It didn't even occur to Veeri to decline.
For nearly fifteen centuries there'd been no distinction in law between a "Greater" and a "lesser" nobility. The formal categories had been erased when the empire had become the Kalifate, part of an agreement that had gained Kalif Yeezhur the military backing of the lesser nobility. Backing that made him the first emperor Kalif.
But in fact the distinction remained, a distinction based mainly now on wealth and tradition. And while the senior male in every noble family, Greater or lesser, held a vote, members of only certain families were eligible to serve in the Diet.
Most of the old Great Families were still so regarded, even those whose earlier wealth had declined somewhat. Their extensive plantations gave them the potential to recoup, meanwhile living like true aristocrats. Occasionally of course, one of them would be disgraced and lose its status, or simply die out.
The Great Families had been joined from time to time, almost surreptitiously, by one and another family of the lesser nobility who'd become especially rich and influential. The Greater Nobles might then begin treating them like one of their own. An example was the Lamatahasu family, of which Lord Fakoda was presently the head.
The military, however, truly recognized no distinction, either in the imperial services or in those of the individual worlds. A son of the poorest noble family, perhaps with only a confectioner's shop to support it, could become a general if he had the necessary skills. In fact, the sons of lesser families made up a sizeable majority of the officer corps, from top to bottom, in every branch, even the navy. Thus, in the armed forces, if a Greater Noble was prejudiced against the lesser nobility, he'd do well to keep it to himself.
Gentry were a different kind of phenomenon, a legally defined class of different origin intermediate between the nobility and peasantry. Gentry made up the entirety of noncommissioned officers, the so-called "sergeantcy," which included corporals. And for a very long time, occasional gentry had entered the officers corps during war by promotion from sergeant. But only over the last three centuries had they been accepted into the service academies and grown to an appreciable minority of commissioned officers.
As officers, gentry met a certain amount of discrimination both socially and on promotion rosters, the amount depending on ability, personality, and the unit's commanding officer. Among gentry, excellence was usually necessary to attain a captaincy, short of one's final years; it was essential to rising higher.
Though wealth also helped.
At age thirty-one, Tagurt Meksorli was already a major. Kulen Meksorli, Tagurt's paternal grandfather thrice removed, had been hired as a stevedore foreman at a spaceport on Varatos. The young foreman, who was paid a percentage of his job contracts, had paid his peasant laborers on the basis of production. Under the table, of course; the practice was illegal, there being a set pay scale for peasants. Soon he bought the crew contract and developed a virtual fief, his fast, efficient crews having gobbled up much of the local cargo-handling business. The more profitable part of it.
Then, in a wild, high-stakes card game, Kulen had won a small hyperspace merchantman, a tramp freighter. He'd paid professional ship inspectors to go over it for him, then plunged most of what he owned and could borrow into getting it overhauled.
Its ownership stimulated Kulen's already active sense of adventure. He left his brother in charge of the cargo-handling business and went into space as an apprentice to his own captain and chief engineer. Within two years he was a full-time smuggler, and through the exercise of considerable cunning, professional ethics, attention to detail, and at key junctures further daring, he compiled a considerable fortune. Which, before he was an old man, included seven ships, none of them smugglers. Having avoided arrest, prison, and confiscation, he'd gone straight as soon as he could afford to.
By the time his great-great-great-grandson had grown to manhood, the Meksorli Line included one of the system's largest fleets of sweepboats, seven refinery ships, a large fleet of bulk carriers, a dozen hyperspace package freighters, and three luxury liners. The Meksorlis were richer than even most Great Families, but no gentry on Varatos had been elevated to the nobility for nearly three millenia. And none of the Meksorlis, the men anyway, aspired to it; they were proud of what they were and what they'd accomplished.
Tagurt aspired to be the first gentry general-a general instead of an admiral because generalcies were more numerous. He had the agreement and appreciation of both his father and grandfather. In that regard, his great-grandfather, old Kulen's sole surviving grandson, had told the young cadet that he was lucky to be gentry instead of nobility. "It'll make the rank more meaningful," he'd said, "and getting it more interesting. "
On graduation from the academy, the new sublieutenant and would-be general had volunteered for an assault regiment, which marked him as ambitious-ambitious or a glutton for hard work. Once assigned, he volunteered to command a maintenance platoon, maintenance platoons being notorious for everything happening at once, for all-night duty, and the need for ramrod officers who were resourceful and quick. And results were hard to fake; the equipment either functioned or it didn't.
Tagurt stayed there long enough to get a reputation and a full lieutenancy. Then, at his own request, he'd been transferred to a notorious and dreaded post, the prison planet Shatimvoktos. Furthermore, he signed for two imperial years there, when the normal tour of duty was one. Simply to request service on Shatimvoktos was virtually unheard of, so that by itself made him a watched man. If he screwed up, his prospects would be seriously impaired.
And if he excelled, that would be noticed, too, gentry or not. Which was, of course, his reason for doing it.
Shatimvoktos was the most dangerous duty the peacetime military offered. Most of its enlisted personnel, the guards especially, were hardbitten, veteran misfits who'd been assigned there as a form of unofficial punishment. The gravity was 1.38-grueling-the atmosphere toxic, the summers almost lethally hot, the winters brutally cold. And if the guards were hardbitten, the prisoners were mostly worse-dangerous men, many of them more or less psychotic-who expected to the there and had nothing to lose. They worked with hammers, drills, blasting gel, crowbars, and hand shovels, digging iron ore from open pits. Even in an economy like the empire's, such an operation was grossly uneconomical, feasible only with unpaid, throw-away labor. Its purposes were the punishment and disposal of criminals, and to serve as a threat to troublemakers.
Deadly fights were common among the prisoners, and they acted quickly when they saw a chance to kill a guard. When a captain of the guard died in what might or might not have been an accident, Tagurt succeeded him, and in time was given the rank to go with the job. Then, as the most qualified available officer, he extended his tour another half year, to fill in for the provost marshal, who'd gone home for a family emergency.
From Shatimvoktos, he'd been assigned to the Capital Division, an elite heavy infantry division stationed only thirty miles outside Ananporu. The division personnel officer mentioned him to the division CO., who examined Tagurt's personnel file and appointed him deputy division provost marshal, a virtual vacation after the prison planet. When the general was satisfied that the young man could handle an easy post with a discriminating hand as well as he had a terrible post requiring an iron fist, he recommended an early promotion to major for his gentry protege-promotion without the standard minimum of three years in rank. The Kalif approved it, and the new major became the general's aide.