My own country celebrated its Independence Day this week, so I thought I’d publish a couple of excerpts (one yesterday, one today, one tomorrow) from the opening chapter of my novel Scapegoating a Hero, which deals in part with the fictional country of Jaiya gaining its independence.

Lieutenant Rijal, Communications Watch Officer aboard the heavy cruiser Alicorn, waited for the radio operator to finish transcribing the new orders coming in.
The radio operator listened to the message coming in on his headphones, and wrote out what he was hearing on a piece of carbon paper.
“Almost done, sir,” the radio operator said when he caught Rijal’s eye. “They are going to pause, and then repeat transmission. I’ll confirm what I have then.” He pulled off one of his headphones to make the conversation easier.
“Any idea what’s in it?” Rijal asked.
“It’s encrypted, so it must be about the Viceroy’s mission,” the radio operator said.
Then he smiled. “You’re pretty calm about this, Lieutenant, for someone whose future is about to be decided by a bunch of land-lubbing politicians.”
“We are all calm about things we can’t control, chief,” Rijal said. “Neither you nor I would have lasted this long in the Navy otherwise.”
“That’s more than Navy calm you’re showing, Lieutenant,” the radio operator said. He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”
Rijal shook his head. “I don’t have enough information to see which way this is going to go,” he said. “But I will find out what our orders a little bit before the Captain does.”
“Because you will be hand-carrying it to him and you can crack the code without using a key,” the radio operator said with a grin.
“Exactly.”
Officially, the Imperials did not believe in what some Jaiyans termed “Oldblood powers.” Unofficially, Imperial sailors believed in good and bad luck, and what they called “second sight.”
Most of the communications department knew that Rijal could see patterns in events, and predict them to some extent, and that he could decrypt an encoded message just by reading it through a couple of times.
They considered the twenty-five-year-old Jaiyan to be their good-luck charm. Rijal thought one or two of the senior officers knew about his decryption abilities as well, but would not admit to believing in such things.
The radio operator turned serious. “Here it comes again,” he said, and pulled his headphones back into place.
His pencil hovered above the carbon paper, tracking from line to line as he listened to the repeated message. Then he signed the carbon paper and handed it to Rijal.
Rijal detached the faint-looking carbon copy from the back of the carbon sheet and read it through, comparing it to the original. The communications department was supposed to file the carbon copy, as part of the bookkeeping on the messages they received, and it had to be legible.
This gave Rijal a legitimate excuse to read and reread the message until the jumble of nonsense words fell away and he could see their meaning uncoded. Pact Signed. Sovereignty Recognized. Proceed to main docks to collect former Viceroy Worlington.
We are free. Rijal’s heart beat a little faster at the idea, and then he thought: if we can survive this day.
Captain Ferrule had been drinking too much lately, and acting strangely. Normally, the Jaiyans under Ferrule’s command were practically invisible to the Captain, but Rijal had twice run across him have a quiet conversation with the Main Gunnery Officer. The gunnery officer commanded the gun turrets used for sea-to-land-bombardments. Both times, the Captain had shut up immediately and stared at Rijal.
A dozen other tiny incidents surfaced in Rijal’s memory, seemingly unconnected but turning into a pattern in his mind, just as the nonsense words in the message had.
“Is it good news?” The radio operator asked. He looked worried.
Rijal forced a wan smile. “Barring complications, you will be steaming out of Goodbay later in the week, with the Viceroy but without myself or the other Jaiyans.”
The Imperial Navy had done some groundwork for the transition by finding out which Jaiyan-born officers would choose to stay with the Empire, and which would choose to leave.
Rijal’s conditional letter of resignation had been sitting on some Admiral’s desk back in the Imperial Heartland, waiting for this moment.
The radio operator smiled in relief. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. You were looking a bit spooky there, so I wondered if everything was all right.”
“It’s a great deal to take in,” Rijal lied.
A plan for dealing with Ferrule was already developing inside his head, but with luck, he would not need to involve the communications department. At least, not much.
He told the radio operator: “I’ll take the master copy up to the Captain, and he can decode it and make it official. There’s no harm in letting the rest of our department know what I told you, but try to keep it from going any further than that.”
He didn’t want the news to reach the Main Gunnery Officer yet, but he did want to make sure that he and the radio operator weren’t the only ones who knew what was happening in the city.
“Will do, Lieutenant.” The radio operator reached out his hand, and Rijal shook it. “I don’t care what those old men say, you blighters deserve your independence after all you did in the war. And if they’re all as spooky as you, we’re better off not making trouble for you.”
“Thank you,” Rijal said. It was pointless to tell the man, as he often had before, that few Jaiyans had Oldblood powers, and Rijal’s ability was very rare outside his own family. “I’ll have to stand you a drink, next time we’re both off-duty.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Lieutenant,” the radio operator called after him as he walked out of the room.
The typical procedure was to file the carbon copy and then carry the master copy to the bridge for the Captain to decode and read.
If the message had come in with an uncoded “Urgent” designator at the beginning, Rijal would have been required to go straight to the bridge. It didn’t, so he didn’t.
Instead, he went to the ship’s master-at-arms, who was in charge of shipboard security, and told him of his fears that someone would disobey orders and try to attack the city of Goodbay.
He did not mention anyone in particular, but pointed out that that any troublemakers working the gun turrets would find it easier to make serious trouble than the rest of the crew.
“Yes, I’ve had my suspicions as well,” the master-at-arms told him. “I’ll keep an eye on that lot. You and the other Jaiyans are welcome to sign out a pistol from the weapons locker for your own protection, if you like. Just remember to sign it back in before you leave the ship.”
I was hoping you’d say that, Rijal thought, and then did as the master-at-arms advised. He tucked the carbon copy of the message into one pocket, and shoved the pistol into his waistband, against his lower back. Only then did he head to the bridge….