His Majesty's Starship Read online

  He squatted down by its head and poked it. The Rustie shuddered in pain.

  “Can you hear me?” he said.

  No answer, except a rattling noise which could have been their usual speech or could have been a gasp of pain that its translator unit couldn’t handle. He hoped it hadn’t lost the power of speech; he wasn’t going to be able to repeat this trick and secure himself another captive. They would believe one flyer full of visiting Rusties struck down by some natural cause, but two?

  He prodded it harder. “I can’t understand you. Speak clearly.”

  Or maybe the translator was smashed-

  The creature spoke. “... hear,” it said.

  “You are a prisoner of the Movement for Free Nepal,” Krishnamurthy said. The Movement was his current bugbear and deserved a few more enemies. “Your friends are dead and you are badly injured. If you want to live you will answer my questions.”

  “... help,” the alien said.

  “Are you asking for it or saying that you will?” Krishnamurthy chuckled. “Never mind, I will soon find out. Now, what is the purpose of the invitation?”

  The creature was hurt but it wasn’t stupid, and it took a lot of encouraging to answer. Water deprivation, pain, keeping it out of the healing coma that was its natural response to its injuries. Much of what it said didn’t make sense but he took it all down for later playback.

  Five hours later the creature was dead, naturally, of its own injuries. So, no need for the freedom fighters story. Krishnamurthy pulled his mask off and stood over the body, hefting in his hand his aide with the recording of the session. He would find out. He would piece it all together. Oh, yes-

  *

  “The Rusties have asked us,” said Manohar Chandwani, secretary to the Prime Minister of the Confederation of South-East Asia, “to pass on to you their appreciation of your efforts in trying to save their colleagues. They regret the effort was wasted.”

  Krishnamurthy shrugged expansively. “One does what one can,” he said.

  Chandwani had Pathan blood in him somewhere: the shrewd look he gave Krishnamurthy could have frozen a lesser man in his tracks. Krishnamurthy had long become inured to what others thought of him, particularly lukewarm wishy-washy liberal Progressives like Chandwani. For a while, he thought, for a brief while, for a glorious couple of decades, we had begun to reclaim our country’s heritage once more. And now people like you would throw it all away again.

  “It was convenient the flyer came down so close to your lodge, Krishnamurthy, and convenient you and your NVN friends were holding your security conference there,” Chandwani said.

  Another shrug. “Fate.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Chandwani touched a button on his aide and the display changed: Krishnamurthy couldn’t see what it was. “To business, Krishnamurthy. The Prime Minister has studied your proposal most carefully.”

  “That is very good of him.”

  “And he has decided-” Chandwani gave a heavy sigh and glared up at him. “He has agreed.”

  “Agreed?” Krishnamurthy’s blood pounded in his ears.

  “Every detail. The budget, the procurements, the overall strategy, everything.” Chandwani sat back and put his hands behind his head. “You can even keep that idiot Ranjitsinhji as your assistant, though goodness knows why you want him. Every detail.”

  Every detail, Krishnamurthy wanted to sing. It was all coming true.

  For years, he had been laying out the case for why the Confederation had to have a presence in space. The one gap in the country’s defences was so sadly obvious. For the last century, Delhi had been too obsessed with expanding its empire sideways to bother with upwards, and as a result the Confederation was a world power with no space presence. The logic was that there was plenty of room down below on Earth; but Krishnamurthy, who had spent most of his career helping his country acquire and retain its empire, knew otherwise. Afghanistan, Tibet, Bangladesh, Burma ... there wasn’t much further they could expand before they clashed with the interests of other nations that it would be best not to antagonise.

  But now the Confederation was going on the delegation, and he would be in charge ...

  “They’re giving me rope,” he murmured.

  Chandwani gave a thin smile. “How can we lose? At best, your plan succeeds, we win the bid for this world of theirs, you will no doubt remain as administrator or whatever. You’re out of our hair. At worst, we lose the bid and you return in disgrace, defeated, finished. You’re out of our hair.”

  “The administration’s gratitude for my past efforts is almost overwhelming.”

  Chandwani’s smile vanished. He stood up, pushing the chair back, and crossed to the window to look out at the bicentenary monument in the square outside – a 50-foot statue of the Mahatma. “The Indian republic is 200 years old,” he said, “and in that time I think we’ve occasionally drifted somewhat from the principles on which it was founded.” He nodded at the statue. “Every now and then a country goes mad. It happened to the fascist and communist states of the twentieth century, the combines of the twenty first ... and it happened to us in the twenty second. We were rich and powerful but we were peaceful. We founded the Confederation because economically and technologically we dominated Asia and we wanted to use that power for the good of all. And we did, for a while, until you and your kind came along with your talk of Greater India and your dreams of the bad old days. Conquest, war, glory.”

  “You have to admit it is more interesting than parliamentary democracy,” Krishnamurthy said.

  Chandwani glared at him.

  “I know how you despise the Progressives,” he said, “but we are healing India, and hence the Confederation. We came close to the Mahatma’s ideals once and people like you drew us away. Now we’re having a second chance.”

  “What goes around comes around,” Krishnamurthy said. “Very karmic. And in the process you weaken our borders, dilute our power-”

  “Our border acquisitions were justified at the time as necessary for our security. Now that we are confident in our security, we no longer need the acquisitions. Thus, the administration shows its consistency and sense of purpose.” Chandwani strolled back to his desk and sat down again. “We are getting off the point. The Rusties are grateful, your plan is approved, now go.”

  Krishnamurthy turned to leave, slowly, showing that he was leaving because he chose to and not because he had been dismissed.

  “The crew will all be citizens, of course?” Chandwani said behind him. Krishnamurthy smiled to himself: so, even Chandwani had an ounce of patriotism inside him.

  “Of course,” said Krishnamurthy. The Rusties had specified that all delegates provide their own ship – a stipulation doubtless intended to separate the men from the boys, and it had almost excluded the Confederation, except that one of the procurements the Prime Minister had just approved was of a spaceship adequate to the task in hand. The crew would have to be picked from the trained spacers of other spacelines, but-

  “May I suggest the Gandhi as a suitable name?” Chandwani said.

  “It had occurred to me.” If it kept the man quiet ...

  But not Gandhi, no, for all Krishnamurthy’s admiration of the way the man had stood up to the British. The ship’s name would be from an earlier and darker part of India’s history: a man for whom Krishnamurthy’s admiration was unbridled and unconditional. Founder of the Maratha state, protector of his people and owner of a name that had struck fear into the hearts of his enemies.

  “Shivaji!” he murmured, but only to himself.

  - 4 -

  26 March 2149

  An amboid was waiting for Gilmore when he reached the palace. The icon that glowed on its faceplate told the world that the artificial intelligence occupying it was called Plantagenet. The intelligence itself was contained in a ROM crystal somewhere else on UK-1, but its attention was concentrated here. It was rare for such a high-level AI to be running mundane errands, and Gilmore wondered if he should feel
flattered that one had come to meet him.

  “Did the king have any reason for calling you Plantagenet?” he said, on a whim, as the amboid guided him through the palace.

  “His Majesty calls us all after Britain’s royal dynasties, Commander Gilmore.”

  “I can’t wait to meet Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,” Gilmore muttered. One more example of the Pretender to the throne of Great Britain’s eccentricities.

  “That AI is simply called Saxe-Coburg,” Plantagenet said helpfully. Gilmore stopped making conversation.

  It was the first time Gilmore had stopped in ‘F’ wheel, and with his first chance to look around he began to revise his opinion of the king. It was as one felt a palace should be: quiet, calm, ornate. Somehow he didn’t doubt that the carpets and paintings and tapestries were genuine ... and that was just it. Mad kings hid in pianos and let their realms go to pot. King Richard had put a lot of love and care into this. He was obsessive about his kingdom but maybe – just maybe – not necessarily mad.

  “This way, Commander,” said a voice at his elbow and he suddenly remembered where he was. He followed Plantagenet.

  “Please wait in here, Commander,” Plantagenet said. Gilmore was led into a room lined with books. “His Majesty will be with you shortly,” Plantagenet said, and left.

  As was no doubt expected of him, Gilmore began to inspect the books. Few surprises there. Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The complete works of Shakespeare, every play individually bound. How much had shipping all this out from Earth cost?

  “Impressed?”

  Gilmore didn’t jump: naturally the king would have a sense of theatre and he would have to show up just now. So he turned round slowly.

  Richard Windsor was a thickset man in his early sixties. He wore a suit which looked quite casual but which Gilmore suspected was well out of his price range. He seemed quite friendly and his eyes were very shrewd.

  This man, Gilmore finally decided, is not in the least bit mad.

  “I would come a long way to see a library like this, sir,” he said. His reply was meant to be to the point, abrupt, showing the king he wasn’t here to take nonsense. Then he ruined it by adding a ‘sir’ at the end.

  The king nodded, absorbing the information without acknowledging it. “Can I offer you tea?” he said.

  A slim man with a moustache was waiting for them in the v-room where tea was served.

  “Have you met my son?” the king asked. “James, Commander Michael Gilmore.”

  “How do you do,” said James, Prince of Wales. He and Gilmore shook hands. Gilmore knew the man by sight, of course, as he knew his two younger sisters and their mother. One princess was an actor, the other worked for a space company – not the RSF – and the Queen spent most of her time on Earth. None of them played a part in UK-1 affairs.

  “Please, sit down,” the king said. “What do you think, Commander?”

  Gilmore sat and looked with interest at the virtual display all around them. It was as though they sat at a point in the central axis of UK-1, and the great ship’s walls and ceilings were transparent. They could look down at anything in the ship, anywhere. It was the closest thing the king could find to standing on a mountain and looking out over his kingdom. There were even people moving about in the corridors and plazas.

  “If you were to zoom in on this room,” the king said, “you would find three simulacra there, watching a similar scene. Of course, at that level the resolution begins to get fuzzy. Other than that it’s just made up. The people cycle through the same set of activities every three minutes.”

  “Nice toy,” Gilmore said. It was impressive, even if it was just a show. There was no flicker, no disjuncture between cycles. Beginning and end merged seamlessly into each other. It did annoy him slightly that the king felt he had to call attention to everything. If you’re king, he thought, you shouldn’t have anything to prove.

  A woman came in carrying a tea tray and Gilmore was trying to place her – not any of the senior politicians, not a member of the Fleet – when it finally dawned on him that she was here purely to serve the tea. After that he couldn’t take his eyes off her: he couldn’t believe that in somewhere like UK-1, where everyone paid their way, there were people whose sole function was to pour tea.

  “So, do you like my kingdom?” the king asked. He did lower himself to passing the cups himself once the servant had gone. They sat in chairs side by side and looked out at his realm. Prince James sat opposite them and drank silently, rarely taking his eyes off Gilmore.

  Gilmore wondered why the king seemed so anxious to get his approval. He was like a small child, constantly drawing attention to his new toy. “It’s a grand achievement,” he said. “It’s been something to look forward to at the end of each voyage.”

  “I’m glad. I enjoy it too, you know. More than I would if I still had my ancestral throne, I suspect. I have a kingdom of seven thousand four hundred and thirty seven subjects, which is quite a comfortable size to rule. Of course, everyone thinks I’m mad. You think I’m mad.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Really? How kind.” The king sipped his tea. “And if you don’t think I’m mad anymore, what do you think?”

  “I think you know exactly what you’re doing.”

  The king beamed. “Then we’ll get to business. I heard about your last mission, by the way – that run-in with the scuttler. Shame it ended that way.”

  “Yes,” Gilmore said. An enquiry had been held while Australasia was on its homeward voyage and he had been cleared of all blame, which still didn’t make it easy. Lives had been lost, and wouldn’t have been if he had just left things alone.

  And neglected your job. He was used to having the two halves of his intellect slug out the different sides of an argument, and he was able to relegate it to the back of his mind while he listened to the king.

  “But that stunt you pulled to make it back off – that was inspired, Commander. And not the first time you’ve pulled something that isn’t in any of the books.”

  “Maybe I should write a book,” Gilmore said.

  The king chuckled as he pulled out an aide and flipped it on. “Maybe. And I heard about the torpedo, of course. Is your ship okay?”

  “Our radiation shielding held up, so no crew exposure. The ship was blinded for a couple of minutes but that was all. No blast damage.”

  “Excellent,” the king said. Even nuclear weapons weren’t that effective in space, with no air to carry the shockwave of the explosion: heat and radiation were the killers, and they were dissipated over space distances. But they were good enough to hold an enemy at bay, which was what the scuttler had been doing. “You know, there’s a lot of theoretical work going on about space warfare. Fascinating stuff. Nuclear weapons for long range combat, lasers and solid objects for close quarters. Early days yet, of course.”

  “So far,” Gilmore said. He couldn’t help thinking that if even scuttlers now had access to weaponry, it was more than early days.

  The king changed the subject.

  “Now, let’s see.” His eyes scanned the display as he spoke. “You’ve commanded the Australasia for three years, doing sweep duty. Prior to that you were chief executive officer on the Oceania, which was your first job in the Royal Space Fleet. My spies report that you run a happy ship and none of your crew members ever have any complaints about you. You’ve worked for the Fleet for seven years in all.”

  Gilmore sipped his tea, saying nothing.

  “Oceania was your first job for us,” the king said. “Before that, you were with the Starward Space Company, on the Solar Sailor.” The king still smiled, but the cheer had left his eyes. This wasn’t quite an interrogation, Gilmore thought, but it was damn similar.

  “Correct,” he said mildly.

  “You worked for them ever since graduating with a blue grade. Your cadet files rated you as excellent command material.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Gilmore knew now where this convers
ation was going and mentally braced himself.

  “Of course not. Confidential, aren’t they? Well, take it from me, they did.” The king, a major shareholder in Starward, raised his cup and drained the last drops, then set it down and reached for the teapot. “Why,” he said as he refilled their cups, “did said excellent command material only make it to junior exec in all those years at Starward? And how did you manage to start your career with the Fleet on a cargo ship and end on sweep patrol, rather than the other way round?”

  I ought, Gilmore thought, to throw this tea at you and storm out. And you know it.

  “I started as a junior officer on the lunar run from Earth,” he said slowly. The king nodded encouragement. “The usual thing was to start there, then graduate upwards to the more prestigious jobs, like the Mars run.”

  “And why didn’t you? Why-” Here it comes, Gilmore thought “-were you instead referred for psychological evaluation? You nearly had a breakdown, Commander.”

  Gilmore set his cup down. It rattled in its saucer. “Mind your own damn business, king.” Breathing slowly and carefully, he stood up.

  “Oh, spare me the affronted walk-out,” the king said irritably. He held a plate of biscuits out and effectively blocked Gilmore’s way. Gilmore’s sense of the ridiculous was far too strong to let him push the plate aside and keep walking, so he took a biscuit and sat down again.

  “I was pushing myself,” he said. “I was making myself be something I wasn’t. I felt I should be one of the big guns, one of the hot shots. Instead I was staring at the rapidly receding backs of my contemporaries, and then my juniors, as they all overtook me. I couldn’t accept that.” He took a bite from the biscuit.

  They had shown him how to live with the fact and they’d shown him how to fight the spectre of failure that loved to hang around him but that didn’t make it less painful to talk about. Gilmore was pleasantly surprised with himself that he was able to do so now.

  “And you joined the Fleet,” said the king.