Hell's Gate

"I see," he said coldly, and looked back at Jasak. "I presume you wish to formally charge your prisoner, Hundred Olderhan?"

"I do, Sir." Jasak repeated the charges he'd already listed for vos Hoven.

"I'll certainly endorse them," Klian said grimly, and Jasak watched from the corner of one eye as the shakira finally began to wilt. It was incredible, he thought. vos Hoven had obviously thought, right up to the last moment, that Klian would quash the charges against him simply because of who he was.

"Since attempted murder is a capital charge, however," the five hundred continued coldly, "it must be heard before a formal court. I have neither the authority to convene such a court, nor sufficient qualified officers to form one. What I can?and will?do is endorse your charges, have this man brigged here at Fort Rycharn, and see to it that he is returned with you, under confinement, to Arcana to stand trial there."

Jasak was a bit surprised by Klian's last statement, and the commandant smiled bleakly.

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hang him right here and now, Hundred," he said coldly. "And given what you and Trooper Sendahli have just told me, I have no doubt the charges against him will ultimately be sustained. However, the situation is complicated by what happened to First Platoon while this man was attached to it. Intelligence is going to want to talk to all of the survivors, I'm afraid."

A slight flicker of warning touched his icy eyes as they met Jasak's, and Jasak abruptly understood. vos Hoven had been present at the botched contact and massacre. Jasak was confident that Klian believed his own account of what had happened, but both he and the five hundred knew there was going to be a court of inquiry. There had to be one. And if it looked as if Jasak had used a court-martial to silence a potentially damaging witness …

Jasak's jaw clenched. That thought had never occurred to him, and it ought to have. He'd realized all along that vos Hoven would never recognize that he merited punishment. Nor would the shakira's powerful family?their minds simply didn't work that way. He didn't doubt for a moment that they would use every bit of influence they possessed, every trick, every distortion, that occurred to them to avert the disgrace vos Hoven's conviction would spill across them. And Sir Jasak Olderhan, as the agent of vos Hoven's destruction, would find himself with implacably bitter?and extraordinarily powerful?enemies. Exactly the sort of enemies an officer already facing a court of inquiry didn't need.

"I understand, Sir," he replied steadily, and Klian nodded with a tight, approving smile.

"Yes, I believe you do, Hundred," he said. Then he looked past Jasak to his clerk. "Summon the Master-at-Arms, Verayk," he said.

"Yes, Sir." The clerk disappeared, and Jasak glanced at Jugthar Sendahli. The garthan's eyes told him that Sendahli, too, knew what sort of enemies this affair was going to make Jasak, and that he was desperately sorry for adding to Jasak's troubles.

Can't be helped, Jasak thought, as philosophically as he could. It went with the territory, if a man was going to be worthy of the uniform he wore. Besides, Jasak's own co

He watched with grim satisfaction as Bok vos Hoven was marched out of Klian's office to the brig, and then personally escorted Sendahli to the infirmary. By the time they got there, the garthan trooper's shoulders had straightened and he was once again carrying himself like what he was, not what vos Hoven had tried to make him.

Jasak handed him over to the healers with a profound sense of satisfaction. If he'd accomplished nothing else in uniform, at least he'd salvaged the career of one damned fine soldier. Perhaps it wouldn't be the most noted epitaph a career could have, but given the circumstances, he was afraid they were going to need good soldiers badly.

He watched the healer examining Sendahli for a moment, then turned away, praying he was wrong as he headed back toward Gadrial's quarters to escort her to di

Chapter Twenty-One

Anticipation crackled through the Board room as Orem Limana, First Director of Sharona's Portal Authority, let his gaze run across the assembled directors. They obviously knew Something Was up, and well they should. Whispers and speculation had been flying for weeks as coded Voice messages came flowing in to the Authority communications center from the frontier. Messages in code generally meant one thing: a new portal.

Each exploration company used its own internal, private codes, known only to its Voices and the Authority, to register its claim to any new portal. The Authority kept copies of each company's master codes, and any Authority code-clerk who broke the rigid rules governing access to them found himself?or herself?in jail faster than thought could fly. The Portal Authority was serious about protecting the rights of the companies and people who invested money, sweat, and blood in the hazardous work of exploration.

Limana had spent twenty years in the Portal Authority Director's chair, making sure everyone lived by those rules, because he believed in them. He was both respected and feared, and because he believed in the rules, he kept track of which players were dirty, and which played fair. Which ones took care of their people, and which ones found ways to cheat, denying benefits or manufacturing excuses to fire an employee unlucky enough to be disabled on company time. Orem Limana had shut down two exploration companies during his tenure?shut them down lock, stock, and barrel?for shady dealings and egregious violations of employee protection compacts filed with the Authority.

Knowing what he did about each and every company in the business, Orem was utterly delighted by the incredible good fortune which had come to the Chalgyn Consortium over these last few months. Everyone in the Authority knew, of course, that portal discoveries must be on the rise in the Hayth Sector. The amounts of coded traffic coming in from the Voices along the Hayth Chain made that painfully obvious, as did the redeployment of the PAAF to send additional troops down the chain. But very few people had an accurate grasp of the situation, and Orem could hardly wait to tell them.

He caught the eye of Halidar Kinshe, one of the few people on Sharona who already knew, since quite a few of those coded messages had been directed to his personal attention. The twinkle in Kinshe's eyes told Limana his longtime friend and frequent co-conspirator was enjoying the moment as much as he was, and the First Director conscientiously suppressed his own smile as he picked up his mallet of office. He tapped the silver bell beside his chair, sending a ripple of notes shimmering across the room, and the buzz of conversation died instantly as thirty heads swiveled toward him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it was good of you to come on such short notice. I know several of you have been traveling close to three weeks by steamship and rail." He nodded a welcome in particular to Lady Jagtha of New Farnal's Kingdom of Limathia, since she'd made the longest journey of any of the board members. "I asked you to come specifically to discuss the situation that's been developing in the Hayth Transit Chain."

He'd had their attention before. The mention of Hayth had turned it into rapt attention, and he smiled as he pulled down a rollup map at the front of the room, showing the beads-on-strings tracery of the forty-odd universes Sharona had explored. Most of those beads were threaded onto only a single string, indicating only a single entry and exit portal. Others, like Hayth, had three portals, although only one?Reyshar?had four. Wherever a triplet occurred, it gave its name to the new transit chain splitting off from its second exit portal, and Hayth?four portals, and almost fifteen thousand miles, from Sharona?was shown as the head of an eight-universe chain. The Hayth Chain split again at Traisum, with the primary chain continuing through Kelsayr and Lashai while a new secondary chain split off to Karys.