For Honor We Stand (13 page)

***

“I must say, Captain Robichaux, that you
do
have a flair for the dramatic.  You should remember, however, that such predilections are not always appropriate.  You could very easily have gotten yourself and the doctor killed, not to mention severely damaging the Ministry building, if not burning it to the ground.  I am officially required to convey the extreme displeasure of my government with the means by which you chose to arrive at this meeting.  My government reserves the right to seek reparations from yours for the rather expensive damage caused by this little adventure.”  Mr. Ellington Wortham-Biggs stirred his coffee with deliberate precision, his accent more perfectly British than that of any true Englishman.  He took a sip, imperfectly concealing his disapproval of the taste.  “As I said, the disapproval is
official. 
Given your rather inventive solutions to prior problems, on the other hand, I was actually expecting something . . . what is the expression?  Oh, yes, ‘out of the box.’”  He treated the idiom the way a fussy butler would handle a soiled diaper.  “I do regret extremely, however, the incidents which forced you to engage in this adventurous behavior.  You may be assured that the individuals responsible, including the Emir, will pay a heavy penalty.” 

Profoundly unconcerned with the Emir’s fate, Max and Sahin sipped their definitely sub-par coffee.  The three men were in one of the Ministry’s many conference rooms, likely designed for trade negotiations.  They were seated around a table for eight, roughly five times as long as it was wide, with places for three on each of the long sides and one at each of the ends.  Max and the doctor sat together on one side of the table and Wortham-Biggs sat at the near end rather than opposite them as they expected.  Sahin had tended Max’s injury with quick skill using the medical kit he had brought with him in his duffel.  His ministrations had left Max’s face spotted in several locations with liquid wound dressing and bearing a 75 millimeter bandage on his cheek.  For some reason, the injury seemed to have deadened Max’s sense of taste, or maybe the topical anesthetic in the wound dressing was seeping into his system deadening his taste buds.  In either event, the coffee seemed flavorless to Max.  Between the injury and the ebbing of the adrenalin from his borderline insane piloting stunt, he was finding it hard to pay attention.  He found himself wanting a donut.  Or, maybe, a candy bar.  Something full of sugar and utterly devoid of any known nutritional value.  Max looked at his colleague, as if to give him a signal to get down to business.  The clock was ticking.  The doctor got the hint.

“Mr. Wortham-Biggs, as you can surmise, we received your ingeniously conceived message and have come, as quickly as we were able, in answer to it.  When we last met, you did me the very great favor of speaking in a manner marked by directness and honesty.  It was my pleasure to reciprocate in that regard.  Given what my friend and I have just been through, and in light of the exigency of events, might I suggest that we consider our previous meeting a precedent and that we conduct our discussions here today in a similar manner?”

“My thoughts precisely,” Wortham-Biggs said.  “Perhaps the most efficient use of our time would be for me to provide you with a brief summary of the relevant aspects of the political and dynastic situation in the Kingdom, and then present to you the precise proposal which we believe needs to be presented by the most expeditious means to your government.”  He inclined his head in inquiry.  The doctor nodded his approval.

Wortham-Biggs smiled in gratitude.  As though collecting his thoughts, he removed his gold pocket watch from his vest pocket and unhooked the chain from his vest button.  Max could see that it was not, as he had expected, a “fancy” dress pocket watch of the kind carried by many gentlemen of the day.  Such watches were like the pocket watches of old in appearance only: an antique-style gold case fitted with a laser-regulated, wireless network synchronized, quantum chronometer that was never more than a few thousandths of a second fast or slow, moving moved old-fashioned watch hands in digitally calculated nudges around a “retro design” analog face.  This watch was not antique-
style
but
antique
.  It was an open-faced model, with each hour marked by an Arabic numeral, clear minute marks around the circumference of the dial, and a second hand that swept a small circle near the bottom of the face rather than the entire watch.  The maker’s name, “Hamilton” was written clearly on the dial.  The words “railroad watch” came to Max’s mind, for this was an Earth artifact made sometime in the last few decades of the 19
^th
Century or the first few of the 20th.  Max could not begin to imagine how much it would cost to purchase a four hundred year old mechanical timepiece in working order and in such beautiful condition. 

The man quietly wound the watch by turning a knob on the stem between his thumb and his forefinger, storing mechanical energy in a coiled metal mainspring inside the mechanism to be released in tiny increments by the interaction of the escapement and balance wheel, precisely repeating the steps of their exquisite mechanical duet exactly five times a second.  No more.  No less.  Because Commodore Middleton had collected antique timepieces and talked about them endlessly, Max knew that railroad watches were meticulously tested and certified to be accurate to within 30 seconds a week, meaning that they measured the passage of time to an accuracy of one part in 20,133, without electronics or external regulation of any kind, and with no source of power other than a human thumb and forefinger supplying torsion to a delicate spiral of metal.  It was the equivalent of measuring something a meter long to an accuracy of a twentieth of a millimeter, a few times the width of a human hair.  As though recognizing the level of engineering achievement such a device represented when it was made, Wortham-Biggs placed it gently, almost reverently, on the table, face up.

He smiled deprecatingly, acknowledging the irony of spending the time on the affectation of winding his watch and then placing it on the table in a gesture that could serve only as a reminder that time was pressing.  Because they were all highly intelligent men attuned by virtue of their backgrounds to many of the complexities of human behavior, this contradictory action managed to trigger the same thought in each of the three men:  that human beings are contradictions, not just collectively, but individually as well.  The children of Earth, all three recognized, are simultaneously brave and fearful, impulsive and cautious, forgiving and spiteful, impatient and deliberate, peace-loving and blood-thirsty.  They are, each of them, a multitude. 

“To summarize then.  At the risk of sounding like a guidebook, I remind you that the Kingdom was settled by the Pan Arab Alliance shortly after the construction of Earth’s first jump drive ships, even before the Earth was fully unified.  Our fifteen star systems with their twenty-five inhabited planets and moons, all packed into an irregular egg-shaped area less than ten light years across, formed a natural political and economic unit from the very beginning.  We have always had a cultural and economic identity distinct from the rest of Human Space and, but for a few decades as members of the Confederation, have not been part of the great political systems that have ruled most of humanity over the centuries.  Our current relations with the Union are friendly, but we are not allies with you in your war against the Krag or otherwise. 

 “Now, our government is a monarchy.  We have a Parliament but, as we are engaging in frank speech among gentlemen, I will not pretend that it plays a meaningful part in the governance of the Kingdom.  True power rests in the hands of the King, and to a significantly lesser extent, the Six Emirs.  Unlike most monarchies, we have six royal families, not one, each of which is descended from one of the six dynasties that ruled one of the leading Arab states at the time of our founding.  The throne rotates from dynasty to dynasty in a prescribed order, such that when one King dies, whether after a day or a century, the next family places its chosen member, usually its Emir, on the throne—except of course that no one may take office through assassination.

“In 2280, King Majali of the House of Qudah died at the ripe old age of 108, and the Kingship fell next on the House of Jaafar.  As this part of the galaxy was then stable and at peace, Jaafar sought to conciliate the other families and build harmony among the ruling houses by naming Rafi to hold the throne.  Rafi’s deserved reputation is that of an amiable man loved by all and, foremost, that of a man with an astonishing ability to inspire loyalty and good feeling, to build bridges and alliances, and to unify people of differing backgrounds and interests.  The Kingdom genuinely rejoiced at his coronation because everyone knew he was a genius at bringing people together, even though he did not have much of a reputation for strength of will or discerning intellect.  This choice proved, however, to be a less than perfectly felicitous one, as the Krag attacked the Union the following year.  Within minutes of the attack and before we learned of it, the Krag approached Rafi through a so-called neutral envoy belonging to a still unidentified species.  He conveyed the Krag message that their putative war objective of the extinction of mankind was merely bellicose language for the internal consumption of a fairly small but highly vocal and influential religious minority.  He assured Rafi that their true war aim was merely to break the Union’s military and humble its leadership, at which point they would extract some sort of territorial concessions and other pro-forma tribute, and then return to their space, leaving Rashid and the other independent human powers alone.  Rafi believed them, and we have remained neutral.

“Two things have happened to change that.  The first of which, you are aware.  The Krag dishonored our people by tricking us into a series of ‘straw man’ sales in which we sold them war materiel through intermediaries—war materiel which the Krag then used to kill other Muslims, not to mention other Peoples of the Book, and many others who are our brothers and sisters on no basis other than that our ancestors and their ancestors lived together on Earth, breathed the same air, were watered by the same rains, and lived under the same skies.  As this fact has gradually become known, many of those with influence in the Kingdom have come to believe that the Krag cannot be trusted and that, once they defeat the Union’s Navy, they will turn their attention to the other ‘infesting vermin’ as they call us, destroy the forces of all the independent powers, and then blot the human race from the galaxy.”

“And the second?”  The doctor asked the question before Max could open his mouth to say the same thing.

“Rafi is dead.  We have been withholding the announcement for the past several days so that we could conclude this meeting first, but it will become generally known tomorrow.  Rule of the Kingdom next falls to the House of Saud.  In light of the perilous state of affairs in the galaxy, the Elders of the House have decided not to place our elderly and ailing Emir on the throne.  The next King will be Rear Admiral Khalil.”

Max nodded in recognition.  “You’ve heard of him?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes.  Used to be a Battleship Captain.  A good one.  He commanded the
Abha
at the Battle of Napoli Prime in that scratch Union/Rashid/Romanova task force that got put together when the Najin invaded from the Perseus Arm two years ago—the only battle in which Rashidian and Union forces ever fought side by side.  That was the impetus for the
Equilateral
exercises a while later.  Khalil commanded the
Abha
and the five Rashidian ships in that engagement.  I suppose that made him a Commodore although I don’t recall anyone making an issue of it.  There were also four Romanovan and eight Union ships there, one of which was my ship, the
Emeka Moro. 
I was her Weapons Officer, so I had my eye on the tactical plot almost the whole time.  Khalil was better than Admiral Windham, who was the Union commander, or Commodore Polyphonus, who led the Romanovans.  Khalil’s tactics were innovative, daring, and unpredictable.  Vessel deployment, use of weapons and sensors, management of kinetic energy, all brilliant.  What I saw says he’s courageous, intelligent, perceptive . . . and crafty.  Looks like you’ve got yourself a good King.  I’d take my ship into battle at his side in a heartbeat.”  He chuckled.  “And, here’s a coincidence.  You look a bit like him.”

“That’s no coincidence, Captain.  Khalil is my brother.”  He smiled modestly.  “My birth name is Khalid al-Saud.  I am eleven years older than the King, but we are a warrior people who, particularly in these times, require a warrior King, and I am no warrior, at least not in the sense of leading men into battle.  I do, however, have a certain facility and a great deal of experience with matters of intelligence and diplomacy.  I am to head both of those ministries.  Alas, I shall have to leave management of the shop to my daughter and Giles.

“So, enough polishing the blade.  Time to attend to the edge.  My brother, quite wisely in my view, has no faith in the Krag and believes that their goal is to eradicate humans from the galaxy.  The King made that belief known when he last met with the Six Emirs—that is, the heads of each of the Royal Houses—five days ago.  Bassam, the Emir of the House of Habib, voiced his disagreement at the time.  Our sources inside his palace inform us that he is in communication with the Krag and, more than that, is in league with them.  The Krag have promised, according to our sources, to put him on the throne and install his House as the permanent Ruling House of the Kingdom in exchange for keeping Rashid out of the war.  Our desire was to meet with Union representatives in secret because we thought an avowed meeting would tip off the Krag and allow them to attack us preemptively even before we came to any agreement.”  He looked at the doctor expectantly.