by Jim Rudnick
He nodded to Bram and then said, “Play message” to the AI on his PDA, and above the unit, a small hologram appeared all in monochromatic teal blue. The face was the face of the Lady St. August, and Bram, seeing that, walked away a few yards to play with his own PDA to give Tanner some privacy.
“Tanner—it’s me. I’d very much like to see you—could you come to the Sterling tonight for dinner? So we can talk?” she asked politely. No mention of anything else—no sorry and no forgive me for putting you on such a shitty duty mission. Nothing but dinner, the invitation said.
He nodded and said, “PDA, acknowledge receipt of message. Send back a yes, I’ll come to dinner at nineteen hundred hours. See you then. Normal signature,” he finished off, and his RSVP done, he said, “PDA off,” and the teal blue hologram disappeared.
Bram came over and smiled. “Appears that as the Master Adept said, you two will be back together—and a wedding in a year! Wow … will that be a party!” he said with a slap on his captain’s shoulder.
Tanner half-smiled. He didn’t react with more interest, as he knew that what an Issian saw—even the Master herself saw—sometimes did not happen.
He knew that this might happen … but then also that an asteroid could come down and send Eons back into the stone age too.
At least that’s what he told himself. But there was no denying Bram was a happy camper.
He sighed once more and sat in the flyer as Bram climbed in beside him.
Today, over at Tower Number Three, he was going to sit in on the Gallipedia installations at the student library, and he was looking forward to it as he did have a soft spot in his brain for the galaxy-sized resource that Gallipedia was.
Moments later as they lifted off and he spun the flyer to the west, he made one small loop around the Sterling as she sat on landing pad number fifty-three. The Barony frigate was, as always, perfectly turned out. Shiny. Her Barony logo of the twin blue and red crowns shone so much it looked like it had been freshly re-done. Down on the tarmac, some chandlers were in-loading something in cases, and he noted the EliteGuards had a couple of squads out doing calisthenics, and even from up here, he could see the sweat and effort these Royal guards were putting out.
As he spun farther to the west, he kicked down on the throttle, and the flyer accelerated up and away. In less than fifteen more minutes, remembering that this was Bram’s first trip to the new academy, he dropped down and made loops of all four towers. He even flew the canyon too for a mile or so. As he came up by the big yellow stain of some kind of ore in the canyon wall, Tower Number Three appeared, and he gunned the flyer up and over the canyon rim as he completed the loop and dropped her down agilely onto the tarmac of the tower landing pads.
As they strode by the Provost guard at the landing tarmac gate, he nodded to Tanner but called over Bram to officially login for the first time. He grinned at Tanner.
“So … do just we Issians get this kind of treatment, or do all of us get same?” he wondered, as they walked away from the gate toward the now closed massive double doors that led into the tower ahead.
“All of us—guess it’s how they know who belongs and who doesn’t,” Tanner said back, and as they reached the walkway in front of the doors and stepped on the huge plate of blue granite that had just been laid down, the doors swung open.
“Nice touch,” Bram said, and they walked into the tower.
In its finals stages of finishing off all the construction shortfalls and extras, there were still contractors, student cadets, and construction supervisors all over the lobby. Some were discussing items that only meant something to themselves, while others were pointing at small pieces of green tape that final inspectors had placed where there was a problem.
Tanner and Bram got in a queue to go up to the library floor in the tower. Floor four was the main library floor, and in a few more minutes, they were there.
As they entered, Tanner was glad to see there must have been a division of cadets already ensconced in row after row, stack after stack, placing books and updating their tablets. Yes, electronic books also existed, but like most people who did research, you couldn’t somehow define the feel of a book, yet the information you got from same by far outweighed what a tablet could say. Somehow, Tanner thought, the heft of a real book meant more.
At the side on the left, they were greeted by a library staff member, and she smiled at them and ushered them down a long corridor, one side stacked with books on dollies ready for their placement. At the large doors at the end of the corridor, she opened the door, and Tanner and Bram found themselves in a meeting room and went to sit off to one side. They were there to watch and learn and not to contribute—but Tanner knew that he might have to speak up should the need arise.
In another twenty minutes, all the meeting attendees must have arrived as there were now ten of them sitting at the table. Three were from Faraway, Tanner noted, their tails all docile, so no problems there yet. One more was from Skogg, his purple skin really quite dark, almost plum colored, which was an unusual shade for this kind of alien. He was surprised to see an Enkian there too with a black and lavender crest of feathers on his head.
“Resources, yes?” Bram whispered, which got a nod from Tanner—a crest of black and lavender meant this Enkian was from the Resources Muse—the ones that ran the planet, in fact. He’d had enough of how the different muses engaged with each other already. And yet Enki had been a newly annexed planet, in the Caliphate realm, and yet here they were at a meeting about the academy library.
“Odd, perhaps, but interesting,” Tanner thought to Bram, and he nodded, as he’d gotten that thought.
The head of the meeting was a library staff member—one that neither Tanner nor Bram knew—and she called the meeting to order and went around the table introducing everyone.
The human from inwards, who was here representing the Gallipedia interests, was interesting for sure.
“A woman, about fifty or so in years if one can tell anymore,” Tanner said to himself.
She was dressed in what might have been very much in style inward in the galaxy, yet here on the RIM, such an outfit of closely fitted small scales of some kind of shiny metal made her look like an old medieval soldier of some type. Her hair looked like it had been doused with some kind of metal sparkles, and they were of all colors, and he assumed that they too were in style. Somewhere. The fact that the only human skin one could see was on the woman’s face and hands really didn’t matter, he supposed.
The first one to talk on the Agenda was the Gallipedia representative, so while she didn’t rise, she did speak loudly, pointedly, and to each and every person at the table.
“My job here today is simple; I have been instructed to acknowledge that the RIM Confederacy has fulfilled all of the necessary applications, paid it’s fees, and has therefore been granted CONDITIONAL status as a Gallipedia node in the galaxy-wide network,” she said, as her gaze swung from attendee to attendee.
CONDITIONAL? Tanner thought. That’s how it worked, he supposed, but he was not alone on that point.
“CONDITIONAL?” the attendee from Skogg said in a voice that was questioning yet somehow sounded ominous.
She nodded. “Yes, CONDITIONAL means that if all goes well in the first year—we will then grant the FULL membership, and the academy will be a node for one and all to see and use.” She said it so matter-of-factly that everyone in the room seemed to accept that.
Except the alien from Skogg, previously introduced as one of the members of the Board of Directors for the Academy, didn’t accept that.
“Pardon me for asking, but is this the normal way that a university like the RIM Confederacy Naval Academy is granted Gallipedia membership? A CONDITIONAL entry level position—when the academy, at least over at its original location, has already been a full member for over, what, hundreds of years already?” he drilled down on that point once more.
He seemed to have caught the Gallipedia woman out in the open as sh
e actually squirmed in her seat. She looked down at her papers in the file in front of her and riffled through some of same, Tanner thought to buy time.
Eventually, she had to look up at the Skoggian and then the whole table.
She looked a bit perturbed but finally did answer.
“Not normally, no. But we—Gallipedia—have received some … uh … some information from various sources that the academy, while on Eons and therefore under control of the Issians here, is having some issues with what I’ll refer to as internal conflicts. Something, we were told has yet to come to fruition. So, like all organizations run for the good of its members—the whole galaxy—we have taken the simple precaution of granting CONDITIONAL membership to the new academy. I’m sure that whatever it is that is in flux will work itself out in the next year …” she said, her voice trailing off.
No one spoke.
Not a word.
Someone, Tanner thought, had gone to Gallipedia and had told stories out of school—on what he had no idea.
But this was interesting for sure, and he wondered who that had been … who had tried to subvert the full membership renewals...
#####
At nineteen hundred hours, Tanner presented himself to the EliteGuard who stood on watch at the boarding ramp of the Sterling—the Lady St. August’s personal frigate. He nodded to the guard and then waited while he checked his tablet. The guard said, “Good to go aboard, Sir. Deck Nineteen is your destination, Sir,” and he grinned at the guard and went up the ramp.
Like all frigates, the Sterling was a vertically stacked craft. Down the long axis of the ship, for its three hundred feet, lay the lifts and shafts that carried the supporting infrastructure of the ship. Each of the ship’s twenty decks was stacked one above each other, and as he was going up to nineteen, he already knew that he was expected to go to the lady’s private quarters.
He smiled. Been there before. And again tonight, which got a wider smile as he thought of what that might mean.
And then he frowned as he entered the lift doors and said, “Nineteen” to the elevator AI, and the motion of going up began.
He had walked away from the lady due to issues that he had with a marriage to her.
That was true. But if she had been noodling around those issues and had come up with a way to defeat them, then maybe that’s why she wanted to see him. Maybe yes. Maybe no.
He knew one thing though for sure—that only by working out the issues of a commoner marrying a Royal could their union work.
The door ahead of him opened up by sliding into the lift wall, and he took a step out into the deck corridor.
And he stopped cold.
Why am I doing this, he suddenly wondered as he stopped to think on that for a few minutes.
He knew that seldom—so seldom that he’d never been a part of such an occurrence—did a Royal change their mind.
It might mean that Helena was not going to consider his issues with their marriage.
Which might mean that she was using herself as a lure to try to get him to change his mind—and he couldn’t help but grin as that was a threat that he understood well. She was the prettiest—the most beautiful—woman he had ever made love to …
From around the curved walls in front of him came a voice, her voice …
“Tanner … are you dawdling, honey?”
The voice was like liquid love to him, as she slowly came around the corridor from his left.
He took a step out from the lift and turned to face her squarely.
She was in a color he’d never seen before—something between amber and orange and gold. Dressed in a set of what he’d call leggings and a matching top, she wore very high heels, and her hair was stacked up with the same color somehow on sparkles that glinted at him in the deck lights. He nodded and couldn’t say a word, as she came right up to him, slid into his arms that now embraced her, and kissed him. Kissed him again. And then one more time.
Lost. I’m lost, he thought, as he continued to hug her tightly, and she twisted in his grasp to walk with him, arm in arm, down the corridor. Only a few feet, but in those feet he realized that the Master Adept would be correct. There would be a wedding and she’d officiate at same, if he could talk Helena into it.
And he smiled down at her as they crossed the threshold of her quarters and she spoke again.
“AI, secure these quarters. No entry by anyone—Barony code Q-Twelve—confirm …”
“Confirmed, Ma’am” the AI voiced her receipt that it had complied and that all was as she demanded.
“AI, turn off your monitoring of these quarters ‘til say eight hundred hours tomorrow. Barony code Q-Twenty-two—confirm …”
“Confirmed, Ma’am. Shutting down all AI activity in these quarters ‘til eight hundred hours tomorrow.”
While Tanner couldn’t discern it, he was sure that the AI wasn’t happy with being off and not monitoring the heir to the Barony. But then he remembered that one of his comments the last time he’d been with Helena in this very room had been that he’d always felt that with AI being on and monitoring him, he wasn’t trusted by Helena either. He hadn’t said that exactly, but still he felt that way.
That one’s been handled, he thought.
Wonder what else she’s come up with?
He sat where she said to sit, over in the kitchen area that she had been cooking up a storm in, and he smiled at her when she handed him the corkscrew.
“You know how to use that, I believe”, she said, as she continued to hold it, and he had to wrestle it from her fingers.
“Yes, Ma’am, I surely do. Might I ask what vintage we’d like to begin with this evening?” he said, as he glanced over at the compact wine rack built into the wall of this big kitchen island.
She danced around the other side and lifted the lid on a large red cast iron oven skillet that sat on top.
“Tonight, we’re having a big Jambalaya—one whose recipe came from a friend I have over on Turljis—one of our Barony realm worlds, Captain. It’s chock full of seafood and sausage, and the rice is to die for—so let’s have a wonderfully buttery Quaran Chard, shall we?” She went back to her stove-top, and while Tanner fought the cork out of the bottle, she chopped a couple of herbs up and tossed them into the skillet. She also stirred what he thought must be the rice, and moments later after a quick taste, she nodded and strained it in the sink. Pressing out the last of the boiling water, she then lifted the lid to the jambalaya and deposited all of that rice right on top. A few quick stirs later, the top went back on the meal as she turned off the burner.
“Twenty minutes to let the mix all meld ‘til dinner’s ready,” she announced as she came around to sit on an island stool beside him.
She picked up her glass, and smiling at him, she took a small sip and swirled the wine around in her mouth. Her blue eyes opened up, and she almost lost the snippet of wine she was tasting as she smiled and then swallowed it.
“Gosh, I love Chardonnays,” she said and then took a much bigger taste as she swirled the wine in the glass. The legs of the vintage even Tanner could see from feet away were big—and he took a gulp of his own.
She looked at him then, and putting down the glass, she took both of his hands in her own.
“Tanner—I want to be totally honest with you. I want there to be no areas of our relationship that we hide from each other. I want to be in love with you—I am in love with you. And I don’t want that to stop,” she said, and as he was about to speak up, she held up her hand to stop him.
She slid around on her seat for a moment and then looked back at him, those blue eyes lit with what he’d always remember as love for him.
“I am the heir to the Barony. I can never ever give that up—it’s what I was born and raised to be. As you may know, my mother died at my birth, and until my father, the Baron, remarried, I’ve never had a mother figure. Not that the current Baroness is such a person—what I mean is that it’s now going to be up to me to bear the next
heir. And I want that child to be our child, Tanner. I want to marry you, and I will do whatever it takes to accomplish that for myself and the Barony too,” she said, and her voice was shaky and tremulous.
She looked at him plainly. “Anything—whatever it takes …”
He looked at her, and a smile broke out and he nodded.
That’s all that he did. He nodded and she launched herself off her stool and into his arms.
It was all he could do to not tip over backward, but he somehow was able to stand, and lifting her, he carried her out of the kitchen area to her bed in the next room.
Hours later, when the jambalaya was in a big deep-sided dish lying between them on the bed and they were both eating it up with big smiles, he spoke.
“Helena. Dunno why I said what I said months ago—but I think we have a chance to be happy. The Master Adept does so too, I’d add, and she’s already said that we marry in the next year—and she added that she’d love to perform the ceremony for us,” he offered, and Helena tilted her head to think on that for a moment.
“A year, eh? Okay, time’s short, as there is so, so, so much to plan and do. Will happen on Neres, of course, in the palace. We’ll have no more though than, say, five thousand guests—I so hate big weddings,” she added, and while Tanner tried to restrain himself, his eyebrows arched up at that.
She nodded to him and waved her fork around to emphasize her point. “You’ve perhaps never been to a head of state wedding before—but it’s a bloody big deal. We’ll have each of the RIM Confederacy realm’s heads—or their designates—there, our own planetary representatives and entourages and families … it’s a big deal, Tanner. You’ll see … it takes hours for us to just meet and greet the heads of state only. Palace will be good for that—oh, guess I have to tell the Baroness today too.”
She stabbed a shrimp, then used her fingers to pile on some of that rice, and popped the big forkful into her mouth.
As she chewed that up, he thought he’d never been happier. He was sitting with the most beautiful woman in the RIM and working out the details of the wedding as they munched on a late dinner. Wouldn’t have been so late if they hadn’t made love the three times, but those memories he had to file away or else the jambalaya would have to wait again.
