Hell's Gate

And the fact that it put him in a position to help kick that sanctimonious, cowardly son-of-a-bitch Olderhan's gutless plans to just hand the biggest, most important portal cluster in history over to the enemy right in the balls was totally beside the point.

Chapter Fifty

"You look unhappy, Five Hundred."

Sarr Klian looked up. Two Thousand Harshu sat across the table from him, holding his wine glass loosely cradled in his right hand. That table was covered with a white cloth and empty plates, for the two of them had just finished dining in what had been Klian's sitting room before Harshu arrived to take command of the steadily growing military power which had come to be based here at Fort Rycharn. Klian didn't resent giving up his quarters to the two thousand. Not precisely, at any rate. He did rather resent giving up his office space, but he knew that was silly. Harshu was the senior officer present. He needed the best facilities available, and it was inevitable that he should have them.

"Unhappy, Sir?" Klian repeated, and Harshu smiled.

"Sparring for time, are we, Five Hundred?"

His voice was almost gentle, at odds with his normal public persona, and he shifted his hand slightly, tilting his wine glass. The gleaming light elements of the wall-mounted lamps had been turned down, reducing their normal brilliance to a level more comfortable for dining, but they were bright enough to light a red glow in the heart of the glass.

"I suppose I am, Sir," Klian admitted levelly. He looked across the table into Harshu's eyes. "It's been my experience that when a superior officer makes that sort of statement, it's often the prelude to a … counseling session, shall we say?"

"Ah." Harshu's smile grew broader, and he cocked his head to one side. "I suppose that's a fair enough observation, Five Hundred. In this case, though, I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts. You've been sitting out here at the sharp end longer than anyone else. I don't say that automatically gives you any sort of special insight none of the rest of us can share, but I'm very well aware that I've come waltzing in and taken over your territory with less than three weeks' experience on the job, as it were."

"Curious about my thoughts about what, precisely, Sir?" Klian asked. "If you mean about being effectively superseded, I don't suppose any commanding officer worth his salt is ever happy to see that happen. But I'm certainly not sitting here nursing a sense of resentment over it. That would be pointless, at best, and stupid, at worst. I'm a five hundred, and what we're looking at out here right now is a five thousand's command?maybe even a ten thousand's. Exigencies of the service or not, there's no way I'd be fitted to command a force that size, even if I were the senior officer present."

"I think you actually mean that," Harshu observed. He sipped a little wine, then shrugged. "I'm relieved to hear it, too. After all, you're going to be in command of our logistics node here, no matter what happens. I can think of very few things better suited to trip someone up in a field command than having his logistics … creatively tangled, shall we say, by a resentful subordinate."

"I can assure you, Sir," Klian said just a bit stiffly, "that it never crossed my mind to?"

"I didn't mean to suggest it had," Harshu interrupted. "In fact, I meant to suggest rather the opposite. However," he set down his wine glass, plucked a roll out to of the breadbasket between them, and began tearing it into small pieces and piling the fragments on the rim of his plate, "that wasn't the question I meant to get at earlier. It seems to me, Five Hundred, that you don't really approve of our contingency pla

Klian sat very still for a moment, then drank from his own wine glass, mostly to buy a little more time to marshal his thoughts. Then he cleared his throat.

"Two Thousand," he said, "you're in command. Whether I 'approve' of your contingency pla

"Specifically?" Harshu invited.

"Well," Klian sat back in his chair, folding his hands neatly on the tablecloth and wishing he didn't feel quite so much like an officer cadet who'd just been handed a trick question in his third-year tactics class, "I can't fault anything I've heard about your defensive pla

"And no one could deny your legitimate responsibility to plan for possible offensive operations, either." The five hundred shrugged. "We're both soldiers, Sir. We both know that, ultimately, battles and wars are won by taking it to the enemy, not simply sitting still and letting him bring it to us. I guess what concerns me is the feel I'm picking up from the majority of your officers that they're actually anticipating offensive operations."

He paused, still looking levelly at Harshu, and the two thousand gazed back in silence for perhaps twenty seconds. Then it was Harshu's turn to shrug.

"I don't doubt that they are," he admitted calmly, and showed his teeth in a thin smile. "The bottom line, Five Hundred, is that the most important quality any soldier can have as he goes into battle is the offensive spirit. Even if we wind up standing totally on the defensive, having the troops thinking in terms of 'taking it to the enemy,' as you just said, won't hurt a thing. If we do go on the offense, on the other hand, there won't be time to turn everyone's thinking around if all we've been pla

"I can see that, Sir," Klian said in a neutral tone, and Harshu's smile grew wider.

"But you're still concerned," he observed. Klian started to say something else, but the two thousand waved it away. "No, that's all right, Five Hundred. I asked for your opinion, and I really want it. And I don't think your concerns are limited to the troops' attitude."

"Sir," Klian leaned forward slightly, "I guess I'm worried on two levels.

"First, however good our intelligence on their tactical dispositions right at the swamp portal, or even between there and Fallen Timbers, may be, we know literally nothing about these people's real military power. We don't have any clear indication of what their heavy weapons' capabilities may be, how close to the point of contact their major military bases may be, or how big they are. I know the current intelligence assessments are that they're not anticipating reinforcement within the next several weeks, but what does that actually tell us? We don't know anything about how big the reinforcement they are expecting might be, or what might be in the pipeline behind it. Even if we managed to punch right through everything they've got in the immediate vicinity, what happens when we run into their reserves? How does the fact that we'd presumably have better reco