Free The Road to Hell - eARC by David Weber, Joelle Presby Page B

Ulthar, he carefully didn’t mention any names like “Harshu” or “mul Gurthak” out loud—“really is involved, we could end up looking at a field court-martial.”
    A field court-martial, he did not point out, whose sentence would almost certainly be death.
    “I know.” Ulthar’s face might have been beaten iron for all the expression it showed, and his voice was colder and even harder. “But if we don’t do something, if we don’t at least try to stop the rot, then we’re complicit in it. I don’t know about you, Jaralt, but I can’t let that happen. I just can’t.”
    “Well, in that case, I don’t suppose we have a lot of choice.” To his own surprise, Sarma actually smiled ever so slightly. “On the other hand, I hope you won’t object to trying to at least do something effective about it. If we’re going up against the dragon with a slingshot, I’d at least like to do it in a way bastards like Thalmayr and Neshok can’t just sweep under the carpet afterward.”
    “Oh, I think I can promise you that much, whatever happens,” Ulthar said grimly. “I’ve already sent an outside-channels message home that nobody’s going to be able to ignore when it arrives.”
    “You have?” Sarma let the front legs of his chair thump back to the floor and leaned forward, eyes narrow. “How?”
    Ulthar smiled crookedly and shook his head.
    “It wasn’t that hard, really. Thalmayr wasn’t with the Company long enough to figure out that Valnar Rohsahk isn’t just our platoon RC specialist; he’s also our hacker. He didn’t even work up a sweat hacking Fifty Wentys’ spellware.”
    “You had him hack the censor’s spellware?” Sarma asked very carefully.
    “Of course I did.” Ulthar’s smile was considerably broader than it had been. “It’s a pity Thalmayr lost the Company files when the Sharonians kicked our arse. If he hadn’t, he might know Valnar was honor graduate in the Garth Showma Institute’s counter-spellware course. If he’d been willing to transfer to one of the regular regiments, they’d have made him a sword or even a senior sword in their recon section on the spot. Wentys never had a chance after I turned him loose.”
    Sarma just looked at him for several seconds while his own mind raced. He’d seen Shield Valnar Rohsahk here at Fort Ghartoun, but he hadn’t paid him much attention. Rohsahk was probably a year or two younger even than Sarma, with light brown hair and unremarkable features. Like Ulthar, he’d been severely wounded in the Sharonian attack on the Mahritha portal. That was true of all the 2nd Andarans here at Fort Ghartoun; they’d been left by their captors to spare them the additional pain of being transported across such rough terrain by someone who didn’t have dragons. He seemed to keep to himself quite a bit, but now that Sarma thought about it, the shield always seemed to have a game or some other app running on his personal crystal. Or at least that was what Sarma had assumed Rohsahk was up to…
    “And just what, if I might ask, did Shield Rohsahk do to Fifty Wentys’ spellware?” he asked with a certain trepidation.
    “He just hid a file in the letter I sent my wife to tell her I was alive after all,” Ulthar said. “It’s keyed to the standard extraction code Arylis uses to unpack all my letters, but it won’t activate until it hears the code in her voice.” He shook his head. “If Wentys could find his arse with both hands we’d have had to think up something a lot more sophisticated.”
    “What if someone farther up-chain is better at his job than Wentys is?”
    “They could hardly be worse at it,” Ulthar pointed out. “I mean, do you really think Five Hundred Isrian left his best commo officer here in Thermyn with the gods only know what waiting for the AEF when it finally hits a Sharonian position that’s too tough to take?”
    That was a valid point, the other fifty reflected. Commander of Fifty Tohlmah Wentys was a