by Jim Rudnick
Alver nodded, saluted back, and said, “You’re the one who found the wreck in the south, right?” which got him a nod.
“Then we’re going along for a tour of same. We intend to stop though and take a closer in-person look, so Dirks, ensure that the shuttle has full gear on same—rations too. Don’t know how long we might be out there, so better safe than sorry,” he added and that got nods too.
In another half an hour, the shuttle lifted off with only eight occupants: the admiral, Bram, and Karl from the Atlas, Major Stal, and four marines, all in full battle gear.
Shouldn’t have any worries about that kind of necessity, he thought, but then again, like the major said, better safe than sorry!
The shuttle climbed up at a precipitous angle, pitched to horizontal with the horizon, and the pilot punched it.
Mach 1, Mach 2, Mach 3 … faster and faster the shuttle went, and the continent and geography zoomed by underneath.
He looked out the windows and saw that a large body of water was coming up and twitched his head towards same.
“Yes, Sir—we don’t have a name for it as yet, but it’s the biggest ocean on Ghayth. We run over it for about the next hour, and then the southern continent comes up, and we aim at the far side of same or so.
Tanner nodded and closed his eyes. He wondered exactly who had left these ancient relics that were still totally usable by the RIM planets, like the anti-grav plates that now also powered the Barony Drive too. Beside him, Bram was also dozing as the shuttle made good time.
Tanner wondered just how far advanced the technology of these ancients was compared to that of humans and aliens who currently lived here in the RIM Confederacy, and he wondered if they knew their technology was being used still.
He had no idea really, and he didn’t know even how to imagine what all of this meant.
But one thing was for sure—Ghayth was the repository of more than rainy days … that was for sure.
As the beaches of the southern continent came up on the horizon, others commented about how beautiful they were, and he opened his eyes and agreed wholeheartedly. Wonderful white and pink sand beaches were wide and expansive as the line of tropical palms, trees, and shrubbery was well back from the waterline. He liked how there were sometimes what looked like small animals on the sands, wobbling as they walked along. From way up here, the waters on the beach were blue, azure, teal, and aquamarine all rolled into many layers of color and depth too.
As the shuttle went on, the beach fell behind and the plains and foliage of the lands crept up and went on and on. At a set of small valleys, he noted a huge herd of animals, about the size of a Garnuthian cow. Thousands of them were spread out over the grasslands feeding and milling about. The shuttle was noiseless, so the animals were undisturbed by them flying over, but Tanner wondered if they might make a great food source and made a note to let the administration know about same.
In another hour, they finally reached the area they were after, and the pilot said quietly, “We’re coming up on the craft soon,” as he banked the shuttle and slowed her down considerably.
Ahead was an area that was wet looking—like the rest of Ghayth, Tanner knew. The shuttle slowly turned to port close to a mountain range, and out of the valley floor, the skeleton of an enormous ship appeared out of the mists. It had buried its nose into the soft Ghayth fen that seemed to cover the planet, and what was left sticking up and out was mostly bare beams and broken sheets of hull plating. Engines were covered with what looked like Ghayth moss and vines, and pieces of wreckage had flown off at impact and lay around the corpse of the hull itself.
“Time to get a closer look,” Tanner said, and he nodded to Stal to have the pilot land the shuttle close by.
Time indeed, he thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
He tossed one more time, and as he did, he thought, there is not going to be much sleep tonight.
Hitting the pillows to change their shape hadn’t helped moments ago, just as it hadn’t helped two hours ago. He’d let one leg half-drape over the edge of his huge bed, and that hadn’t helped either. He’d lain on his back, both sides, and his stomach too … and still sleep was not in the offing either.
He had thought for more than an hour about his new admiral sense of running the Barony Navy—how he’d approached it as if he knew what he was doing. He'd tried his best, but often, he’d asked himself what Admiral McQueen might have done in the same circumstances.
As a mentor, the admiral had taught him pretty well to do as much recon on every single item that he needed to, to understand the problem as best as he could. Once you had the knowledge to make a decision, you did just that. You delegated, surely, wherever you could, but when a decision was called for—you made it.
He scratched an ear and pulled on the lobe. As he did so, he thought he detected a few—very few, mind you—strands of hair that he’d never noticed before on his ear lobe.
Hair. On my ears, he thought, as he tried to grab them and pull them out.
I’m so old that hair is growing out of my ears.
I’m old at forty—and my ears are reminding me about that.
He was unable to grab those very short hairs, and he wanted to go to the head to see if he could see them.
Wonder if they’re even black like my hair color is, or maybe even they’re gray, like at my temples, he thought.
He shuddered, punched a pillow again, and knew sleep was still in the distance.
He felt—as he was sure that all grooms felt—that the whole gestalt of a wedding was beyond him. It was the bride’s thing and her circle of support; in his case, the lady and the Baroness and now even Gillian, the lady’s Adept officer off the Sterling was a part of things as she’d just accepted Helena’s maid of honor position. Helena had said she’d always thought of Gillian as an aunt, and he knew they’d been together for more than twenty years.
Still, it did say something that Helena really had no close girlfriends, and he pondered that for a half hour. Being an heir to a barony meant that you had duty over friendship in every case. There was always another world to visit, another project to manage, or another commercial endeavor to champion for the barony. That made the finding of girlfriends hard and the keeping of same impossible, he’d finally reasoned out. There was no other answer he could come up with, which ate up another sleepless hour.
He rolled over on his back now, one arm above his head on top of the pillow and the other tucked below the covers resting on his chest. He could never fall asleep on his back, but he often started to feel sleepy in this position, so he tried it yet again.
He had to make the choices himself on whom to ask to be his best man, but it really boiled down to only a couple of friends. Either Bram for whom he’d had a large share of respect over the past five years or Admiral McQueen. Either was perfect, either was the one … which was the problem. Choose a past mentor or a younger man who knew his every thought and desires and needs.
It was something to think on, for sure, he thought once again, and yet he still couldn’t make up his mind.
He knew he had to decide but not tonight. Tonight, he’d just like to have a scotch—Black scotch was his brand—and he wanted one very badly right now. It was the first time since he’d gotten the shot from his doctor over on the Barony Hospital Ship that cured his alcoholism.
It was one thing to drink and get drunk—and that was what the shot had done—cured him from that.
He could still sit—and he had tested this a few times over the past year—and drink a scotch. It did not lead after a couple to the need, the driving desire, to have another and then another and another once more. The shot he’d gotten had cured his body of that kind of response to imbibing any kind of alcohol.
But what it had not been able to cure him of was the social part of drinking. The part where a group of friends or a table of marines and his buddy Alver all sat and drank some beers and some shots. The conviviality of the social part, the shot had not
been able to quell in him. He did love that. He still did that, but it had changed.
The few times he’d been in that situation, he felt he was a part of the group for the first round at the table. But every single round after that, he’d felt like he was less a member of the group and more of an observer. As the marines all together got potted, he didn’t. He found the talk and their topics sometimes got too far afield, and he just couldn’t relate—or even sit and listen for too long ... especially as the rounds kept coming.
What it boiled down to was the simple fact that he missed the fun of drinking. The real live fun of it …
He snorted and rolled over on his left side while tucking his left arm up and under the pillow, and he balanced his right arm on his right side, the covers bunched up just under his bicep.
Fun. What a word. It was fun to hunt pirates—as long as you were successful. It was fun to find a woman to bed, if you were successful. It was fun to get to be an admiral—but then you had to be successful at that too, he reasoned.
He tried to shake his head, but it was too buried into his pillow, and instead, he said to himself, “Head-shake goes here.”
He tried to think of nothing. Black empty space in front of him—not a single star to see.
Little dots of light and starbursts interrupted that blackness until he willed them out of existence.
“Too bad one can’t do that with all our enemies,” he said right out loud as he thought about rolling over to his other side. Not much sleep tonight was the prognosis …
#####
On the far wall of the executive committee meeting room, the Baroness noted that someone had been cleaning the bookcases with the knick-knacks she had donated to help make the room a nicer place to work in. At least that’s what she thought, and the fact that someone had been cleaning the items too might be a good sign. The sculptures from Bottle, the vacation planet here on the RIM, were now all shiny and glistened under some kind of wood wax. The sailing ships from DenKoss, the water world, were also somehow spruced up too … though how one could make canvas and thread and tiny braids look any better was beyond her.
The big wooden carving from the Ikarians over on Throth was shiny with a coat of wax. It was of a huge feathered serpent, and the bright oranges and reds on the yellow skin of the snake with those piercing blue eyes made it a standout on the bookcase—in the room, maybe, she thought as she sipped her tea.
Darjeeling, of course, its green color noticeable in the cup, and its floral aroma pervaded the room. As she sat and sipped, she waited for the rest of the committee to arrive. She thought for a moment about her new admiral and the changes he’d already brought to the Barony.
Good choice, she said to herself as she congratulated her decision.
The biggest change would be the advent of the Barony Drive to the RIM, via this BETA testing as he’d called it. While she, of course, had not attended the recent Captains Council meeting, she did have her own contacts within the group, and all had reported the same thing—Admiral Scott was capable and very much forward thinking.
Might just be the father of the next baron. She contemplated that for a moment and was interrupted as the Master Adept walked in to take her place at the small table in the meeting room.
They nodded to each other, and the Baroness added a mental hello and welcome which got an acknowledging nod back from the Master. Having a mind reader at the table was mostly a good thing, but she tried not to think about the gym visits that she’d canceled because she had been lazy yesterday. That too got a smile from the Master who dipped her head and asked a steward for a plain green tea.
“The Darjeeling green is very nice, Master,” the Baroness said as she gestured to her own cup in front of her.
The Issian nodded and in moments, the cup in front of her was filled with the same tea, and both women smiled as they drank.
The day on Juno was one of beautiful summer weather again. Looking out the window, the Baroness saw bright sunshine, few clouds, and an occasional bird or two flying over the Navy Hall building. If she stood, she would be able to look down at the parking area in the front of the building, but she was too comfortable for that much effort. Life was good, she thought and smiled.
A moment later, the chairman of the committee, Chairman Gramsci, bustled in, along with the Duke d’Avigdor and the admiral of the RIM Confederacy naval fleet. They were in some kind of discussion—heated perhaps, she thought—about something, and while they did nod their hellos, the conversation didn’t stop at all.
“And I’m telling you—both of you—that an escalating series of trade sanctions, tariffs, and even blockades can mean that while trade breaks down, it can lead to more than that. Much more … and the use of force is not unknown either,” the admiral said, and he was almost shaking his finger at the two of them.
The chairman dropped his many files, folders, and notebooks and two tablets on the table and said, “Nonsense, Admiral, we just won’t let that happen, Sir,” and he nodded vigorously to emphasize his point.
His disagreement was genuine even if his tone wasn’t, the Baroness thought, as she interrupted the argument. “I see that the Agenda will be moot today—may the Master and I just ask what the disagreement is that you’re all on so much about?” she said sweetly. Always good to know what the latest scuttlebutt was no matter what.
The duke nodded and tried to explain, as the Doge of Conclusion and the Caliph of Neria wandered in and went over to get some refreshments before joining the table.
“Baroness—and Master too—what we’re discussing is the escalation of the two big trading members of the RIM Confederacy and how they’re both upping the ante, so to speak, with their trade issues.
“The Leudies, it appears, are now insisting that there are subsidies on Faraway to their native manufacturing industries. Hence, the much lower cost of the goods that they are producing can be exported at very much lower costs—and that captures a larger market share. Economics 101 is the rule. But the Leudies are using the proper channels, via the RIM Confederacy Customs ministry, to force through the tariffs on such products—especially it seems at first on all mining equipment and the like.
“Faraway was surprised by this—and has had to succumb to paying these new tariffs but under protest, of course—”
“—And that’s why the new Faraway applications are now in front of Customs to have all Leudie fissionable materials that used to qualify for those extra fees discounted. If an ore, their application says, is fissionable means nothing if the ore is to be used as something else. Enriched ores, of course, would always qualify, but un-enriched ores should not. Makes sense to me—though why anyone would ever use U-238 as a plain Jane metal once smelted is beyond me.
“But what is also troubling—and as yet unknown by the Leudies—is that Faraway is now also marketing its own brand of enrichment hardware-slash-software. Buy U-238, import it at rock bottom rates, then use your own equipment to enrich the nuclear material yourself. Save and save again,” the chairman finished off and he shook his head.
The admiral nodded. “Didn’t know about those applications over at Customs—but it does look like they’re ramping up for a full-on confrontation,” he said and shook his head.
The chairman called for order, and the meeting began with a note that item number four, the trade wars, would now go to the end of the list for later discussion.
The clerk called for item number one, and they were soon discussing the upcoming full RIM Confederacy Council meeting and its agenda too.
The Master Adept brought up the Eons issue and the charges leveled by the protesters and how the full council might handle that. She made no claims and asked for no quarter, but the Baroness could tell the issue still carried some weight for the Issians.
The Baroness waited until the Master was finished and then she spoke up too. “We—the Barony—have promised that the head protester, this Kendal Steyn, will be allowed to make her comments under our sanction. We will fol
low through on that, and we will also make no comments or opinions known. The woman wishes to tell what she thinks is the truth to the council, which will happen. What will happen next is discussion, correct?” she asked of the chairman, and she received an affirmative nod from him.
“Then, someone will need to move a motion that the council appoint a special investigator to look into the issue and make a report back to the Confederacy Council with the report on their resulting investigation. That can, or might, take months if not a year or even two. Once the report is complete, it will need to be studied first by us—the Executive Committee—and then moved down to the full council. Again, that can take time, and as we all know, things change pretty rapidly here on the RIM. Might that not be the way to go for an item like this?” she asked, and all around the table, she saw nods of agreement.
She turned to the Master Adept and spoke to her alone. “Ma’am—I have no idea as to the veracity of this claim by this Steyn woman. But over the next months and perhaps years, might I suggest that these issues be looked at by Issians themselves as a way to forestall any kind of full RIM Confederacy issues arising?”
That got a definite nod and a bow from the Master Adept, and the chairman gave the committee clerk the proper items to record, and they moved on to item number two on the list.
#####
On Alex’n, the largest of the realms in the RIM Confederacy, the shipyards that housed their sphere ships was the stopover for all repairs and such. Being the capital planet of the fifteen-strong planetary realm was one thing, but the shipyards serviced all fifteen of the planets, including all commercial, passenger, and yes even the Alex’n Navy too, which meant they ran three full shifts daily.
Major repairs were handled on the far side of the thousand-acre yards in the dry docks that lay on that side. Smaller repairs and the like were done by alien technicians and robots, and they occurred on an hourly basis.
The Alex’n race, an alien race that had held these planets for over five thousand years, had six arms which was a boon for a repair crew. Nothing helped more than being able to put extra leverage on a bolt or to hold a panel with three hands while working on it with two or three more hands. Alex’n technicians were worth their weight in platinum.
