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  The fort where they had stayed for such a short time grew smaller by the minute as the ship accelerated quickly and smoothly. They were already moving faster than any of Trans-Temporal Express' freighters. It was hard for Shaylar to estimate, but they had to be moving at least as quickly as any of the great high-speed passenger ships, maybe even as fast as the new turbine-engined warships she'd heard about. Yet still there was that eerie lack of vibration, that silence. No funnel smoke, no noise, just this smooth, effortless sense of speed.

  She pressed a hand to her lips, staring back through the porthole. That vast marsh and that tiny log fort looked inexpressibly lonely, kissed by the rising sun and populated only by great clouds of water birds and a tiny handful of people. Or perhaps it was only she who felt such unbearable loneliness.

  Then Jathmar's arms tightened about her from behind.

  "I'm here, love," he murmured. "Whatever else, I'm here."

  She pulled his arms more tightly around herself and held onto them silently, her throat too constricted to speak. At the moment it was hard?so very hard?to remember that they'd come out here to see new sights, new places. Things no other Sharonian had ever seen, or even imagined. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would be able to remember that, but not just yet.

  For the moment, she could only grieve … and hold tight to those loving arms which were all she had left in any universe.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Balkar chan Tesh looked up as someone tapped lightly on the small gong hanging from the peak of his tent. He recognized the towering, youthful Marine officer instantly, although they'd never met. The youngster looked exhausted, as well he might after what had to have been an even longer forced march than chan Tesh's own, but he was also the spitting image of his father. Even if he hadn't been, the blue-gray peregrine falcon on the far-from-regulation leather pad covering the left shoulder of his uniform tunic would have been a powerful clue. The bird was huge even for a peregrine?easily over twenty inches long, with a wingspan which must have been well over four feet?and it was neither hooded nor jessed, which was … unusual, to say the very least. Its powerful talons gripped the shoulder pad securely, but it was obvious they were also delicately aware of?and restraining?their own strength. Its dark eyes were bright and alert, and they focused on the company-captain with unnerving intensity.

  It was, chan Tesh thought, quite possibly the most magnificent predator he'd ever seen, and well it should be, given the millennia-long breeding program which had produced it.

  "Yes, Platoon-Captain?" he said, giving absolutely no indication that he'd recognized the newcomer.

  "Platoon-Captain chan Calirath," the Marine introduced himself. "Company-Captain Halifu told me to report to you as soon as I arrived."

  "I see." chan Tesh laid down his pen and leaned back in his folding canvas chair. "In that case, I suppose you'd better come in … assuming you'll fit," he added with a small, wry smile.

  "Thank you, Sir," the Marine said politely, and chan Tesh gave a small mental nod of approval.

  Platoon-Captain His Highness Crown Prince Janaki chan Calirath, heir to the Winged Crown, stood at least eight inches over six feet, with his dynasty's powerful shoulders, but imposing size wasn't enough to explain the sense of presence he projected. chan Tesh had been curious about how the Crown Prince would introduce himself, and he was pleased by the way Janaki had actually done it. Of course, in an odd sort of way, that simple "Platoon-Captain chan Calirath" had only emphasized that the young man introducing himself was actually the future ruler of the oldest, most powerful empire in human history.

  Well, in our branch of humanity's history, anyway, chan Tesh reminded himself.

  "Wait for me, dear heart," Janaki murmured to the falcon, and shooed her gently off his shoulder. She launched with a soft cry, and chan Tesh watched her disappear into the overhead foliage. The Crown Prince watched her go with a smile, then maneuvered himself into the tent cautiously but smoothly. It was apparent that he'd had plenty of experience moving his substantial bulk in and out of the tents the PAAF provided for field use. He seated himself rather gingerly in the folding chair chan Tesh indicated, and the chair creaked alarmingly under his weight. Fortunately, it held.

  "I hope you won't take this wrongly, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said, "but I could wish you hadn't turned up for duty here at this precise moment."

  "Sir?" Janaki began, but chan Tesh's raised hand stopped him.

  "Platoon-Captain," he said, "I'm Ternathian. I know the tradition of your family, and I honor it. But there's no point in our pretending you're just one more platoon-captain. I don't wish to belabor the point, but you must be aware that who you are?and, even more importantly, who you someday will be?is going to play a part in the thinking of any of your commanding officers."

  "Yes, Sir, I know." Janaki didn't quite sigh, but he came so close that chan Tesh was hard put not to smile.

  "And you wish it didn't," the company-captain said, instead, as sympathetically as possible. "As it happens, however, in this particular instance I think I'm in a position to kill two birds with one stone. To be devastatingly blunt, Your Highness," he used the imperial title deliberately, "any sane CO would order you to the rear the instant he saw your face. Especially when the situation is as riddled with uncertainties and complete unknowns as this one is. In this case, though, the duty I have in mind for you could have been tailormade for someone with your experience."

  "Sir?"

  "We've got prisoners, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said much more grimly. "Several of them were pretty badly wounded in the fighting. Our Healers have done what they can for them, of course, and they're all at least stabilized now, but we need to get them transferred to the rear and better medical facilities. Even if that weren't the case, we'd need to get all of them?wounded and unwounded like?moved to the rear for proper interrogation as quickly as possible. The only officer we took alive appears to have been their commander?he's one of the wounded I mentioned, and it doesn't look like he'll ever walk again?but we've captured several men who seem to have been senior noncoms. They're our best, and only, source of information, and we need to get them into the hands of someone who can at least start figuring out how to talk to them. Not to mention the fact that we need to move them further back as a security measure against escapes or rescue attempts."

  He paused, and Janaki nodded very slightly.

  "I can't spare very many men as prisoner escort," chan Tesh continued. "I'm thinking that using your platoon for the job would make the smallest hole by avoiding pulling somebody out of my established units for the job. In addition, you're not exactly a typical platoon-captain. You've grown up in the Palace. I'm quite sure you have a better ear than most junior officers for possibly significant political and military details.

  "What I'd like to do is to send at least some of them all the way back to Sharona, and I'd prefer to keep the same officer in command of the escort detail the entire way. Some of these people appear badly shocked and demoralized by what's happened to them; most of them, though, are obviously prepared to resist divulging any important information. I suspect that spending two or three months with them could help engender a sense of familiarity which might get inside that defensive mindset of theirs. It certainly couldn't hurt. And if that does happen, I want the best attuned ears available to pick up anything they might drop.

  "And, to be frank, I'd like the officer in command of the escort detail to have a certain stature?official or unofficial?to help discourage any of the intervening COs from poaching prisoners on the grounds that they ought to be interrogated closer to the front. In short, I think you'd make an excellent first filter for the analysts … and that you may have enough clout, despite your relatively junior rank, to actually get them all the way back to those analysts."

  "With all due respect, Sir, mightn't there be some point to keeping them closer to the front, where whatever we learn can be gotten to the sharp end quickly?"

  "Of course there is," chan Te
sh agreed. "And I expect the bulk of the prisoners will be. At the moment, I'm assuming Regiment-Captain Velvelig will hold the majority of them?and probably all the more seriously wounded?at Fort Raylthar. That's far enough towards the rear to satisfy most security concerns, and big enough to have a capable Healer Corps detachment. But it's going to be equally important to get at least some of these people clear back to Sharona where the government and the staff's intelligence experts can gain a firsthand impression of them. Your job is going to be to expedite their delivery to Tajvana."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "In addition," chan Tesh said quietly, "there's the political situation back home to consider, as well. I have no idea how that's going to sort itself out, but I do know that some sort of unified military and political policy is going to be necessary. I don't think the Authority can handle that job as it's presently constituted, which means the politicians are going to have to come up with some new mechanism. I can't imagine that your family isn't going to be deeply involved in that process, and having you there couldn't hurt. Especially if you've just returned from the front, escorting the first prisoners we've taken."

  The Marine looked back at chan Tesh without any expression at all for several seconds. The company-captain simply sat there, waiting. He very much doubted that anything he'd just said hadn't already occurred to the Crown Prince. As far as chan Tesh knew, there weren't any stupid Caliraths, and only an idiot could fail to recognize the sort of political catfight this situation was going to make inevitable back home. Nor could Janaki possibly be unaware of the role his family?and he himself?was going to have to play in that fight.

  "Very well, Sir. I understand," the Crown Prince said, after a moment. He did not say that he approved, chan Tesh observed, but the company-captain was prepared to settle for that.

  "In addition to all the rest of those considerations," he said, "there's one other job I'd like you to undertake for me."

  "Sir?"

  "Darcel Kinlafia?Voice Kinlafia?is the only survivor of the Chalgyn Consortium team." chan Tesh's expression was grim. "Frankly, I'm … worried about him."

  "May I ask why, Sir?"

  "He was there, Platoon-Captain. He was linked with Shaylar throughout the entire battle. He Saw his friends being butchered all around him, and he couldn't do a single godsdamned thing about it. He blames himself for that. I think he may actually hate himself for it. It's … poisoning him, and he's a Voice. I'm sure it's inadvertent, but anyone with a hint of telepathy is picking up his leakage, and it's affecting our people. I don't need anything which might push our men towards atrocities in the name of vengeance if it comes to more fighting. Almost equally important, I think we need to get him away from here for his own good, as well. He needs a little space, a little time, if he's going to heal, and he's too close to where it all happened here."

  "I see, Sir." Janaki nodded again. His sea-colored eyes held a small but unmistakable flicker of approval, but he also cocked his head to one side. "At the same time, Sir, can you afford to send him back? I understand that he's a Portal Hound, as well as a Voice."

  "Yes, he is," chan Tesh agreed, impressed by how quickly the crown prince had picked up that particular bit of information. "But he's already been able to give us the bearing of the nearest portal?apparently the only other portal?in this universe. We know it's somewhere to the northeast, probably in Esferia or New Ternath. Of course, we don't know how far away it is, or whether or not they've got bases closer than that. And we sure as hell don't have any idea how they managed to get their people in and out of this godsforsaken swamp! But we know where to start looking for their portal if it comes to that, and that's about the best we could hope for from any Portal Hound. Frankly, we don't need any of the services he could still offer us, and we do need to get him out of here."

  "And away from all of the memories," Janaki said slowly. "Somewhere he can start healing inside."

  "Exactlly," chan tesh replied. "I'm not thinking just about Darcel, though. He was linked with Shaylar. I'm pretty certain there are more details still locked up in his memory than he's aware of, but he's … not very supportive of efforts to dig them out. I don't blame him for that. It must be pure hell to go back in there and relive it over and over again, especially for someone with a Voice's perfect recall. But I need someone who can convince him to do just that?someone who can wring every detail out of his experience.

  "The information itself might be of enormous military value, but, to be perfectly honest, it may not be particularly significant, either. Not from the perspective of future operations, that is. But I've discussed it with Petty Captain Yar, my senior Healer. He thinks it's important for Darcel to get it out, deal with it. Frankly, I suspect that he's a lot more likely to open up if someone like you presses him on it than he is if I do. And if you can convince him of the importance of his reporting his impressions firsthand back in Tajvana, we may actually manage to get him away from the front before I have to place him under arrest to protect any additional prisoners from him."

  "It's that bad, Sir?" Janaki asked, eyes widened slightly, and chan Tesh shrugged.

  "I may be worrying too much. He's a good, decent man. In fact, I think that's part of the problem. He's not used to carrying this kind of hate around with him, and he doesn't know what to do with it. But I'd like to keep him a good, decent man, if we can, Your Highness."

  "Point taken, Sir," Janaki said respectfully, and chan Tesh nodded.

  "In that case, Your Highness, why don't I take you around to the POW cage?" The company-captain smiled without any humor at all. "We'll probably find Darcel somewhere in the vicinity."

  "I think this is going to be the most ticklish case, Sir," Petty Captain Delokahn Yar said. He stood at Janaki's elbow at the foot of one of the cots under the canvas tarp arranged to shade a clean, breezy open-air hospital ward. The tall, powerfully built man on the cot lay still?not simply motionless, but rigidly, harshly still?staring up at the sun-patterned canvas above him.

  "This was their commanding officer?" Janaki's voice was cold.

  "We believe so, Sir."

  "I see."

  Janaki gazed at the man in question with cold, contemptuous eyes. Company-Captain chan Tesh had briefed him fully on the portal battle … and how it had begun. Platoon-Captain Arthag seemed rather more philosophical about it than chan Tesh, and Janaki supposed the septman was probably right. It was very unlikely that these people used the same sort of banner to indicate the desire to parley, after all. Still, the idiot had to have recognized that Arthag wanted to talk, not fight, and no officer worth his salt could overlook the way the sheer incompetence of his tactics?and his own peerless stupidity?had gotten the vast majority of his command slaughtered.

  "What appears to be the problem?" the Crown Prince of Ternathia asked after a moment.

  "The physical damage is bad enough, Sir. He took a hit?from one of the Model 10s, I suspect?right through the body just above and behind the hips. It was a clean in-and-out that somehow missed the major internal organs, but it clipped the spine on the way through. He's paralyzed from the waist down, and there's nothing we can do about it. On top of that, though, he's clearly suicidal."

  Janaki nodded, although he couldn't avoid the thought that perhaps, in this case, not intervening to prevent a suicide might be the better course. Even aside from the man's stupidity, and all the deaths it had already caused, there was something else about him. Something Janaki couldn't quite put a finger on … but which resonated uncomfortably with the Glimpse he'd experienced in the mountains east of Fort Brithik.

  "As nearly as I can tell, Sir," Yar went on, "none of these men even understand what Talent is. That's fair enough, I suppose, since we don't have a clue how in all the Arpathian hells they do some of the things we already know they do. But because of that, none of them understands what my corpsmen and I are trying to accomplish. They don't know how to help us, and at least some of them are so busy being frightened of us that they're actively blocking
us, making it a lot harder for us to do them any good. And this man here is the worst of a lot. I think part of the problem may be that he actually has at least a trace of Talent. He's more aware of what I'm doing than most of the others, but he doesn't understand it any better than they do, and his own Talent, even untrained, is producing a lot of … interference that makes even pain management really difficult."

  "I see," Janaki said again. "Which means, of course, that he's going to suffer a lot more discomfort when we transport him."

  "Which is going to tie into the entire depression/suicidal cycle," Yar agreed. "In fact, to be brutally honest, Sir, I doubt he'll survive trip unless we take some fairly drastic action."

  "Such as?"

  "I'm afraid the only thing I can think of to do at this point is to shut him down completely, Sir," the Healer said. He clearly didn't like the suggestion very much, but he made it unflinchingly, and Jasak forced himself to step back and consider it before he reacted.

  "You really think that's necessary?" he asked after a moment.

  "Sir, my Talent's strength lies more in repairing physical damage than emotional or psychological damage," Yar said frankly. "That's one reason I'm forward deployed, where physical trauma is more likely, and usually more immediately life-threatening when it turns up. But it's going to take someone with a lot more strength on the nonphysical side to get through to this man and keep him from simply withdrawing deeper and deeper into himself until he finally just goes out like a light. I don't think you're going to get him to that kind of care in time if we don't shut him down for the trip."

  Janaki nodded yet again, his expression somber. The techniques for disengaging a patient's consciousness from his body and surroundings were fairly straightforward, but it was a major breach of medical ethics to apply them without the patient's informed consent. Unfortunately, there was no way this man could even have understood the question, far less made an informed decision. Yar's Healer's oath required him to seek the patient's agreement, and forbade him to apply the techniques without that agreement from a conscious patient. Yet the same oath required him to keep his patient alive.