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Chapter Twenty-One
"Come in Klayrman! Come in."
Klayrman Toralk obeyed the invitation and stepped into Two Thousand Harshu's command tent. He'd half-expected a summons like this one. In fact, he wondered what had taken so long. More than two days had passed since the revelations of his supper with Harshu. Tayrgal Carthos had been sent upon his way forty-eight hours previously, but Harshu had yet to move towards his own next objective, and so far, at least, Toralk had no idea why he hadn't.
Hopefully, that's about to change, he told himself as he approached the map table floating in midair at the center of the outsized tent.
Aside from himself and Harshu, the only other person present was Commander of Five Hundred Herak Mahrkrai, Harshu's Chief of Staff. Mahrkrai—old for his rank, with iron-gray hair and oddly colorless eyes—was the sort of officer who seemed to have specialized in unobtrusiveness throughout his entire career. Toralk had worked with him enough in pla
Of course, it's always possible Harshu picked him expressly because he has that sort of personality. But if he did, the question is whether it was because Harshu was smart enough to know he needed a balance wheel like Mahrkrai? Or was it because he wanted to make sure his chief of staff wouldn't challenge him for the spotlight?
"Thank you for getting here so promptly, Klayrman," Harshu continued, reaching out to offer the Air Force officer his hand.
"I'd say you were welcome, if there were any particular reason why I shouldn't have come promptly, Sir," Toralk replied, and Harshu snorted.
"What a polite way of saying we've been sitting here on our arses too long!" the two thousand said.
Toralk opened his mouth, but Harshu shook his head before he could speak. "No, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to be thinking, actually. Especially given how heavily all of our preliminary pla
Unfortunately, Five Hundred Neshok has turned up some intelligence which Herak and I have been kicking around for the better part of twelve hours now."
"What sort of intelligence, Sir, if I may ask?" Toralk said cautiously.
"According to two or three of our prisoners, there are Arcanan prisoners being held in our next objective, Sir," Five Hundred Mahrkrai answered for his boss.
"What?" Astonishment startled the question out of Toralk. The instant it was out of his mouth, though, he wondered just why he was surprised. They'd known all along that the survivors of the Second Andarans had been taken prisoner, which meant, logically, that they had to be being held somewhere.
I suppose I simply assumed they'd have done the same things with their prisoners that we did with ours—
gotten them moved to the rear for proper interrogation as quickly as possible. Except, of course, that we haven't been doing that since we launched this attack, have we?
That last thought suggested some potentially grim reasons for holding prisoners closer to the front, so he decided not to think about it any more just at the moment.
"We've confirmed it," Harshu told him. "At least, the verifier spells have confirmed that the prisoners giving us the information believe it's accurate. According to the best information Neshok's been able to put together, the worst wounded of our people were held at this Fort Ghartoun,or Fort Raylthar, or whatever the hells it's named these days."
"It makes sense, Sir," Mahrkrai put in. "As far as we can tell, they don't have anything like our magistrons. They're pretty much limited to natural healing times, and transporting badly wounded men without even dragons must be a nightmare. So they probably parked the most badly hurt of our people at this Fort Ghartoun. Since they didn't know a thing about our aerial capability, they must have figured Ghartoun was far enough from our point of contact to be secure."
"But you see our problem, don't you, Klayrman?" Harshu said, waving one hand at the sketch map on the table. "We can't exactly use the yellows—or even the reds—in a surprise attack if our own people are being held inside the fort."
"No, we can't, Sir," Toralk agreed, stepping closer to the table and gazing down at the map.
"At least it's on this side of the next portal," Harshu pointed out. "As long as we exercise a little caution, there's not too much chance of anyone spotting us moving into attack position."
"I'm not sure how significant that really is, Sir," Toralk replied. Harshu raised an eyebrow, and the Air Force thousand shrugged. "Obviously, there's always a greater chance of being spotted moving through a portal—one of the more irritating things about them is the way they bottleneck your movement options to at least some extent, after all. But we've pretty much swept the area between here and the next portal.
There weren't any civilian settlements—" thank the gods, he very carefully did not say aloud, thinking about Neshok "—and we'd neutralized the Voice relay even before we hit Fort Brithik. So we can move with virtual impunity right up until the instant we jumpoff for the attack. All of that's true. But from the outset, one of our primary pla
"Maybe not, Sir," Mahrkrai put in diffidently. He tapped the sketch map. "From this, it looks as if their fort is a good mile or mile-and-a-half inside the portal. If we can get people on the ground, maybe a talon or two of dragons in the air, between the fort and the portal, they won't be able to get a Voice through to the other side. Not, at least, until we can get our people through to take their next Voice relay station."
"And you know roughly where that is?" Toralk asked.
"Yes, Sir. We do."
"I see."
Toralk fell silent, pursing his lips as he moved his gaze to the sketched floor plan pi
He ran a fingertip across the sketch, thinking hard, then looked back up at Harshu.
"I could wish we had some SpecOps troopers to spearhead this thing, Sir. Still, I think we could probably do it without an opening air strike. Assuming, of course, that we still have the advantage of surprise." His expression was sober, and his voice took on a warning note as he continued. "With their weapons, if they figure out we're coming and get themselves stood-to in time, even a relatively small garrison is going to inflict heavy casualties if we don't hammer them with a surprise air strike first."
"Understood." Harshu stepped over close beside the Air Force officer, gazing at the same sketch.
"To be honest," the two thousand went on, after a moment, "I never expected that we'd get much farther than we already have without taking substantial casualties of our own. I'm inclined to think now that I was overly pessimistic in that respect, given how decisively your combat strikes have been shutting them down before we ever have to go in on the ground. I don't really want to do anything to change that, like sending in some sort of conventional assault instead. But if they do have any of our people inside, then we can't justify not trying to get them out—or, even worse, possibly killing them ourselves—
simply because we might risk a few more casualties in a rescue attempt."
"I agree, Sir," Toralk said firmly, although he was strongly tempted to point out that even if they hadn't suffered very many casualties in human terms, the dragons they'd lost had been more than merely painful. The diversion of both transports and battle dragons he'd been forced to make to Five Hundred Mala to support Carthos' independent advance hadn't helped his force availability any either, of course.
"How soon can you give me an operations plan?" Harshu asked.
"Probably by lunchtime, Sir." Toralk shrugged. "As I say, I'd feel better with a SpecOps company to lead the way, but this is a fairly standard scenario. We spend a lot of time pla
"Good. It's going to take us a full day to get our transports moved into striking range and rested, anyway.
Can you do your pla
"No, Sir," Toralk said with fairly massive understatement. "But what I can do is hold a small pla
"Good," Harshu repeated. "Good! I'll be looking forward to seeing your plan."
"Good, Syrail. Good!" Folsar chan Tergis Said enthusiastically as he Watched the crystal-clear imagery of something physically seen through someone else's eyes. "I've known Voices three times your age who wouldn't have gotten it that clear. I think you're finally getting the hang of it."
The Fort Ghartoun Voice could Feel Syrail Targal's pleasure at the compliment. A pleasure due in no small part to the fact that the thirteen-year-old boy knew that it was deserved.
"You know, Folsar," Syrail Said back, "you really are a pretty good teacher."