Hell's Gate

Chapter Forty-Two

"Now that's impressive."

Division-Captain chan Geraith stood with his hands on his hips, watching as one of his Bisons snorted up the loading ramp onto the massive flatcar under a floating banner of black smoke and the careful direction of the loadmaster. The Bison?technically, the Transport Tractor, Mark I, Model B?was based on the same powerplant as the next to largest of the Trans-Temporal Express's bulldozers, although its suspension and caterpillar tracks had been substantially modified in an effort to allow for greater speed over even rougher terrain. It wasn't an actual transport unit itself, but rather designed to tow a capacious wheeled or tracked trailer, and despite its funnel, it was sleek, low-slung, and powerful looking.

It was also dwarfed by the flatcar it was busily climbing onto. Indeed, two more Bisons were already in place on the same car. TTE employees were tightening the tie-down chains on the second of them even as the third clanked into position, and there was still going to be almost enough room for a fourth, he realized.

"You think so, Division-Captain?"

chan Geraith turned his attention from the flatcar to the man standing beside him. Train Master Yakhan Chusal of TTE's Directorate of Operations was the sprawling transportation giant's senior train master. He'd been overseeing the loading of TTE freight trains for almost thirty years, and his eyes were rather more critical than the soldier's.

"Yes, I do," chan Geraith said. "I never realized you had flatcars that size. Oh, I've seen pictures of the special, articulated cars you use to transport ship hull sections, but I'd never realized you had standard cars this big."

"I wish we could make them even bigger," Chusal replied with a grimace. "They're just barely large enough for our biggest steam shovels as it is, and you can't put a shovel on an articulated car and get it through some of the mountains we've got to transit on this run. Some of the curves are way too sharp, not to mention the little question of whether or not the trestles would stand the weight. In fact, I understand Engineering had to turn down a new shovel design because we couldn't guarantee that we could transport it."

"You mean you need a flatcar that size for one steam shovel?" chan Geraith demanded in an almost shaken tone.

"That's right." Chusal shrugged. "In fact, we have to break them down into two loads, even with cars that size. Which, of course, means we need big damned cranes?which we also have to ship out?to put them back together again at the other end. When you've got to dig your way through a godsdamned mountain range, or dig a frigging canal, you need a really big shovel. Well, we've got them."

chan Geraith shook his head with a bemused sort of expression. Before his own recent experiences with the experimental mechanization program, he probably wouldn't have been as impressed as he was. Now, though, he'd had far more firsthand experience with incredibly powerful and yet sometimes frustratingly fragile heavy machinery.

"I guess we're lucky TTE's got as much rolling stock as it does," he said after a moment, and Chusal snorted.

"Depends on how you look at it, Division-Captain. Our charter from the Portal Authority requires us to maintain a fifteen percent reserve over and beyond our normal operational and maintenance requirements. Frankly, it's always been a pain in the ass for the bean-counters, and I've got to admit that there have been times when I was royally pissed to have that many cars?and engines?basically just sitting in sheds somewhere. But there wasn't much luck to it. And," his expression darkened, "I don't think the reserve's going to be big enough after all."

"You don't?"

chan Geraith's eyes narrowed. Short of TTE's Director of Operations, Chusal was undoubtedly the most knowledgeable person, where the Trans-Temporal Express' rails were concerned, in any of the many universes Sharona had explored. If he thought there were going to be bottlenecks, then chan Geraith was grimly certain that there were.

"Well," Chusal looked away, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun with one hand while he watched the loading activities under the sky of autumn blue, "I can't say for certain, of course. But unless this new government does go through, and unless it budgets one hell of a lot more money for the line after it does, there's no way we're going to be able to meet the transport requirements we're facing. We're transferring engines and cars from every other trunk line to the Hayth Chain, but just getting them where we need them is going to be a royal pain. I've been sending them out basically empty, or half-empty, at least, just to get them where we're going to need them down the road."

"How bad is it, really?"

"Honestly?" Chusal looked up at the considerably taller Ternathian officer with a thoughtful expression, as if considering whether or not chan Geraith really wanted to know the truth, then grimaced. "The biggest problem's going to be the water gaps. There's a six thousand-mile voyage to cross Haysam to get to Reyshar, and another nine hundred-mile cruise between Reyshar and Hayth. Then there's another eleven hundred miles of water between Jyrsalm and Salym. We're going to have to detrain all of your people, all of your horses, all of your equipment, at each water gap, load it onto ships and sail all of it across the gap, then load it back onto another set of cars, and haul it to the next water gap. Then repeat the process."

It was chan Geraith's turn to grimace, although he wasn't really all that surprised. He could read a map, after all.

"I can't say I'm looking forward to the process," he said after a moment, "but surely it's one you've had to deal with before."

"Oh, yes. Of course we have." Chusal nodded. "We have to deal with it constantly, in fact. Unfortunately, we've never had to deal with it on quite this scale before, Division-Captain. Moving whole armies, not to mention all the ammunition and other supplies they're going to need?and all the coal our engines and steamships are going to need, if we're going to go on moving all that other stuff?simply devours rail capacity. And, obviously, shipping capacity between ports.

"Haysam and Reyshar are pretty well provided with freighters and passenger liners we can conscript for the military's needs, since everything moving in and out of the home universe has to pass through both of them. But we haven't needed anything like this sort of transport capacity in the Hayth Chain before. Sealift's going to be a real problem in the move between Salym and Traisum, and then there's the rail ferry across the Finger Sea in Traisum itself to consider, at least until they get the bridge built.

"That's all bad enough, but we've never had to assign the Hayth Chain anywhere near the rolling stock we're going to need now on the outbound side of Hayth. That's why I've been sending so many perfectly good engines and freight cars out empty. And it's also why every heavylift freighter in both Haysam and Reyshar has been withdrawn from regular service and assigned to hauling those engines and cars across the water gaps. Which," he added sourly, "has created a monumental bottleneck in commercial cargo service."

"I see." chan Geraith frowned. "I hadn't realized it would impose quite that much of a strain."

"Division-Captain, you haven't even begun to see 'strain' yet," Chusal said grimly. "We're building up as much capacity as we can, but basically, we're looking at at least three totally separate rail lines, for all intents and purposes. That's what those water gaps do to us, since we've got to have the rolling stock we need between each of them. Worse, in Reyshar and Salym, we've got two separate rail legs divided by water too wide to bridge. So we can't just load you onto one set of cars and send you all the way to the end of the line. We can do a lot to economize if we plan our turnarounds on the shorter legs carefully, but it's still going to be a nightmare keeping everything moving. And so far, we're only looking at moving one division at a time. What happens if we have to start sending entire corps down the same transit chain simultaneously? For that matter, the line's only double-tracked as far as Jyrsalm! We're working on that, too, and that's another logistical consideration we have to juggle somehow."

The train master sounded both weary and frustrated, and chan Geraith couldn't blame him for either emotion. On the other hand, he'd known men like Chusal before. Yakhan Chusal hadn't become TTE's senior train master by accident, and chan Geraith suspected that he was going to prove much more capable of doing that logistical juggling than he thought he was at the moment.

None of which invalidates a single thing he's said, of course.

The division-captain shook his head. He'd known going in that managing his logistics down a single supply line as long as this one was going to be a … challenge. No one in history had ever before even considered attempting such a thing, far less planned for it, and the urgent need to get his division loaded up and moving in the right direction had kept him from giving it the sort of attention and preplanning any peacetime maneuver would have permitted. He'd been painfully aware of that, but he'd also known he and his staff were going to have literally weeks in transit to work out the details.

"Train Master," he said after moment, "would it be possible for you to assign someone from your operations staff to me on a temporary basis? My staff and I are reasonably competent when it comes to planning moves around the Empire, or across a single planet. I'm beginning to think, though, that we need someone with a better feel for genuine trans-universal movements. Besides, we're accustomed to simply telling the quartermaster how much lift capacity we need. This time around it looks like we're going to need an expert just to tell us how much capacity there is!"

"Now that, Division-Captain, is a very good idea," Chusal said warmly. "And, as it happens, I think I have just the man for you." chan Geraith arched one eyebrow, and Chusal chuckled. "I've assigned Hayrdar Sheltim as your train master. He just happens to be one of our more experienced train masters … and he also just finished a three-month assignment to operations right here at Larakesh Central. If you've got questions, Hayrdar can answer them as well as anyone I can think of."

"Thank you, Train Master. I appreciate that?a lot."

"It doesn't look like much, does it?" Second Lord of Horse Garsal grumbled.

"Perhaps not," Lord of Horse Jukan Darshu, Sunlord Markan replied quietly as they watched the first of his Uromathian cavalry troopers climb down from the passenger cars which had carried them as far as Fort Salby.

They were moving slowly, stiffly, and the sunlord's lips quirked in a wry sympathy he would never have admitted to feeling. The last twelve days had been a severe jolt to their systems, he thought. The rail trip from Camryn to Salym hadn't been all that bad, but then there'd been the move to the hastily improvised transports in Salym for the voyage from Barkesh to New Ramath. The horses had hated it, the heavy weather they'd encountered en route had left half the men miserably seasick, and at the end of it, they'd had to climb back into the rail cars for the trip from New Ramath to Fort Tharkoma covering the portal between Salym and Traisum.

New Ramath was only a few hundred miles from Tharkoma, but they were mountainous, inhospitable miles, and the slow, swaying trip along the steep tracks which twisted like broken-backed serpents between the port city and the fortress had been exhausting, especially for the men who hadn't yet fully recovered from their seasickness. Yet even that hadn't been the end of it, for the Traisum side of that portal was located in the equivalent of the Kingdom of Shartha.

Shartha lay on the west coast of Ricatha, which lay thousands of feet lower than?and three thousand miles south of?the Salym side of the portal, and it had been snowing hard in Salym. The change as their train wheezed through the portal from sub-freezing Tharkoma to the brutal, brilliant heat of the Shartha Plain had been stunning even for hardened trans-universal travelers. The cold, insufficiently heated passenger cars had gone from icebox to oven in what had seemed mere minutes as the ice and snow which had encrusted them turned abruptly into water. Indeed, Markan rather thought that most of it had probably gone straight to vapor without even bothering with the intermediate liquid stage. The shock to the system had been profound, and the day and a half it had taken to get from there to Salby had offered insufficient time for men?or horses?to adjust.

"Impressive or not," Markan continued now, "it will serve neither the need of the moment nor the Emperor to reflect upon that fact too loudly."

He glanced levelly at his second-in-command. The two of them stood on the front platform of the palatial passenger car which had been assigned to Markan's senior officers for the move, and a flicker of what might have been mere irritation or might have been anger showed in Garsal's eyes. Whatever it was, it was gone as quickly as it had come, however, and he nodded.

"Point taken, Sunlord," he said.

Markan nodded back. There was no need to do more, for several reasons. First, Jukan Darshu was a sunlord, what a Ternathian would have called a duke, whereas Tarnal Garsal was only a windlord, or earl. Second, despite Garsal's fastidious, finicky dislike for frontier conditions (and his undeniable arrogance), he truly was a highly competent officer. And third, because Garsal was a distant relative of Chava Busar, and knew better than to disappoint his imperial cousin.

Not to mention the minor fact that our entire multiverse?Ternathia and Uromathia alike?is at risk this time, Markan reflected.

It felt … unnatural to think of the Empire and the long-resented Ternathians facing a common threat. For as long as Markan (or any other Uromathian) could remember, Ternathia had been if not precisely the enemy, the next closest thing available. And, he admitted, since Chava had come to the throne, the long-standing rivalry between the two great Sharonian empires had once again grown both more intense and nastier.

I suppose it's a little silly of us, the sunlord reflected. Or, at least, it was in the beginning. By now, it's taken on a life of its own.

Markan knew he was rather more sophisticated, in many ways, than most Uromathians, including all too many members of the high aristocracy. Despite that, however, deep down inside, he still suffered from that ingrained Uromathian sense of … not inferiority, really, but something close.

The truth was that Uromathia could never quite forgive Ternathian for being almost four millennia older than it was. Ternathia had made Tajvana its capital thirty-three centuries ago, and the Caliraths had stayed there until less than three centuries ago. In the interim, their empire had lapped as far east as the Cerakondian Mountains, in the south, and eventually as far as Lake Arau, in the north, until it finally stopped against the Arau Mountains in far eastern Chairifon. It had reached the Araus just under nine hundred years ago, and on the far side of that mountain barrier, it had finally encountered another empire almost as large as it was.

That empire had been Uromathia, which had controlled everything beyond the Cerakondians and the Araus as far south as Harkala. In terms of territory, Uromathia had been the smaller of the two; in terms of population, they'd been very nearly evenly matched. But Uromathia had been far younger, hammered together only over the previous three or four centuries as the various Uromathian kings and, eventually, emperors had watched the Ternathian tide sweeping steadily and apparently unstoppably towards them.

There hadn't really been a Uromathia until that steadily approaching Ternathian frontier?and example?had created it. In fact, Markan's ancestors had been too busy fighting and slaughtering one another in the service of their innumerable nobles and kinglets to pay the notion of "civilization" a great deal of attention. The threat of being ingested by Ternathia had concentrated the minds of the more powerful Uromathian kingdoms marvelously, however, and they'd begun cheerfully eliminating one another by conquest in an effort to build up a powerbase sufficient to remain uningested. Strictly, of course, out of a patriotic sense of their mission to resist foreign occupation. Perish the thought that personal power could have had anything to do with it!

They'd succeeded. In fact, they'd built a very respectable empire of their own by the time Ternathia arrived on their doorstep. They'd actually been even more centralized, since they had deliberately constructed their imperial bureaucracy for streamlined, military efficiency, whereas the Ternathian bureaucracy had been the product of millennia of gradual evolution and periodic bouts of reform. Their military capability had been impressive, as well, and they'd already acquired most of the Talents by intermarriage. Taken altogether, it had been an enormous accomplishment, one of which anyone could have been proud, and they had been.

But the thing which had stuck in the Uromathians' collective psyche was the lingering suspicion that Ternathia had stopped where it had not because Uromathia's power had given the Winged Crown pause, but because Ternathia had chosen to stop. The two great empires had sat there?coexisting more or less peaceably, with occasional, interspersed periods of mutual glaring?for the better part of six hundred years. Until, in fact, the Calirath Dynasty had begun its long, steady disengagement from the Ternathian Empire's high-water mark borders. And in all that time, there had been only three true wars between them … each of which Ternathia had won quite handily.

Ternathia had never made any effort to conquer Uromathia. That had never really been the Ternathian way, as Markan was prepared to admit, at least privately. But Uromathia had never quite been able to forgive the Ternathians for never?not once?letting the Uromathians beat them. The Uromathian Empire had fought its own wars, established its own prowess, but always in the Ternathian shadow. Never as Ternathia's equal. In fact that Chava Busar's was the fourth dynasty to rule Uromathia while the Caliraths were only the second dynasty and Ternathia's history (and that they had ruled Ternathia in unbroken succession for over four thousand years) didn't exactly help the situation, either. Uromathia had become the perpetual younger, smaller, weaker brother who deeply resented his older brother's patronizing attitude … even?or perhaps especially?when that older brother didn't even mean to be patronizing.

And that attitude lingered, even today.

Of course, Fort Salby didn't belong to Ternathia, the sunlord reminded himself. It was a Portal Authority base, which?theoretically, at least?meant it was a multinational installation, belonging to neither empire. The fact that the Portal Authority Armed Forces had seen fit to adopt Ternathian rank structures, weapons, tactical doctrines, and even military tailoring might, perhaps, explain the fact that it didn't feel that way.

But this time, we were the ones close enough to respond when the lightning struck, Markan thought with a certain grim satisfaction. I only wish the Emperor had seen fit to send us more detailed instructions.

Part of Chava's vagueness was undoubtedly due to the Emperor's suspicions of the Voice network. Unlike Zindel of Ternathia, Chava of Uromathia was completely unTalented, and he cherished a deep and abiding distrust for those who were. Despite all evidence and experience to the contrary, he was absolutely convinced that the Portal Authority Voices would violate their sworn confidentiality any time it suited their purposes. And, of course, their purposes?whatever in all the Arpathian hells they might be, Markan thought waspishly?were inevitably hostile to Chava's own.

In this case, however, it was at least equally probable that the Emperor's failure to provide detailed instructions had as much to do with the totally unprecedented nature of the threat as with his undeniable paranoia. It was certainly enough to strain Markan's … mental flexibility, at any rate.

The sunlord wasn't especially fond of Shurkhalis, whether as individuals or corporate entities, like the Chalgyn Consortium. While he might sometimes feel his Emperor took his hatred for all things Ternathian to unnecessary extremes, the fact remained that Shurkhal had been a part of the Ternathian Empire for almost three thousand years and that it had stubbornly aligned its national interests and foreign policy with its one-time imperial masters, rather than its much closer neighbor in Uromathia, since regaining its nominal independence. As a consequence, it was normally a bit difficult for him to work up a great deal of sympathy for any minor misfortunes which might befall the desert kingdom.

Then there was the fact that this particular survey crew had included Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. Markan had never met the woman, and had nothing against her personally, but her exploits had been a direct affront to his own notions of proper female behavior, and he was scarcely alone in that. Not in Uromathia, at least. Nor did the fact that the Portal Authority had been using her so heavily in its own propaganda leave him feeling much more cheerfully inclined towards her, given how unfond of the Authority he was.

Like most Uromathians, Markan had always resented the Portal Authority. His resentment was less pointed than that of many Uromathian aristocrats, especially those closest to the Emperor, but it was nonetheless real. No Uromathian could quite forget that the Authority stemmed directly from a Ternathian demand (although courtesy had required that it be called only a "proposal," of course) for the internationalization of the Larakesh portal. Nor could any Uromathian forget that the then-Emperor of Uromathia's efforts to assert control over the portal and the proposed international authority had been stymied by a direct threat of Ternathian military action. Or that it was Ternathia which had insisted that the Authority's board of directors must represent all major nations yet remain completely and rigorously politically independent of any of them.

If pressed, Markan was prepared to admit?grudgingly?that Ternathia had no more direct control over the Authority than Uromathia did. Unfortunately, it didn't need direct control. Not when the "independent" Authority had fallen all over itself adopting Ternathian models for everything from its internal organization and exploration techniques to its military forces. Including, probably, the way they wiped their arses.

Stop that, the sunlord told himself sharply. You're letting your own paranoia get the better of you again!

He snorted in wry amusement, then shook his head when Garsal looked at him inquiringly.

"Just a thought, Tarnal," he said. "Just a thought."

He looked around for a moment longer.

It was appropriate, he supposed, that Fort Salby was located in what would have been Shurkhal on Sharona. At the moment, they stood on a plateau in the rugged Mountains of Ithal, which fringed the western coast of Shurkhal along the Finger Sea. Back home, the location was the site of the city of Narshalla, built around an oasis and bounded by an extensive lava field to the east and by the arid hills of the Ithal Mountains on the other three sides. In Traisum, where thousands of years of human habitation hadn't completely deforested the Shurkhali Peninsula, those hills were less arid than their Sharonian equivalent. They weren't what Markan would have called lush or luxuriant, even here, but they were far less forbidding and desolate than the ones Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr must have known.

Despite any improvement in the local climate, driving the rail lines from Traisum's entry portal on the flat coastal Plain of Shartha to Salby had been a gargantuan task. The straight-line distance between Fort Galsar and Fort Salby was over fourteen hundred miles; the actual distance imposed by the terrain was at least half again that far. To reach the rail ferry across the southern terminus of the Finger Sea while avoiding the rugged, tangled mountains of the Shartha Highlands, the engineers had been forced to run their lines clear up and around both sides of the Horn of Ricathia. The route from the ferry's western terminus through the Ithals hadn't been any picnic, either, he reflected, although at least they'd been able to make up some of the lost time in the fast, fairly straightforward run along the coastal plain at the Ithals' feet until they had to turn inland to reach Fort Salby.

He'd been impressed, as always, by the accomplishments of the TTE construction crews. Especially by the fact that they'd already more than half completed the construction of a multitrack bridge across the Strait of Tears which connected the Finger Sea to the Gulf of Shurkhal. The coral-encrusted Strait of Tears was shallow and constricted?back home, it required constant blasting and dredging to keep it open for deep-draft shipping, and the span across the narrower, two-mile-wide eastern channel was already complete. They were well advanced on the longer, sixteen-mile length required to cross the western channel, as well, and work on it was proceeding twenty-four hours a day.

No doubt, he thought sardonically, recent events further down-chain have something to do with all the overtime TTE is accumulating at the moment. I wonder who'll get the final bill for that?

"I suppose you'd better look after getting our people off the train while I go find this Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik," he said finally.

"Better you than me," Garsal muttered, but quietly enough Markan could pretend he hadn't heard. Then the windlord saluted. "I'll see to it, Sir," he said much more crisply.

"Good," Markan replied, and climbed down from the platform.

Actually, "go find" was scarcely the correct choice of verbs, he admitted as a tall Ternathian officer?and aren't they all tall? Markan thought wryly?stepped up to greet him.

"Lord of Horse," the Ternathian said in barely accented Uromathian. "Welcome to Fort Salby. I'm delighted to see you."

"Regiment-Captain," Markan responded in Ternathian, offering his right hand for a Ternathian-style handclasp. He was impressed by chan Skrithik's command of Uromathian, which was actually better than his own Ternathian. Nonetheless, there were appearances to maintain. A Uromathian lord of horse?and a pedigreed sunlord, to boot?could scarcely permit a Ternathian to be more cosmopolitan than he was, after all, he told himself sardonically, and rather suspected that he saw a matching flicker of amusement in chan Skrithik's eyes.

"We got here as quickly as we could," Markan continued. "Indeed, I was rather astonished by how quickly the TTE was able to arrange things once our troop movement was authorized."

"TTE's always been good at improvised movements," chan Skrithik agreed. "And just so we get off on the right foot, let me say that I'm as grateful as I am delighted to see you. I realize there's always been a certain degree of friction between Ternathia and Uromathia, and I don't imagine your men are going to be any more immune to that tradition than the Ternathians in my own garrison are. However, this isn't about Ternathia or Uromathia?it's about Sharona, and I've seen to it that everyone under my command understands that. As one Sharonian to another, then, welcome to Fort Salby."

"Thank you," Markan replied. He was impressed by chan Skrithik's willingness to confront the situation so openly. And pleased, as well. And the Ternathian had shown considerable tact in suggesting that the "friction" existed only between his own empire and Uromathia, he thought. Any Arpathians and Harkalans in the Fort Salby garrison were probably torn between welcoming Markan's troopers with open arms and shooting them in the back at the first opportunity.

"I've stressed the same points to my own personnel," the sunlord said, and indeed he had. "I'm sure there are going to be at least some incidents, anyway, of course. But my officers have been instructed that if?when?such incidents occur, they are to be reported first to you, as the base commander and the senior officer in the PAAF chain of command. They've also been instructed to warn their men that any breach of discipline will be severely punished under our own regulations after any penalties you may see fit to award under the Authority's."

He showed his teeth in a tight smile.

"That's good to hear," chan Skrithik said. "Of course, your troops' internal discipline is your own affair. I'm sure any difficulties which arise can be dealt with expeditiously."

"As am I," Markan said with a slight bow.

He didn't add that he'd told chan Skrithik about his instructions to his officers for a specific reason. Markan's own rank was the equivalent of the Ternathian rank of brigade-captain, which made him senior to chan Skrithik. But chan Skrithik was the ranking PAAF officer present, and this was a Portal Authority post. More to the point, one instruction Emperor Chava had made crystal clear was that Markan was not, under any circumstances, to do anything which might be construed as attempting to undermine the Authority chain of command. In fact, Markan had been specifically ordered to obey chan Skrithik's orders, regardless of who might technically be senior to whom. Clearly the Emperor wanted no unfortunate incidents in the field while the Conclave back home was still debating what sort of political arrangements were going to emerge out of all this.

Markan doubted there was any need to be more explicit with chan Skrithik. The man was obviously intelligent, and the quality of his spoken Uromathian suggested a certain degree of familiarity with Markan's native culture. He would recognize Markan's message?that Markan intended to obey the spirit, not just the letter, of the orders subordinating him to chan Skrithik's command?without the sunlord having to be more direct.

"In that case, Sunlord," chan Skrithik said after a moment, "let's see about getting your people settled in."

"I think that's an excellent suggestion, Regiment-Captain."

"About damned time!" Hardar Jalkanthi announced with profound satisfaction as the signal arm swung into the upright position and the signal lamp glowed green.

"Try to be at leaitst a little patient, Hardar," Charak Tarku grunted with a laugh. "I'm supposed to be the impatient barbarian around here."

Jalkanthi chuckled. Tarku was his regularly assigned senior fireman, and he knew he'd been lucky to hang onto him under the present chaotic circumstances. The burly, broad shouldered Arpathian was a rarity in TTE, given the usual Arpathian attitude towards technology, and Jalkanthi was glad to have him. He knew better than most just how sharp a brain lurked behind the typically Arpathian fa?ade Tarku chose to present to the rest of the multiverse. The engineer wasn't quite certain why Tarku had decided to play to the Arpathian stereotype, and it often irritated Jalkanthi, but the two of them had been together for almost four years now. That was more than long enough to cement a solid friendship, despite their very different backgrounds, and Tarku knew him better than just about anyone else.

"I always thought Arpathians were supposed to be deadly nomadic hunters, patient as the very stones," he said now, as the two of them swung up the high steps to the footplate of TTE's Paladin 20887.

"Nothing but a fairytale," Tarku said, waving one hand airily. "Just another baseless exaggeration we put about to bolster our fearsome reputation and mystique."

"Well, I think it's about time your mystique settled down and started doing its job," Jalkanthi told him.

"Orders, orders. Always orders," Tarku grumbled with a grin. Then he caught hold of the vertical handrail and leaned well out to peer back past the bulk of 20887's integral tender, the auxiliary sixteen thousand-gallon water tender, and the second Paladin and tenders coupled in behind 20887.

"See him?" Jalkanthi asked.

"No, not?Ah! There he is!" Tarku leaned a bit further out, waving to show Train Master Sheltim he'd seen him. The train master waved back from his place on the station platform, but the green flag was still tucked firmly under his arm.

"Well?" Jalkanthi pressed.

"No point fretting at me," Tarku told him. "Sheltim will waggle his little flag at us when he's good and ready to."

Jalkanthi grimaced, then tapped the glass face of the pressure gauge pointedly. Tarku only grinned, and Jalkanthi produced an oily rag and carefully wiped the already gleaming bronze of the burnished throttle lever. He was always inordinately proud of his big Paladin's speed and power, but today he had a special reason for his impatience to be off.

Jalkanthi was Ternathian, from the city of Garouoma in the Province of Narhath, but his wife was Shurkhali. In fact, it was almost frightening how much like a taller version of the murdered Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr Jesmanar Jalkanthi-Ishar looked. Jalkanthi might not have been born Shurkhali, but he'd absorbed more than enough of his wife's culture to feel the same fury which had swept across her native kingdom. Worse, Jalkanthi had just enough Talent to have Seen SUNN's Voice broadcast of Shaylar's final message. He didn't really care what the assembled heads of state decided in their precious Conclave. He'd been gratified by his own Emperor's attitude, and he wasn't very happy about even the most remote possibility of winding up with Chava of Uromathia running things, but he didn't have time to waste worrying about either of those things just now. He knew what he wanted to happen to the bastards responsible for the Chalgyn Consortium crew's massacre, and he was impatient to deliver the first installment of Sharona's vengeance.

He'd been prepared to pull every string in sight when he heard about the decision to send the Third Dragoons forward to Fort Salby. He'd wanted that train, and he'd been determined to have it. But he hadn't had to pull any strings in the end, because Yakhan Chusal knew who TTE's best engineer was. So at least?

"Green flag!" Tarku announced suddenly.

"At last!" Jalkanthi replied, and cracked the throttle.

Steam hissed, and the enormous, powerful engine shuddered, trembling like a living creature. The ten huge drivers, each of them almost seven feet high, began to move?slowly, at first, with a deep, strong chuff, spinning on the steel rails as they fought the incredible inertia of a train over two miles long. Then, behind 20887, the second, identical engine hissed into motion as well, drive rods stroking, and the massive drag began to creep slowly forward. Jalkanthi propped one elbow on the window frame as he leaned out of the cab and felt the incredible mass of the train behind him. Thirteen thousand tons, Train Master Sheltim had told him. Most people would have found that hard to believe, but this was the TTE. It routinely hauled loads that massive?or even larger?down the ribbons of steel which stitched the endless universes together.

The vast semicircle of the Larakesh Portal loomed ahead of him. Beyond it, he could see the high mountain plateau of South Ricathia and the thriving city of Union.

He'd always thought calling it "Union City" was more than a little silly. For one thing, Union was really no more than an extension of the vast sprawl of Larakesh into the universe of New Sharona. At the time it had been founded, the newborn Portal Authority had felt it was imperative to establish a new, independent city with its own government beholden to no existing Sharonian government, even a purely local municipal one.

Since then, practices had changed?most other portals the size of Larakesh had spawned single cities, with quite efficient unified governments, which sprawled across their thresholds?but Union City had been a special case on several levels. Not only had it been the first extra-universal city Sharonians had ever established, but the Portal Authority, at Harkala's suggestion (although it was widely rumored that the original idea had come from Ternathia), had been granted ownership of the massive South Ricathian gold fields. The vast majority of the authority's operating revenues over the ensuing eighty years had come from the exploitation of those gold deposits?whose location, of course, had been easy to project from Sharona's own experience?which had neatly absolved the governments which had established it from any requirement to provide it with long-term funding. And, Jalkanthi knew, it had also avoided a situation in which those governments which made disproportionate contributions to the Authority's budget would have acquired an equally disproportionate amount of clout with the authority Board of Directors. That was why he tended to believe the rumors about Ternathia's behind-the-scenes involvement in creating the arrangement in the first place.

Rather than develop and mine those deposits itself, however, the Authority had chosen to lease the mining rights for a percentage. Union City had been built largely for the specific purpose of overseeing and accommodating that exploitation.

Still, "Union City" had been a silly choice of names, whatever the Authority's reasoning, given the fact that the one thing exploration of the multiverse hadn't done was to unite all of Sharona. When Jalkanthi had been much younger, his grandfather had told him how so many people had hoped that the abrupt appearance of the Larakesh Portal truly would bring their own world together at last. The old man had cherished the dream of a restored Ternathian Empire as a worldwide bastion of freedom and just governance, both welcomed back to the many lands it had voluntarily freed and extended beyond them, as well, and he'd scarcely been alone in that.

Unfortunately for those dreams, Sharonians had been too attached to their nations and their national identities. And, his grandfather had grudgingly admitted, the Portal Authority had done too good a job of administering the portals in everyone's name. There'd been no need to create a true world government, and so "Union City" had remained no more than a name. No more than an unfulfilled promise, in the eyes of people like his grandfather, at least.

But maybe that's going to change at last, Grandpa. And it looks like we may even get the Empire back, just the way you wanted, Jalkanthi thought as the endless train of passenger cars, freight cars, and flatcars loaded with the tools of war moved steadily forward. Thick black smoke plumed from the funnels of both Paladins. Steel drive wheels flashed, and the trucks of the cars behind banged, grated, and squealed with ear-stabbing shrillness, then began to sing as they moved faster. Buffers rattled and banged thunderously as the double-headed train crossed the switches, swinging onto the mainline.

Jalkanthi watched the familiar landmarks, watched the front end of his own streamlined engine cross the portal threshold. Unusually for portal connections, Larakesh and Union City, although they were almost six thousand miles "apart" in their respective universes, were in the same time zone. Of course, what was fall in Larakesh was spring in Union City, and the sun was at a totally different angle, whatever clocks and watches might say. But Jalkanthi was accustomed to that. He was more concerned with getting through the vast Union City side of the enormous Larakesh Central yard and its innumerable sidings?the biggest and busiest rail terminal in the entire known multiverse, by any standard of measurement?and out into the Ricathian countryside, where he could open 20887's throttle wide.

Not much longer now, he told himself, caressing the smooth bronze lever like a lover. No, not much longer.