Ричард Бейкер - Valiant Dust

He glanced down at his comm unit in surprise. Sure enough, Ranya’s blue-black curls and dark eyes filled the small screen. “Ranya? This is a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

“Is this a good time to call?”

“Yes, absolutely. It’s just after dinner for me, and I’m not due to go on watch for hours.”

Darvesh looked up from the task of stowing Sikander’s shirts in the cabin’s dresser unit. “The amira?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

Sikander nodded, and muted his pickup for a moment. “The amira,” he confirmed.

“Begum Vadiya will find this a most interesting development,” Darvesh remarked. “She has long despaired of you taking a serious interest in a woman of noble background.”

“Leave my mother out of this,” Sikander told Darvesh, and shooed him away. The valet gave a small shrug and withdrew; Sikander returned his attention to his comm unit and activated the vid to be polite. No need to let Ranya speak to a blank screen, after all.

Ranya smiled when she caught sight of his face. “There you are. I was worried I might be calling in the middle of the night for you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded much. We’re accustomed to odd hours around here,” he said. He studied her image in the small device, and noted what seemed to be a small cut on her brow with a bandage. “I’m glad to see you again, Ranya—well, your image anyway. I feared the worst when I heard what happened to your uncle’s flyer. Are you okay?”

She gave a small shrug. “I have some stitches, and there was some minor surgery for a shrapnel injury in my ankle. I am back at home now and recuperating well, or so they tell me.”

“How is your uncle?”

“He is recovering from a more serious surgery on his shoulder, but it isn’t life-threatening. He should be fine with a few weeks of rest, or at least as much rest as the present circumstances allow.” She frowned. “Speaking of which, I understand you had a close call of your own recently. I saw the newscasts about the consulate and the Sidi Marouf riots. I heard that Hector ’s landing party suffered some casualties, and I was worried that you might have been hurt.”

He shook his head. “A couple of our sailors were wounded, but I came through without a scratch. Unfortunately I was standing right by Franklin Garcia when he was shot. There was nothing I could do for him.”

“I am terribly sorry about Mr. Garcia. He was a good man, and I liked him quite a lot.”

“I think you probably knew him better than I did. I only met him a couple of times.” Sikander gazed at her image in the small vidscreen. “I wish I understood why people are so upset,” he continued. “I’ve seen civil unrest a time or two in my own home system, but there was so much anger in the crowd at the consulate … How do they think Aquila has wronged them?”

“They are not necessarily angry at you,” Ranya replied. “Many Gadirans are quite poor, and they have been held down by the beys for a long time. When Gadira was brought back into contact with other star nations, the beys were naturally positioned to benefit first and most from offworld trade. So, to many of our people, you represent a force that has enriched and propped up an already oppressive class for forty years now. Combine that with offworld mores that conflict with the more traditional teachings of Quranism, and you have an explosive mixture.” She sighed. “I’m afraid you picked a poor time to visit Gadira, Sikander. Matters have worsened significantly in the last few months.”

Sikander smiled ruefully. “I wish we’d met under better circumstances, Ranya. All we seem to talk about are interstellar politics and planetary troubles.”

“I’m afraid they are in the forefront of my mind these days.” She looked away, then met his eyes again. “I suggest we change the topic, then. Tell me about your homeworld.”

“There are two of them, really,” Sikander replied. “Kashmir has two near-terran planets, Srinagar and Jaipur, and my family spent a good deal of time on each one. But I suppose Jaipur is what I think of as home.” He fell into a description of his family home near Sangrur, and before he knew it, he was chatting with Ranya, trading small stories about their childhoods and schooling. She was easy to talk to, and her Montréalais-accented Anglic was delightfully exotic in his ears.

Half an hour passed by as they talked, but then Ranya glanced aside and made a small face. “I am sorry, Sikander, but I must go. I have an appointment in just a few minutes.”

Sikander nodded. “I understand. I hope we’ll speak again soon.”

“Good night, Sikander.”

“Good night, Ranya,” he said.

She held his gaze a moment longer, smiled, and then ended the connection. Sikander stared at the blank screen, somewhat bemused. He hadn’t intended to spend half an hour chatting about idle nothings with the sultan’s niece, but somehow it had happened anyway. She must have received thousands of messages in the last few days, but she took the time to reply to mine, he reflected. Was it simply the novelty of a note from an Aquilan officer? He replayed the conversation in his head, and decided that there was definitely more to it than that.

“Careful, Sikay,” he told himself. Reaching out to express sympathy and see how she was doing after the missile attack was within the bounds of friendship. Late-night calls and stories about their homeworlds seemed a good deal more … complicated. Ranya wasn’t an Aquilan socialite he could date casually, after all. In fact, it wasn’t really clear how he could date her at all, even if he was so inclined. But that didn’t stop him from dwelling on her when he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep later that evening.

* * *

The next day, Sikander rose early to take the morning bridge watch. Ships didn’t normally maneuver much in orbit, but monitoring the traffic even in a backwater system such as Gadira was a never-ending chore, and of course events on the ground required constant attention. When he assumed the watch, Sublieutenant Larkin and the landing force were already on the ground seeing to the evacuation of a mining survey team cut off in the small desert outpost of Ksar Lake—something of a misnomer, since the “lake” was actually a vast salt pan. Caidist raids had closed the access road, stranding a dozen Aquilan engineers and geologists working for Clayne Industries. Larkin’s team extracted the Clayne group without much trouble, but then a new demonstration broke out in the large city of Oujad, threatening a storage facility where hundreds of new Aquilan heavy ground transports waited to be distributed to local dealers. Sikander didn’t think that Hector ’s sailors ought to risk their lives to protect someone else’s new trucks, but the Operations Department recommended a demonstration of resolve, so they dispatched an orbital shuttle and a squad of armed sailors as soon as the mining survey team was transported to safety.

The chime of the bridge’s contact alert interrupted Sikander as he watched the orbital imagery of the landing at the transport facility. “Mr. North, two new contacts arriving in-system, thirteen light-minutes out,” announced the sensor officer of the watch, a senior chief petty officer in the Operations Department. “They’re Dremish transponder codes, military.”

“Two more Dremish warships?” Sikander rose from his station and walked over to the consoles of the sensor operators, looking over the chief’s shoulder. He frowned at the sensor picture. Sharing an orbit with Panther was one thing; if Aquila was interested enough in Gadira to send a cruiser, then Sikander could grudgingly accept the possibility that the Empire of Dremark had the right to express its own concerns by dispatching a warship, too. But a whole Dremish flotilla was another matter entirely. “What classes are we looking at?”