His Majesty's Starship Read Online Free Page B

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