Magdalena Juarez helped herself to some coffee from the service on the nearby credenza, and gave Sikander a wicked smile when she noted his absentminded gaze. “Thinking about the amira?” she asked—a lucky guess indeed.
Sikander pulled his attention away from the image of the planet below. “I suppose I was,” he admitted. “Ranya el-Nasir is not what I expected to find here.”
“You seem to have made quite an impression on her.”
“She made an impression on me, as well. She’s a very intelligent woman—insightful, curious, and quite fluent in Standard Anglic, which I imagine is at least her third language. Mr. Garcia says that she just about runs the place for her uncle.”
“The dashing offworld prince descends from the stars and meets the bookish princess,” Magda teased. “To his surprise he finds a woman of fiery passions stifled by the expectations of those around her! The romance novel almost writes itself.”
“Did you just call me dashing?” Sikander grinned. “I like the sound of that, but I have to admit that our conversation was not in the least romantic. The amira asked about Kashmir and Aquila.”
The chief engineer gave him a measuring look as she sat down in the opposite seat. “Really? What did you discuss?”
“She was curious about how I came to be in the Commonwealth Navy. From there the conversation turned to colonial relationships and interstellar politics, and the similarities between Gadira’s situation and that of Kashmir a generation or two ago. Nothing about her fiery passions, thank you very much!”
“Too bad,” said Magda. “It was a lot more interesting in my head, I suppose.”
Sikander shrugged, and sipped at the dregs of his coffee. “What did the sultan talk about while I was off strolling with the amira?”
“Nothing at all to do with politics, insurgencies, or colonial affairs. However, I’m now certain that the sultan’s gardens will be well prepared for any eventuality.” Magda smiled. “I think Captain Markham had hoped that indulging his botanical interests would establish a bit of a connection, which in turn might shed insight on the strategic situation. Unfortunately, all we gained from the conversation was a vastly increased understanding of Gadiran sunrose varietals.”
“You never know when that might be useful,” Sikander replied. “For example, you might—”
He was interrupted by the ship’s info assistant. “Ms. Juarez, Mr. North, your presence is requested in the captain’s cabin,” the computer announced. “The matter is urgent.”
Sikander exchanged looks with Magda, and read the same sudden disquiet in her expression that he felt. It was not all that unusual to be summoned for an impromptu discussion, but the “urgent” wasn’t included unless something was in need of immediate correction. “We’re on our way,” he said to the computer, and pocketed his dataslate as he stood.
“What’s going on?” Magda wondered aloud. She allowed herself one long sip from her just-poured coffee, then set down her mug and stood as well.
“I’ve no idea,” Sikander answered, even though he knew she hadn’t really been asking him. The two officers hurried out of the wardroom and headed forward, climbing up one deck to the captain’s cabin. Sikander did not quite run, since that would have been undignified. But he did reach the captain’s door less than two minutes after the announcement.
He knocked once and entered, Magda a step behind him. Captain Markham waited by the small conference table in her cabin. “You wished to see us, ma’am?” he asked. Then he noticed that Peter Chatburn and Isaako Simms were already seated in their customary places. Apparently the captain had summoned all the senior officers, not just Sikander and Magda.
Captain Markham merely nodded at the empty seats by the table. “Ms. Juarez, Mr. North, have a seat. Events are taking an unpleasant turn down on Gadira.”
Sikander took his customary seat, halfway down the table. The vidscreen on the cabin wall showed a scene on the ground, the highly magnified ship’s-eye view of a tree-shaded boulevard filled with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles and what appeared to be a crash site of some kind. He studied the view for a moment. The lights flashing, the hastily erected barricades, the firefighting vehicles and medical transports … he knew the scene well. It’s like Sangrur, he realized. Something has happened to the sultan.
There was a knock at the cabin door, and Hiram Randall entered, a dataslate open in one hand. He had finally shed the arm sling he’d been wearing for the last two weeks. “My apologies, Captain,” he said as he came in and took his seat at the table. “I thought it best to pull together the newest intel before joining you.” As operations officer, it was Randall’s job to keep a close eye on all planetside developments and determine which of those merited the direct attention of Hector’s leadership team.
“Good thinking,” Captain Markham replied. “Go ahead and bring everyone up to date, Mr. Randall.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Randall shifted in his seat to address the rest of the officers at the table. “Insurgents shot down Sultan Rashid’s flyer with surface-to-air missiles thirty-five minutes ago. We picked up a major military alert about twenty minutes ago, and the news is just now breaking on Gadiran vid channels.”
Sikander nodded; his intuition had been all too accurate. Around the table, his colleagues likewise winced, straightened in their seats, or took in sharp breaths as they absorbed the news. “Is the sultan dead?” Chatburn asked.
“We don’t believe so, sir.” Randall reached for the display controls. “Let me bring up the live newscast feed—that’s our best source at the moment.”
He clicked the wall display over to a Gadiran broadcast channel. The screen shifted from the overhead view of Hector’s vidcams to a live street-level view from a local news team. Ground transports were parked unevenly on both sides of the tree-lined street, and ugly black smoke climbed up to stain the colorless sky over the nearby buildings. In the middle of the image, charred debris soaked in firefighting foam was scattered down the boulevard, leading to the wreckage of a large luxury flyer. Text in Jadeed-Arabi crawled slowly across the bottom of the screen while a woman—the news anchor, or so Sikander guessed—spoke rapidly in a voice-over.
“Dear God,” Magda murmured. “Where is this, Mr. Randall?”
“It’s in Tanjeer, a few kilometers from the palace,” Randall replied. “The sultan was on his way home from an official visit to Nador, where he’s been for the last few days.”
“Is anybody claiming responsibility for the attack?” Dr. Simms asked.
“Not yet, but our best guess is that we’re looking at the work of a large and well-funded group of urban insurgents,” said Randall. “Surface-to-air missiles would almost certainly be offworld arms, and the attackers fired off a whole volley at the sultan’s skycade—three of the escort flyers were hit at the same time as Rashid’s transport. It appears to have been a coordinated ambush.”
“The Royal Guard has a major security leak,” Chatburn observed. “The insurgents had to know the sultan’s schedule and the flight plan in order to set up this kind of attack. Someone on the inside is feeding them intelligence.”
“Not necessarily,” Captain Markham said. “I’d bet that someone watching the sultan’s comings and goings from the palace over a few months could make a very good guess about the Royal Guard’s typical flight paths, and an observer on the ground at Nador could call ahead to provide a couple of hours’ advance notice. For that matter, orbital observation could provide the same information.”