Read Online The Road to Hell - eARC by David Weber, Joelle Presby - Free Book Online
Authors: David Weber, Joelle Presby
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even more quickly than we could if we had as many levitation accumulators as we wanted! Each load’ll take longer to make the trip, but a single “train” as long as the work trains that pulled out of Karys after the prisoner exchange can carry as much as all my transports together. And that’s assuming the transports have the accumulators to double up!
That, he decided, was a very unpleasant thought indeed.
* * *
Commander of Five Hundred (acting) Alivar Neshok looked up from the report in his PC as Shield Lisaro Porath knocked once, opened his office door, and stepped through it. The one good thing about the abrupt check in the AEF’s advance was that there’d been time for the engineers to throw up quarters a bit more substantial than tents. The chansyu huts, named for the legendary immortal Ransaran two-headed, winged lion which died and was reborn in a flash of lightning, couldn’t be erected quite as quickly as their name suggested, but now that the AEF looked like spending at least several months in one spot, more durable quarters were in order.
Neshok didn’t like the fact that their advance had come to such a screeching halt, but he was grateful for the solid roof and walls—and the warmth—the chansyus provided. The privacy that came with walls less permeable to sound than canvas was also welcome, and so was the rather more comfortable set of quarters attached to the chansyu which housed his office.
Now the shield braced to attention in front of his field desk and touched his chest in salute.
“Sorry to disturb you, Five Hundred, but Thousand Gahnyr is here to see you,” he said.
Porath—a black-haired, brown-eyed Hilmaran with a thin mustache—was a solid, chunky, broad shouldered fellow whose hard face hinted at the flinty soul of the man who wore it. He’d been Javelin Porath up until about last week, when Neshok had finally managed to get him the promotion he’d so amply earned. It was a mark of the way Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk were busy pushing Neshok into obscurity now that they felt they no longer needed him that it had taken so long for Porath’s promotion to come through.
That thought sent a familiar trickle of resentment through the five hundred, and his lips thinned as he recalled how different Harshu’s attitude had been when the AEF’s advance had begun. No one had expressed any qualms then about how Neshok and his handful of interrogators got the intelligence Harshu needed to plan his movements or Toralk needed to plan specific attacks. Oh, no! All that had mattered then was that the information continue to flow!
He treasured the heat of his anger for a moment, warming the hands of his soul’s bitterness above the furnace of his fury, then made himself take a mental step back. The truth was that Toralk had always looked down that long, Andaran nose of his at Neshok. In fact, he’d protested to Harshu about the five hundred’s methods several times. Hadn’t kept him from making use of the information Neshok and Porath and the others like them had obtained for him, though, had it? But now that the brilliant tacticians like Harshu and Toralk were bogged down in front of a bottleneck they couldn’t find a way through, now that they might have to start answering awkward questions from their own superiors, now they were ready to throw the despised “intelligence puke” who’d brought them this far to the dragon to cover their own arses. They weren’t even accepting personal briefings from Neshok any longer. Instead, they sent middlemen like Commander of One Thousand Faildym Gahnyr to see if Neshok had obtained any additional intelligence that might let them somehow crawl out of the pit into which their advance had fallen.
The five hundred squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply, and nodded to Porath.
“Show the Thousand in, Lisaro.”
He was rather pleased with how calmly the sentence came out, and he shut down his PC, climbed out of his chair, and
That, he decided, was a very unpleasant thought indeed.
* * *
Commander of Five Hundred (acting) Alivar Neshok looked up from the report in his PC as Shield Lisaro Porath knocked once, opened his office door, and stepped through it. The one good thing about the abrupt check in the AEF’s advance was that there’d been time for the engineers to throw up quarters a bit more substantial than tents. The chansyu huts, named for the legendary immortal Ransaran two-headed, winged lion which died and was reborn in a flash of lightning, couldn’t be erected quite as quickly as their name suggested, but now that the AEF looked like spending at least several months in one spot, more durable quarters were in order.
Neshok didn’t like the fact that their advance had come to such a screeching halt, but he was grateful for the solid roof and walls—and the warmth—the chansyus provided. The privacy that came with walls less permeable to sound than canvas was also welcome, and so was the rather more comfortable set of quarters attached to the chansyu which housed his office.
Now the shield braced to attention in front of his field desk and touched his chest in salute.
“Sorry to disturb you, Five Hundred, but Thousand Gahnyr is here to see you,” he said.
Porath—a black-haired, brown-eyed Hilmaran with a thin mustache—was a solid, chunky, broad shouldered fellow whose hard face hinted at the flinty soul of the man who wore it. He’d been Javelin Porath up until about last week, when Neshok had finally managed to get him the promotion he’d so amply earned. It was a mark of the way Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk were busy pushing Neshok into obscurity now that they felt they no longer needed him that it had taken so long for Porath’s promotion to come through.
That thought sent a familiar trickle of resentment through the five hundred, and his lips thinned as he recalled how different Harshu’s attitude had been when the AEF’s advance had begun. No one had expressed any qualms then about how Neshok and his handful of interrogators got the intelligence Harshu needed to plan his movements or Toralk needed to plan specific attacks. Oh, no! All that had mattered then was that the information continue to flow!
He treasured the heat of his anger for a moment, warming the hands of his soul’s bitterness above the furnace of his fury, then made himself take a mental step back. The truth was that Toralk had always looked down that long, Andaran nose of his at Neshok. In fact, he’d protested to Harshu about the five hundred’s methods several times. Hadn’t kept him from making use of the information Neshok and Porath and the others like them had obtained for him, though, had it? But now that the brilliant tacticians like Harshu and Toralk were bogged down in front of a bottleneck they couldn’t find a way through, now that they might have to start answering awkward questions from their own superiors, now they were ready to throw the despised “intelligence puke” who’d brought them this far to the dragon to cover their own arses. They weren’t even accepting personal briefings from Neshok any longer. Instead, they sent middlemen like Commander of One Thousand Faildym Gahnyr to see if Neshok had obtained any additional intelligence that might let them somehow crawl out of the pit into which their advance had fallen.
The five hundred squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply, and nodded to Porath.
“Show the Thousand in, Lisaro.”
He was rather pleased with how calmly the sentence came out, and he shut down his PC, climbed out of his chair, and
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