was more attentive even than usual today. And he also regretted the fact that they didn't have a decent Distance Viewer even more than usual.
But they didn't, and they couldn't get one, which meant Loumas' Plotting Talent was the best they could come up with, and he frowned in concentration as he 'felt' for the presence of living creatures. As always, he was bombarded with thousands upon thousands of flickers of life essence-birds, mammals, lizards, crocodiles, jaguars … The list went on and on, but all of those essences, all of those glittering points of light in his Talent's field of view, were scattered randomly. They lacked the organization, the formation, which would have indicated a human presence.
Still no sign of the bastards, I guess, he reflected. Good. I know some of the other guys are awfully full of themselves. Well, they can be as eager for another round with these people as they want to be. I'd just as soon not see a sign of them until our reinforcements get here.
He opened his eyes and straightened, and Junior-Armsman Tairsal chan Synarch cocked an eyebrow at him.
'Nothing, huh?' the Flicker asked.
'Don't sound so disappointed,' Loumas said dryly.
'Oh, I'm not, believe me!' Chan Synarch shook his head, hard.
'Good, because in that case, I don't have to throttle you for being an idiot.'
Chan Synarch chuckled. He and Loumas had been teamed for lookout duty ever since Company-Captain chan Tesh had taken the swamp portal away from the Arcanans, and they got along quite well, despite very different backgrounds. Loumas was a New Farnalian who'd joined the PAAF almost fifteen years before, whereas chan Synarch was a Ternathian who'd been born less than fifteen miles outside Estafel, the imperial capital. He was an Imperial Marine on temporary assignment to the PAAF, and there was a lively tradition of rivalry between the Marines, who considered themselves a corps d'elite, and the Portal Authority Armed Forces' long-service regulars.
Upon occasion, that rivalry had spilled over into even more lively brawls, but not this time. Chan Tesh had pinched Loumas from Hulmok Arthag because he desperately needed a Plotter. Well, actually he'd needed a Distance Viewer, but he'd had to settle for the best he could get. Although chan Synarch was senior to Loumas, he'd confessed at the outset that he'd never worked with a Plotter before. He'd been refreshingly ready to ask questions in order to figure out how their Talents could mesh most effectively, and the two of them had quickly established a lively mutual respect.
'I wish we were on the other side of the portal,' chan Synarch said now, swatting vainly at the insects whining about his head and ears.
'Well, if you can figure out away to make a Talent work through a portal, I'm sure we can get the Company- Captain to sign off on it. For that matter, you'll end up filthy rich, I imagine.'
'Instead of just filthy, you mean?' chan Synarch said, grimacing at one muddy boot, and it was Loumas'
turn to chuckle.
Commander of Fifty Fahrlo felt himself trying to curl even more tightly against Deathclaw's comforting solidity. He'd never before dared to take the dragon to his maximum speed, given the bloodcurdling penalties awaiting any Air Force officer foolish enough to lame or cripple one of the expensive, almost impossible to replace battle dragons in a mere training exercise.
I hope to all the gods that Neshok knows what he's talking about this time, Fahrlo thought. If he doesn't, if these people are maintaining any sort of a decent sky watch instead of concentrating solely on ground threats, things could be about to get pretty damned messy.
Fahrlo would have been more confident of the Intelligence officer's assessment if he hadn't decided that Neshok was one of the half-dozen biggest pricks he'd ever had the misfortune to meet.
You don't have to like him, as long as he manages to do his job, the Air Force officer reminded himself.
Of course, if he were half as bright as he thinks he is, he'd probably be a Two Thousand himself by now, wouldn't he?
Fahrlo gave his head a mental shake. He had other things to be concentrating on at this particular moment, he reminded himself, and pressed the tips of his gloved left fingers into the control groove along the side of Deathclaw's mighty neck.
Transport pilots used reins and dragon prods to control their beasts, but the men who piloted battle dragons flew by the tips of their fingers-literally. Just as the dragon breeders had created the cockpit in which Fahrlo rode, they had formed two grooves, each just a shade over two feet long and conveniently placed for the pilot's hands. Those grooves were deep enough that Fahrlo's fingers touched Deathclaw's actual hide, not just the thick, protective scales which armored the mighty beast. That hide was acutely sensitive, and Deathclaw had been trained to respond to even the lightest touch. Fahrlo, like most battle dragon pilots, had long since developed the manual dexterity of a concert pianist, and after so long together, he and Deathclaw literally thought as one. The dragon knew exactly what each touch through one of the control grooves meant, and now he lowered his left wingtip, arcing into a steeply inclined bank, and lowered his head.
Fahrlo removed his right hand from the starboard control groove just long enough to press the sarkolis crystal embedded in his flight helmet, and a circular window-like image appeared on the helmet's faceplate. It didn't look quite like anything Fahrlo had ever seen with his own eyes, because dragon vision was different from human vision. The color balance was subtly skewed, and no human being had ever been able to pick out such minute details from so far away.
Delthyr Fahrlo's father had been a battle dragon pilot. So had two of his uncles, and his grandfather. And his great-grandfather, for that matter. It was a calling which tended to run in families, because it absolutely required a particular Gift. The image projected across Fahrlo's helmet faceplate wasn't quite like something a scrying spell might have produced, although there were similarities. But the crystal embedded in the helmet contained no scrying spellware. Instead, it reached out to another sarkolis chip, surgically embedded in his dragon some three months after its hatching, which linked the two of them directly when activated. A pilot literally saw what his dragon saw, and the linkage worked both ways. A
crosshair floated in the window, moving as Fahrlo moved his eyes. By turning his own head, directing his own vision on a specific object or creature, and marking it with the crosshair, the pilot was able to designate targets for his dragon's attack.
Nor was that all the crystal did. No one in his right mind wanted a battle dragon's breath weapon to come online without direct human supervision. The weapon itself was an integral part of the dragon's structure, but the dragon couldn't use it without his pilot's consent. It was the pilot's job to select the target; it was the dragon's job to hit the target … but only when the pilot triggered the release code through the helmet crystal and allowed the dragon to attack.
Now Deathclaw's impossibly powerful vision focused on the pair of enemy soldiers so far below. The two men who had to be the first to die under Thousand Toralk's operations plan.
Something made Tairsal chan Synarch glance upward.
He didn't know what it was. Certainly, it wasn't because of any Talent, or because he'd heard anything.
Perhaps it was some primitive instinct which cut deeper than any Talent, any Gift.
Whatever it was, it came too late.
The Marine's eyes went wide as he saw the incredible beast arrowing down out of the heavens above him. The thing's sheer size-and the fact that he'd never seen anything remotely like it-made it impossible to judge the range accurately. At first, for a few brief moments, he'd thought it was only some distant hawk, or possibly an eagle. But then he realized that it was far, far larger than that. And, as the sun caught it, it glittered with a peculiar, metallic sheen no feather had ever produced.
'What the-?'
He never finished the question.
In many ways, Deathclaw's selection for this particular mission cut against The Book on Air Force operations. Blacks were aerial-superiority dragons, not ground-attack beasts. That sort of attack was supposed to be the province of the fire-spitting reds and gas-spitting yellows. But Five Hundred Neshok and Thousand Toralk had made it clear that the lookout post they'd identified had to be taken out in the very first moments of the attack. One of those lookouts clearly had one of the Sharonian 'talents' which allowed him to send messages back and forth almost instantly over at least short distances. According to Neshok, he didn't seem to be what the Sharonians
