. Since the eagle-lions weren’t attacking anyone and instead seemed content to fly high overhead, chan Gayrahn had suggested they were probably carrying out reconnaissance, and that was a very unhappy thought. The observation balloons in use in Sharona for decades hugely extended visual horizons, and only someone who’d ascended in one could begin to imagine how much detail could be made out from them. No one knew how intelligent the eagle-lions might be, either, or if there was some Arcanan equivalent of the Animal Speaker Talent. There might well be, however, and if an eagle-lion was remotely as intelligent as a dolphin or porpoise, the creatures could be bringing back more detail than anyone could wish.

“Well,” he said philosophically, turning beside chan Serahlyk as the two of them considered another dust-spewing worksite about a mile further east, “I doubt getting a handful of eagle-lions past us will tell them all that much about the Division-Captain’s plans.”

* * *

It was, perhaps, as well for Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu’s blood pressure that he was unable to overhear chan Skrithik’s observation as he and Klayrman Toralk stood on opposite sides of the floating map table, with Commander of Five Hundred Mahrkrai, Harshu’s chief of staff, to one side. At the moment, a selection of imagery from a gryphon reconnaissance crystal was playing out on that table, and Harshu’s expression was not a happy one.

The current selection ended, and the two thousand looked up at Mahrkrai.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“I believe it covers all the salient points, Sir.” The chief of staff’s oddly colorless eyes met Harshu’s steadily. “There are several hours of total imagery,” he continued, “and I’ve got the analysts going back over it to see if we missed anything on the first run, but I doubt young Brychar did.”

Harshu’s acknowledging nod was more than a bit brusque, but not because he disagreed with Mahrkrai. Commander of One Hundred Brychar Tamdaran was very young indeed-less than half Harshu’s age-and one of the relatively rare Ransarans in the Union of Arcana’s armed forces. At the moment, he was none too happy with his two thousand’s decision to wink at Alivar Neshok’s interrogation methods. Tamdaran didn’t know everything Neshok had been up to-Neshok (and Harshu) had kept his operations tightly compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis-but he’d heard more than enough rumors to write up a formal protest, even though he was obviously aware Harshu had tacitly approved the five hundred’s actions. That was going to make things even more difficult in the fullness of time, but that was nothing the two thousand hadn’t bargained on from the beginning, and he didn’t blame the boy. He was rather proud of him, actually.

And however disapproving Tamdaran might be, he was also good at his job. In fact, he’d been responsible for the spellware which allowed his intelligence section to scan captured Sharonian printed maps into properly formatted files and generate accurately scaled and oriented paperless versions. And he also had the patience to wade through hours of recorded images looking for the one key element which might tell Harshu what the Sharonians were up to.

Aside from “no good,” that is , Toralk thought sourly. I think we can count on that much being true, at least .

“Tamdaran’s sure about their ‘trains’?” Harshu asked after a moment. “I’d be a lot happier if we had clear imagery of that.”

“The Sharonians’ve gotten damned good at taking out gryphons that come in too low, Sir,” Toralk replied before Mahrkrai could respond. Harshu’s eyes flicked to him, and the Air Force officer grimaced. “I suspect they’re wasting a lot more ammunition than we realize on each gryphon they nail, but they appear to have unlimited quantities of it. And, frankly, the cupboard’s pretty close to bare where recon gryphons are concerned. We didn’t have anywhere near as many of them as of the strike gryphons when we started out, and we’ve been losing more than we’d expected to from the outset. I’ve instructed the handlers to do what they can to hold down additional losses, and they’ve gotten more cautious about altitudes and evasive routing as a result. I’m afraid it’s costing us resolution and detail, but if we send them in for close passes, we’ll lose our long-range eyes completely in painfully short order.”