And that was why Sir Pardinar Rukkar had been chosen to run the investigation into the shit storm with the yellow. He’d sent updates over the last several days, but he’d come to deliver a summary of the final report in person.
Now he lowered himself heavily into a well-worn leather chair at the duke’s gesture and drew a deep breath as he prepared to do that delivering.
“Thankhar, it’s a mess,” he said frankly, skipping any honey coating preamble. “I know it’s to be expected, given what it takes for this kind of cluster-fuck to happen, but—” He grimaced. “There’re going to be people who’ll never believe my report, and I don’t know as I’ll blame them. For about the first twenty-four hours, I thought it was a clear-cut case. Stupidity all ’round—but simple. And I still think it is, really. But then things got a lot less clear-cut.”
Olderhan leaned back in his own chair, listening but certain he wasn’t going to like what came next.
“A hundred with Mythal Air Expeditionaries took full credit for sending one of my boys still in flight training out to scare off the crowd in front of your offices. Someone’d told them you’d asked for assistance with a riot. The boy needed saddle time, so this Hundred mul Belftus gave him the mission.
“So far so good, I thought at that point. But when my investigator asked mul Belftus where the hummer was who’d brought that request message from you, the hundred died.”
“He what?” Olderhan jerked upright in his own chair, and Rukkar winced. There was no easy way to explain the oddities of the report.
“His heart, the healers said.” He threw up his hands. “And it gets worse. My boy flying that yellow—I know he was a fool to take the mission, but before that he was shaping into an excellent flier. He was a third-generation Andaran pilot, and he’d been flying retired transports at home since his arms were long enough to reach the controls. I had to write his parents a letter. He never woke up.”
“From a crowd control spell?” Olderhan wasn’t taking this nearly as calmly as Rukkar could have wished.
“Two blasts from peacekeeper staffs at focused max power.” He corrected. “Unusual, but not unheard of for that to be fatal.”
“Even at that range with him at least partially shielded by a dragon’s body?” Thankhar shook his head disbelievingly.
“I know,” Rukkar said. “If I hadn’t been running this investigation, I’d be a skeptic myself. But for any other explanation, I’d have to believe someone walked into the hospital and shot the boy with a daggerstone at exactly the same angle as he’d been hit by your retainers. Angles,” he corrected himself. “It’d need to be two shots to the same spots. It’s ridiculous.”
Thankhar Olderhan looked at him, his expression absolutely blank, and Rukkar raised an admonishing index finger.
“Don’t be thinking that, Thankhar. People’re stupid far more often than they’re wicked. Mythalans do things like gassing their field hands if they try to riot. We’d never do it, but to someone like mul Belftus, it wouldn’t have seemed so outrageous under the circumstances.”
“Slaves, Rukkar.” Olderhan spoke through gritted teeth. “They gas their garthan slaves and do it for revolts, not riots.”
“You know what I mean.” Rukkar regretted mentioning the Mythalan practices.
“And I never sent a hummer,” Thankhar said. “None of my Portalis staff sent a hummer. None of the Garth Showma Househummers left their coops within four hours of that dragon’s arrival.”
“Maybe someone on your staff forgot to log it, or—”
“No, I’m telling you a message was never sent!”
“Old friend, I understand,” Rukkar said, “but there’s no proof of that. You weren’t at home yourself until afterwards, so you can’t swear to it of your own knowledge. And no one’s staff would have the clearest recollection of what happened after that kind of surprise.”
“You don’t believe me.” The look in Olderhan’s eyes was not friendly.
“That’s not what I said.” Rukkar tried to calm him. “I only said there’s no proof, and I have a sworn statement from Hundred mul Belftus that someone sent him a hummer. And there’s a note in his office log that he did receive one. You say you didn’t send it, and I know you too well to think you’d say that if it wasn’t true. But think about it. Mul Belftus’ senior commo clerk—an Andaran, not a Mythalan—noted a message from someone at exactly the time mul Belftus said he’d received one, and why would anyone fake a message like that?”
Sir Thankhar Olderhan looked very old. “If that horror had happened, I’d look like someone who’d kill my officers’ wives and sisters on a whim. I’d be a pariah, a man no one could trust, much less believe.”
Rukkar shook his head. “It didn’t happen.”
“Only because the chief sword who manages my duty roster decided he needed to stand a ceremonial door watch himself that morning. I usually have two lances in that position, Rukkar! Lances!”
Rukkar raised his hands again. “Your staff did very well. It was brilliant. Almost anyone else would’ve stepped inside and sealed the doors instead of shooting at the yellow’s pilot.”
“The same staff you believe uniformly lied to your investigators about not sending the message supposedly asking for that mission.” The iciness in Olderhan’s tone began to frustrate Rukkar.
“I’m not the enemy here, Thankhar!” He shook his head. “I admit the coincidence of mul Belthus and the pilot both dying like that looks odd. Maybe even suspicious. But I did my investigation, and I had the medical examiner run detailed forensic exams on both bodies. There’s absolutely no evidence the hundred died of anything but natural causes, and the pilot’s death was clearly the result of the crowd control spells your people hit him with—entirely justifiably, under the circumstances! It was a mess, and I’ll say so. But there’s no evidence of any conspiracy. Some of the MAE pilots thought a new breed of yellow had been flown in—one with a very mild breath weapon the shakira claim to have used on, yes, garthan slaves with no long-term injuries—and that that wingling was one of those. The pilot trainees who weren’t picked for the flight thought it was, too.”
“And was it?” Olderhan’s voice was flat.
“No. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone who was on-site thought it was. And before you say another word, everyone in the Air Force understands how near this horror came to happening. I have a debrief with the Undersecretary for Dragon Affairs himself. We’ll ensure controls are put in place so that nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“You didn’t have controls already?” The tone was deceptively mild.
“We damned well had controls! But the wing deputy, Hundred mul Belftus made an exception and no one questioned it because they thought the Governor of New Arcana was being assaulted in his home by a mob!” He winced. “And I know you weren’t actually there, but they scrambled that mission thinking they were helping you and your family. I understand how pissed off you are, and under the circumstances, I don’t blame you for questioning the likelihood of that many fuck-ups piling on top of each other. But you spent enough time in the field yourself to know crap like this does happen. And”—the five thousand looked his old friend straight in the eye—“there’s absolutely no evidence—none, Thankhar—that this was anything but just that: an effort to get help to your townhouse as rapidly as possible that almost blew up in everyone’s faces!”
The duke looked back for a long, silent second, then nodded minutely.
“Shartahk spare us all such ‘help,’” he said, and Rukkar made an averting sign against the devil. Olderhan matched the sign, and rose to walk him out.
“Thank you for taking the time to give me the report in person,” he said. “I know it wasn’t a pleasant chore.”
It was obvious to Rukkar that the duke wasn’t about to accept his conclusions, but Olderhan’s tone acknowledged that there was no evidence to support any other determination. And, if he was honest with himself, Rukkar didn’t blame his ol
d friend one bit. In fact, he was prepared to admit there was a distinct whiff of something rotten about the entire affair, but he’d taken too much testimony under lie-detection spellware. Every witness—every surviving witness, at any rate—said the same thing, and that was that.
“Of course I brought it in person,” the five thousand said, and grinned crookedly. “Knew I had to bring it in person, because you’d damned well’ve taken the head right off anyone else I’d sent, now wouldn’t you?”
The duke’s lips twitched in a small, unwilling smile, and Rukkar snorted. Then, on a wall in the outer office, he spotted an old picture of himself and Olderhan as squires. Rukkar’s first black lifted a wing in the background to frame the two men for the image spell capture, and the five thousand smiled more naturally and tapped the picture to draw the other man’s attention to it.
“Remember my first dragon? She was a beauty, wasn’t she?”
“I’ve never been very fond of dragons.”
Rukkar shook his head. Olderhan’s perspective had never been comprehensible for him.
“I love ’em,” the five thousand said simply, then racked his brain for something neutral to part with. Nothing came for a moment, but then he nodded.
“Say, I received an interesting bit of correspondence from a colleague on New Mythal the other day,” he said. “A man from the vos Sidus family. He served a few years as an Air Force officer a decade ago, but his family’s been breeding dragons for ages. They’re old money, though. No transport dragons or regular combat types for them; they do sea dragons. They call ’em drakes or hydras. Strong swimmers. A few of them fly, but mostly they’re sea creatures—great for securing coasts and rivers, he says. Monsters, really, since the Mythalans breed ’em for those nasty spectator fights, but he wanted to press a proposal for the creatures to be used for military purposes. He’s going to pitch ’em to the Navy. Doesn’t that sound interesting?”
“I think it sounds horrible,” Olderhan said. But after a pause he admitted, “Still, they might be useful, I suppose. Are they docile enough for transport?”
“I’m not so sure about that. These are fighter lines. They’re worse than combat dragons. They’re bred to fight each other, not just selected enemies.”
“How barbarically Mythalan.” Olderhan grimaced. “Do they have any officers for them?”
Rukkar shrugged. “After a fashion, but I can’t say I trust any of ’em. And none of them are actual operators. The Mythalans use garthans with the drakes, not shakira—the operators often die in the gladiator shows, and no shakira’s signing up for that!—and no shakira would ever consider making a garthan an officer, either. So if we want officers with hands-on experience, we’ll have to commission garthans, and you know how well that’s likely to go over with Mythal. And, truth to tell, they aren’t the most genteel folk to invite into an Air Force officer club.”
Olderhan’s lips tightened, and Rukkar shook his head.
“Don’t get me wrong, Thankhar. I’m just saying that these aren’t emancipated garthans; they’re still literal slaves and the Mythalans seem to treat them like just another animal to go with the drakes. And less valuable than the drakes, come to that, because the drakes are at least carefully bred and trained. Not surprising the poor bastards won’t come equipped with the attitudes and…call ’em social skills we expect in our officers. But Torkash knows we can’t allow the shakiras’ attitudes to spread to the Air Force, so I’m recommending to the undersecretary that if we make these into some kind of Air Force Naval Auxiliary, we have to insist on commissions for the drake riders, anyway.”
Olderhan actually laughed at that. “You hate the very idea, but you’re going to push them forward anyway just in case they’re useful in the war effort. You’re Andaran to the core, Rukkar! Sometimes I wonder about the sorts of people who want to spend so much time with dragons, but then I think of you, my friend, and I know we’ll be okay. Andara’s in good hands as long as five thousands like you run the Air Force.”
Rukkar brushed the compliment off, but he was deeply relieved to feel back on easy footing with Olderhan again.
“That’s just ground pounder jealousy because some of us get to freeze solid during the long travels and then spend our days digging latrines and building up the frontier fort while you marching lot take your sweet weeks-long promenade across perfectly flat looking ground to get to the place we have all set up for you by the time you get there,” he said.
Olderhan smiled at the old joke, not as widely as Rukkar would have liked, but there was a faint smile there. Rukkar knew full well that marching over a bit of ground and flying over it were two drastically different propositions.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Molidyr 9, 206 YU
[January 31, 1929 CE]
Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu’s expression was bleak as his orderly escorted the exhausted-looking, travel-stained commander of one hundred into his chansyu hut office. The sarkolis-crystal heater filled the office with a comfortable warmth, but none of that warmth had leaked into the two thousand’s cold eyes.
“Hundred Thalmayr, Sir,” the orderly—who could read his two thousand’s moods unerringly after so many years in his service—announced in a somewhat flattened voice, then withdrew as Hadrign Thalmayr braced to attention and saluted with the stump of his right wrist. Not even the best of Gifted Healers could regenerate a totally lost or destroyed limb.
Harshu returned the salute with a curt nod, not even glancing at the other two officers he’d asked to join him here. He already knew what he would see in Herak Mahrkrai’s and Klayrman Toralk’s expressions. They’d read the brief hummer message Thalmayr had sent ahead of him, and neither of them was stupid enough to miss the weasel-wording of that dispatch…or the holes in it. Nor had they missed the fact that it had arrived less than twenty-four hours before Thalmayr himself. Worse, they probably understood the reasons for the tardiness of its arrival as well as Harshu did.
The hundred’s journey—flight, more accurately—from Thermyn to Karys had begun over a month earlier. True, he’d spent much of that time on unicornback, covering the vast distance between Fort Ghartoun and the first of the AEF’s airheads in Failcham, but he’d still had ample opportunity to send word ahead if he’d wanted to. For that matter, he could have gotten higher priority for air transport if he’d been willing to tell Toralk’s AATC station commander what had happened in Thermyn. The dispatch he’d finally written could say whatever it liked about maintaining security to prevent rumor mongering, but the truth was obvious.
He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know about it before Harshu because he hoped the two thousand would protect his worthless arse the way he had Neshok’s. That he’d wink at Thalmayr’s barbarities because he’d allowed so many others. And the hundred was so concerned with covering up his own actions—and their consequences—that he didn’t give a single solitary damn how much additional damage the time he’d wasted might have caused.
Well, Mayrkos, you always knew the gryphon would get loose in the henhouse sooner or later, didn’t you? Not that you ever expected it to happen this way. His iron expression never wavered, but internally he winced. On the other hand, you knew no plan survives contact with the enemy, too, and you ought to’ve borne that in mind while you were deciding what kind of shit you were willing to let people like Neshok get away, he reminded himself. Thought you could keep it from getting out of hand, did you? Sure, you knew that stinking shakira bastard would’ve just shuffled you out of the way and given the job to that arsehole Carthos, and only the gods know how much worse it would’ve been with him in command. No way you could’ve gotten anyone back home to override the son-of-a-bitch in the available time, either. So you went all Andaran-noble and decided to jump down the dragon’s throat to keep as much control as you could. And the fact that you really needed that info—that keeping your own men alive required it—made it easier, didn’t it? Besides, you were so damned sure you could keep it from splashing on
anyone else when the time came, weren’t you? Well, guess what? If what you think happened really did…
He let the silence linger, watching the tall, broad shouldered commander of one hundred’s face as that silence worked on his nerves. For all his powerful build, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Thalmayr’s body language was stiff, defensive, as if he were bracing for a blow. His eyes were nervous and a muscle in his cheek quivered as his stiffly squared shoulders seemed to hunch under the weight of the two thousand’s silent gaze. The hundred was obviously exhausted, as well he should be, given the journey he’d undertaken to reach this office, but the sweat smell which hung about him carried a stronger stink of fear than of exertion.