Raschid’s family on Earth was very powerful, his father one of the Caliph’s Pashas, the highest ranking of all government officials. The family was fabulously wealthy and highly respected in the Caliphate. But Ahmed Raschid was a man of insatiable appetites, and he had a dozen wives and mistresses who had given him many sons. Kemal was the youngest of these, and though he was also the most capable, all he could hope for on Earth was a life of comfort and dissolution while the eldest of his brothers succeeded to the family’s power and titles.
For most citizens of the Caliphate, a life of even minimal comfort was an elusive dream. But for Kemal it was a curse, an existence without purpose. His mind was too strong, his spirit too powerful to spend his days sitting uselessly alongside the fountains in the family gardens.
He besought his father’s aid - that is when the old man had time for his youngest son, which was rarely. The two had discussed a place in the Caliph’s army, but the officer corps of the Earth-based forces had become a dumping ground for surplus sons of petty noble houses. The army that had shaken the world in the Unification Wars had atrophied during a century of terrestrial peace, and father and son agreed such a commission was beneath the dignity of the Raschid.
The offworld forces were vastly more capable than the Earth-based army, but there was no place among the slave-soldiers of the Janissary Corps for the son of a highly-placed family. The Janissaries were backed up by the picked levies of the lords who ruled the colony worlds, again leaving no career path for an Earth-based nobleman.
But Kemal could not be content to aimlessly walk the halls of his father’s vast palace with nothing more to occupy his thoughts than what he would eat for the evening meal or which of his women he would take to his bed that night. Finally, in his desperation, Kemal looked to the one place where superfluous younger sons could hope to wield power…space…the frontier.
The Caliphate’s colonies were, for the most part, estates contracted out to noble lords who agreed to pay certain taxes and a percentage of production to the Caliph. Convincing members of the nobility to leave behind the pleasures of Earth for the danger and hardship of founding a colony was difficult, and the Ministry frequently resorted to blackmail and coercion to secure enough “volunteers.” But Kemal needed no prodding, and his father’s influence obtained for him the position of emir on the newly discovered planet Bokhara. Most of the nobles who emigrated to found colonies were granted only the title of Subashi and the mandate to govern a world, or portion of a world, on behalf of the Caliph. But as emir, Kemal’s power was nearly total; he was the absolute ruler of the planet, save only for his fealty and obligations to the Caliph.
Fifteen years had passed since Kemal left Earth, and though his wealth would have allowed him to travel back and forth freely, he had never returned. The journey was long - over six months each way – and Kemal was busy building a world.
His energy had produced results. Calling Izmir a city was a bit of a stretch perhaps, at least by Earthly standards. But it was well on its way to deserving that status and, with 25,000 citizens and a bustling spaceport, it was a major metropolis out on the frontier.
Kemal had come to Bokhara a wealthy man already. Even the small sum allocated to a youngest son in a family as wealthy and prominent as the Raschid was a vast fortune. But now the planet itself had begun to add to his wealth. Most of the Caliphate’s colonies were backward, with a disinterested and decadent nobility ruling over the lower classes. These worlds produced only raw materials, shipping them back to Earth for processing. Kemal demanded more. Bokhara produced gemstones, some of the rarest and most valuable in human-occupied space. But Kemal did not ship raw stones back to the markets of Earth. The gems Bokhara exported were already cut and polished, and often used to create exquisite jewelry that sold for premium prices, swelling the coffers of Kemal Raschid.
In every area, the resources of the planet were fully exploited. The lower classes of Bokhara were poor and oppressed, as they were everywhere in the Caliphate, but the planet’s prosperity filtered down, making the life of a Bokharan peasant much more bearable than those elsewhere. As the demand for labor grew, Kemal allowed more immigration, mostly workers bonded to ten years’ service to pay for their passage. Kemal’s rule was firm, and sometimes harsh, but it was also fair…much more so than in most places, and he was popular with the masses.
The Caliphate had lost the Third Frontier War badly, and it had been forced to surrender a number of resource-rich colonies to the hated Alliance. Yet even this was to Kemal’s advantage, as the demand for new colonies to replace the lost production was acute. In addition to its planetary resources, Bokhara’s system boasted something else of great value – two warp gates leading into unclaimed space.
The Caliph was so desperate to replace the lost colonies with new worlds, he did something that had never been done before…he granted a lord power over more than one world. Kemal Raschid had been given vice-regal authority over two new planets discovered in one of the adjacent systems, with the proviso that he agree to develop them with his own resources. He anxiously accepted and initiated plans to settle the first of these almost immediately. Kemal had even been excused from the recent mobilization order, freeing 500 of his Spahi petty nobles from military service to assist in the colonization effort.
Now Kemal himself prepared to visit his new fief. At the spaceport, the shuttles had been launching for days, ferrying people and equipment to the orbiting fleet. An armada of ships, mostly transports, but some gunboats as well, had been assembled by Raschid to support his new interstellar dominion. The ships were mostly older surplus hulls but, old or new, fleets were expensive, and this one had strained even the vast resources of Kemal Raschid.
Kemal wordlessly waved his hand. It was a signal that he was finished listening to the petitioners. Hamid, his chamberlain and major domo had entered through the side door of the audience chamber.
“My lord, your shuttle awaits you.” The chamberlain stood respectfully in the doorway. His uniform was utilitarian, crisp and clean in sharp contrast to the intricate décor of the palace. When Kemal had first arrived on Bokhara he had imitated the pomp and ceremony of his father’s domicile, including antique period costumes for the staff. But years of hard work and a focus on the profitability of his estate had instilled a new appreciation for practicality.
“I am ready, Hamid.” Kemal walked toward the door, the chamberlain moving quickly out of his way. “It is time for me to see what these new worlds have to offer.”
Red Crescent moved across the front of the warp gate. The ship was thrusting at half a gee, altering its vector slightly to position itself to drop the next scanner buoy. The solar system, dubbed Zon 111 by the Caliphate, not only had two useful planets, it had a warp gate leading into uncharted space.
Zon 111 was far from any hostile borders, but Kemal was a cautious man, and he intended to take no chances. That warp gate probably led farther out into the galaxy, but it was always possible that the chain of warp lines looped back to an enemy world. The Caliphate had lost the war in no small part because the Alliance found a previously undiscovered warp gate that turned a once secure sector into a warzone. So Red Crescent was out here to put a detection grid in place. Once that was active, anything coming through the gate would trigger an alarm.
Captain Mustafa was bored. A veteran of the Caliphate’s navy, Mustafa had been in some of the largest battles ever fought. He’d mustered out during the purges after the war. It was better to retire in good standing, he thought, than to stay too long and become a scapegoat for defeat. He’d gotten a few civilian jobs, but trade among the Caliphate’s colonies collapsed after the war, and they were still recovering slowly. When Mustafa received Kemal’s offer to captain one of his new ships he gladly accepted.