Scornful Stars

by Richard Baker

  “Good morning, Your Excellency,” Darrow said with a small bow, as if a disused passenger lounge were a formal audience chamber. “Thank you for agreeing to meet on such short notice.”

  Marid al-Zahabi folded his arms over his chest, glowering. “Mr. Darrow. I think my government’s position has been made clear, so I’m not sure what you hope to add at this point. I have only a few minutes before I’m scheduled to inspect the work on my navy’s newest acquisitions. Say what you came to say, if you please.”

  “Of course. We will get to the point, then.” Darrow nodded to Sikander.

  Sikander took a deep breath and faced the pasha. “Your Excellency, I would like to personally apologize for the misunderstanding at Bodrum Depot. Our intelligence was extremely confident that pirates were making use of the base for cargo transfers and resupply. Clearly, our intelligence was mistaken. I don’t know how they came to make such a serious error, but we will figure out how this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I am disappointed in you, Commander,” Marid said sternly. “What sort of intelligence would lead you to treat soldiers and sailors of Zerzura’s military forces as criminal suspects? Or land armed troops in our sovereign territory? Those are not the actions of a friendly power.”

  “I know, and I am sincerely sorry that our sources led us to make such a serious error. Our intention was to help Zerzura suppress piracy in this sector, and we thought that’s what we were doing.” Sikander tried very hard not to look at Torgut al-Kassar as he said that, and did not quite succeed; the Zerzuran admiral actually smiled thinly at his words. “I will take this up with my superiors on my return to Neda, I promise you.”

  Marid Pasha exchanged a long look with his advisors; Sikander had the sense that he was waiting to see if they had anything to add. Jahid Saif returned the pasha’s look without expression, and Torgut al-Kassar said nothing; the pasha returned his gaze to the Aquilan party. “I appreciate Commander North’s personal apology,” he said to Eric Darrow. “It speaks well of his character that he would be prepared to accept responsibility for his ship’s actions. It seems clear to me, though, that his superiors directed him to act with blatant disregard for Zerzuran sovereignty; Commander North’s apology is insufficient to the magnitude of the offense. As a result, I am immediately suspending all cooperation and passage agreements with Aquilan military forces. Commander, you have twenty-four hours to remove your ship from the Dahar system and set a course out of Zerzuran space.”

  Sikander remembered Darrow’s advice to say as little as possible and clamped his mouth shut. The Aquilan diplomat, however, held up a hand in protest. “Your Excellency, with all due respect, a sector governor cannot suspend agreements between the Terran Caliphate and the Commonwealth of Aquila,” he said. “However, in the interest of avoiding further local misunderstandings while this incident is fully investigated, Decisive will voluntarily withdraw to internationally recognized open space.”

  “I am not finished,” Marid Pasha said. “Mr. Darrow, you and your special commission are hereby expelled from Zerzura. I have no interest in continuing a relationship with a partner that feels it can invade Zerzuran bases with impunity and meddle in our internal affairs. You have twenty-four hours to arrange passage from Dahar. I suggest you leave aboard Decisive, since she’ll be heading in the right direction.”

  “You can’t do this!” Darrow retorted. “You don’t have the authority. I am accredited before the Caliphate Porte!”

  “Then I suggest you go to Terra and make your protest there—you are no longer accredited in Zerzura. If you are still here the day after tomorrow, I will have my troops forcibly remove you.” The pasha motioned to one of the bodyguards at his back, a hard-looking officer with a scarred face. “Major Terzi, our guests will be returning to their boat. Mr. Darrow, Commander North, you may rest assured that we will be conducting our own investigation into the facts of the New Kibris incident. If this debacle turns out to have been a sincere mistake, then I may reconsider my decision in due time. But until then: Get out of my sector. Good day, gentlemen.”

  Major Terzi silently motioned toward the passage through which the Aquilans had entered the lounge. Marid Pasha gave them one last withering look, then turned on his heel and stormed out without another word. The rest of his entourage followed him.

  “Well, shit,” Amelia muttered as the hatch hissed shut behind the Zerzuran party.

  “Shit, indeed,” Darrow said, and sighed. “Let’s be on our way, Commander North. I have a lot to do in the next twenty-four hours, and then I suppose I’ll need a ride.”

  * * *

  After a brief detour through Dahar High Port to drop off Eric Darrow, Sikander and his officers returned to Decisive. He didn’t trust himself to say a word about the pointed meeting with Marid Pasha, so he stormed back to his cabin and threw himself into the chair behind his desk. So much for months of hard work, he fumed. Two pirate bases smashed, hundreds of outlaws captured, God knows how many lives saved from attacks we prevented simply by being present, and it’s all for nothing because of one bad lead. The truly infuriating part of the situation was that Torgut al-Kassar would doubtless keep those ex-Dremish cruisers parked at Dahar’s dilapidated orbital station, where they’d do exactly nothing about piracy, allowing his friends to resume their depredations just as soon as Aquila’s patrols ended.

  Amelia Fraser let him cool off for the better part of an hour before she knocked at his door. “Mr. Darrow’s office informed us that he’ll be on board by 0900 tomorrow morning, Captain,” she said. “How soon after that do you want to get under way?”

  “The last possible moment to observe Marid Pasha’s deadline,” he said with a snort. “Let the Zerzurans stew a bit, damn them.”

  Amelia met his eyes. “It didn’t matter what you said to the pasha, you know. Marid al-Zahabi had already made up his mind to expel our diplomatic mission and revoke our patrol agreement. It was out of your hands, Sikander.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m ready to accept the outcome. At least, we didn’t need to be a part of that little scene. I don’t know what I was thinking—we should have gone straight back to Neda instead of coming back to grovel in front of the Zerzurans.”

  “A sincere apology isn’t groveling. We screwed up, we owned it, and we took our medicine. That’s what honorable people do when they make a mistake.”

  Sikander grimaced, thinking of Torgut al-Kassar watching him go through the whole performance. Apologizing to a criminal for failing to catch him in the act didn’t feel very honorable … but, as Amelia pointed out, the Commonwealth Navy had screwed up, and as the embodiment of the Commonwealth Navy in this particular corner of the galaxy at the moment, it had fallen to him to own it. That’s the job, he reminded himself. Leadership is about taking responsibility and setting examples. No one aboard this ship needs to see me sulking about that—not even Amelia.

  He took a deep breath, and composed himself. “All right, you’ve made your point. Let’s get the department heads together to start our transit planning. But if we’re supposed to be on our way by 1100, then I’m serious about not moving a millimeter until 1059.”

  “Not a millimeter until 1059, aye,” Amelia confirmed. “We’ll get them next time, Captain. Toads like the al-Kassars are going to get greedy and make mistakes—it’s in their nature. You’ll see.” She saluted, and left to begin arranging Decisive’s next warp transit.

  Sikander picked up his dataslate and headed for the bridge. Not much was going on as long as they were comfortably powered down in a parking orbit, but being around a few watchstanders and listening in to the routine system traffic seemed like a better idea than continuing to stew in his cabin, and he had some work to do—specifically, finishing his Bodrum Depot report for the Admiralty, now with an addendum describing the brief encounter with Marid Pasha. Chances were good that Decisive would beat the report home, given the circuitous routes messages took through the network of courier services lin
king the worlds of humanity, but after the last few months in Zerzura he’d lost a little confidence in his ability to predict where his ship would be in a few days’ time.

  He was just putting the last touches on the message when Zoe Worth—currently on watch as officer of the deck—called for his attention. “Captain? There’s a civilian orbiter signaling us,” the sublieutenant said. “It’s registered to La Nómada, Principality of Bolívar. They wish to come alongside. Umm, Ms. Pavon is on board, and she says that it’s important that she speak with you.”

  “Elena—er, Ms. Pavon—is here?” Sikander asked. He glanced over at the bridge display; sure enough, there was her yacht, now coasting into view in its own parking orbit a few hundred kilometers above Decisive. I really shouldn’t be that surprised, he realized. Elena had told him that she planned to head in this direction as soon as she finished on Nuevo León, but in his hurry to consult with Eric Darrow and call on Marid Pasha he hadn’t noticed La Nómada amid the rest of the system’s traffic. “Very well. Tell the orbiter to come alongside, and bring Ms. Pavon up to my cabin. Ask the XO to join us, too.”

  He returned to his cabin and tidied up quickly—not that Darvesh ever allowed his quarters to become too cluttered—while the valet prepared coffee and tea. Then he took a moment to check his appearance in the mirror above the sink. He found that he was surprised by how much he was looking forward to seeing Elena, and a little regretful that he’d have to keep the unexpected reunion proper and professional. A captain enjoyed a few privileges most officers and crew didn’t, but entertaining a romantic interest on the Navy’s time was not one of them.

  A knock at his cabin door announced Elena’s arrival; the deckhand escorting her opened the door and stepped aside. “Captain, your visitors,” the young man announced.

  “Sikander!” Elena said, and hurried over for a quick embrace. “I’m glad to find you here.” A handsome, dark-haired man in a finely tailored business suit followed her in; Sikander recalled seeing him with Elena in one or two of their earlier encounters. Omar, Elena’s executive assistant, he reminded himself.

  “It’s good to see you too,” Sikander told her. Naturally, Amelia Fraser appeared at his door just in time to catch him with his arms around the lovely heiress. She raised an eyebrow, and managed to avoid smirking at him. He disentangled himself and nodded toward his XO. “Allow me to introduce my executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Amelia Fraser. Amelia, this is Ms. Elena Pavon.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Amelia said, and shook Elena’s hand. “I’m sorry I missed you a couple of weeks ago at Neda—I had to get home and see my children off to bed.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” Elena said. “This is Omar Morillo, my executive assistant.” Another round of handshakes ensued.

  Sikander indicated the small conference table in the cabin’s aft alcove, where Darvesh was setting out refreshments. “I have a feeling this isn’t just a social call, and I’m afraid that we’ve been asked to leave the system soon,” he said. “So…”

  “So don’t waste time?” Elena grinned, showing that she was not offended. She took a seat; Omar sat down beside her, while Sikander and Amelia took the opposite side of the table. “I understand. Let me begin by asking if you’ve ever heard of a Zerzuran company called Rihla Development Corporation.”

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “It’s a private holding company with only a dozen shareholders,” Omar Morillo said. “Last year Rihla paid out almost half a billion in dividends from legitimate investments—investments funded by large transfers from shady outfits like Venture Salvage, the group that sold off Carmela Día’s stolen cargo and owned the so-called mining facility at Zafer.”

  “You’re talking about a money-laundering operation that turns the proceeds from piracy into big checks for some very rich people,” Amelia Fraser observed.

  “Exactly,” said Elena. “My legal team in Mersin unearthed the scheme when we started looking into Gadi al-Kassar’s assets. He owns a six-percent stake in Rihla Development, but he’s only a small fish. It turns out that the biggest shareholders are Hidir al-Kassar, Torgut al-Kassar, and Marid al-Zahabi.”

  “Whoa,” Amelia said, sitting up straight. “Admiral al-Kassar and Governor Marid al-Zahabi? The two most powerful men in the Zerzuran government?”

  Elena nodded. “And Hidir al-Kassar is the president of Suvar United, the largest Zerzuran shipping line. I see that you appreciate the magnitude of the problem.”

  “Good God,” said Sikander. “We certainly had our suspicions about Admiral Torgut after you identified Gadi al-Kassar among our prisoners, but I didn’t expect that a connection to Marid Pasha would turn up, too.” He glanced over at Amelia. “Not three hours ago he looked me right in the eye and told me he was disappointed in me. Disappointed! That bastard.”

  “I told you they’d get greedy,” Amelia said.

  “You did. I didn’t think it would be today, though.” He thought about the implications. “No wonder Marid Pasha wanted to get rid of us. Everything we’ve been doing in the last three months has been a direct attack on his bank account!”

  “Which certainly made it more attractive for him to cozy up to Dremark,” Amelia observed. She snorted in bitter amusement. “Now I see why he wants those hand-me-down cruisers. He needs to keep us away from the people paying him off.”

  “One step at a time,” Sikander said, returning his attention to Elena. “Before we go any further, you’d better explain what you know and how you know it.”

  “Show them what we’ve got, Omar,” Elena said to her assistant.

  Morillo nodded, and started a presentation on his dataslate—evidently he’d anticipated that a detailed explanation might be needed. For the next twenty minutes he walked Sikander and Amelia through the connections, showing them records of Rihla’s tax filings, Venture Salvage’s sale of stolen cargo, and Hidir al-Kassar’s initial investment. “I don’t know if we could make it stick in court,” the assistant admitted when he finished. “We’d have to subpoena bank records to prove that Venture paid Rihla, which means a court would have to allow a suit to proceed or someone’s being prosecuted over this whole affair. But we have informal confirmation that those payments took place.”

  Amelia glanced over at Sikander. “Maybe our intelligence on Bodrum Station wasn’t as far off as we thought. This is our smoking gun.”

  “I suspect that depends on the court it’s brought to,” Sikander replied. “But it’s certainly solid enough for an intelligence report. We don’t have to prosecute the Zerzuran government—we just need to be able to document what they’ve been up to and take the appropriate action.”

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Elena said. “My options are limited. I’ve got everything I need to go after Marid Pasha and the al-Kassars, but that’s dangerous for Pegasus-Pavon: The pasha could snap his fingers and confiscate our cargoes, revoke our commercial licenses, maybe even expropriate our ships and auction them off to his friends at Suvar. We lose if we go up against the Zerzuran government. I asked the Dremish to intervene, since they would seem to have some influence over the pasha, but they’re in no hurry to rein in their Zerzuran allies. Hanne Vogt told me as much yesterday.”

  “You took this to the Dremish envoy?” Sikander asked sharply.

  Elena shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I? Dremark has more pull with Marid Pasha than Aquila does, and Dremark isn’t my rival—I’m Bolívaran, after all. Unfortunately, it was a waste of my time. The Dremish are heavily invested in Marid Pasha, and Vogt has no interest in spoiling that relationship.”

  “No, I suppose she wouldn’t.” Sikander didn’t like the idea of Elena looking for an accommodation with the Dremish, but he had to admit that he couldn’t expect her not to do anything she could to protect her family’s business. He hoped that his Dremish counterparts at least had the decency to feel ashamed when they overlooked the sort of criminal behavior Vogt was apparently prepared to overlo
ok. “All right. What do you think we can do to help?”

  “It seems to me that Marid Pasha is a problem for both of us,” said Elena. “You can bring diplomatic pressure to bear on him. Press for Terra to recall him, threaten sanctions against Zerzura if he tries to declare independence, or at least see to it that he doesn’t squash Pegasus-Pavon if we go public with what we know. If you can’t get rid of him, you might at least get him to hold back his pirate friends and watch his step.”

  “That might be more difficult than it would have been a few hours ago,” Amelia said in a sour tone. “The pasha just expelled our diplomatic mission and revoked our passage rights throughout the sector.”

  “Then you’ve got nothing to lose by confronting the pasha.”

  “It’s not clear that pushing harder is in the Commonwealth’s interest at the moment,” Amelia replied. “It might be smarter to back off and find a different way to engage in this sector. Piracy isn’t the only problem to keep in mind.”

  “I’m getting tired of hearing about the politics of the situation,” Elena retorted. “It’s not just about the bottom line, Ms. Fraser. People are dead—my people are dead. It’s time someone did something.”

  She’s right, Sikander decided, remembering the frozen bodies aboard Carmela Día. He hated the idea of letting the people behind such atrocities go unpunished; the more he thought on what he’d learned in the last few hours, the angrier he got, until he could actually feel a cold and razor-sharp resolve hardening in the center of his being. He stood abruptly and moved away from the table to stare at the vidscreen that served as the cabin’s window. Dahar’s nightside glimmered beneath Decisive’s orbit, with a slim orange crescent of daylight creeping into view. Politics be damned—we have to stand for what’s right. By taking those payoffs, Marid Pasha made himself just as guilty of piracy as the murderers who shot down Carmela Día’s crew in cold blood. We can’t turn a blind eye to that just to stay a move ahead of the Dremish in this sector … who have their own crimes to answer for. And as Elena says, what more do we have to lose?