Scornful Stars

by Richard Baker

  “Yes, sir,” Herrera said. “We’ll probably need to try a low-power shot or two to evaluate things, though.”

  “Next time we’re in space, Guns,” Sikander promised him. He clapped Herrera on the shoulder, and headed back aboard Decisive to throw himself into any work he could find.

  For a few days, he succeeded in distracting himself with the ordinary routine of command: maintenance, training, planning for future deployments, the regular turnover of crew members moving on to new assignments and replacements showing up on board. He followed the prosecution of the Fort Jalid prisoners as closely as he could, although as one of the commanding officers present when the pirates had been captured, he was a key witness and couldn’t overstep his role without causing headaches for the judge-advocate specialists building their case. He pored over reports of pirate contact from other ships in Pleiades Squadron, working with Michael Girard to see if they could spot anything the squadron intel team had overlooked. And, for the most part, he managed to put Elena Pavon out of his mind. Slowly, Sikander and Decisive returned to their in-port routine.

  The week after Elena left, Michael Girard came to see Sikander with Jay Sekibo in tow. “Good morning, Captain,” Girard said. “Got a moment?”

  Sikander took note of Girard’s quick stride and the frown of intense concentration on his face. Clearly, something had caught his attention. “Come on in, Mr. Girard,” he replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Mr. Sekibo just informed me that we’ve received a response to the message we sent to the Velarans a few weeks ago. I think you’re going to want to see this.” He handed Sikander a dataslate, the message already cued for play.

  Sikander took Girard’s dataslate, and pulled up the correspondence—an old-fashioned text message, not the vid recording many humans would have used.

  North, Commander of Destroyer Decisive:

  We examined all sensor traces of the signal Decisive discovered and correlated it with small craft departures from Meliya Station as you suggested. There were two departures during the time window you identified. The first was an orbiter returning to the city of New Opava. All of the passengers aboard the orbiter have been interviewed and are no longer of interest to our investigation. The second departure was a launch from the courier Asfoor, which picked up four passengers before departing Meliya on a course for Dahar. We are informed that Asfoor has now disappeared, which means that none of the passengers aboard the launch can be accounted for. Attached you will find security cam recordings of the boarding area. You will review the recordings and inform us if you can identify any of the humans that boarded Asfoor’s launch one hour before the bomb explosion.

  Pokk Skirriseh, Meritor

  “Paom’ii don’t waste words on common courtesy, do they?” Sikander said, rereading the message. “Has the Asfoor turned up anywhere since the meritor sent this?”

  “No, sir,” Ensign Sekibo said. “She was scheduled to arrive in Dahar weeks ago, but she’s overdue. Dahar’s system-control authorities now report her as ‘presumed lost.’”

  Pirates, again? Sikander wondered. He’d never heard of a courier falling prey to a pirate attack—drive couriers, even civilian versions, were fast. No pirate could have caught one that didn’t want to be caught … but that was a mystery for another day. He turned his attention to the attached images to examine each one in turn: a thirtyish woman he’d never seen before, a man of about the same age with a military look to him, a bigger man who definitely looked like an operator, and—

  “Bleindel.” Sikander scowled at the dataslate in his hands. “Damn him! I knew he had to be involved in that Meliya business!”

  Girard nodded. “I thought you’d find that interesting.”

  “Who is he, sir?” Sekibo asked.

  “A Dremish KBS agent,” Sikander replied. “A very dangerous one, I might add—Mr. Girard and I encountered his handiwork at Gadira eight years ago. We ran into him at the pasha’s palace a few weeks ago.”

  “So the Dremish blew up Vashaoth Teh?” Sekibo whistled. “Damn.”

  Sikander stared the image on the small screen, thinking it through … and reluctantly shook his head. “No, Mr. Sekibo, this image doesn’t prove that, as much as I hate to admit it,” he said. “It’s very, very suspicious, but it’s circumstantial evidence. Yes, we see that Bleindel was at Meliya. That doesn’t mean that he bombed the station. For all we know he was just passing through and narrowly missed getting caught in the blast.”

  “That’s certainly what the Dremish will claim if we confront them with this security vid,” Girard said, nodding. “But unless you record someone actually planting a bomb, how do you prove that they did it?”

  “Demonstrate that they had the bomb beforehand?” Sekibo suggested. “Find a reliable witness who can testify that the bomber planted the device?”

  “Neither of which we have here,” said Sikander. He handed Girard’s dataslate back to him. “Forward this to the squadron’s intelligence desk—it might not be proof of Dremark’s responsibility for the attack, but it’s a certainly incriminating.”

  “Should I send a reply to the Velarans?” Girard asked.

  “It’s the policy of the Navy to cooperate with the investigations of friendly powers.” Given the fact that Sikander had met Otto Bleindel publicly, there were no Commonwealth secrets involved, and while he could only guess at the diplomatic consequences of telling the Velarans that the Dremish agent might have been involved in the destruction of their cruiser, he had to imagine that it would make trouble for Bleindel—something he was inclined to do at the moment. “Thank you, Mr. Girard. And Mr. Sekibo, once more: Good work on the Meliya investigation. We wouldn’t know about Bleindel’s involvement if you hadn’t found that signal.”

  Sekibo grinned. “Thank you, Captain!”

  Sikander smiled at the younger officer’s sheer enthusiasm, and watched him and Michael Girard hurry back to their work. Was I that eager as an ensign? he wondered. He returned his attention to the maintenance reports on his desk … but his attention was dozens of light-years distant. Regardless of what he’d just told his officers about proof versus suspicion, he knew that if Bleindel had been at Meliya, he must have been involved in the attack. The question was why—and Sikander simply didn’t have anything more than guesses about that.

  Late in the afternoon of the following day, Captain Broward summoned Sikander and Amelia Fraser to the squadron headquarters. “Ah, there you are,” Broward said when Decisive’s officers entered his office. Sikander observed that Lieutenant Norton, the squadron’s staff intelligence officer, was also present. “My apologies for stretching out the workday, but George here just brought some very interesting news to my attention. Go ahead, George.”

  “Yes, sir,” Norton replied. He was a High Albionan, with the diffident bearing of a senatorial family that had represented the island of Falworth for something like two hundred years. Sikander found him somewhat standoffish, but as far as he knew Norton was good enough at his job. “We’ve received a report about suspicious activity in New Kibris: Specifically, outlaw ships are using an old Zerzuran naval depot at Bodrum as a fueling station and a transfer point for stolen cargo.”

  “Wait a moment,” Sikander said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the message from the Velarans we sent over to you yesterday, or the Dremish agent who was identified in the security footage?”

  “No, Commander,” Norton replied. “We’re looking into that, of course. This is something new.”

  Sikander hadn’t expected that—he’d assumed that he’d been summoned to Broward’s office to provide more context about Bleindel’s activities. He leaned back in his chair. “I see. Go on.”

  “As I was saying, our source indicates that valuable cargo from several ships hit by pirate attacks over the last six months is stored at the Zerzuran depot. Naturally, we wish to verify this report.”

  “You’re saying that this is a Zerzuran naval depot?” Amelia asked the intelligence o
fficer. “As in a facility belonging to the Zerzura Sector Fleet and manned by Zerzuran military personnel?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That is exactly what our report says,” said Norton. “Bodrum is a minor supply depot and fueling station, not a fleet base per se. But as far as we can tell, it’s an active post with a caretaker garrison of about sixty Zerzuran personnel.”

  “Are you so surprised?” Broward asked Amelia. “You handed Qarash and eighty-something prisoners over to the Zerzuran fleet at Bursa; the Zerzurans let them go as soon as you bubbled up and left the system. And I hear that Commander North’s friend Ms. Pavon identified one of the prisoners over at the brig as the nephew of Admiral al-Kassar. Given that, the only questions in my mind are whether any of the Terran Caliphate forces in this region are honest, and whether Marid Pasha is personally involved in the scheme.”

  Sikander looked over to the staff intelligence officer. “What’s our source?” he asked. He’d held the same position himself during his assignment to Helix Squadron, and his intelligence training had taught him that how you found out about something was almost as important as what you thought you’d found out. “Why are they only coming forward now, when everyone in the sector knows we’ve been looking for pirates for months?”

  “I’m afraid that I am not at liberty to discuss sources,” Norton said. “Suffice it to say that we consider it very reliable. As to why nothing was said before, my understanding is that our recent and highly publicized successes at Zafer and Fort Jalid—for which Decisive naturally deserves credit—have gone a long way toward puncturing the pirates’ reputation for invincibility.”

  “You’ve shown everyone that the pirates are only human, Commander,” Broward added with blunt approval. “We shouldn’t be surprised if some highly visible successes encourage other people to come forward with what they know.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Sikander said. He didn’t care for Norton telling him to mind his own business, but he had to admit that it was a reasonable conclusion. The outlaws could easily be falling out with one another over the shock of losing outposts and ships, or perhaps not all of Zerzura’s naval commanders could stand the idea of cooperating with the region’s pirates—passing information to another power that would actually do something about piracy might be a whistleblower’s way of striking back. “I take it that you’d like Decisive to investigate, sir?”

  “You’ve demonstrated a real knack for paying attention to the right leads and doing what needs to be done,” said Broward. “I wanted either you or Giselle Dacey for this job. I know I’ve been working Decisive hard lately, but Harrier just went into the yard for a couple of weeks, so it’ll have to be you. I trust your judgment, Sikander.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Sikander shifted in his seat, considering how the proposed mission would unfold. He wasn’t familiar with the Bodrum depot, but he’d seen a number of similar stations. No minor post or patrol detachment in any of Zerzura’s systems posed a serious threat to Decisive—that, of course, would change when the pasha’s new cruisers entered service—but that didn’t mean he had no reservations. “I want to make sure that I’m very clear on this, sir: You’re ordering me to proceed to Bodrum and send a search party into the station to find pirated goods. Do we have the Zerzuran government’s permission to conduct a search?”

  “The last thing I want to do is warn someone that I’m about to search their facility for stolen goods,” Broward said. “We already know that Marid Pasha’s government leaks like a sieve, at least when it comes to our operations in their systems. Lieutenant Commander Fraser here convinced me of that weeks ago. So, no, I do not intend to ask them if we can have a look around.”

  “That worries me, sir. So far we’ve been operating in open space—international waters, so to speak. I have to imagine that Marid Pasha’s government will see a search of one of their naval posts as a serious infringement of sovereignty.”

  “That depends on what you find there, Commander. I’m not concerned about questions of sovereignty if the Zerzuran fleet is abetting piracy.” Captain Broward pushed himself back from his desk, rising to pace over to one of the windows looking out over the row of destroyers moored in the basin outside. “Since you ask, I’ve already discussed the diplomatic implications with Admiral Thompson and Governor Blakeslee. Yes, in a perfect world, we’d run this all the way back to High Albion for approval. Unfortunately, that’s a thirty-day round trip by direct courier, and I suspect that the first answer we’d receive is a long set of questions about what exactly we’re proposing, meaning that it’s really a sixty-day decision loop. Mr. Norton tells me that our intelligence suggests we need to move faster than that.”

  “Our source informs us that the pirates are preparing to shift their operations to better-hidden facilities by the end of the month,” the intelligence officer said. “If we want to secure real, tangible evidence of the Zerzuran fleet’s cooperation with pirates, we need to raid Bodrum before the stolen goods are moved somewhere else.”

  “I want to catch them at it, Sikander,” Broward said, turning back to face his subordinates. “You’re worried about the diplomatic consequences of boarding a Zerzuran station, but I’m worried about the consequences if we don’t. Eric Darrow’s dispatches from Dahar make it clear that Marid Pasha is cozying up with the Empire of Dremark in spite of our recent successes, and your report that a Dremish agent may have been involved in the Vashaoth Teh bombing certainly suggests that Dremark will stop at nothing to secure their strategic objectives in this region. Fine, then—if the Dremish are willing to fight dirty, we’ll just have to do whatever it takes to stop them. Since we can’t win the race for the pasha’s friendship, maybe we can influence him with leverage of a different sort.”

  “Or start over with a different pasha,” Norton added. “If we can prove that Marid Pasha actively supports piracy, or show that he’s so incompetent that pirates can freely operate from his own fleet bases, the Caliph’s court would have no choice but to replace him.”

  “Either way, we’ll check our Imperial friends’ designs on the Zerzura Sector while inflicting another serious setback to the pirates’ operations,” Broward said, nodding in agreement. “That’s an opportunity we can’t miss.”

  Sikander glanced over at his XO and met her eyes. Amelia gave the tiniest of shrugs, as if to say, I’m not sure but I guess it makes sense, or so he thought; after nearly a year of working with her every day he could read her pretty well. It wasn’t too far off from his own reaction—having jumped headfirst into controversy more than once in his career, he thought he could recognize the signs of one here. On the other hand, the tiny Zerzura Sector Fleet’s active participation in piracy would explain a lot of what had been going on the region since he’d taken command of Decisive. The idea of military professionals ignoring the sort of butchery he’d seen aboard Carmela Día or profiting from violent robbery sickened him. If that was what had been going on in Zerzura, it needed to be stopped, and he supposed that he didn’t particularly care whose feelings got bruised in the process.

  He looked back to Captain Broward. “I understand, sir. We can be ready to depart in a few hours.”

  * * *

  Seven days and one high-speed warp transit after the conversation in Captain Broward’s office, Decisive unbubbled in the Zerzuran system of New Kibris and began its deceleration maneuvers. Sikander studied the system with some interest after he’d satisfied himself that his ship had safely reached her destination—New Kibris was the only Zerzuran world he hadn’t yet visited during his tour at Neda. The planet represented a centuries-long terraforming project of a cold, dry, supermartian world. The old Caliphate planetary engineers who’d started the process had succeeded in unfreezing a narrow belt of ocean around the planet’s equator and building up a breathable atmosphere at low elevations, but any point on the surface more than two thousand meters or so above sea level lacked the oxygen or the warmth for human settlement—in a way, it was Dahar’s opposite. Bodrum Naval Depot
was located on a tiny moonlet of the gas giant Tepegoz, twenty-one light-minutes farther out from the system’s semihabitable world; it had been established more than a century ago to protect and monitor mining operations exploiting the exotic ices found in Tepegoz’s moon and ring system.

  “More rings,” Amelia Fraser observed. “I didn’t know pirates were such romantics.”

  Sikander rested his chin on his hand. “I suspect they appreciate the cluttered conditions more than the view. It must be hard to keep track of exactly who’s coming or going around here unless you’re right on top of the station. Mr. Girard, give me a zero-zero intercept for Bodrum Depot, standard acceleration, please.”

  “Helm, come left to course two-four-four down five, standard acceleration,” Girard ordered. Naturally, he’d already worked it out while Sikander was taking in the scenery. “ETA ten hours, Captain.”

  “Roll over the watch in two hours so that everybody can get a good rest before we set general quarters,” Sikander told his tactical officer. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

  He worked through a couple of hours of routine administration—reviewing enlisted promotion recommendations, today—before taking his own advice and trying to get a few hours’ rest. Sleep proved more elusive than he would have hoped. He’d spent most of the warp transit trying to visualize how events would unfold at Bodrum, and after a week of thinking about Captain Broward’s orders he still had no idea what to expect. At least he’d known that any ship he found in Zafer or Jalid would be a pirate; no honest spacers would have any reason to be in those uncharted systems. Today, though, he feared that Zerzura’s pirates would be hiding behind denials and evasions instead of asteroids and ring systems, and he was keenly aware of the fact that he was poorly prepared for a confrontation of that sort.