Valiant Dust

13

CSS Hector, Gadira II Orbit

The riots in the capital lasted for three days. When the Royal Guard finally succeeded in restoring order in Tanjeer, a huge strike by disaffected workers in Nador paralyzed the sprawling offworlder industrial plants there. Hector’s landing force was obliged to execute two more evacuations of local consular offices, as well as protect a new Aquilan-owned tidal power station from an unruly demonstration, disperse a crowd immobilizing a lev train carrying Aquilan goods, and rescue a news team from High Albion that managed to wander into the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. And those were just the disturbances that directly touched on Aquilan interests; there were two or three times as many Montréalais investments on Gadira, and the sultanate’s forces were hard-pressed to protect them all. Sikander himself made three landings within a week of the Sidi Marouf riot, and Angela Larkin at least five or six more without him.

He was just finishing a report on the news-team incident at the desk in his stateroom when his comm beeped at him again. Sikander sighed and keyed it, wondering where he’d be headed next. “Lieutenant North,” he answered.

“Mr. North, this is Sublieutenant Larkin. I’m in the gunnery office with Ensign Girard. We think we’ve made some progress on the torpedo failure.”

“You did?” Sikander had almost forgotten about the missing torpedo over the last few days. “When in the world did you find the time to work on it?”

“I’m not on the watch rotation now, so I’ve been working with Mr. Girard whenever I’m back on the ship,” Larkin replied. “I suppose it gave me something else to think about instead of riots and snipers.”

Sikander could certainly understand the desire to put the troubles down on the surface out of mind for an hour or two. “I’ll be right there,” he said. Stretching his legs and thinking about something different for a while sounded like a good idea to him, too.

He grabbed his cap and headed down to the Gunnery Department office. Larkin and Girard were waiting for him, along with Chief Torpedo Mate Maroth, the senior enlisted man in Larkin’s division. Sikander could see Larkin’s fatigue in the set of her shoulders and rumpled uniform, but her eyes remained bright and alert, and she greeted him with a confident smile. “Mr. North. Thank you for coming down.”

“I’m in need of some good news today, Ms. Larkin.” He joined the others at the table. “What have you found out?”

Larkin picked up the remote controlling the office’s vid display, and brought up an image of the schematics of a Phantom Type 12 torpedo. “You’ll recall that the older Phantom Type 12s were upgrades from the Type 11 with new warheads. The top image is the Type 12-P-2, which was the torpedo that went missing. Later Type 12s were manufactured new. The second image is the Type 12-P-5, which is the torpedo we recovered.”

“They look identical,” Sikander remarked.

“They are—almost,” Larkin said. “A Type 12 is simply a Type 11 fuselage and propulsion system with a new warhead bolted on. It was an easy conversion for fleet-level repair depots, and hundreds of old Phantoms were upgraded to match the new model when it came out. But Mr. Girard discovered a crucial difference here, sir.” Larkin moved a pointer to a specific point in the schematic. “This is a power supply to the flight-control unit. That’s the hardware that converts maneuvering signals from the guidance system into operations such as cutting off the warp generator at the termination of an attack run. The power supply on the old Type 11 was replaced with a newer unit with a bigger capacity for new Type 12 torpedoes, but the older upgrades kept the same power supply.”

“The old power supply wasn’t a problem for the Type 11,” Chief Maroth said. A twenty-year veteran with thinning hair, he spoke with the nasal twang of Hibernia, his home system. “Those were in service before I joined up, and no one had much trouble with them.”

Girard cleared his throat and answered. “That’s true, Chief. The problem is in the interaction between the Type 11 power supply and the Type 12 control unit. Under the right—well, wrong—settings, the new unit draws more power than the old power supply can handle. When that happens, the whole thing resets, and the fault recurs before the reset is complete. Our missing torpedo is probably resetting over and over again while we speak. In a few months the onboard generator will be exhausted, and it will pop out somewhere in interstellar space.”

“So what are the wrong settings?” asked Sikander.

“The ones I used at Aberdeen,” said Larkin. She changed the vid image to show a control console’s display; Sikander recognized the icons and menus for the torpedo officer’s station on the bridge. “When the standard attack program is selected and the seeker head is set in continuous homing, it generates a power demand that triggers the reset.”

Sikander glanced over to Chief Maroth. “What do you make of it, Chief?”

“That’s a pretty normal attack program, Mr. North. At torpedo school, they tell you to choose those settings for practice shots because they might give you a slightly better score on the range. I’d bet that half the torpedoes in the fleet are probably set to run the same way.”

“And God knows that every ship in the Navy is fanatical about range scores.” Sikander nodded slowly. “So what does this mean for our war shots?”

“They use that same power supply and flight-control unit, and some of those were conversions from the old Type 11, too,” said Girard. “This problem isn’t just limited to our practice torpedoes.”

“I was afraid of that,” Sikander said. “Very well, then. We’d better check our torpedo inventory and make sure we know which of our war shots are upgrades and which are new weapons. I’ll recommend to the captain that we put the new ones in the launch tubes on the off chance we might need to use one.”

“We already checked, sir,” said Larkin. “We have only two of the 12-J series 5 on board. The rest of our torpedoes are the older series 2, so they might fault out. I’m sending you the list of weapons we ought to replace in the torpedo tubes.”

“We have only two good torpedoes on board?” Sikander winced. He didn’t look forward to explaining that to the captain and the XO.

“If we had to, we could probably use the questionable torps with a different attack program, sir. But we’d need to run a lot of simulations to make sure the power-supply fault wouldn’t crop up.”

“Better that we know that now, I suppose.” Sikander took one last look at the vid display, then turned back to his junior officers. He’d known that Michael Girard was sharp as a tack in technical issues, and the landing operations over the last few days had showed him a different side of Angela Larkin. “Excellent work, both of you,” he said. “Clear your afternoons—I want you to present your findings to the captain as soon as possible.”

Girard grimaced. “The captain, sir?” Like many ensigns fresh out of the Academy, he was more than a little intimidated by the idea of speaking with his commanding officer, even someone as reasonable and even-tempered as Elise Markham.

“The captain,” Sikander affirmed. “Far be it from me to take credit for your work, Mr. Girard.”

Larkin’s response was more guarded, but she gave him a small nod, and allowed herself another smile. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

Later that afternoon, after the two junior officers had made their report to Markham and Chatburn, Sikander spent an hour watching the Torpedo Division carry out the painstaking work of unloading two of the cruiser’s torpedo tubes and replacing the potentially defective weapons with Phantoms of newer manufacture. Each weighed over two thousand kilos, and the torpedo room was a crowded workspace; changing weapons required no small amount of care. But the exchange went well, and by dinnertime Sikander was able to report to Markham that at least two of the ship’s torpedoes were fully ready again.

He returned to his stateroom, intending to turn in early and catch a few hours’ sleep before he was inevitably awakened by another deployment of the ship’s shore party or further deterioration of the situation on the ground. He found Darvesh there, folding freshly laundered shirts and arranging the shoes in his closet. “Good evening, sir,” said Darvesh.

“Good evening,” Sikander replied. Personally, he saw little reason to waste time on the tiny details of military grooming during ordinary shipboard routine, but Darvesh refused to allow him to be seen with anything less than crisply pressed clothing and shoes shined to a mirror polish. He’d learned long ago to simply allow Darvesh to have his way. He sat down on the edge of his bed, but before he could even kick off his boots, his personal comm beeped.

Wondering who would call him directly, he keyed it and answered. “Lieutenant North.”

“Hello, Sikander. This is Ranya el-Nasir. I just found your message, and I wanted to thank you for your concern.”

He glanced down at his comm unit in surprise. Sure enough, Ranya’s blue-black curls and dark eyes filled the small screen. “Ranya? This is a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

“Is this a good time to call?”

“Yes, absolutely. It’s just after dinner for me, and I’m not due to go on watch for hours.”

Darvesh looked up from the task of stowing Sikander’s shirts in the cabin’s dresser unit. “The amira?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

Sikander nodded, and muted his pickup for a moment. “The amira,” he confirmed.

“Begum Vadiya will find this a most interesting development,” Darvesh remarked. “She has long despaired of you taking a serious interest in a woman of noble background.”

“Leave my mother out of this,” Sikander told Darvesh, and shooed him away. The valet gave a small shrug and withdrew; Sikander returned his attention to his comm unit and activated the vid to be polite. No need to let Ranya speak to a blank screen, after all.

Ranya smiled when she caught sight of his face. “There you are. I was worried I might be calling in the middle of the night for you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded much. We’re accustomed to odd hours around here,” he said. He studied her image in the small device, and noted what seemed to be a small cut on her brow with a bandage. “I’m glad to see you again, Ranya—well, your image anyway. I feared the worst when I heard what happened to your uncle’s flyer. Are you okay?”

She gave a small shrug. “I have some stitches, and there was some minor surgery for a shrapnel injury in my ankle. I am back at home now and recuperating well, or so they tell me.”

“How is your uncle?”

“He is recovering from a more serious surgery on his shoulder, but it isn’t life-threatening. He should be fine with a few weeks of rest, or at least as much rest as the present circumstances allow.” She frowned. “Speaking of which, I understand you had a close call of your own recently. I saw the newscasts about the consulate and the Sidi Marouf riots. I heard that Hector’s landing party suffered some casualties, and I was worried that you might have been hurt.”

He shook his head. “A couple of our sailors were wounded, but I came through without a scratch. Unfortunately I was standing right by Franklin Garcia when he was shot. There was nothing I could do for him.”

“I am terribly sorry about Mr. Garcia. He was a good man, and I liked him quite a lot.”

“I think you probably knew him better than I did. I only met him a couple of times.” Sikander gazed at her image in the small vidscreen. “I wish I understood why people are so upset,” he continued. “I’ve seen civil unrest a time or two in my own home system, but there was so much anger in the crowd at the consulate … How do they think Aquila has wronged them?”

“They are not necessarily angry at you,” Ranya replied. “Many Gadirans are quite poor, and they have been held down by the beys for a long time. When Gadira was brought back into contact with other star nations, the beys were naturally positioned to benefit first and most from offworld trade. So, to many of our people, you represent a force that has enriched and propped up an already oppressive class for forty years now. Combine that with offworld mores that conflict with the more traditional teachings of Quranism, and you have an explosive mixture.” She sighed. “I’m afraid you picked a poor time to visit Gadira, Sikander. Matters have worsened significantly in the last few months.”

Sikander smiled ruefully. “I wish we’d met under better circumstances, Ranya. All we seem to talk about are interstellar politics and planetary troubles.”

“I’m afraid they are in the forefront of my mind these days.” She looked away, then met his eyes again. “I suggest we change the topic, then. Tell me about your homeworld.”

“There are two of them, really,” Sikander replied. “Kashmir has two near-terran planets, Srinagar and Jaipur, and my family spent a good deal of time on each one. But I suppose Jaipur is what I think of as home.” He fell into a description of his family home near Sangrur, and before he knew it, he was chatting with Ranya, trading small stories about their childhoods and schooling. She was easy to talk to, and her Montréalais-accented Anglic was delightfully exotic in his ears.

Half an hour passed by as they talked, but then Ranya glanced aside and made a small face. “I am sorry, Sikander, but I must go. I have an appointment in just a few minutes.”

Sikander nodded. “I understand. I hope we’ll speak again soon.”

“Good night, Sikander.”

“Good night, Ranya,” he said.

She held his gaze a moment longer, smiled, and then ended the connection. Sikander stared at the blank screen, somewhat bemused. He hadn’t intended to spend half an hour chatting about idle nothings with the sultan’s niece, but somehow it had happened anyway. She must have received thousands of messages in the last few days, but she took the time to reply to mine, he reflected. Was it simply the novelty of a note from an Aquilan officer? He replayed the conversation in his head, and decided that there was definitely more to it than that.

“Careful, Sikay,” he told himself. Reaching out to express sympathy and see how she was doing after the missile attack was within the bounds of friendship. Late-night calls and stories about their homeworlds seemed a good deal more … complicated. Ranya wasn’t an Aquilan socialite he could date casually, after all. In fact, it wasn’t really clear how he could date her at all, even if he was so inclined. But that didn’t stop him from dwelling on her when he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep later that evening.

* * *

The next day, Sikander rose early to take the morning bridge watch. Ships didn’t normally maneuver much in orbit, but monitoring the traffic even in a backwater system such as Gadira was a never-ending chore, and of course events on the ground required constant attention. When he assumed the watch, Sublieutenant Larkin and the landing force were already on the ground seeing to the evacuation of a mining survey team cut off in the small desert outpost of Ksar Lake—something of a misnomer, since the “lake” was actually a vast salt pan. Caidist raids had closed the access road, stranding a dozen Aquilan engineers and geologists working for Clayne Industries. Larkin’s team extracted the Clayne group without much trouble, but then a new demonstration broke out in the large city of Oujad, threatening a storage facility where hundreds of new Aquilan heavy ground transports waited to be distributed to local dealers. Sikander didn’t think that Hector’s sailors ought to risk their lives to protect someone else’s new trucks, but the Operations Department recommended a demonstration of resolve, so they dispatched an orbital shuttle and a squad of armed sailors as soon as the mining survey team was transported to safety.

The chime of the bridge’s contact alert interrupted Sikander as he watched the orbital imagery of the landing at the transport facility. “Mr. North, two new contacts arriving in-system, thirteen light-minutes out,” announced the sensor officer of the watch, a senior chief petty officer in the Operations Department. “They’re Dremish transponder codes, military.”

“Two more Dremish warships?” Sikander rose from his station and walked over to the consoles of the sensor operators, looking over the chief’s shoulder. He frowned at the sensor picture. Sharing an orbit with Panther was one thing; if Aquila was interested enough in Gadira to send a cruiser, then Sikander could grudgingly accept the possibility that the Empire of Dremark had the right to express its own concerns by dispatching a warship, too. But a whole Dremish flotilla was another matter entirely. “What classes are we looking at?”

“One moment, sir,” the sensor chief replied. She quickly correlated the transponder codes and visuals with a library of Dremish ships. “It looks like a Waffe-class destroyer, escorting a General-class assault transport. They’re identifying as Streitaxt and General von Grolmann.”

Sikander studied the readouts on the Dremish ships. The destroyer did not worry him overmuch—after all, the Imperial fleet was already represented in Gadira. But the assault transport was a different story. It had a capacity of well over a thousand Dremish marines, plus heavy combat vehicles for ground operations. Hector’s thirty-hand landing force of armed sailors suddenly seemed extremely inadequate in comparison. Nothing on this planet could stand up to a large landing force of Dremish infantry, he realized. This completely changes the strategic picture.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Communications, send the standard greeting to the new arrivals, and inform them that we’re conducting landing operations and do not anticipate maneuvering for some time yet.” Then he returned to his station. Standing orders did not require Captain Markham to be notified of routine traffic, but this was the sort of development she expected her deck officers to alert her to.

He keyed the captain’s direct link. “Captain, this is Lieutenant North.”

Markham replied a moment later from her cabin. “A busy watch this morning, Mr. North. Where are the locals rioting now?”

“Nothing new on that front, Captain—this is a system traffic update. Two additional Dremish warships have just arrived in-system, range thirteen light-minutes. It’s a destroyer escorting an assault transport. I sent the customary greeting.”

“Any change in Panther’s status?”

Sikander checked his displays. “No, ma’am. She is maintaining orbit.”

“What in the world are they doing here?” The captain paused for a long moment, absorbing the new information before speaking again. “Very good, Mr. North. Let me know when the new ships take station.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sikander replied. He waited and watched as the two new arrivals began their maneuvers; a few minutes later, the customary messages and captains’ compliments arrived. General von Grolmann turned her blunt bow toward Gadira and began moving in to assume an orbit near Panther, but Streitaxt reported that she was not remaining in Gadira long and maneuvered to establish a new warp transit. Sikander relayed the news to Captain Markham; thirty minutes later, Streitaxt bubbled up again on a new course, heading for parts unknown. He made a note to have the intelligence team analyze the destroyer’s departure course and figure out where she was bound; there was no harm in being a little nosy, after all.

* * *

General von Grolmann was still en route to Gadira when Sikander’s watch ended. He headed down to the wardroom to find some lunch, but managed to eat only half his sandwich before the info assistant signaled him. “Lieutenant North, your presence is requested in the captain’s conference room.”

“On my way,” he replied. He took one more bite and washed it down with a gulp of iced tea, then headed up to the captain’s cabin. When he arrived, he found Peter Chatburn, Hiram Randall, Magdalena Juarez, and Isaako Simms already there. The vidscreen on the bulkhead showed the orbital view of Gadira’s night side, with thin threads and clusters of yellow light marking out the planet’s inhabited areas.

“My apologies for being late,” he said. “I just finished my watch.”

“Have a seat, Mr. North,” Captain Markham replied. “We’re discussing the implications of the Dremish assault force and what we could do to step up our presence if the Dremish become more heavily involved in the security situation on the ground.”

“We can’t compete with a full brigade of heavy assault troops,” Randall remarked. “Dremark now has far more combat power to influence events on the surface than we do. They will presumably employ that power to look after their own interests.”

“What interests?” Magda Juarez asked. “We’ve been keeping tabs on a hundred different Aquilan companies and citizens for the last few days, but as far as I know there isn’t a single Dremish shipping crate on the ground—only stories about Dremark’s plans to invest in Gadira. If they’re so involved here, where are the Dremish businesses?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Markham said. “Let’s take it for granted that we are outgunned on the ground. How else can we influence events?”

“We can provide the benefit of our orbital observation to the Royal Guard and help them monitor the movement of insurgent forces,” Sikander suggested. “And we can provide orbital gunfire support to help the sultan’s forces repel insurgent attacks or neutralize Caidist strongholds. We might not have as much ground power as Dremark here, but our help might make the difference between Sultan Rashid’s survival or defeat.”

“Preserving the el-Nasir sultanate is not our primary objective in Gadira,” Captain Markham said. “That is Montréal’s problem, not ours. Our principal concerns are to make sure that the extremists down on the planet don’t hurt or kill Aquilan citizens, and that our Dremish friends don’t use any local disorders as a cover for an unwarranted intervention. Other than that, we need to stay out of the way and allow the sultan and his Montréalais allies to deal with the Caidist problem—or not.”

Sikander hesitated. While it was strictly true that Aquila was more or less ambivalent about the survival of Sultan Rashid’s government, he could not help but think of Ranya el-Nasir and wondering what would become of her if the Caidists succeeded in overthrowing her uncle. The right thing to do is to keep the peace as best we can. But it would be more pragmatic to determine who’s going to hold the throne at the end of the day, and make sure they’re indebted to the Commonwealth. If I think the right course of action is to assist the el-Nasirs, I need to tie that argument to something that Captain Markham sees as the simple demand of duty.

“There is a good argument to be made that a new sultanate might be more amenable to the open-door policies we favor than the el-Nasirs,” Chatburn said, explicitly stating the concern that Sikander was privately wrestling with. “If the Caidists win, they’ll see Montréal as the ally of the enemy they just fought for twenty years to defeat. They’ll need a new friend among the great powers. It might as well be us.”

“I suspect the Caidists won’t be inclined to be friendly with any offworlders for quite some time,” Randall countered. “They don’t seem like they’re very interested in making Gadira into a place where foreigners might want to do business.”

For once, Sikander found himself in agreement with the operations officer. “Mr. Randall is right,” he said. Randall glanced at him in surprise, but Sikander kept his attention focused on Markham. “And that is exactly why we should be prepared to intervene on behalf of the el-Nasirs, Captain. If the Caidists gain power, no offworlder will be safe on Gadira. The surest way to protect our citizens—and, incidentally, deflect any Dremish ambitions in this system—is to help the sultanate defeat or pacify its enemies. By helping them restore order swiftly, we are helping ourselves.”

Captain Markham leaned back in her chair, considering his point. “There may be something to that, Mr. North,” she admitted. “But I must be clear about this: We are not authorized to attack local insurgents unless Aquilan citizens are in immediate danger from them. My orders do not permit me to begin an open-ended military commitment for the Commonwealth.”

“Sharing our intelligence with the sultan’s Royal Guard and making plans to coordinate fire support would appear to be within your discretion, ma’am,” said Sikander.

Captain Markham fell silent for a long moment, gazing at the vidscreen with its view of the planet below. Sikander held his breath; he thought Markham was a reasonable person and that he’d made good points, but he also felt that he’d pushed her about as far as it was safe to go in arguing his case. Finally, she nodded. “Very well. Mr. Randall, make arrangements to share our orbital observation with the sultan’s forces. Mr. North, go ahead and prepare your fire plan. Give me a range of options from nonlethal crowd suppression to targeted interdiction of military movements. I seriously doubt that we will need them, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Randall replied. “I’ll get on it immediately.”

“Yes, Captain,” Sikander said. He made a mental note to speak to Michael Girard; this was a job for the fire-control officer. “We will examine a range of responses.”

Markham glanced over to Commander Chatburn. “While we’re at it, XO, let’s touch base with the senior surviving consulate personnel and verify the Aquilan citizens known to be in-system.” Chatburn nodded his assent, and made notes on his own dataslate. “Anything else? Then let’s meet again tomorrow to—one moment.” Her dataslate beeped softly with a new communication. The officers gathered at the table waited politely as Markham quickly checked her message. Her comm preferences would not interrupt a senior leadership meeting for routine business, so anything that triggered a notification had to be at least a little unusual.

“What is it, Captain?” Chatburn asked after a long moment, unable to restrain his curiosity.

“Some of our preparations will have to wait until tomorrow,” Markham replied. “We’ve been invited to dinner.”

“The Gadiran government? Or the Montréalais?” Sikander asked.

“Neither.” Markham allowed herself a wry smile, savoring the opportunity to surprise her officers. “We’ll be dining with Captain Harper and the officers of SMS Panther tonight.”