Scornful Stars

by Richard Baker

  Amelia looked skeptical. “Do you think that would do any good?”

  “I have no idea, but the pasha was familiar with my role in the Gadira affair and expressed a good deal of admiration for what I did there. I think that an apology from me might mean something to him.”

  “Or he might have you arrested on the spot, Captain,” Master Chief Vaughn observed. “Nothing sours people like finding out that their heroes have let them down.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Sikander said. “XO, make preparations to get under way.”

  18

  Mersin, Dahar II

  It was raining about as hard as Elena Pavon had ever seen it rain in Mersin … which, as it turned out, was not very hard at all. A damp, heavy mist clung to the city’s mountaintops and high-rises, beading up on the windowpanes of her office. She didn’t think it would do much to discourage the pro-independence marches and rallies taking place in the planetary capital today—crowds numbering in the tens of thousands were expected later in the afternoon despite the forecast. From her building, she could see dozens of banners featuring the heroically posed likeness of Marid al-Zahabi decorating store windows or looking down from billboards on every block. The newscasts and opinion shows playing on the vidscreens on the office’s opposite wall all agreed that more and more Zerzurans supported the idea of independence from Terra, and a good number of them believed that Marid Pasha would be able to do more for Zerzura as a president instead of a governor.

  They might not be wrong about that, Elena reflected. Certainly she’d long been frustrated by dealing with an outdated and inefficient bureaucracy designed by Caliphate officials back on Terra centuries ago; piracy wasn’t the only challenge in Zerzura’s business climate. If Marid al-Zahabi could do something about that, she’d gladly overlook whatever outsized political ambitions he might harbor. In fact, we might need to boost our support for the pro-independence movements and put some more credits into campaign coffers. When the pasha gets around to making the separation official, it’d be smart to make sure he knows Pegasus-Pavon was behind him the whole time. We don’t want the al-Kassars standing alone beside the throne.

  Omar Morillo appeared at her office door. “Ready to go?” he asked. His bruises had faded and his cracked ribs had largely healed from the scuffle in the parking garage more than six weeks ago, but he still moved a little gingerly as he held the door for Elena.

  “I guess.” Elena reluctantly abandoned her post by the window, and slipped her dataslate into the leather case she used in place of a handbag or purse. “Although I doubt the kidnappers would make another try, not after our security upgrades. And I’ve got a few calls I need to make—”

  “—which you can do from Mount Kesif just as easily as you can from Mersin,” Omar said firmly. “The first rule of personal security is don’t be predictable. As long as we’re in Dahar, regular office hours are out. We’re rescheduling your afternoon appointments and leaving early today, and that’s that.”

  Elena frowned, but did not argue the point any further. “Fine, then,” she said. “Let’s go.” Omar had earned the right to micromanage her security arrangements, and it would have been stupid to go right back to business as usual in any event. She had to proceed under the assumption that her enemies could call upon the full resources of the al-Kassar family and Suvar United, and that meant they might be able to reach her anywhere in the system. As a result, a full-time professional security detail now guarded her office, her apartment, and the Mount Kesif plantation. She wouldn’t be caught unprepared again.

  Omar wisely refrained from commenting on her cooperativeness. He simply inclined his head, and led the way to the rooftop garage where her luxury flyer waited—a heavier and better-protected replacement for the flyer she’d been using just a few weeks ago. Two armed chase flyers hovered nearby, ready to escort her to her destination. “I can’t imagine how much this is costing us,” she muttered as they climbed into the backseat.

  “It’s significant,” he admitted. “Then again, your father made it clear to me that I was to spare no expense when it comes to your personal safety, especially in Zerzura.”

  “Let’s see if we can find a reasonable compromise sometime soon. I don’t need a parade everywhere I go.”

  “Sure thing. Just as soon as the situation improves.”

  “Anything new from our legal team?” she asked as the skycade lifted off from the Pegasus-Pavon building and turned south through the mists wreathing the city. The minute La Nómada had arrived in Dahar, Elena had ordered Pegasus-Pavon’s lawyers to begin proceedings against Gadi al-Kassar. She didn’t need Gadi’s money, of course, and she doubted that Gadi could be tied to the kidnapping attempt. The opportunity to ferret out Gadi al-Kassar’s business arrangements and bank accounts with asset searches and discovery, on the other hand, might be very useful indeed.

  “Since you ask, yes, we’re making good progress,” Omar said. “I received an initial report from our people less than an hour ago. It turns out that Gadi al-Kassar is a wealthy man—he’s got dozens of accounts and investments to sort through. But the one that’s caught our interest is something called the Rihla Development Corporation. No one seems to know what it is or what it does.”

  “Rihla Development?” Elena pulled out her dataslate and started searching; it took her only a few moments to make a cursory pass through Dahar’s information systems. Her search bounced—there wasn’t any virtual storefront or public portal available. The name appeared only in public records listing businesses incorporated in the Dahar system. “Is it some sort of holding company or shell?”

  “That’s our guess,” Omar said, looking over her shoulder. “Gadi gets a lot of money from Rihla Development, but this is all we have on them so far. We’ll have to do some digging to find out where their registration forms are filed and what exactly they say they do.”

  “So let’s dig, then,” she told him. “I want to nail that son of a bitch to the wall, Omar.”

  “We’ve got thirty people on it, Elena. Before we’re done, we’re going to be able to account for every credit Gadi al-Kassar ever earned or spent. If he bought a candy bar in a vending machine twenty years ago, we’ll document it. It’s just a matter of time.”

  At Mount Kesif, Elena spent the rest of the afternoon looking after the plantation while she waited for Omar and the Pegasus-Pavon legal team to unearth more details. The coffee orchard always served as a welcome change of pace from Pegasus-Pavon strategic challenges spanning fifty light-years and involving eleven-figure profit-and-loss statements. A business that turned a profit of a few hundred thousand credits in a good year was a hobby, really, but Elena loved dealing in small and tangible things: discussing the irrigation strategy with her grower, consulting with the master roaster over the best way to bring out Mount Kesif’s unique flavor profile, reviewing suggestions for a long-overdue new logo. Pegasus-Pavon was so big that she really spent most of her time and attention on the business of running a business; involving herself in the day-to-day operations of the shipping line was micromanaging. At Mount Kesif, she could literally get her hands dirty and tinker to her heart’s content … and she’d discovered that her subconscious mind often continued to process the big problems while she distracted herself with solving a few little ones.

  She did spend an hour late in the evening reviewing progress on the acquisition of the old gunboats Kartal and Pelikan. Before retreating from Dahar in the aftermath of the kidnapping attempt, she’d instructed the Mersin office to continue the effort to secure the two ships before they were scrapped. To her surprise, the Zerzura Sector Fleet hadn’t shut down the transaction. Oh, they weren’t in a hurry to transfer the gunboats, but they’d at least come back with a counteroffer and allowed her representatives to inspect the vessels in the orbital depot where they were currently being decommissioned. Given what she suspected about the al-Kassars, she couldn’t imagine why Admiral Torgut had any interest in letting the deal go forward. Maybe he int
ends to slow-walk the whole deal just to keep my time and money tied up in an effort he can stifle whenever he likes, she decided. Or maybe he’s planning to pocket a big kickback in the process of helping me to “fight” piracy. He’s probably laughing all the way to the bank!

  She directed her team to keep working on it just in case Torgut al-Kassar wasn’t as smart as she thought he was, and went to bed.

  The next day, Omar found her taking coffee and a late-morning brunch on the plantation house’s wide porch. “Okay, boss, I think we’ve learned something about Rihla Development,” he said with a grin. “And it’s just about as bad as you could imagine.”

  “I can imagine a lot. What have you got?”

  “Rihla Development is a privately held corporation registered in a tax-haven asteroid settlement in Dahar’s outlying regions. They’re a holding company with investments in real estate and legitimate businesses throughout Zerzura, established by Hidir al-Kassar five years ago with the purchase of a thirty-million-credit stake in a Tejat Minor bank.”

  Elena gazed off across the orchard, comparing dates in her head. “Didn’t Suvar United lose a couple of ships to pirate attacks around five years ago?”

  “Two old bulk carriers, yes. Suvar received a big insurance payout, and they haven’t suffered another major loss from piracy since. Anyway, ever since its establishment, Rihla Development receives large infusions of cash from a variety of mysterious companies and corporations throughout Zerzura, turns that cash into legitimate investments, and pays its shareholders very handsomely. Guess who beside Gadi and Hidir is a shareholder?”

  “A lot of people named al-Kassar, I imagine.”

  “Eight of them, in fact, including Admiral Torgut. A few other people I don’t know, who might not actually exist. And Marid al-Zahabi, whose Rihla dividends last year were reported at sixty-three million credits.”

  “Oh, shit. The pasha, for sure?” Elena got up and paced away from the rocker where she’d been working. “Can we prove that Rihla’s cash infusions come from illegal sources?”

  “In a court of law? No, not yet. But I spent some time this morning chatting with a friend who works for a bank where we do a lot of business. Rihla Development keeps an account there, too. I asked him if Rihla ever received deposits from an outfit called Venture Salvage.” Omar grinned again. “My friend told me that he could never disclose to me that Venture Salvage had made six large transfers to Rihla Development in the last two years.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that we now know that proceeds from piracy flow from Venture Salvage—”

  “—and a dozen other murky outfits—” Omar added.

  “—into Rihla, where they’re converted into legitimate investments and then paid out as gigantic dividends to the Caliphate governor of this sector, the admiral in command of the sector fleet, the president of Suvar United, and God knows how many more of their friends and cronies?”

  “Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: A prosecutor would have a hell of a time proving that the money flowing into Rihla is dirty. Assuming that you could find a Zerzuran prosecutor who’d even give it a go.”

  “What do we even do with this?” Elena asked, momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the corruption. Any corporation doing business across multiple star systems had to deal with a certain amount of local corruption, but a sector government whose high officials moonlighted as pirate kings? It defied comprehension, really. There’s almost nothing we can do about it, she realized. Marid Pasha answers to no one in Zerzura. There were no elections to think of, no opposition who could use it as a campaign issue, and not even much independence in the judiciary or the press to hold the pasha accountable. “We can’t touch the pasha; he’s the direct representative of the Caliph. The man can pardon anybody he wants, use his military authority to arrest whoever he needs to, or just expropriate everything under a Pegasus-Pavon flag in Zerzura and expel us from his little kingdom whenever he likes. In fact, I can’t figure out why he hasn’t done it already.”

  “He doesn’t need to because you’re not a threat to him. Not yet, anyway—you should be careful about how we pressure the al-Kassars. And while the law is in Marid Pasha’s pocket, he still needs to keep public opinion in mind. He can’t shut down the courts or start arresting people who accuse him of corruption without looking guilty as hell.”

  “I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure that Marid Pasha couldn’t step on us whenever it suits him. If he spins it as standing up to an evil foreign corporation for the sake of all Zerzurans, the people in the streets might cheer him on. Have you seen the polling numbers lately?”

  “I have.” Omar made a face. “Damn. You’re right—we need to find another mouse to bell the cat.”

  Elena didn’t like to think of herself as a mouse, not even in a metaphor. “Let’s reach out to the movers and shakers in the Caliphate court. If Marid Pasha doesn’t answer to anyone in Zerzura, he might have to answer to someone on Old Terra.” Of course, who’s to say that the next governor they send out to Zerzura would be any more honest?

  “Get the Caliph to fire Marid Pasha, got it.” Omar made some notes on his dataslate. “You know, this might not be the sort of problem we can fix, Elena. Either we learn to live with it—minimizing our risks as best we can—or we write off the sector and look for safer places to do business.”

  “I’m not prepared to accept either of those answers.” Elena paced across the porch, gazing over the even rows of coffee trees marching up the sunny hillside above the house. Omar remained silent, giving her space to think. If this isn’t a problem we can fix, then who can? Even if she could convince the Caliphate court to intervene, that could take months, and the streets in Mersin were plastered over with banners calling on Marid Pasha to make a clean break from the Caliphate. She had to imagine that Marid would simply declare independence if Terra tried to remove him from power. No, what she needed was someone who could make it clear to Marid Pasha that it was in his own best interest to drop his support for the al-Kassars … even though they were paying him millions each month.

  Well, no one’s going to get paid for hijacking Pegasus-Pavon hulls if we pull our business out of Zerzura altogether, Elena realized. The question was, who could explain that to the Zerzurans and make them listen? And even as she examined that problem, she realized she might know the answer.

  She stopped pacing and looked back to Omar. “Get me an appointment with the Dremish envoy,” she told him. “I need to explain a few things to her.”

  Omar raised an eyebrow. “You really think she can control the pasha?”

  “I think I can make her see why she ought to try.”

  “Okay. I’ll make a couple of calls.” Omar turned to go back into the house.

  “Hold on. Set up a call with Alonzo Benady at Grupo Constelación first—I think I might want to talk to him before I approach the Dremish.”

  “Got it.” Omar raised an eyebrow again at Elena’s intention to speak with one of her chief competitors, but added it to his list of notes. “Anything else?”

  “That’ll do for now,” Elena told him. She returned to her rocker and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, already beginning to plan out what she’d say and how she’d say it.

  The Grupo Constelación call took several hours to arrange—Alonzo Benady was busy with a board meeting and couldn’t be interrupted. He turned out to be something of a hard sell, but eventually gave Elena a cautious agreement after she explained what she wanted. She expected it might take Omar days to book an appointment with the Dremish envoy after that, but surprisingly Vogt made herself available later in the afternoon. A little after four o’clock, Elena’s skycade lifted off from Mount Kesif for the twenty-minute flight back to Mersin. They landed on the rooftop platform of the building housing the Dremish consulate, and Elena and Omar took the elevator down to the lobby.

  “This is it,” Omar observed, nodding toward an elegant entranceway. Gold lettering on the plate-glass doors read
“Consulate of the Empire of Dremark” in Jadeed-Arabi, with the Nebeldeutsch phrasing of the same name just underneath. “Last chance to change your mind.”

  “I think they’ll be interested in what I have to say,” she told her assistant, and headed inside. Two plainclothes Dremish security agents stood guard in the lobby, frowning at the rest of Elena’s retinue—four private bodyguards who escorted her inside. Elena left the Dremish security and her own protection detail engaged in their professional stare-down, and headed for the receptionist at the lobby desk. “Good afternoon. Elena Pavon and Omar Morillo; we have an appointment with Ms. Vogt.”

  The receptionist, a Dahari, consulted the vidscreen in front of her and nodded. “Welcome, Ms. Pavon,” she replied. “You’re expected. Paul here will take you to the special envoy’s office. Your detail can make themselves comfortable here.”

  “Thank you,” Elena replied, and followed the young man indicated by the receptionist; Omar Morillo lingered just long enough to tell her bodyguards they could wait in the lobby, and hurried after her. The Dremish aide showed them through the working areas of the consulate to a comfortable corner office—nowhere near as vast as Elena’s own in the Pegasus-Pavon suite a few kilometers away, but handsomely paneled and furnished nonetheless. Apparently the special envoy had claimed the permanent consul’s desk for the duration of her mission in Zerzura.

  Hanne Vogt met them at the door of her temporary office. “Good afternoon, Ms. Pavon,” she said in Jadeed-Arabi. “Please, come in.”

  “Thank you, Envoy Vogt.” Elena took note of Vogt’s dark, expensive-looking designer pantsuit and her striking chartreuse blouse; the diplomat certainly had a sense of style. “This is my personal assistant, Omar Morillo.”