Ричард Бейкер - Valiant Dust

“Sharing our intelligence with the sultan’s Royal Guard and making plans to coordinate fire support would appear to be within your discretion, ma’am,” said Sikander.

Captain Markham fell silent for a long moment, gazing at the vidscreen with its view of the planet below. Sikander held his breath; he thought Markham was a reasonable person and that he’d made good points, but he also felt that he’d pushed her about as far as it was safe to go in arguing his case. Finally, she nodded. “Very well. Mr. Randall, make arrangements to share our orbital observation with the sultan’s forces. Mr. North, go ahead and prepare your fire plan. Give me a range of options from nonlethal crowd suppression to targeted interdiction of military movements. I seriously doubt that we will need them, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Randall replied. “I’ll get on it immediately.”

“Yes, Captain,” Sikander said. He made a mental note to speak to Michael Girard; this was a job for the fire-control officer. “We will examine a range of responses.”

Markham glanced over to Commander Chatburn. “While we’re at it, XO, let’s touch base with the senior surviving consulate personnel and verify the Aquilan citizens known to be in-system.” Chatburn nodded his assent, and made notes on his own dataslate. “Anything else? Then let’s meet again tomorrow to—one moment.” Her dataslate beeped softly with a new communication. The officers gathered at the table waited politely as Markham quickly checked her message. Her comm preferences would not interrupt a senior leadership meeting for routine business, so anything that triggered a notification had to be at least a little unusual.

“What is it, Captain?” Chatburn asked after a long moment, unable to restrain his curiosity.

“Some of our preparations will have to wait until tomorrow,” Markham replied. “We’ve been invited to dinner.”

“The Gadiran government? Or the Montréalais?” Sikander asked.

“Neither.” Markham allowed herself a wry smile, savoring the opportunity to surprise her officers. “We’ll be dining with Captain Harper and the officers of SMS Panther tonight.”

14

SMS Panther, Gadira II Orbit

“CSS Hector, arriving!” The shrill, piping call of the bosun’s whistle echoed through the large hangar deck of the cruiser Panther as Captain Markham descended the steps from the shuttle. By old tradition, commanding officers were identified by the command they held when boarding or leaving another warship; the Dremish navy observed the same rituals that the Aquilan navy did. As Elise Markham reached the deck, an honor guard of eight sideboys in resplendent black uniforms with blue trousers snapped to attention.

Captain Markham returned the honor guard’s salute and strode ahead between the two lines of sailors. Captain Georg Harper and several other Dremish officers waited at the end of the sideboy line; Sikander debarked from the shuttle just in time to see the two commanding officers exchange salutes, then shake hands. “Captain Markham, welcome aboard,” Harper said. His voice had a strong, slow drawl; Sikander wondered where he’d learned his Standard Anglic. “We’re glad you and your officers could join us.”

“Captain Harper,” Markham replied. “It was courteous of you to invite us. I hope you’ll allow Hector to return the compliment in the near future.”

Harper smiled broadly. He was shorter than Sikander had expected, not much more than 1.7 meters or so, although of course he’d seen Harper only from the shoulders up in their message exchanges. “Of course, we’d be delighted.”

The two commanding officers exchanged more pleasantries; Sikander took a few moments to study Panther ’s hangar deck. It was definitely a little larger than Hector ’s, with several dangerous-looking armed shuttles stowed efficiently in davits suspended from the overhead. On the forward bulkhead, a large flag in blue, black, and gold hung from brackets—the Imperial ensign. On the opposite bulkhead, the Dremish placed a similarly sized ensign in white and red, the insignia of the Commonwealth of Aquila. “It seems they are rolling out the red carpet for us,” he murmured to Hiram Randall, who happened to be standing nearby.

Randall snorted. “Foresighted of them,” he replied. “I’m pretty sure we don’t have a Dremish banner in our flag locker.”

Captain Markham finished with her initial greetings, and gestured at the rest of Hector ’s officers. “Allow me to introduce the rest of my party,” she said to Harper. In addition to Sikander and Randall, the group included Dr. Simms; Angela Larkin; Sublieutenant Keane; Ensign Perry, the auxiliaries officer; and Ensign Kang, the ship’s disbursing officer. It was only half of the wardroom, but given the necessities of watchstanding—and a little elementary military caution in a potentially volatile situation—Markham had made sure to leave Commander Chatburn behind with enough officers to handle Hector in combat if the unthinkable happened. Sikander was still getting to know the younger officers in the dinner party, but they seemed comfortable and competent as they exchanged greetings with the Dremish captain.

“A pleasure to meet all of you,” Harper said. “May I present my executive officer, Kapitan-Leutnant Anton Braun? Our gunnery officer, Oberleutnant Helena Aldrich? And here is Major Owen Kalb, executive officer of the Third Silesian Rifles. They are the regiment embarked on General von Grolmann. ” He continued with several more junior officers, but Sikander quickly lost track of their names and positions; the most important impression he came away with was that Panther ’s crew was about the same size as Hector ’s, and the officers had similar duties. The only differences he noted were that ranks had slightly different names. Then Harper turned to a thin, sandy-haired man in civilian clothing who stood beside Panther ’s officers. “Oh, and I almost overlooked Mr. Otto Bleindel, our leading trade representative in Gadira. He works for Dielkirk Industries, but he is also accredited by the Imperial government.”

The two groups of officers mixed together, exchanging handshakes and quick greetings. Sikander found himself shaking hands with Oberleutnant Aldrich, the woman that Harper had introduced as his gunnery officer. She was a tall, strong-featured woman with short rust-brown hair and a stern, rudder-like nose, but she had a surprisingly warm smile. “It would seem that you are my counterpart,” she said, her voice marked by a noticeably throaty accent. “I am Helena Aldrich, gunnery officer.”

“Sikander North. A pleasure to meet you.” Sikander returned her smile. “May I say that Panther is a very impressive-looking warship? I was admiring the main battery from the shuttle as we flew over. Those are the new Type 9 K-cannons, aren’t they?”

“Indeed they are,” Aldrich said. Her smile broadened; it was a rare gunnery officer who didn’t like to talk about his or her work, after all. “I see that you know your armament.”

“I read a feature piece about the Löwe -class cruisers in Naval Review a few months back. They garnered quite a bit of praise from the naval-affairs establishment in Aquila.” Sikander was curious about some of the specifications on the Dremish cruiser’s guns, but it would seem a little impolite to ask. After all, the exact performance of Hector ’s own Mark V kinetic cannons was considered confidential; he would have declined to offer any details if Aldrich asked him. The Empire of Dremark was not an enemy, but it was a rival with a fast-growing, modern, powerful navy. Quite a few strategists in Aquila worried that Dremark’s rise would lead to conflict, although Sikander sincerely hoped they were wrong. There hadn’t been any kind of great power war in almost fifty years, and the size and power of the battle fleets maintained by most of the stellar polities meant that a serious conflict would certainly result in destruction on an unimaginable scale.