Scornful Stars Read online

  “That would change if Marid Pasha had a squadron or two of Dremish-built cruisers under his command,” said Bleindel. He glanced back to Vogt. “So the Aquilans, then?”

  “Or maybe the Montréalais, although my money’s on the Commonwealth. The Aquilans are in a better position to buy the pasha, and their base at Neda means they have something of a foothold in Zerzura already.” Vogt tapped the stylus of her dataslate against her chin. “I wish I knew what they’re offering. I think that their domestic politics would make it difficult for Aquila to offer direct military assistance such as bargain-basement warships, but they’re not going to sit on their hands once our interest in Zerzura comes out into the open.”

  Bleindel grimaced in distaste. He had firsthand experience with Aquilan interference; eight years ago, the presence of a single Commonwealth Navy cruiser at Gadira had completely unraveled months of hard work he’d put into laying the groundwork for the Dremish takeover of that world. He’d barely escaped the disaster with his life, and it had taken him years of hard work to repair the damage done to his career and reputation in the security bureau. “I can put my team to work on that,” he told Vogt. “Establishing surveillance of the Aquilan consulate or securing a source or two within the pasha’s government shouldn’t be all that difficult. Dahar is enough of a backwater that we have quite a lot of room for discreet operations of that sort.”

  “Do it. I want to be a few steps ahead of the competition if Marid Pasha’s ambitions begin to attract more serious attention from the other powers.”

  Bleindel noted that Vogt hadn’t bothered to add and don’t get caught, which he rather appreciated. Most people unfamiliar with the sort of work the KBS did seemed compelled to tell the Empire’s spies to perform their jobs competently. Of course the experts under his command would do everything they could to minimize the risks of any operation—it went without saying, didn’t it? “I’ll have some proposals for you by the end of the day.”

  “Fifteen minutes to rendezvous, ma’am,” the orbiter’s pilot announced over the cabin’s intercom. “Dahar Control is routing us around a bit of orbital traffic.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Vogt replied. She returned her attention to her dataslate.

  Bleindel sighed in irritation; now that he had something to do, he was anxious to get back to their ship and get to work on it. He glanced out the window again, looking for the traffic interfering with their flight path. Scores of small shuttles, workboats, and cargo lighters lingered in the space above Mersin, the typical collection of light traffic one expected to see around any good-sized planet … and, just coming into view, the teardrop-shaped hull of the Velaran cruiser. Vashaoth Teh, he remembered. He admired its striking maroon-and-silver paint scheme, watching as its orbit brought it steadily closer.

  An idea struck him.

  He considered it carefully for several minutes, studying the Velaran cruiser through the window until it once again disappeared out of sight. Then he turned and addressed Vogt. “If you’re concerned about Marid Pasha playing us off against the Aquilans, it occurs to me that we could do something to provide him with a sense of urgency,” he said. “For example, if tensions with the Velar Electorate suddenly became more serious, he might favor the offer that includes a battleworthy fleet.”

  It didn’t take her long to discern the direction of his thoughts. “You’re thinking about provoking the Velarans?”

  “I have something in mind, yes.”

  “The last thing we want to do is start a war between the Electorate and the Caliphate. The Velarans are our allies—sort of, anyway—and the Caliphate is turning into a good place for the Empire to do business.”

  “I know. I was thinking in terms of third-party actions,” Bleindel said. “Someone who doesn’t represent Marid Pasha’s sector government or the Terran Caliphate; as you say, we don’t want to start a war, so we don’t want the Velarans to see it as a direct attack. But if our agents provocateurs represented a problem that the Velarans expected the governor of Zerzura to do something about—”

  “—we could count on those prickly Velaran sensibilities to kick in,” she said, finishing his thought. “And some Velaran bluster might remind Marid Pasha how far Zerzura is from any Terran help.”

  “Exactly.” Bleindel nodded. “Sometimes your process involves turning up the temperature, right?”

  “Okay, Otto, you’ve got my attention.” Vogt put away her dataslate, and fixed her attention on him. “Tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

  4

  Tawahi Island, Neda III

  Sikander climbed out of the flyer’s roomy rear seat, taking in the warm air and brilliant blue waters of the Tawahi Island base. One of the things that he disliked about his job was the fact that he spent so much time inside windowless hulls; vidscreens slaved to exterior cams provided the illusion of daylight, but there was nothing like the smell of fresh air or the sound of the breeze rustling in the palms. No naval base was really pretty, of course—too much concrete and steel, not enough natural scenery—but he found the Commonwealth Navy’s base on Neda III more pleasant than most.

  Decisive rested alongside the pier, her hull gleaming with a fresh coat of the nanopolymer that served as a warship’s paint: clean white hull, buff-colored turrets and upperworks, bold red piping around her bow and drive plates. On the other hand, it could be that I like Tawahi because this is where my ship is, he reflected. He’d never met a captain who didn’t think his command was the most beautiful thing in the universe, with the possible exception of his spouse or children.

  “Looks like we’re home,” he said to Darvesh, who unloaded their small collection of suitcases and settled the tab with the flyer’s pilot. “And the ship’s in one piece, too.”

  “I am relieved to see it, sir,” Darvesh replied. “I know you were concerned.”

  She definitely looks better than the last time I saw her, Sikander decided. When he’d departed for leave, Decisive had been encased in the scaffolding of an orbital shipyard, her engineering spaces open to vacuum to facilitate the overhaul of her fusion generators. With twenty-five years of service behind her, Decisive had accumulated quite a bit of wear and tear. Some experts in the Office of Construction and Repair had suggested mothballing her rather than paying for the refit, considering her something of a white elephant with little value in the modern battle fleet. Decisive was big and roomy as destroyers went, almost the size of a light cruiser, but she’d been built around what was most likely a flawed tactical concept—a long-range “gunfighter” with a minimal torpedo battery. Decisive mounted eight kinetic cannons in her rounded turrets, as compared to the four or five most destroyers carried, but she had only four tubes for her warp torpedoes, and a paltry one reload for each. Most destroyers were built for torpedo attack; Decisive’s designers had regarded it as an afterthought.

  Sikander didn’t care; he loved her anyway. The big hull gave Decisive plenty of endurance for extended cruises, and serving in a strategic backwater like Neda meant that her unsuitability for the usual squadron operations didn’t matter. There were no enemy battleships in the Zerzura Sector to make him wish he had the torpedo battery a destroyer should have carried—Decisive more than outgunned any pirate they might run across.

  Eager to get started, he picked up one of the bags despite Darvesh’s look of disapproval and headed from the landing pad to the pier. Major fleet bases tended to be orbital cities like the one at New Perth, but Neda lacked that sort of system infrastructure, so the Commonwealth Navy’s Pleiades Squadron moored in the waters of Tawahi Roads instead. He strode up the brow to the large hatch at Decisive’s boat deck, pausing to salute the Aquilan flag displayed on the quarterdeck.

  The officer of the deck came to attention and returned his salute, while the petty officer of the watch keyed the ship’s intercom and struck the four bells naval tradition required for a commander of Sikander’s seniority. “CSS Decisive, arriving!” she announced.

  “Welcome back, C
aptain! And you too, Chief Reza.” Lieutenant Commander Amelia Fraser, Decisive’s executive officer, met Sikander and Darvesh on the ship’s quarterdeck with a crisp salute, then broke into a wide smile and stepped forward to shake Sikander’s hand. “How was your leave?”

  “Good, XO, good. I saw most of my family, spent some time with the younger nieces and nephews, and even managed to go horseback riding for the first time in ten years or so.” Sikander knew he’d gotten lucky in his executive officer; she was tireless without falling into the martinet-like caricature XOs in the fleet often adopted. Too many officers in her position acted like volcanoes waiting to erupt, but he’d never seen her lose her temper. No, when Amelia Fraser needed to set someone straight, she did it with an I’m-not-mad-I’m-just-disappointed routine that left even the greenest ensigns or most careless deckhands feeling about a centimeter high. Sikander made a show of looking around the ship’s boat bay with an expression of surprise. “I see that nothing’s on fire and there’s a fresh coat of paint on everything. You must have been expecting me.”

  “Chief Reza’s doing, sir,” Fraser said. “He warned us you were on your way over when the orbiter touched down at the shuttle field.”

  “How am I ever going to catch someone napping if you do that, Darvesh?” Sikander said to his valet. “Sometimes I wonder whose side you’re on.”

  “It’s important to see to the formalities, sir,” Darvesh replied.

  “If you say so.” Sikander returned his attention to his executive officer. “How’s the ship? Did the shipyard complete all the work orders, or do we still have some action items to get to?”

  “They missed a few things, sir, but nothing major. Just a matter of making sure we dot the i’s and cross the t’s, really. We could get under way in ten minutes if you wanted.”

  “That isn’t necessary, but it’s good to know. Give me an hour to get settled, and then let’s get the department heads together. I’m sure everything is in fine shape, but I’ve been gone awhile and I feel like I want to start catching up.”

  “It’s already in the plan of the day, Captain,” Fraser said. “Is 1100 soon enough?”

  “Perfect, thank you.” Sikander grinned—it felt good to be back. “Fill me in while we walk.”

  They left the quarterdeck and headed forward toward the ship’s berthing areas and command decks, Fraser quickly summarizing the major events of the last three weeks. The only thing of note that Sikander had missed was the ship’s undocking from the repair facility and its landing at Tawahi, but he’d expected the shipyard to finish up with Decisive while he was away and he’d been happy to allow his second-in-command to oversee the brief flight from the orbital dock down to the ship’s customary mooring spot in the squadron’s planetside base. Not every captain would have willingly missed any ship’s movement, no matter how small, but Amelia Fraser enjoyed his complete confidence, and trying to get back early enough to see to it himself would have made it pointless to make the trip back home.

  Sikander found a file full of correspondence waiting for his attention in his cabin, and spent the rest of his “settling-in” time skimming the messages to see if anything required an immediate reply. An hour before noon, he changed into the buff-colored jumpsuit that served as shipboard working dress, then headed down to the wardroom. Many commanders preferred to meet with their department heads in the more private and intimate setting of their own cabins, but Sikander felt that he spent more than enough time cooped up in his own quarters. On his ship, the officers’ mess doubled as the ship’s executive conference room. It also had the added advantage of a fully equipped galley and a well-stocked refrigerator right next door.

  Amelia Fraser waited for him at the long table with six other officers: Lieutenant Michael Girard, operations officer; Lieutenant Commander Jaime Herrera, gunnery officer; Sublieutenant Zoe Worth, ship’s flight and deck officer; Lieutenant Commander Grant Edwards, supply officer; Lieutenant Carla Ruiz, medical officer; and Sublieutenant Reed Hollister, power plant officer. Girard was an old shipmate of his from CSS Hector, a fellow survivor of the furious battle at Gadira; Worth had served with him aboard Normandy as a brand-new ensign when he was the assault transport’s XO. Herrera, Edwards, and Ruiz were all new shipmates, but during his time aboard Decisive Sikander had learned that he could rely on them to run their departments efficiently and generally count on their judgment. Hollister he didn’t know quite as well, but that was because he was the senior division officer in the Engineering Department and not the actual department head. Chief Engineer Victoria Walsh had rotated out just before Sikander departed for his leave, so Hollister had stepped up to serve as the acting chief engineer until Walsh’s replacement reported aboard.

  A good team, Sikander reflected. Decisive might not have been a frontline fleet destroyer, but she’d certainly collected a first-rate crew.

  “Attention on deck,” Fraser announced. The assembled group stood and faced the door.

  “Carry on,” Sikander replied; his officers returned to their seats. “It’s good to see everybody. What did I miss?”

  “We took her out for a spin while you were gone, Captain,” Herrera quipped. A strapping New Caledonian with a weightlifter’s sculpted physique, he concealed a very unserious personality behind his fierce appearance; he let no meeting pass without some attempt at humor. “She’s fast off the starting line but fishtails on the corners if you don’t watch yourself. Might be missing some paint on the rear quarter panel, sorry.”

  “So I shouldn’t look too closely at the odometer?”

  “Oh, we rolled it back, sir,” Worth said. She was positively tiny beside the hulking gunnery officer, dark-haired and so young-looking she probably could have passed for a student if she dressed for the part. She was responsible for the ship’s deckhands and flight operations. “You’ll find that it shows a kilometer less than when you left.”

  “I expected no less from you,” Sikander said, and took his seat at the head of the table. “Okay, let’s get to work. XO, walk me through our job list from the refit, and tell me what we missed.”

  “I’ve got it right here, Captain,” Fraser answered. She pointed a remote at the wardroom’s big vidscreen, and pulled up a file Sikander had studied for hours before going on leave: the list of repairs, special maintenance, refits, upgrades, and replacements that Decisive had accumulated over the two and a half years since her previous visit to the shipyard. When he’d left, half the items had been highlighted in yellow for “work under way, not complete”; now the vast majority of the list was a very reassuring green. Clearly the Neda Naval Shipyard had been hard at work while he was off in Kashmir, and that meant his officers and crew had been busy as well.

  One by one, his department heads took turns explaining the items on their portions of the list that remained incomplete—an old power conduit no longer in use that was too much trouble to remove, a food-storage freezer that slowly lost refrigerant but wasn’t worth replacing, pocking and pitting on the ship’s bow armor that didn’t quite meet the requirement for patching but had been close enough that Sikander had wanted it added to the list, and a dozen more mostly cosmetic issues. The Commonwealth Navy had its budget constraints, but Sikander wanted to make sure he understood exactly what hadn’t been done and why it had been skipped. No captain liked the idea of leaving the shipyard with parts of the to-do list unchecked, no matter how small. Fortunately, it seemed that Neda had taken care of the major issues; Sikander really had no cause to complain.

  “Very good,” he said when his department heads finished their reports. “Decisive didn’t get ten years younger while I was away, but she certainly has that new-flyer smell. I’m looking forward to shaking her down. So, Mr. Girard, why don’t you tell us about when and where we’re going?”

  “Aye, Captain,” Michael Girard replied. As Decisive’s operations officer, Girard was primarily responsible for mission planning and analysis. When Sikander had first met him eight years ago aboard CSS Hector, Gir
ard had been a young ensign terrified by anyone with more than one stripe on their sleeve. He remained a little bookish and thoughtful, but he’d grown more comfortable in his own skin over the years, and he was quite possibly the smartest officer Sikander had ever served with. “The squadron’s assigned us to a four-system patrol in the Zerzura region: Tejat Minor, Bursa, Dahar, and Meliya. We’re to get under way at 0800 on the twenty-first, and accelerate for a transit to Tejat Minor at 1930 hours. It’s a four-day transit, after which we’ll be on station for twelve days before continuing on to Dahar. The op plan calls for routine propulsion tests and casualty drills—”

  “Checking the shipyard’s work, I suppose,” Sikander observed.

  “Exactly, sir,” Girard continued. “I expect we’ll finish up the shakedown tests within the first few days of our arrival. The rest of our deployment is devoted to antipiracy patrols: six days on station in Bursa, followed by twelve more days in Dahar before returning to Neda by way of Meliya.”

  “Meliya?” Worth asked. “That’s not a Caliphate system.”

  “No, it’s Velaran,” said Girard. “But it’s nearby, and they’ve got trouble with piracy, too. In the spirit of cooperation, the Velarans are allowing our squadron to add Meliya to our regional patrols.”

  “Do we have any specific assigned stops or patrol routes within each system?” Sikander asked his operations officer.

  “No, sir. The squadron’s given us a good deal of operational discretion in that regard.”

  “In other words, ‘See if you can think of a way to get pirates to show themselves while you’re around,’” said Herrera. “Not that any will.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, Guns,” Amelia Fraser pointed out. “But even if the pirates aren’t stupid enough to put in an appearance while we’re in the system, the fact that we’re keeping them away means that the shipping lanes will be safe, and that’s the whole point.”