Hell's Gate

He furrowed his brow, trying to identify the elusive, disturbing sensation. It was more like the energy patterns near portals than anything else he could think of, but it wasn't the same as that, either. It was … different.

He growled in frustration and stood, looking around until he spotted Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag and Parcanthi. They were standing together to one side, and he strode briskly over to them. When he tried to explain his confusing impressions, the cavalry officer looked baffled, but the Whiffer blinked. He frowned for a few seconds, then nodded vigorously.

"I think you're onto something, Soral," he said. "I kept getting a Whiff of something really odd in this clearing. It was pretty strong where our people died, but it was even stronger over there." He pointed into the standing trees opposite the clearing where the crew had made its fatal last stand. "I got the strongest sense of it where I caught the flashes of those weird, shiny tubes Kinlafia described."

"That's interesting." Arthag rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking from one spot to the other. "You sensed it at the point of impact, and at the point of origin. But not between? Shouldn't there be a parabola of residue between them, along the trajectory?"

"You'd think so, Sir," Parcanthi agreed with a frown. "Let me Whiff this again."

He moved slowly and carefully across the open ground between the two spots, again and again. He quartered the area meticulously, but when he came back, he shook his head.

"There's not a damned thing between them, Platoon-Captain. Nothing."

He looked perplexed, and Arthag's frown deepened.

"That's impossible!" the officer protested. Then grimaced. "Isn't it? I mean, how can something shoot without following a trajectory?"

"I don't have the least damned idea, Sir, but that's what it looks like they did. There was some kind of powerful energy discharge at the enemy's gun emplacement." He pointed. "There was another one where the weapon's discharge struck." He pointed again. "But I'm telling you, Sir, that there's nothing between those two spots. Not even the ghost of a signature. And this energy feels so damned weird it would be impossible to mistake its signature if it was there in the first place."

The three men exchanged grim glances.

"Just what in hell are we dealing with?" Hilovar asked for all of them in an uneasy tone, and Arthag scowled.

"I intend to find that out." He glanced at Parcanthi. "Can I send the men in to search the site yet, or do you need to take more readings first?"

"Keep them away from our people's death sites, if you don't mind, Sir. I do want to take more readings there, see if I can pin down more information about who died and who might not have. And stay clear of that area for now." He pointed to a spot under the standing trees. "That's where they tended their wounded before evacuating. I want to take a close scan of that, as well. You can turn them loose anywhere else, though."

Arthag nodded and strode across the clearing to Chief-Armsman chan Hathas.

"Spread them out, Chief-Armsman. I want every inch of this ground searched, from there?" he pointed "?to there." He indicated the two off-limit sites Parcanthi needed to scan again.

"Yes, Sir. Any special instructions on what we ought to be looking for?" chan Hathas asked.

"Anything the Tracer can handle, Chief. We're looking for anything he can get a better reading off of. As it stands, we don't have enough surviving debris to give Hilovar a decent set of readings. Find something better for him."

"Yes, Sir." chan Hathas looked out across the clearing, his jaw clenched, and nodded sharply. "If it's out there, we'll find it, Sir," he promised grimly.

"Good," Arthag said, and then turned to face the sole survivor of Chalgyn's slaughtered crew.

"Darcel." His gruff voice gentled as he called the man's name.

"Sir?" The civilian's question was hoarse, his expression stricken and distracted.

"Pair up with Nolis, please," Arthag said quietly. "Compare what you saw through Shaylar's eyes with what he's picking up. I know that's going to be hard on you, but we've got to know precisely how many of our people were killed."

"Yes, Sir." The words should have been crisp, but they came out as a shadow of sound, barely audible, and distress burned in Darcel's eyes. He turned without another word and headed out across the broken, fire-scorched ground, stumbling over the rough footing.

It wasn't just the debris that was responsible for his unsteady gait. Just being in this clearing was agony, but he also had trouble distinguishing between what his own eyes saw and what he'd Seen through Shaylar's eyes. The memories kept superimposing themselves over what he was seeing here and now. He kept trying to step over branches that weren't there, and stumbled over ones that didn't exist in the view Shaylar had transmitted. He blinked furiously, trying to clear his distorted vision, and cursed himself when he couldn't. He needed to be clearheaded, not muddled between past and present. He had to be if he was going to help spot something that would provide clues for Parcanthi and Hilovar.

He stopped, turning in place, looking for the exact spot where Shaylar had crouched, where the agonizing memories in his mind had been born of fire and thunder. There. It was somewhere in that direction, he decided, and started forward once more, moving with grim determination through the confusion of reality and remembrance. If he could find the spot, he and the others might dredge up something they could use. Darcel had little hope that anyone had survived, but he needed to know. One way or the other, he had to know, because anything would be better than this dreadful uncertainty. This doubt.

He cursed the men who'd done this, not only for the killing, but for burning the dead and stealing everything they'd been carrying. They hadn't even marked the ash piles in any way! What kind of barbarians didn't even mark a grave? If they'd simply marked the sites, just indicated which piles of ashes had held Sharonians, and which their own accursed dead, there wouldn't have been this horrible doubt. The column would have known how many people needed to be rescued.

And how many needed to be avenged.

Darcel couldn't even lay remembrance wreaths at the graves of his dearest friends because he didn't know whose ashes were whose! It was intolerable, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it, other than help the Whiffer and Tracer wring every scrap of information they could from this place and from his own memory, with its perfect recall.

Shaylar's entire transmission was still in his memory. He simply had to calm down enough to retrieve it, and he had to remain detached enough to analyze every fleeting second of those harrowing minutes. If Shaylar had known where everyone was, and if she'd been aware of everyone's deaths as they occurred, then theoretically, he knew that, too. Those were distressingly large "ifs," but he had to start somewhere.

So did Platoon-Captain Arthag. The officer had to know if they were on a rescue mission, or a punitive strike. So Darcel tramped through the fallen trees, comparing views and angles with what he saw in memory.

It took a long time, but he found it in the end. When he finally located the spot, he stood peering down at it for a long silent moment. Had she died here? Or "merely" been wounded badly enough to knock her unconscious?

Most of the branches and tree trunks in a four-foot swath around her place of concealment had been scorched during the battle. Dead leaves had burst into flame and burnt to white ash, some of which had fallen onto branches below, and some of which?protected from the wind?still clung to branches and twigs, paper-thin ghosts, holding their shape eerily … until the slightest touch of his breath caused them to crumble to nothing.