Thousand Toralk that evening. 'From what we've been able to put together so far, the next stop-the one in the universe they call 'Karys' should be easy. But the one after that, in 'Traisum'-that one's going to be the hardest nut to crack yet.'
'Really, Sir?' Toralk tried very hard not to let his distaste for the way that 'intelligence summary' had been assembled show. Harshu obviously saw it anyway, and gave his head an impatient shake.
'I know how you feel about Neshok, Klayrman. And, to be honest, it's time I started reining him in. In fact, I have started. I've removed our prisoners from his control, and I've approved Five Hundred Vaynair's refusal to release the wounded to him.'
'May I ask why, Sir?' Toralk inquired very carefully.
'Mostly because we're starting to hit more heavily settled universes, according to what we've already learned. Or we will be shortly, at any rate. Fort Mosanik in Karys isn't much. Your yellows should be able to deal with it without any trouble. But somewhere on the other side of it, we're going to encounter this 'railroad' of theirs. Apparently they've got quite a large work crew pushing it down-chain as quickly as they can, and it's undoubtedly got one of these Voices of its own assigned to it.
'That's going to make problems enough all by itself. But once we get past that, there's this Fort Salby in Traisum. I think you'll find the information on the portal itself fascinating reading. Then, once we get past that, there's the fort and a substantial settlement around it. In addition, it appears that there are quite a few farming and ranching villages and homesteads stretched out along the route from Fort Salby to the next universe. With that many people mucking about, it's highly unlikely that we're going to be able to continue to … neutralize this Voicenet of theirs. There's too much chance of missing a Voice hiding in the underbrush, as it were. That means we're going to lose the advantage of surprise, which is going to make any real advance beyond Fort Salby problematical, at best.
'But that's all right, actually. As you know, we captured their maps intact here at Ghartoun, and a couple of my bright young staff officers have worked out an adaptation of the standard recon image-intepreting software. We still can't read most of their documents, but they're loading the captured maps into their PCs and then using the interpreting software to compare them to our maps and look for terrain feature matches. Once they find one, the software automatically orients the Sharonian maps to ours and scales them accurately, using ours as a base. We may not know how to read any of the names on their maps, but we're able to make some detailed appreciations of the terrain on them now. Which means we know what the rest of this portal chain looks like, although I could wish we knew more about the rest of their explored chains. At any rate, the maps all confirmed what the prisoners had already said. The Traisum portal is definitely going to be the chokepoint we've been looking for. For a lot of reasons.'
'Really, Sir?'
'Oh, yes.' Harshu smiled thinly. 'As I say, I think you'll be impressed. The portal itself would be a nightmare for anyone without dragon capability, and the approaches to the portal in Traisum itself are almost as bad. The only ground access to the portal is by way of a valley which is dominated by this Fort Salby. That's one reason I want Salby so badly. I want to be able to control that valley, keep them penned up in it where we can pound them hard, bleed any effort just to reach the portal. Given their lack of any aerial capability, we should always be able to break off and fall back through the portal if they start pushing us too hard.'
'Excuse me, Sir, but if the portal is as defensible as you seem to be suggesting, why should we move beyond it?'
'There seems to be substantial agreement among our current prisoners that the reinforcements their swamp portal commander was anticipating will probably be no more than a week or so out from Fort Salby by the time we can reach the portal. If I were their commander, and if I didn't have transports, then I'd probably think long and hard before even contemplating fighting my way through the portal from Traisum to Karys. On the other hand, we still haven't seen these people's heavy weapons, and we don't have any way of predicting the actual combat power of this reinforcement they're expecting. They may think they can force the portal. They might even be right.
'By taking Salby and controlling the approach valley, we'll be able to start hitting them early. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to get a feel for how their combat capabilities differ from those we've already encountered. I want that feel before it comes down to a toe-to-toe fight for the actual portal. If, on the other hand, their basic combat power is as outclassed as our more optimistic junior officers prefer to assume, they may never get past us to the portal in the first place. At any rate, from the topography on these maps, it looks like whoever selected the site for Fort Salby had an excellent eye for terrain.
They've definitely put the plug into this valley at its most defensible point, which means it's the logical anchor for us to hang our own defensive positions on.
'In any case, I'm assuming that once we hit the fort itself, word of our presence is going to get out. We won't be able to keep it from spreading up-chain from Traisum, no matter what we do. And I'm not planning on advancing any further than Traisum, anyway.'
The two thousand shrugged.
'In light of all that, the intelligence value of anything more Neshok could extract from his prisoners has got to be of strictly limited utility. And, quite frankly, I'm delighted that that's the way it is.' For just a moment, a haunted, almost haggard, expression flickered across Harshu's face. Then he met Toralk's eyes levelly. 'I can't justify continuing to allow him to do the things he's been doing unless he's in a position to provide me with genuinely critical information, and that's not going to be the case any longer.'
'I can't pretend I'm not … very relieved to hear that, Sir,' Toralk told him after a moment.
'I know you are, Klayrman.' Harshu reached across the floating map table in his command tent and patted the Air Force officer's forearm gently. 'I know you are.'
There was silence for a moment. Then Harshu inhaled sharply and handed Toralk his copy of the current intelligence summary.
'When you look this over, I think you'll see why this Fort Salby's going to be tough,' he said much more briskly. 'I'll be interested to see if you come to the same conclusions I did about the most effective approach. I don't want to prejudice your thinking, but as you look through the summary, I'd like you to consider-'
'My gods, Sir! I thought you were dead!'
'As you can see, Silky, we Arpathians are even tougher then you knew.' Namir Velvelig's eyes were darker and bleaker than Company-Captain Silkash had ever before seen them, yet his voice held a ghost of genuine amusement.
'No one's that tough,' Silkash said flatly. 'Remember, I'm the one who triaged you in the first place.'
'You did?' Velvelig cocked his head to one side. 'Odd. I don't recall it.'
'I imagine that's because you were unconscious, almost out of blood, and had serious cranial injuries, not to mention a badly shattered hip and what I'm almost certain was at least one spinal fracture,'
Silkash told him. The surgeon's face twisted with bitter memory. 'I black-tagged you.'
'I see.'
Velvelig reached out and squeezed his friend's shoulder. He understood now why Silkash looked the way he did. A black tag indicated that there was no point trying to save the patient. That it was time to let him go and concentrate on saving those who might live, instead.
'I don't think your judgment was in error, if that's what's bothering you, Silky,' the regiment-captain said after a moment. Silkash looked skeptical, and Velvelig snorted. 'Look, don't forget that these people can work magic. Magic, Silky. And apparently it's not limited solely to better ways to kill people, either. You wouldn't believe what I saw their healers doing before they decided I was fit enough to go to jail with the rest of you.'
'If they could fix everything that was wrong with you, they really are wizards,' Silkash said. Then he grimaced.
'What?'
'I was just thinking. If they could fix you up, as badly hurt as you were, and do it this quickly, no wonder an idiot like Thalmayr didn't understand what we were doing! I'll bet you they don't use surgery at all.'
'I don't know about that.' Velvelig shook his head. 'I saw them doing some surgery, but I'd say they only do it for relatively minor injuries. I'm guessing there's some kind of limit on how much healing they can do at any one time with these spells of theirs, so they probably handle the little stuff the hard way and save the 'magic' for really serious problems. But I think you're probably right about Thalmayr … since I saw him walking out of their medical tent unassisted.'
