Ричард Бейкер - Valiant Dust

“It was 3077, the Palarist Uprising. He was shot and blinded while under orders not to fire back.” Larkin took a deep breath. “The doctors did the best they could, but he’s never seen me with his own eyes.”

Sikander nodded to himself. All of the sudden, many things about his difficult start with the younger officer made a good deal more sense. Twenty-five years ago, the Palarist movement had racked large parts of Jaipur and Srinagar. Nationalists and extremists had rioted for weeks, protesting Aquilan rule over Kashmir and demanding more autonomy. Thousands of Aquilan troops had been involved in the fighting. In fact, the terrorists who had struck at Nawab Dayan and the North clan during the Bandi Chor Divas had been Palarists, fighting on fifteen years after their defeat. No wonder she finds it difficult to serve alongside me. Every time she sees me, she is reminded of her father’s injury.

He met Larkin’s eyes. “My family, too, fought against the Palarists. You must understand that many Kashmiris died at their hands. Their reckless violence hurt both my people and yours.”

“I didn’t know that, Mr. North,” Larkin admitted.

“This is not Kashmir. Most of the demonstrators outside the walls are not our enemies—they are angry and misguided, and they don’t know what else to do. Yes, we can’t let them hurt people we’re here to protect. But we have to be careful not to make things worse.”

Larkin nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Very well, Ms. Larkin.” Sikander took a step back and signaled to Chief Trent, waiting a short distance away with the armed sailors she’d gathered. “It’s your shuttle. Inform your team that they are not to fire unless you release them to return fire, and do so only as a last resort. We don’t want to take any chance of hitting noncombatants.”

“Understood, sir.” Larkin motioned to the sailors of her detachment. They quickly boarded the shuttle as Sikander backed away to give Long plenty of room to lift off. With a shrill whine of the engines, the stubby vehicle kicked up off the ground. It hovered just above the consulate grounds for a moment, and then slewed around and disappeared over the surrounding rooftops.

Darvesh watched the armed shuttle fly off. “You allowed the sublieutenant to go?”

“She was right to insist—it’s her job. And I seem to recall that you had some words for me about choosing my risks more carefully.”

“I am surprised that for once you heeded my advice, Nawabzada.”

“I promise I won’t make a habit of it,” Sikander told him, watching the feed from the Dragonfly drone as the shuttle moved into position and alighted on the bank’s rooftop. Then he made himself put away his dataslate and pay attention to the neighborhood immediately around the consulate. Plenty of people would be watching the shuttle’s rescue attempt, and he didn’t need the temptation of micromanaging Larkin’s efforts via vid feed. He settled for quickly circling the compound, checking the positions of the landing force. Four sailors protected the front gate, staying back around the wall to minimize their exposure. The low roof of a garage that stood up against the compound’s eastern wall provided a good vantage for another fire team to protect that whole side of the grounds, while the windows and roof of the consulate building itself offered good positions for another fire team to guard the back of the compound. He left Chief Trent in charge there. But the western wall offered no good places for a rifleman to stand and look over its four-meter parapet—anything could be going on just on the other side of the wall, and the Aquilans would have no idea. Sikander settled for repositioning one of the Dragonflies to provide a constant view of the street on that side of the compound, and instructed the fire team there to keep a close eye on its video feed.

“Is there anything we’re overlooking?” he asked Darvesh as he studied the compound defenses again.

“The consulate cannot be held against a determined attack, sir,” said the Kashmiri soldier. “It simply comes down to whether or not the people in the streets outside have the motivation to make such an attack. Your guess about that is as good as mine.”

“I do not find that reassuring,” Sikander muttered. He glanced at the video from the Dragonfly watching over the bank evacuation. The shuttle remained parked on the rooftop. Several of Larkin’s squad knelt with mag rifles raised as they covered different quadrants around the rear hatch, while the rest of the team hurried to move a handful of civilians from a roof access panel to the shuttle. It seemed to be going slowly.

He keyed his comm device and spoke. “Status report, Ms. Larkin?”

“Taking fire, sir. Several of the civilians are wounded. We’re moving as fast as we can.”

“Very well,” he replied. Larkin had enough on her mind for the moment; he didn’t need to distract her with extra orders or suggestions. Instead, he keyed the two medics in the landing force. “Thierry, Niles, it sounds like Ms. Larkin will have wounded civilians on board when she returns. Be ready to treat casualties.”

“Yes, sir,” the two medics answered. A few moments later, they appeared by the consulate building entrance and hurried over to wait beside Sikander. He glanced again at his vid feed just in time to see Hector ’s shuttle lift off from the rooftop. Silent puffs of paint and dust showed the impact of bullets on the hull. Small-arms fire posed little threat to the orbital shuttles; they were rugged craft. But if the Caidists in the crowd had any more of their antiair missiles, it might be a different story.

The shuttle darted out of the Dragonfly’s view, accelerating hard as soon as it was clear of the rooftop obstructions. Sikander heard the low hum of the returning shuttle’s induction engines echoing through the streets, growing louder as it quickly spanned the short distance between the bank and the consulate. Then the shuttle suddenly appeared overhead, circled around just above the rooftops, and set down again in the consulate courtyard. The crowd outside the front gate shouted in consternation and anger, and a new shower of bricks and bottles came over the wall. Sikander hurried over to the main hatch, with the two medics just a few steps behind him.

The hatch slid open, and Angela Larkin hopped out. Without a word to Sikander she turned and immediately helped down a crewman bleeding from a bad leg wound. More than a dozen civilians—three Aquilans judging by their clothing, the rest Gadirans dressed in business attire now torn or rumpled in some cases—tumbled out of the shuttle as soon as the wounded sailor was clear. “Head for the consulate!” Sikander shouted to them, and pointed the way. “Right over there!”

An old-style rifle barked from somewhere high and behind Sikander. One of the civilians running for the consulate door, an older Gadiran man in a good suit, grunted and stumbled, falling on his face. A neat round hole between his shoulder blades oozed red.

“Sniper!” several voices called over the tactical comm network at the same time. Civilians and sailors alike scattered in terror, seeking cover anywhere they could find it or throwing themselves flat on the ground. Sikander ducked back under the shuttle’s stubby wing, and managed to knock his helmet against the fuselage hard enough to bite his tongue.

I have been here before, he realized. The panic, the screams, the taste of blood—

—in his mouth. Then he becomes aware of the sounds: shouts of dismay, thin wails of pain, the ringing echoes of the blast all strangely dull and distant to his ears.

Sikander slowly levers himself upright from the wreckage of the reviewing stand. It’s difficult to make out what he is looking at. Ceremonial costumes are nothing but colorful tatters; smoke roils across Sangrur’s central square while Jaipur Dragoons scramble to reach the nawab’s family. He can see his own fear and confusion mirrored in their expressions.