“No! Really?!” Brigade-Captain Desval chan Bykahlar looked back at his silver-haired Delkrathian quartermaster in mock disbelief.
“Really, Sir,” chan Ersam replied solemnly. “Why, I remember the last time clearly. Three years ago, it was, I think, during those maneuvers at Fort Erthain.”
“Actually,” Regiment-Captain chan Therahk said dryly, “I believe there may have been at least a time or two since then.”
“I’d hate to disagree with a senior officer,” chan Ersam told 3rd Infantry Brigade’s executive officer,” but I distinctly remember that it was three years ago.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean three weeks ago?” Battalion-Captain Fernis chan Klaisahn, 3rd Brigade’s chief of staff sounded a bit more sour than the XO. Chan Klaisahn was a native Ternathian, six and a half feet tall and immensely strong, with huge hands, who’d won more than a few beers by straightening horseshoes without benefit of an anvil. Now he cocked his head at chan Ersam. “Something about Regiment-Captain chan Ferdain’s tents, I believe it was.”
“That was entirely TTE’s fault,” chan Ersam asserted. “My people had all the right paperwork. It wasn’t our fault TTE put them on the wrong train.”
That won a chuckle from the officers seated around the utilitarian desk. That desk sat in in the quayside office which had been made available to chan Bykahlar while the men of his brigade-and the mountain of food, equipment, and ammunition accompanying them-filed aboard the transports which would carry them across the Vandor to what ought to have been New Ternath. And while that chuckle was entirely genuine, it had a sour edge which had quite a lot to do with that logistical mountain, because the truth was that chan Ersam had a point.
The battalion-captain was a bit long in the tooth for his current rank (at fifty, he was only three years younger than chan Bykahlar and three years older than the XO), but that was entirely due to the six years he’d spent in forced medical retirement after losing his left leg below the knee in a training accident. It had taken him that long to browbeat the Personnel Board into letting him and his peg back into uniform. The sheer determination that accomplishment had required-coupled with his undoubted capability and the closeness of their ages-was one reason he got along so well with chan Bykahlar, and during his career, he’d probably seen just about every mistake a quartermaster could make. No doubt the Quartermaster’s Corps was thoroughly capable of inventing new ones, but that hadn’t happened in the case of the tentage for Hahlstyr chan Ferdain’s 312th Infantry Regiment. It wasn’t really the Trans-Temporal Express train masters’ fault, either, chan Bykahlar supposed. They were shoving things into every nook and cranny aboard the torrent of trains pouring down the chain of universes from Sharona to Traisum, and it was inevitable that at least some of those things would end up misplaced. In its way, that was stupid-military logistics depended on things arriving where (and when) they were expected; simply getting them there early if no one knew they were coming was pretty useless-but he certainly understood why it was happening.
What bothered him, truth to tell, was less that the tents had arrived when they did-they had been early, not late-than the reason the space they’d been pushed into had been available. According to the official lading transmitted down the Voice chain, that train ought to have been full of Uromathian infantry, at least as far Frayika. In chan Bykahlar’s opinion, the fact that it hadn’t been didn’t bode well.
“If pressed, I will concede-unwillingly, but concede-that I can’t really blame you for that one, Rechair,” he said after a moment. “Which doesn’t mean I won’t have your guts for gaiters if we have any major screwups on the move to the front.”
“In all seriousness, Sir, I don’t expect any.” Chan Ersam’s tone and expression were much more serious than they had been and he rested his palm on the closed notepad. “The truth is that all of the reports coming back from Shosara sound like this is actually going to work. Assuming TTE’s people are their usual efficient selves, we ought to be detraining in about five weeks in Resym.” He shook his head. “When I first heard about this brainstorm of the Division-Captain’s, I thought he was crazy. I was much too respectful to say so, of course, but any experienced quartermaster could’ve told him the whole idea was insane. Push an entire corps down a seventeen thousand-mile corridor through six different universes in only four months? With an ocean crossing thrown in for good measure, and with fifteen hundred miles of unimproved travel after we run out of railroad?” He shook his head again. “I suppose it’s a good thing Division-Captain chan Geraith isn’t a quartermaster. If he was, he’d never have tried it!”
“No one ever accused the Division-Captain of thinking small,” chan Klaisahn pointed out. “And we have been playing with the Bisons and Steel Mules for a while now. Not that I don’t think you have a perfectly valid point, Rechair.”
“From the sound of things it’s been going better than we had any right to expect it to,” chan Bykahlar agreed. “But it’s our job-read that as your job, Rechair-to make sure it keeps going that way.”
“I know, Sir. And if I’m going to be honest, I’m more than a little nervous about how many steam drays we’re going to end up using. I was joking when I said it was a good thing the Division-Captain wasn’t a quartermaster, but he really is demanding an awful lot out of our logistics net. The Bisons and Mules seem to be having fewer maintenance issues than I’d expected, but the drays are making up for that. And given that long stretch through the Dalazan, I’m nowhere near as confident as I’d like to be that they’ll hold up under the pounding.”
“We’ll just have to do the best we can,” chan Bykahlar said. “And, speaking of doing the best we can, it’s occurred to me that once we reach Shosara and start breaking bulk for the move to Kelsayr, it might be a good idea to make sure the ammunition for the 37s and the pedestal guns is well to the front of the queue. So, what I want you to be thinking about Rechair, is-”
February 15
It was as hot as it had ever been at Fort Salby, Arlos chan Geraith thought, and much, much, much more humid. He hadn’t thought anything was likely to make him long for that remembered heat as a breath of cool air, but he’d been wrong.
He stood on the platform of his command car, sweating in the oppressive early afternoon sauna and smoking one of his cigars while he listened to the shouts of command, the snort of heavy equipment, and the clang of metal on metal as Olvyr Banchu’s and Ganstamar Yanusa-Mahrdissa’s work crews labored furiously. That labor continued rain or shine-and a lot of the weather was rain, not shine, here in the very center of New Farnal-driving even the enormously experienced TTE personnel past the brink of exhaustion.
The Trans-Temporal Express had laid track through the heart of the Dalazan Basin in at least half a dozen universes, and its engineers had all the maps, all the records, all the construction logs at their disposal. Without that, the current effort would have been a madman’s dream. Even with it, it was a task to daunt the ancient tomb builders of Bolakin, but they were actually doing it.
The troop train upon which he’d arrived would be forced to back for over forty miles to the nearest triangle junction-the railroad men called it a “wye”-where it could be turned to head back the way it had come. Eventually, Yanusa-Mahrdissa had told him, there’d be balloon loops, or even proper wheelhouses and switching yards, spaced along the line at convenient intervals. But at the moment, he was also at what was-for now-the very end of the rail line from Traisum, and those improvements were a future luxury their frenetic present had to do without. And however primitive their facilities might be, they were working…so far, at least. At this moment, as he stood smoking his cigar and cradling a cup of tea in his left hand, looking out across the raw-edged railbed and muddy road hacked out of the rain forest, he was the next best thing to two thousand miles from the point at which he’d entered the universe of Resym.