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.