Valiant Dust

15

Tanjeer, Gadira II

For the first time since the shootdown of her uncle’s luxury flyer, Ranya el-Nasir’s leg did not ache. She’d been on her feet all day, and in odd moments she noticed that it wasn’t sore at all—a testament to the effectiveness of Montréalais medicine and the care lavished upon her since her injury. On the other hand, her temper was rapidly fraying. For all the study and effort she’d put in over the seven years since her father’s assassination, too many of the sultan’s officers treated her as a child playing with things beyond her years, and it positively infuriated her.

At this moment, the object of her anger was Major Louis Cheney of the Republic Marines. She’d called over to the Montréalais embassy first thing in the morning to speak with him, only to discover that he was already in the palace, meeting with the sultan’s military advisors. Naturally, none of them had thought to advise her that any important discussions might be taking place. Ranya could almost understand that from her own countrymen; they simply didn’t think of including her in anything resembling strategy discussions or operational planning. But she’d hoped that the Montréalais—especially Major Cheney, after the lesson she’d imparted a few weeks ago while examining the grav tank on the parade ground—would have figured out by now that she needed to be included in any conversations about the ways and means of supporting the sultan’s military establishment. She’d had to wait until the private meeting broke up, then send Tarek Zakur to fetch Cheney before he left the palace grounds.

She waited in the Sultana’s Conservatory, a room that she often used for meetings and discussions with visitors to the palace. Since Sultana Yasmin avoided long stays at El-Badi, the room was pretty much hers to use when she liked. Its outer wall consisted of sliding glass doors in a decorative iron framework, leading out to the well-shaded eastern gardens. The morning sun helped to warm the room swiftly, but the shade trees kept it from getting unpleasantly hot before the sun moved to the other side of the palace. Ranya could keep the whole outer wall opened up for most of the day, listening to the birdsong and the sounds of the fountains outside as she worked.

Footsteps echoing on the marble floors caught her attention. She closed the documents and reports in front of her, and turned to face the parlor’s door. After two soft knocks, Captain Zakur entered with the Montréalais major Cheney in tow. “Major Cheney, Amira,” he said.

The major crossed the room and bowed. “Good afternoon, Amira,” he said. “I was just leaving the palace when Captain Zakur summoned me. What can I do for you?”

“Major, I was hoping you could help me solve a little mystery,” Ranya began. She glanced at her dataslate to check the numbers. “As best I can tell, our Royal Guard took delivery of one hundred and twenty-two Léopard grav tanks three weeks ago. But when Tarek checked on the depot where our new Léopards are supposed to be refitting for desert service and our troops are supposed to be training with their new machines, they weren’t there. It turns out that they were deployed out to our field commanders already, and they’re now scattered over half the planet, chasing Caidists. Is that correct?”

Cheney stood easily with his hands clasped behind his back. “Yes, Amira. The grav tanks have already been deployed.”

“I thought we had agreed that Montréal would furnish training programs and desert-ops modifications for these grav tanks.”

“Yes, Amira,” Major Cheney said. “We did. We sent a training cadre to the depot at Nador, along with sufficient mod kits to ready all the Léopards for Gadiran operations.”

“The training course is supposed to be six weeks long, isn’t it? And our planning anticipated that it would take about the same time to complete the mods, didn’t it?”

“That is correct, Amira.”

“So, why in the world were these grav tanks put into immediate operation without the proper training or equipment?” Ranya glanced again at her dataslate. “I see that we’ve already had eighteen of our new Léopards immobilized due to mechanical failures. More are failing every day. Did you even bother to apply some desert camouflage, or are they still painted in the parade-ground colors I saw a couple of months ago?”

Major Cheney looked uncomfortable. “Amira, the decision was made to provide the crews with an abbreviated training course so that the new grav tanks could be employed in the sultan’s current offensive against the Caidist strongholds. Only essential refits—mostly additional dust filters for the fuel and ventilation systems—were carried out.”

“Who made that decision?”

“I think it was General Mirza, although the sultan’s military council concurred.” Cheney frowned. “I advised against rushing the Léopards into service, Amira Ranya. Your uncle’s officers thought that operational demands required their immediate availability.”

Ranya glanced over to Tarek Zakur, standing by the door. The Royal Guard officer gave her the tiniest of shrugs, reminding her that it was not Major Cheney’s idea to dispense with training and maintenance in order to rush grav tanks to battlefields where they weren’t needed. Over the last few years she had managed to establish some basic oversight of purchasing and logistics, the elements of military readiness that Gadiran generals found boring. But gaining any kind of access to operational decisions remained out of her reach, thanks to her gender. As a result, she had to find out that the sultan’s new tanks had been rushed into the field by quizzing the Montréalais who had provided them to the Royal Guard.

It is not Major Cheney’s fault, she told herself. And she could hardly blame him for acceding to the demands of Gadiran generals, even when they were being foolish. The Montréalais were certainly aware of the fact that Dremish and Aquilan warships were orbiting a few thousand kilometers above the sultan’s domain, and that if they didn’t give the sultan’s generals what they asked for, somebody else might. She consciously set aside her anger, and took a deep breath. She would take it up with a more appropriate target later on.

“Very well, so the grav tanks have been deployed,” she said in a calm voice. “What can we expect as a result of inadequate training and desert readiness?”

“It shouldn’t be too bad, Amira. In all honesty, the Léopard is a pretty reliable machine, and simple enough to operate. I would worry about damage to the plenum skirt and lift plates from ground impacts—the most important rough-terrain refit is a heavy-duty shield for the undercarriage, such as it is. Boulder fields and rocky, uneven ground are pretty punishing on grav tanks.” Cheney considered the question for a long moment. “At a guess, I think you’ll lose about ten percent of your effective force per week of hard operations to minor failures. Those vehicles can be recovered and put back into service fairly easily.”

“If we had any tank recovery vehicles,” Zakur observed from his place by the door.

Cheney winced. “Well, yes. But any heavy-lift grav transport could do the job of moving a Léopard back to the depot.”

I’d wager we don’t have a lot of those either, Ranya thought. The districts where the Caidists operated, and where the Royal Guard attempted to go, noticeably lacked modern heavy construction equipment and transport assets. And the Caidist rebels loved nothing better than ambushing sultanate forces when they tried to clear crash sites or recover damaged equipment.

“I will make sure to pass that along to our field commanders,” Ranya told the Montréalais. “Thank you, Major Cheney. Please let me know the next time you receive a request to put Republic equipment in service without adequate preparation first. I may be able to do something about that.”

“I will, Amira,” Cheney promised. He bowed and left, striding quickly across the marble-floored hallway outside the salon.

“Idiots,” Ranya muttered.

“In the major’s defense, he is new here,” Zakur reminded her.

“I wasn’t speaking about the major,” Ranya replied. She thought of a roomful of overdecorated Gadiran colonels and brigadiers, and wondered which one had convinced General Mirza to throw an expensive new weapons system into conditions that virtually guaranteed a force crippled by preventable faults within five or six weeks. “What do I have to do to make an impression on the generals? If they’re not comfortable listening to me, you would think they’d at least listen to common sense! Or do they think that a pair of breasts invalidates whatever advice might follow?”

“I would not presume to comment on … that,” Zakur said, which earned him a sharp look from Ranya. As it happened, the guard captain was happily married and very, very careful to avoid anything close to impropriety, except when he thought that a dry remark might do her some good. “I’m afraid it’s the message, not the messenger. You happen to have a good deal of expertise in a field that General Mirza is inclined to overlook. Even if you were the crown prince instead of the sultan’s niece, he would not pay much attention to issues of logistics and infrastructure.”

“Yes, but if I were a prince rather than a princess, I could at least put on the uniform and make him pay attention,” Ranya said. “The Montréalais and Aquilans seem to run perfectly competent militaries with females in the ranks.”

“Just because it is right for them does not mean it is right for us, Amira—not yet, at any rate. Do you really wish you had been born a man?”

“Not particularly,” Ranya admitted. If she’d been the son rather than the daughter of Kamal el-Nasir, her father’s death would have forced her onto the throne as a teenager. As a member of the royal household and a woman in Gadira’s chauvinistic society, she chafed under some annoying limitations, but she enjoyed her little freedoms. The sultan, on the other hand, could do nothing without careful calculation of the outcomes. Yes, she had to put up with patronizing behavior or annoying expectations such as finding a husband, but she’d been encouraged to gain a first-class education and she was more or less free to speak her mind; Gadira was not nearly as hidebound as some of the old Caliphate worlds. “But that does not mean I don’t find it frustrating at times, Tarek.”

The guard captain shrugged. “I was not born in the right family to hope for a brigadier’s star. The general staff is full of men who gained their positions through the merits of their titles, not their experience. That does not diminish the value of my service.”

Ranya allowed herself a sigh. Zakur came from a solidly middle-class background, but the most prestigious posts in the Royal Guard were traditionally given to bey families to curry favor or ensure loyalty. He’d probably never rise above major, through no fault of his own. The irony was not entirely lost on her.

She met the guard captain’s eyes, acknowledging his point, then returned her attention to the reports stacked on the fine desk. “The worst part of it is that using up the Léopards isn’t doing much good, by all the reports I can get my hands on,” she said. She picked up a handful of documents, and let them drop to the tabletop. Sultanate forces were bogged down in half a dozen districts, unable to press forward without heavy fire support, but every time armored forces deployed, civil protests and riots broke out like wildfire. “I’m beginning to wonder whether any amount of escalation would actually make a difference.”

“What other options are the Caidists and the urban radicals giving you, Amira?”

“Not many,” she admitted. And that begs the question of whether fighting is the right answer. She looked up at Zakur again. “I think I need to have a word with my uncle. Is he free?”

Zakur murmured into his comm unit, comparing notes with the rest of the palace’s security detail. “He’s just finishing a private discussion, Amira. You can find him taking coffee on the south terrace.”

“Thank you,” said Ranya. She gathered up her dataslate and a folder full of reports, and headed for the other side of the palace. As a member of the royal family, she could interrupt her uncle at almost any time, but as a matter of simple courtesy she tried to avoid derailing whatever schedule his handlers had worked out for the day. The sultan, of course, was never considered late for any meeting or audience, but the palace just ran better if disruptions were kept to a minimum.

The sunny south terrace, with its expansive swimming pools and vine-covered arbors, faced the bluffs overlooking the Silver Sea. Most non-Gadirans would have found it unpleasantly hot, but a light breeze blew in from the sea this afternoon. Sultan Rashid sat in the shade of a table-sized umbrella at his favorite reading spot, his wounded arm in a sling. Ranya could tell it pained him by the way he favored it. Beside him sat an older, white-bearded man in the long, plain robes of a scholar. As she approached, the old man rose and took the sultan’s hand.

Sultan Rashid exchanged some words with the scholar, then noticed Ranya’s approach. “Ah, good afternoon, my dear! Have you met Hadji Tumar ibn Sakak?”

“I don’t believe so, but I certainly know of him,” Ranya answered. Hadji Tumar was one of the most respected imams on Gadira, an allameh—or Quranic scholar—widely regarded as a moderate voice among the planet’s clerics. Finding him meeting with the sultan surprised her, since most imams took a dim view of House Nasir’s friendship with nonreligious offworlders and lack of zeal for policing moral infractions among the population; Tumar ibn Sakak visited El-Badi at his peril. Not even the most fanatical Caidist would think about physically threatening a well-known allameh, but the risk to his moral authority was very real.

Hadji Tumar salaamed, and then took her hand. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Amira,” he said. “We met when you were very small—I used to visit your father and speak with him from time to time. Sultan Kamal was a generous patron to my school.”

“I am afraid I don’t remember.”

“I would not expect you to. You were very young.” The old cleric turned to Sultan Rashid. “I will think on what you have said, Your Highness. I will do what I can, but so many men are ruled by their passions in these days. Changing minds is hard enough, but changing hearts? Only God has that power, I think.” He bowed and withdrew.

Ranya watched the old scholar go, thinking back to her childhood and searching her memory for any recollection of him meeting with her father. It would have been at least ten or fifteen years; Hadji Tumar’s hair would have been gray, not white, and perhaps his beard would not have been quite so long. Why is he here today? she wondered. Had her uncle invited him to the palace to seek his counsel on some question of policy? Or did he hope that Hadji Tumar could use his influence to calm some of the current unrest? Would any of the insurgents listen to him?

Sultan Rashid interrupted her speculation by patting the chair beside him. “Come, sit, my dear. What is on your mind?”

Ranya set aside her curiosity, and sat down. “Have you been briefed by the general staff on our equipment losses in the last few weeks?” she asked.

Rashid sighed. “And here I was hoping that perhaps you merely desired the pleasure of my company. It is not seemly for a young woman to take an interest in military matters, Ranya. You know how I feel about this.”

“I am afraid I had no opportunity to choose my gender, Uncle.”

“While that is certainly true, I think you probably had a little more choice about your interests. Most other women your age occupy themselves thinking about young men in general, not just soldiers.” Rashid raised a hand to forestall her protest. “No, never mind that now. I can see that you have something important on your mind. Tell me what it is you think I need to know.”

“We are using up equipment and supplies too quickly to sustain the offensive we launched after the missile attack, Uncle.” Ranya pulled her dataslate out of a hidden pocket in her caftan, and brought up the figures she had been looking at. “We might succeed in reducing a couple of the Caidist strongholds in built-up provinces like Nador or Meknez, but our sweep is stalling out in the remote regions. I think we need to consider a change of strategy.”

“Really?” Rashid frowned. “General Mirza told me just yesterday that he was pleased with our progress, and especially pleased that our casualties have not been too bad. We’re wearing down the caids, Ranya. It seems like we should maintain the pressure.”

“I agree that we haven’t suffered too many personnel losses—well, I agree that no serious casualties have been reported so far. But the problem is the same one we’ve been experiencing for years in dealing with the Caidists. They’re avoiding contact with our heavy forces and allowing us to wear ourselves out chasing them all over the desert. There is not much fighting, but it’s brutal on our equipment. Almost fifteen percent of our brand-new Léopards are out of action already, just from operational tempo. And when the Caidists choose to stand and fight, the casualties will be a much different story.”

“If all this is accurate, why does the general staff remain optimistic? They can certainly count up tanks and vehicles as well as you can, Ranya.”

“Because they’re looking at maps, not logistics reports,” Ranya told him. “General Mirza sees that he has a heavy brigade operating out in the Harthawi Basin where the Royal Guard hasn’t dared to patrol in three years, and he thinks that he is winning a war. I see that next month he’ll be lucky to have half that force still ready for operations, and I worry about what happens when the Caidists launch their counterattack.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Rashid asked.

“Suspend the offensive, or at least the parts of it that we know are going nowhere. Bring those forces in to rest, reequip, and train before we launch another effort.” Ranya took back her dataslate. “Or see if we can open direct talks with key caids, and buy their loyalty with the right concessions. Settle this uprising at the negotiating table before we lose in the field.”

“Lose?” The sultan sat up sharply, and winced as his wounded shoulder repaid him with a jolt of pain. “The caids don’t have a single modern war machine, Ranya! Even if we can’t run them to ground in the desert, they have no ability to take the battle to us in the cities. General Mirza has pointed out to me a dozen times that, down through history, irregular skirmishers have never managed to defeat a well-organized, well-armed professional army fighting on open ground.”

“General Mirza might do well to acquaint himself with the Peninsular War or the Narnian Uprising,” said Ranya. “And it’s not clear to me that our army is terribly professional.”

“I doubt that General Mirza would be pleased to hear you say that.”

“Probably not. Still, the fact remains that continuing the campaign risks overextending ourselves, Uncle. If General Mirza does not recognize that, you might need to find a commander who does.”

Sultan Rashid shook his head. “Replacing General Mirza is simply not possible, Ranya. He is the choice of the beys, and if the beys withdraw their support for us … well, whatever follows will not be our concern, because the house of el-Nasir will be finished. Allowing our current offensives to end without achieving their goals might be just as dangerous. Not only would the Caidists be emboldened by their victory, the more ambitious beys would be emboldened as well. And what would happen if Montréal decided to write off our house as a lost cause? No, for political appearances, we cannot admit to weakness at this moment.”

Ranya was silent. It greatly surprised her to hear her uncle voice such a clear summary of his concerns; she’d fallen into the habit of assuming that he was disengaged on matters of state. His generals don’t know how to win this war, she decided. And he doesn’t know how to replace them. “Then we must have more help from offworld,” she finally said. “We need a commitment from Montréal to suppress the caids and make sure that none of the beys decide to move on the throne.”

“That would be helpful,” Sultan Rashid agreed. “But of course, Montréal refuses to commit ground forces. They don’t want to be drawn any further into our war—which, by the way, would expand tenfold if Republic troops were called upon to suppress the desert tribes—and their own rivals among the Coalition powers won’t stand for a Montréalais occupation of our world. For that matter, I should not like to live out the rest of my life as nothing but a Montréalais puppet.”

“I am sorry, Uncle. I—I think I have not appreciated the difficulties of your situation until now.”

“You mean that you thought I was not paying attention,” said Rashid. He smiled wryly. “I look up from my gardens every now and then, my dear.”

She smiled, but she could not completely dismiss her concern. “We still have to figure out a way to conserve our strength, Uncle Rashid. I can promise you that unless something changes soon, the Royal Guard is going to exhaust itself in our current offensives. It seems to me it would be better to negotiate from a position of relative strength, so if we have a way to bring any of the caids to the table, now is the time to do it.”

“Keep this to yourself, my dear, but I am working on that already,” the sultan replied. “Why do you think Hadji Tumar ibn Sakak was here?”

Ranya regarded her uncle for a moment, surprised. “I didn’t know that any of the moderate clerics had any influence over the caids. What does he want for his support?”

“Some hope that he is backing the winning side, for a start. And guarantees that our traditions will be respected by offworlders, so that we won’t all be godless Montréalais within a generation or two.” Rashid set down his cup. “I am afraid I must excuse myself, my dear. I believe that Bey Salem wants me to help that Dremish trade representative increase his already vast fortune with some agreement or another.”

“Of course,” she said. “Thank you, Uncle. Don’t let Bey Salem talk you into doing anything foolish. And don’t say too much in front of that Dremish fellow, either. I have a feeling he is interested in things other than business deals.”

Rashid got to his feet and gave her an elaborate salaam. “Have you not yet learned that I can talk all day long and not say one thing of importance, my dear?” Then he headed back inside the palace, his attendants moving in to brief him on his next discussion before he even left the terrace.

Ranya watched him go. Sultan Rashid was not the ruler her father had been, but the self-awareness to know that seemed like a rare quality in a sultan. The fact that he continued to entertain visits from Salem el-Fasi and his Dremish friend while SMS Panther lurked overhead troubled her; it seemed like negotiating with someone pointing a pistol in your general direction. A move intended to elicit some more assistance from Montréal, perhaps? she thought. Giving the Montréalais reason to believe they had competition for the sultan’s loyalties and might need to up their offer seemed like a shrewd tactic.

She glanced at the clear sky overhead. There is another warship in orbit, she reminded herself. If Montréal’s hands were tied by the considerations of its internal politics, maybe another power would be inclined to show support for the sultanate. She would have to be careful in exploring those options; the last thing in the world House Nasir needed was a rift with its Montréalais sponsors, after all. Something quiet, a back-channel approach, that would be the way to go. And she thought she knew where to begin. Lieutenant Sikander North of the Commonwealth starship Hector might understand the el-Nasir position better than anyone else in the system, and he could serve as a conduit to his own superior officers and the Aquilan diplomats in the system. Besides, she’d enjoyed their conversations, and she thought he had, too.

Is he thinking about me? she wondered, and instantly chastised herself for such a silly thought. Romantic daydreams had no place in her world at this moment. But the fact remained that she wanted to know what Sikander thought about their situation, and what he thought Aquila’s position might be. If a social occasion offered the best way to speak with him again, well, she would just have to make that sacrifice, wouldn’t she?