Scornful Stars Read online

  “Sure, XO,” Herrera acknowledged. “But I’d really like to catch some pirates someday.”

  Sikander didn’t disagree with his gunnery officer. It was disheartening to spend cruise after cruise sailing through seemingly peaceful systems, only to discover later that the region’s pirates had launched a raid or attacked a merchant ship after Decisive had left the area. All the other Aquilan warships in Pleiades Squadron shared similar tales of disappointment. The problem was simple: planetary systems were big, and a criminal who had a little patience could simply go to ground somewhere out of sight—say, a worthless rock of a moon or an asteroid with an eccentric orbit—and wait out the patrolling ship. During his previous deployments in Zerzura’s systems Sikander had tried searching likely hiding spots instead of just standing guard, but it turned out that planets (and moons, and asteroid belts) were big, too, and a single ship couldn’t hope to make any kind of thorough search without months of effort. And even if we did find an unidentified ship hiding in some crater, who’s to say it’s a pirate if we don’t find it engaged in piracy? he reflected. “Tell us about Tejat Minor, Mr. Girard,” he said, refocusing the discussion. “As I recall, it’s been a while since Decisive dropped by.”

  “Yes, sir.” Girard picked up the remote on the table and pointed it at the nearest vidscreen, bringing up a system map with planetary orbits marked in bright circles around the central star. “It’s a multiple-star system whose primary component is the red giant Tejat, here. Tejat Minor is a distant red dwarf companion with five planets of its own. The second of those is a semi-terran world settled back during the First Expansion. It’s the system’s only inhabited planet, so naturally that’s where the commercial traffic concentrates.”

  “What’s the recent pirate activity look like?” said Grant Edwards. He was a laconic New Andalusian who pressed his shipboard uniform into perfect creases and preferred smart spectacles in place of the corrective eye surgery most other nearsighted Aquilans chose.

  “Five incidents so far this year,” Girard answered. “The most recent was two months ago. An inbound Bolívaran container ship with a mixed cargo was intercepted about forty light-minutes out by this ship, here.” He switched the display to an image of a black-painted light freighter that had been refitted with kinetic cannons in open-space mounts. “The pirates put a shot through a drive plate to show they meant business, boarded, and held the crew at gunpoint while they removed several cargo containers with valuable consumer goods.”

  “The Caliphate authorities just sat on their hands and watched all this happen?” Edwards asked.

  “Their local defense force consists of three system cutters, the newest seventy years old,” Girard replied. “It would have taken them days to just reach the scene of the attack.”

  “Which is why the Admiralty’s sending us,” Sikander said. He glanced at the time display in the corner of the vidscreen; they’d run past noon, which meant that there were probably some hungry and annoyed junior officers lurking outside the wardroom while they waited for the department heads to finish their meeting and move on to lunch. “Mr. Girard, I assume you’ve got that summary of pirate activity in a convenient format?”

  “Of course, Captain. It’s already in your inbox.”

  “Copy it to all the department heads, please. On that note, let’s adjourn. I know everyone has a hundred things to do to get ready for departure next week.” Sikander looked around the table at his officers, and smiled broadly. “And let me say again: It’s good to be back.”

  After lunch, Sikander spent several hours catching up on the mountains of paperwork—well, the digital version thereof—that required his personal attention after a three-week absence. The daunting backlog almost made him regret coming back, but he powered through the chore; he’d learned through hard experience that putting it off would only make the final reckoning worse. He did find time to study Michael Girard’s analysis of pirate activity, which at least made for interesting reading. While no one had been hurt in the July incident, the one before that had left a crew of sixteen aboard a tanker dead, and back at the beginning of the year, eleven passengers—young men and women, evidently selected for their looks—had been abducted from a liner. Most likely, they’d been sold into the sex trade, shipped to some distant world or outpost with no identities except those provided by their captors and little hope for help from local authorities who were either apathetic or complicit. After finishing the summary, Sikander decided that “interesting” was no longer the right word to describe the pirates’ depredations. There was nothing remotely amusing about what had been going on in the Zerzura Sector.

  The next day, Decisive’s new chief engineer reported aboard. Sikander was reading through the morning’s message traffic when a knock came at his cabin door. “Come in,” he called.

  A lanky, good-looking officer in Aquilan dress whites entered the room, his cap tucked under one arm. Like Sikander, he wore a green sash with his Aquilan uniform, signifying dual service in the Commonwealth Navy and the Royal Kashmiri Navy. He marched up to Sikander and saluted crisply. “Lieutenant Amar Singh Shah, reporting for duty,” he announced. “I’m your new engineering officer, sir.”

  “Commander Sikander Singh North, commanding officer.” Sikander returned Shah’s salute, and accepted the datastick Shah presented—the customary orders and personnel file. “Welcome aboard Decisive, Mr. Shah. I wasn’t expecting to see you until tomorrow. You’re early.”

  Shah grinned easily. “I’m anxious to get started, Captain.”

  “I certainly don’t object to that.” Sikander stood and nodded toward the small conference table by the large vidscreen in his suite. “Have a seat, Mr. Shah. Can I get you some tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, please.” Shah set his cap on the table and sat down.

  “A traditionalist, I see. I’m afraid I’ve fallen prey to the vile Aquilan preference for the bean instead of the leaf.” Sikander wasn’t surprised; many Kashmiris preferred tea to coffee, and Jaipur’s plantations produced some of the best to be found anywhere in human space. He busied himself with the hot water, brewing a cup of coffee for himself. He found himself remembering the day he’d reported aboard CSS Hector eight years ago, and Captain Elise Markham performing the same time-honored ritual on his behalf. Strange to find myself on the other side of the table, he reflected. Elise Markham had been a natural at this part of the job, supremely comfortable in her place, calm and reassuring in those first anxious moments of introduction. He couldn’t go wrong by emulating her example. “How was your journey?”

  “Swift and uneventful,” Shah said. “I came straight from Laguna.”

  “No leave after Department Head School?”

  “I had five weeks back home before I started the course, sir. And, as I said—”

  “You’re anxious to get started.” Sikander dropped a teabag into the cup of steaming water and poured himself a mug of coffee, then brought them over to the table. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Shah. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Actually, this is not the first time we’ve met,” said Shah, reaching for his tea.

  “It’s not?”

  “When you were a sublieutenant, you attended a wedding banquet at my uncle Niyam’s villa near Sangrur. I was only fifteen then and short for my age, so there’s no reason you should be expected to remember me. I grew into my height a little later.”

  Sikander studied Shah closely, searching his memory. He remembered the wedding celebration at the King estate and he recalled meeting some of the younger members of the King family, but he didn’t remember any Shahs … “You’re Amar King!” he said suddenly.

  Like the Norths, the Kings ruled as nawabs over a major region of Kashmir—in their case, the continent of Chandigarh on Srinagar—and they owned estates throughout Kashmir, including one on Long Lake even grander than the North manor there. Before the Aquilan conquest of the system, the Kings and the Norths had often been rivals or even enemies, caught up in the great
game of the families vying for control over Kashmir’s worlds. Even today, more than a hundred years after the Aquilan admiral Alberto Reyes had smashed the last independent Kashmiri fleets, the traditional divisions lingered … and the Aquilan governors-general sometimes exploited them. Like the King soldiers at Bathinda, Sikander remembered. The Chandigarh Lancers—

  —march swiftly from the stern gates of the transports, carrying their heavy mag rifles at port arms. Instead of their scarlet parade uniforms, they wear mottled brown combat armor and battle helmets. This is a combat operation, not a mere show of force, and it’s breaking news all across Kashmir.

  Sikander watches the live feed on an entertainment system in the Sangrur palace’s family residence. He’s stunned by developments in Bathinda. “They can’t do that!” he snarls at the vidscreen.

  “It seems that the governor-general thinks that he can,” his older brother Devindar says in a bitter tone, watching the report beside Sikander.

  “This is Jaipur!” Sikander says, waving a hand at the screen. “We’re a sovereign state! If the situation requires troops, it’s a job for our dragoons, not King lancers from Srinagar. They have no jurisdiction here!”

  “The classic tactic of the imperialist power,” Devindar observes. “Send troops from one part of the empire to quell troubles in another. Are you really so surprised?”

  Sikander doesn’t answer. In fact, he is surprised. Aquilan soldiers—well, Chandigarhi soldiers led by Aquilan officers, which are more or less the same thing as Aquilan soldiers—haven’t entered his father’s domain without invitation since before he was born. For generations, the Aquilans have exercised control over Kashmir by permitting the system’s nawabs to govern their own states with varying degrees of autonomy. Does Governor-General Braxton think we can’t trust our own troops to suppress the strike? he fumes. Or does he think that the Norths are the ones who can’t be trusted?

  “I wonder if Father knew about this,” Devindar muses. “For that matter, did he ask for the governor-general to intervene? He’s been looking for a chance to crack down on the liberation movement. This way he can keep his hands clean while someone else handles the KLP.”

  “Keep your conspiracy theories to yourself, Devin,” Sikander snaps. “I don’t want to hear them.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t right.” Devindar watches the screen a moment longer, then suddenly turns on his heel and hurries away.

  “Where are you going?” Sikander calls after him, worried that his brother is about to go confront Nawab Dayan. Today is not the day to test their father’s patience.

  “Bathinda,” Devindar says over his shoulder. “That’s where the struggle is, and I need to be there. See you around, Sikay.”

  “I see that you remember me after all,” said Shah, bringing Sikander back to the present.

  “You peppered me with questions about the naval service.” Sikander shook his head, brushing away the memory of Chandigarh Lancers landing in Bathinda and his old argument with Devindar. “If you’re here, I suppose you were satisfied with the answers I gave you.”

  “I was. I knew it would be hard at the Academy—you made that much clear—but I wanted to test myself, and your example inspired me to apply. I was one of eleven Kashmiris admitted to the class of ’03, thanks to you.”

  “It was long past time for the Commonwealth to make room for more Kashmiri officers in the service.” Sikander had never considered the idea that others might follow in his footsteps. In fact, he was a little uncomfortable with it; the only reason he’d been admitted to the Academy was that his father had pulled strings and called in favors in order to send him to High Albion. He wondered how many Kashmiris were in this year’s Academy class, and resolved to find out. “I should have recognized you from your service jacket. I’m afraid the name threw me off.”

  “When I entered the Academy, I decided that I preferred the sound of it in High Panjabi, not Standard Anglic. Many of the Kings in my generation choose to go by Shah instead.”

  “I see.” Sikander wondered what the older Kings made of that. It had never come up in his own family; they were happy to be known as Norths, not Utaras. He’d heard of other Kashmiris dropping Anglic family names or place names, but he’d never really seen the point of it. Kashmir had been originally settled by people descended from the Sikh diaspora on ancient Earth, many in blended families. They were English and Canadian and Indian and American as well as Punjabi, united by a common faith. To Sikander, recognizing the fullness of that heritage didn’t make one less of a Kashmiri or imply undue sympathy for the Anglic-descended peoples who made up most of the Commonwealth of Aquila. Certainly he’d never heard Devindar or any of his friends come out and say that Kashmir’s Anglic names had to go, and Devindar’s anticolonialism lagged behind nobody’s.

  It’s none of my business, he reminded himself. People had the right to be called what they wanted to be called, and if he detected an implicit criticism in the younger Kashmiri’s choice, that was his problem, not his new chief engineer’s. “Shah it is, then. You’re joining us at a good time; we get under way next week to perform in-service trials after our recent yard time. Have you given any thought to how you’d like to get started with your department?”

  “I have, sir. I plan to conduct a rigorous inspection of all the repairs and installations completed during the ship’s refit. It’s as good a way as any to familiarize myself with the engineering plant and the mechanical systems, and it never hurts to check up on the work that’s been done.”

  “We’ve been doing a lot of that already,” Sikander said. “But some extra thoroughness doesn’t hurt, and a chief engineer shouldn’t be afraid to get dirty. Go on.”

  “I believe I’ll have my division officers and their chief petty officers walk me through what’s been done in each of their spaces. That should give me plenty of opportunity to see what my junior officers know, as well as showing them something about what I expect from them.”

  “I approve. I think you’ll find that you’re inheriting a good team. If Lieutenant Walsh—your predecessor—had a weakness, it was her tendency to rely on senior people to fix things instead of allowing more junior hands to make a few mistakes while learning what needed to be done. That made sense when we were trying to keep some problems in check until the yard could get at them for a proper repair job, but now that we’re done with our refit, I think it’s time to invest in our people again.”

  “That seems sound to me, sir. I’ll keep an eye open for that sort of top-heavy thinking as I get to know my team.”

  “Good.” Sikander drained the last of his coffee, and stood. “Well, Mr. Shah, I’m pleased to see that you found something useful in whatever it was I said to you ten years ago. Make sure you introduce yourself to the XO—she’s sharp as a tack, and she knows your department well. She can be a great resource for you. And, of course, my door is always open.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Great to have you aboard—welcome to Decisive.” Sikander shook Shah’s hand firmly, and walked him to the cabin door.

  Shah certainly seems confident, he decided as he returned to his desk. Perhaps too confident? Back when Sikander had started his own first department-head tour aboard CSS Hector, he’d adopted more of a watch-and-wait attitude, avoiding big changes until he had a sense of how his subordinates worked. Shah seemed eager to dive in—not unusual in new department heads, but likely to lead to turmoil as everyone adjusted to the new boss’s leadership style. And, even though Sikander didn’t like to dwell on it, the Aquilan officers and enlisted hands who made up the great majority of Decisive’s Engineering Department might not react well to a Kashmiri department head suddenly questioning how things were done. He hoped that after a year of command he’d more than proven to Decisive’s crew that Kashmiris could do the job, but he’d also chosen to tread softly and show a certain amount of open-mindedness in his leadership style.

  That also means all
owing my department heads the chance to show me that they can do things their own way, he reminded himself. If I wouldn’t advise an Aquilan officer to go lightly, I shouldn’t treat Shah any differently just because he’s a Kashmiri.

  Later in the afternoon, Sikander and Darvesh left the ship to run a few errands ashore. First they took a hired flyer over to Sikander’s bungalow in Tawahi City to drop off their extra bags from the extended stay in Kashmir. The nonmilitary portion of Tawahi was a thoroughly Aquilan bubble on a world that otherwise hadn’t changed much in the centuries since it had been a Caliphate colony; decent rental houses cost a small fortune, but Sikander hadn’t ever had to worry much about whether he could afford something. The spaciousness of captain’s quarters notwithstanding, it was healthy to be able to leave the ship in the evenings and on weekends simply to avoid the temptation to work all the time. He often brought paperwork home with him, but reading reports in shorts on his own back patio at least offered a change of scenery. He also enjoyed having a place where he could entertain Decisive’s officers or his colleagues from other ships in the squadron.

  The house seemed fine, so Sikander left Darvesh to restock the groceries while he retrieved his personal flyer—a sporty performance sedan—from the garage, heading back to the naval base. He parked on a landing pad near the squadron headquarters building, smoothed the front of his uniform, and went on inside. Like Helix Squadron on the Tzoru frontier, Pleiades Squadron served as a standing force assigned to a distant station; ships occasionally rotated in or out, but at any given time an odd mix of half a dozen or so Aquilan destroyers and corvettes operated from the base at Neda. It was a less exotic posting than the remote Tzoru Dominion, but still a long way from the Commonwealth’s home territory. Some officers regarded it as a sleepy assignment unlikely to do much to advance a career or provide the same opportunities for building patronage networks that a main-battle-fleet billet offered, but Sikander had never looked at it that way. He preferred the freedom and independence of serving at a small outpost a long way from the Admiralty’s bureaucratic eye.