Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  "Do you think Ronnel is really on our side?" Ekthar Shilvass murmured quietly in Shamir Taje's ear.

  Andrin knew she hadn't been supposed to overhear the Internal Affairs Councilor's question, but she'd always had remarkably acute hearing. And, she had to admit, she found Shilvass' inquiry well taken. The Emperor of Farnalia was on his feet once more, his eyes crackling with fury, as he rebutted the comments of yet another of Chava Busar's allies.

  He'd been doing a lot of that over the past several hours, as early morning turned into late afternoon, she reflected.

  Taje's lips twitched in what could have been amusement or irritated agreement?or both, Andrin supposed?but the First Councilor didn't respond. Perhaps he was too well aware of all of the attention focused on the Ternathian delegation as the debate raged onward. Andrin wished he'd responded anyway, and, after a moment, she decided to take advantage of her own youthfulness. She didn't do it very often, but she was barely seventeen years old. There were times when being a teenager allowed her a degree of latitude the official adults around her were denied.

  "Papa," she said quietly, looking up at her father in the chair beside hers, "why is Emperor Ronnel kicking up such a fuss?"

  Zindel chan Calirath found himself restraining an abrupt temptation to burst into deep, rolling laughter. "Such a fuss" was precisely the right word for what his old friend was doing at the moment, although he rather doubted that anyone except his Andrin would have described it with such succinct accuracy. It took him a few seconds to be sure he had his voice under control, then he looked down at her and shook his head slightly.

  "Ronnel is just a bit … stubborn," he said, with massive understatement. "To put it bluntly, he doesn't like Chava, he doesn't trust Chava, and he doesn't want Chava anywhere near the imperial succession. Not in any empire that he belongs to, at any rate."

  "But if you don't object to it, then how can he?" she asked. "I mean, it doesn't seem very logical."

  "Politics often aren't logical, 'Drin," he replied. "People think with their emotions at least as much as they do with their brains?probably more, I often think. Part of the art of ruling is to recognize that. To allow for it when it's likely to work against you, and to figure out how to use that same tendency when it can help to accomplish the things you have to accomplish.

  "At the moment, though, Ronnel is convinced?in some cases for some pretty emotional reasons?that he has a lot of perfectly rational reasons to hate and distrust Chava. And he does, actually. To be honest, most people who know Chava have reasons to hate and distrust him."

  He considered telling her about his intelligence reports on Chava's use of terror tactics against suspected opponents among his own people … and against his neighbors, as well. The "brigandage" which no one could ever quite stamp out in the mountains and valleys along his borders had been inexplicably on the upsurge over the last couple of decades?a period which just happened to coincide with his accession to the throne. And for some peculiar reason, it appeared to be directed primarily against people the Uromathian Emperor didn't like very much. That was bad enough, but there were other, still darker reports which even Ternathian Imperial Intelligence hadn't been able to definitely confirm or rebut.

  He thought about those reports as he looked down into his daughter's clear, sea-gray eyes, and decided not to share them. Someday he might have to, but that day had not arrived yet, and for all of her strength, she was still only a girl. His girl, and the father in him decided that just this once he would shelter her a little longer.

  "No one is ever likely to confuse Chava with one of the paladins out of the old tales," he said instead. "Ronnel?and some of the other delegates?aren't about to forget that. And, to be perfectly honest, I suspect that the fact that Ronnel is one of my closer friends has something to do with his present attitude."

  Andrin looked puzzled, and he squeezed her shoulder gently.

  "I've told Ronnel this is how it has to be," he told her. "But he's not at all convinced that it's how I want it to be. Which is fair enough," he conceded, "since if I had any choice at all, I certainly wouldn't do something like this to Janaki! But the point is that Ronnel is convinced I made my decision for reasons of state, and he's furious at the thought of seeing me backed into this sort of corner by someone like Chava. And don't forget, he's Janaki's godfather, as well. Do think he really wants to see Janaki with Chava Busar as a father-in-law?"

  Andrin shook her head with a grimace, and Zindel shrugged.

  "To be perfectly honest, neither do I. But we don't seem to have a great deal of choice, and I know your brother, 'Drin. Once everything was explained to him, he'd make exactly the same decision I've made. Getting back to your question, though, it's the combination of Ronnel's own reasons to despise Chava, coupled with the fact that he's trying to 'defend' me from a decision he feels has been forced upon me, which accounts for his decision to oppose me on this particular issue. I did say," he reminded her, "that politics often aren't logical."

  "But if this is necessary??" she said, and he shrugged once again.

  "Ronnel and I differ on just how necessary it is," he said. "I think we need Uromathia included from the outset. And I think we need to do it in a way which makes it perfectly clear to everyone that we've made an extra effort to accommodate Chava's reasonable demands. I think we can't afford to leave an excluded Uromathia sitting out there like some sort of canker, distracting us while we're trying to gear up for a major war against the Arcanans. And if we're going to include Uromathia, I want to do it in a way which cuts the legs out from under any future attempt on Chava's part to argue that we didn't meet him at least halfway.

  "Ronnel's view is that the Conclave's already approved Unification and already approved my election as Emperor. As far as he's concerned, the rest of Sharona can get along quite handily without Uromathia. In fact, I think he'd just as soon see Uromathia excluded in order to keep Chava as far away as possible from the levers of power. And the news that the Arcanans have initiated negotiations leaves Ronnel feeling less of a sense of urgency than he felt when unification was originally proposed. So where I'm willing?even determined, however little I like it?to include Uromathia, he's perfectly prepared to exclude it. And all he has to do to accomplish that is to prevent me from assembling a big enough supermajority to amend the original Act."

  He smiled down at his daughter, but his eyes were dark.

  "So you see, 'Drin, it's the very fact that he's my friend which is driving him to do everything in his power to defeat what I'm trying so hard to accomplish."

  Andrin nodded slowly, but the youthful eyes looking up into his were just as dark, just as shadowed, and he knew. She'd Glimpsed what he had. Neither of them had Glimpsed it clearly?not yet?and, in many ways, that was even more terrifying than it would have been if they had. Over the millennia the Calirath Dynasty had discovered that the more deeply involved someone with the Calirath Talent was in the events he Glimpsed, and the more harshly those events impinged directly upon him, the harder it was to See that Glimpse's details sharply. That was what frightened Zindel chan Calirath now, because there was too much darkness, too much loss and pain, woven through the chaotic scenes he and Andrin had managed to Glimpse for him to force clarity upon them.

  But because his daughter shared his Talent, she understood what Ronnel Karone?who did not?never could.

  "I do see, Papa," she said quietly, laying her slender hand atop one of his. "Thank you for explaining to me."

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The bright morning sunlight only made Sarr Klian's mood even darker by comparison.

  The final draft of Two Thousand Harshu's reinforcements had arrived last night, and it was, Klian conceded, an impressive force. mul Gurthak had managed to assemble even more fighting power than he'd projected in his original dispatches to Klian. He'd not only managed to dig up two complete Air Force talons, but he'd even come up with an additional four-dragon flight of the rare yellows. Klian hadn't expected that.


  The Air Force's battle dragons were divided into flights and strikes on the basis of their breath weapons. The reds (the traditional colors of the original Mythalan war dragons bore very little resemblance to modern dragons' actual colors but still made a convenient shorthand for purposes of reference) were the fire-breathers, although it probably would have been more accurate to describe them as spitting fireballs. They'd been bred as a general attack type, although the "flight time" required for a fireball to reach its target made them less suitable for air-to-air combat.

  The blacks were the lightning-breathers, who'd originally been developed expressly to fill that gap in dragon-versus-dragon combat. Their attacks delivered less total damage than a red's, but it was extremely focused. More importantly, it struck with literally "lightning-speed," which meant there wasn't any point in attempting to evade it the way someone might a fireball, if he was fast?and lucky?enough.

  Both weapons sites were, of course, also effective against ground targets. No one in his right mind wanted to get in the way of dragon-spawned fireballs or lightning bolts, and it had been two hundred years since anyone had. But however little Klian might have liked the thought of being incinerated or flash-fried by lightning, the yellows were the ones that really gave him nightmares.

  Almost every peace organization on Arcana?and a rather surprising number of officers within the Air Force itself?had tried repeatedly to have the yellows banned along with the weapons of mass destruction which had been outlawed when the Union was formed. Although the yellows' opponents hadn't succeeded in getting them completely banned, the Air Force had allowed their numbers to run down drastically. There simply weren't very many of them left, and Klian hadn't imagined that any of them were out here in the Lamia Chain. Nor could he imagine why they'd been sent in the first place, or what possible use anyone in the Commandery might have expected them to be.

  Yellows were poison-breathers.

  The shortest-ranged of all the dragons, they were also the most lethally effective against unprotected personnel. Their breath weapon had the largest area of effect, and without gas masks and a sound doctrine in their use, there was no defense against it.

  They came in several varieties, the most deadly of which breathed what the Healers called a nerve-toxin that was uniformly lethal. Others breathed gases like chlorine, which were horrible enough but at least offered some possibility of survival if the wind was in your favor, or if you could get out of the gassed area quickly enough. But even a tiny concentration of the nerve-toxin was deadly once it was inhaled. There were rumors that the Mythalans had developed contact nerve-toxins during the Portal Wars. If that were true, at least they'd never been used, thankfully, but the existing varieties of yellows were more than enough to make Klian's skin crawl.

  Especially now, as he stood on the Fort Rycharn parapet, gazing out across the crowded dragonfield at the rows upon rows of canvas tents. According to the latest returns, Harshu currently had two cavalry regiments and eight infantry battalions, plus artillery support, assembled under his command. That gave him over two thousand cavalry and almost nine thousand infantry, even before he counted the artillerists, the Air Force personnel, and the special combat engineer units. All told, Harshu had better than fourteen thousand men?as many men as many a full division could have boasted?and Klian felt a deep surge of inexpressible bitterness as he gazed out across that crowded encampment and thought how easily he might have contained this situation at the outset if he'd had it under his command.

  Assuming you hadn't pissed it away the way you did Charlie Company, he told himself with bleak self-honesty.

  He heard the flag above the fort cracking and popping in the crisp wind, and he was tempted to turn around and gaze back at the central office block. But he didn't. There wasn't any point. He'd already heard everything he needed to hear.

  "Gentlemen," Two Thousand Harshu had told his assembled officers less than two hours ago, "Master Skirvon's latest dispatches make it quite clear the other side is not negotiating in good faith. That fact has become increasingly clear to him over the past several weeks, and he's communicated that conclusion to Two Thousand mul Gurthak. In addition, our reconnaissance has confirmed that the enemy actually on the portal are anticipating the arrival of substantial reinforcements within the next sixty to ninety days."

  He'd paused, and Klian's heart had sunk into his boots. The five hundred had looked around at the silently watching faces, willing one of them to speak. When no one else had, he'd drawn a deep breath and lifted his own hand.

  "Yes, Five Hundred Klian," Harshu had said.

  "Excuse me, Sir. But if they aren't negotiating in good faith, what, exactly, does Master Skirvon think they are doing? Why talk to us in the first place?"

  "They haven't requested a freeze on troop movements," Harshu had pointed out. "Obviously, that's because they believe?or hope, at any rate?that they can move their reinforcements to the front faster than we can. Unfortunately for them, they appear to be wrong. Master Skirvon's assessment is that they've basically been intent on buying time to bring those troops into play, without any intention of ever seriously attempting to resolve the differences between us peacefully. They continue to insist that the original confrontation was entirely our fault, and they've persistently refused to move beyond that to any discussion of the future possession of the portal cluster. Master Skirvon?who, I hardly need to remind anyone in this room, has by far the most personal experience in dealing with them?is of the opinion that they intend, at a bare minimum, to secure their own permanent and exclusive possession of Hell's Gate. Whether or not they intend to move beyond the cluster into our own territory is more than he's prepared to say at this point. That possibility cannot be overlooked, however."

  Klian had hovered on the brink of pointing out that Skirvon hadn't requested any freezes on troop movements, either. But he hadn't said it. Harshu already knew that, and Klian had no doubt that Skirvon had waited to see what the other side proposed specifically as a test of the Sharonians' sincerity.

  "Based on Master Skirvon's dispatches," Harshu had gone on, "Two Thousand mul Gurthak has authorized me to take preemptive action against the enemy, if, in my judgment, the situation requires it." Klian's plummeting heart had seemed to freeze as the two thousand paused briefly, then continued in measured tones. "He hasn't ordered us to attack, but he's eleven days away by dragon. As he says, he can't possibly be as good a judge of the immediate situation as we can here, at Fort Rycharn."

  He'd surveyed the taut ranks of his officers. His eyes had challenged them to disagree with anything he'd said, but not a single voice had spoken. Not even Klian's.

  "At the moment, we have a clear and overwhelming superiority. All of our reconnaissance confirms that they have less than one full regiment equivalent, and they remain in complete ignorance of our aerial capabilities. We have an equally overwhelming advantage in the speed with which we can move our troops. Given the fact that we know they have heavy reinforcements headed in our direction, I believe we have no option but to strike quickly and decisively."

  Klian's jaw had tightened as he heard the words he'd dreaded from the beginning of the meeting, but Harshu hadn't been finished.

  "Our immediate objective, obviously, is to secure Hell's Gate and control of its portal cluster," he'd said. "Two Thousand mul Gurthak has made it quite clear that the Union can't afford to leave it in Sharona's possession. Especially not given the fact that they may well have designs upon even more Arcanan territory. However, while the seizure of Hell's Gate itself ought to be a relatively straightforward proposition, given the balance of forces currently available, holding it may be quite another matter, given the hostile forces we know are already headed in this direction. To be blunt, we need additional defensive depth, especially given the size of the Sharonians' entry portal to that universe. We can't possibly adequately defend a portal that size with the forces currently available to us.

  "Accordingly, I've decided that we'll continue thr
ough Hell's Gate. Thanks to Magister Halathyn's final discovery, we're equipped with portal detection devices of unparalleled range and sensitivity. If necessary, we can survey for, locate, and secure all of the portals in a given universe far more quickly than was ever possible before. Our objective, however, will be to get as far forward as we can. Ideally, I'd prefer to find another portal, no larger than our own swamp portal, to use as a chokepoint against the inevitable Sharonian counterattack. Failing that, I want enough depth for us to use our air power to hammer them mercilessly as they advance, and rip apart their supply lines behind their spearheads. It's essential that we buy enough time for the Commandery to dispatch heavy reinforcements of our own, and we can't do that by standing passively on the defensive in Hell's Gate."

  Still no one had spoken, and he'd shaken his head slowly.

  "I realize that if we continue beyond Hell's Gate we'll be clearly and unambiguously moving into Sharonian territory. That, of course, would constitute an act of war by anyone's definition. But there's no point in deceiving ourselves, gentlemen. The moment we attack Hell's Gate, we will be at war with these people."

  He'd said it unflinchingly, and continued in the same level tones.

  "I don't say that lightly. Nonetheless, as Two Thousand mul Gurthak has pointed out, leaving Sharona in possession of Hell's Gate, and a foothold in our own territory, constitutes an unacceptable risk to the security and interests of the Union of Arcana. As soldiers in the Union Army, it's our duty to protect that security and those interests. I intend to do so. And once we've opened the ball by attacking at all, it would be criminally negligent of us to fail to act in accordance with the military realities and imperatives of our mission. The diplomats can sort out who's responsible for what and which of their universes we're prepared to hand back at the negotiating table, after the shooting is over. Our job is to make sure that when they sit down at that table, they sit down with the winning cards already in their hands. Is that clearly understood?"