by Jim Rudnick
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Dear Reader…
The RIM Confederacy
A Message to you from the Author
Title
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Epilogue
Title
Prologue
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Epilogue
Title
Prologue
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
Epilogue
next Book Prologue
Reviews
THE RIM CONFEDERACY SERIES
Book Ten - Brothers Pride
Book Eleven - Honeymoon Bottle
Book Twelve - Captured Aliens
By Jim Rudnick
This is purely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book may not be re-sold or given away without permission in writing from the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means past, present or future.
ISBN-13: 978-1-988144-34-4
Copyright © 2017
Jim Rudnick
RUDNICK PRESS
All rights reserved.
For my Susan…
Dear Reader…
Thank you for reading this ebook.
If you have borrowed this book through the Kindle Unlimited subscription program, I kindly ask that —
— you click through to the last page of this book when you are finished reading and exit the book!
This will ensure that the author is properly credited for the book borrow…
Thank you…
Jim Rudnick
The RIM Confederacy: Brother’s Pride
"While the wrecked alien ship on Ghayth provides some interesting new technology, Admiral Scott has nothing on his mind but his upcoming wedding to the Lady St. August. In only a couple of months, he’ll have vows to pledge and a ring to don as he becomes a Royal himself to take the new title of Lord Scott. And the only thing in his way—even though he doesn’t know it, is his sister Gia who has pledged revenge upon him for the death of their sister, Nora.
With the upcoming release of the Ikarian longevity vaccine, the RIM Confederacy realms are all wanting more and more of the vaccines to double their lifetimes, while the Baroness is purposely chocking off the supply. Added to that is the fact that the Master Adept knows what will happen at the wedding and she is hurriedly training her own replacement and the wedding will be where the assassination attempt is made.
But the Master is not the only wedding party member to die at the altar as the admirals sister takes careful aim and screams out her revenge and Tanner falls as do others—all to pay penance for his crime of decades ago…”
The RIM Confederacy: Honeymoon Bottle
"Recovering from almost fatal wounds at the hands of his sister, Tanner finds the time spent on the beach on Bottle a great way to recharge and think about his future too. Finding a way to save his sister is one major item on his plate but then there is the late Duke’s Will and the codicil offer that was beyond his wildest expectations—what to do?
The Barony had other issues, from the new discovery of more ancient relics on the crashed alien ship on Ghayth to the news that the Baroness was out once again, trying to expand her realm. When a mysterious package arrives sent to the Ambassador in charge of the Duchy, the secret is out and the hunt for a new Duke is now public news.
As the RIM Confederacy Council meeting convenes to decide the fate of the Duchy of Neen, the whole Confederacy is surprised and Provost Guards enter the room to keep the peace—which may or may not last past the end of the meeting, never mind lasting for the whole RIM Confederacy!”
The RIM Confederacy: Captured Aliens
"While Duke Tanner Scott takes over the reins of the Duchy, there are other forces at work that will challenge his new role. The alien Praix suddenly show up off Ghayth to begin to take over the RIM Confederacy and the Issians appear to not be able to help. Add to his woes as his sister charged with the two murders at his wedding goes to trial for murder and that his protege declares his love for her too.
Meanwhile the Leudies offer to help the upcoming battle with the Praix by lending their new Power Belts to the RIM Task Force and that is matched by the offer of the Caliph to lend his Xithricite clad ships as well. Even the Baroness knows that these aliens are a superior race and their technology is something to be feared as she pushes her navy to come up with a plan.
Added to all of this, is the sudden find of more Praix technology on the wreck on Ghayth. And the secretive move by the Praix as they are attacked by surprise by a rogue Barony navy captain means that once again, on the RIM, lines are drawn in the sand.”
A Message to you from the Author…
I just wanted to say thanks so so much for reading my fourth BoxSet of the RIM Confederacy!
As my Amazon bio says, being a youngster in the 1950's meant that I was a voracious reader in what has been called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. That meant that for me, my heroes were not on the hockey rink or gridiron - but instead in my local Library where at 12 I had a full Adult card (thanks Dad!) and took out more than 5 books a week.
Everyone from Heinlein, Norton, Leiber, Pohl, Anderson, Simak, Asimov, Brackett, Gunn, Van Vogt and more....I fell in love with and eventually owned Ace Doubles of my own. And while I never knew who wrote the Tom Corbett - Space Cadet series, I fell in love with them and they had a place of honor on my own bookcase too!
With that kind of an introduction to Science Fiction, it's no wonder that when I got my writing work done, I turned my own fictional side of my brain to writing same. It's one thing I know how to write - and a totally different matter to release same to the world - something that I've just started to work on....
Suffice it to say my own works are rooted in that Golden Age and it's that era that I'd like to one day be known as a teensy contributor to in some small way...
So once again, thanks for beginning my RIM Confederacy series and wait'll you learn about the alcoholic spaceship captain that is my hero, who fights and beats aliens but not the bottle!
Enjoy and remember, in a series, characters develop and mature not the way we sometimes want…instead, it's like they have a life of their own!
And while you can read the series in any order, I'd highly recommend to start with Pirates then follow the Series in order!
RIM CONFEDERACY
Brother’s Pride
by Jim Rudnick
Prologue ~
She dreamed as mostly all long voyage sleepers dream, the dreams long and complex and intertwined with her past and her future. She felt like she needed to scratch an ankle, but the knowledge that she was in a cryogenics tank, submersed in the freezing solution so that she couldn’t even reach all the way down to her ankle was there.
She knew that she was sleeping her way to the RIM, but that didn’t make the dreams any less real to her.
She was floating, like a bird or a dirigible, over the landscape below, it’s darkened colors almost too monotone to even make them out. The frozen side of Branton lay behind her, she’d floated for thousands of miles already in the sub-darkness, with stars only above and after hours of that kind of dream, the light ahead was getting closer.
Branton was a tidal locked planet; it kept one face towards it’s sun all the time. She knew that this effect is known as synchronous rotation. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner and Branton had rotated around it’s own star for billions of years.
One side that was hot, very hot and very sere and very much tough to live on. The other side, then one she’d just flown over was dark, almost no light got to it at all. It was cold. It was uninhabited for the most part unless one went to the tropical areas on the equator.
Still no light, but there was some bleed-over of heat there, and in this twilight kind of living, many millions lived. The band around the planet, was about three hundred miles wide, where the hot scorching sun lay on one side and the cold arctic climate ruled the other.
Three hundred miles wide, this band of civilization held the citizens of Branton. They lived therein, they worked therein and yes they spent as much time as they could in the habitable zone.
But the planet of course, lay before it, both hot and cold. Sometimes they needed to go out into the hot areas and others into the freezing cold. To mine for ores, or to get access to more water or even just for scientific observations.
She flew over the last few miles of the darkness and ahead the light was growing brighter and brighter. Soon, she squinted as the sunlight caught her at this height and she couldn’t slow or turn…she was propelled on wards into the light…and the heat.
After not more than a few more miles, she realized that she was heating up—her brow dripped sweat in rivulets right off her forehead. Her underarms, were pocketed with dripping sweat as well and yet she flew on, towards the brighter and brighter lights that lay ahead…
Branton…called her…and she had no choice but to fly towards the light…
CHAPTER ONE
The sunshine on Ghayth was lacking, as usual, Professor Reynolds said to himself as he sat to join the rest of his Xenoarchaeology team down on the beach, under a tree. At least on his home world, Neres, it would have been called a tree. Here, in the grayness and mists that enshrouded the beach that they were on, it looked more perhaps like a mushroom of an immense size. Still green, but with a brownish trunk it certainly had the parts to be a tree, he said to himself as he looked up.
But it was the leaves—or what would be leaves perhaps somewhere else that were the strange thing. Each of the various limbs of the tree growing out of the trunk itself, was like a solid, perfectly round cylinder of what looked like polished wood. At the end of the branch, if that was what it was, was a bulbous light gray colored mass of what looked like a mushroom cap. It was fleshy and puffy and yet, it just sat alongside dozens of others, giving the tree itself a puffy looking top.
“Which is why we’re here” he said to the assembled group all sitting on a couple of rubber backed ground sheets waiting for him.
“My apologies, for being so dang late, but I’ve just gotten off the Ansible with the admiral. We did have a good conversation and I’ve been authorized to tell you all, the following items,” he said as he looked at them all, one by one.
“What I now say is to be considered as ultra-private. No one else to ever know these items and I have your word on that, yes?” he said and he looked at each in turn, awaiting some kind of agreement.
Professor Scholes, nodded and said “aye, Nelson.”
Professors Irving and Vincent, were seated side by side and that got double nods from them.
The doctor, Boxer smiled and said “absolutely, you have my word.”
Beedles was playing with his tablet, but he waved his agreement and didn’t even look up.
Lieutenant Hartford and lieutenant commander Sheldon were seated and paying rapt attention, and both said “aye, Sir” and they all were in.
Reynolds nodded back and said simply “there are some very odd opinions about the bridge door security. You all know what I mean by that. Anything at normal usual speed getting close to the door itself, is fine. You can—we all have—walked up to it, leaned on it, even kicked it” he said as he glanced over at Professor Beedles who really had little patience for some things.
“No matter, as what we also learned is that anything that approaches the door, with speed as in a bullet or a laser or a needler or an arrow too—we do only have a few weapons to try at this point—but all of them just disappear. When we recorded the various projectiles, we noted that we could see quite easily, that the arrow itself was transported away from the door oddly. Like it was slowly entering another dimension or zone and the vids show that it slid into that zone inch by inch but at speed as it was propelled from a bow quite close to the door. We do not know how this was done—but what is news, is that we have been told that the bullets and arrows have all shown up. Each and every one of them, and the where they were found was the interesting part. But rather than tell you, here’s a quick vid into….and yes, its our north pole area here…” he said as he held up his tablet for them to crowd around and see.
Ahead, it was ice packs as far as one could see, the frozen wastes of the ultra north. Ahead there was also a huge up-swelling of some kind of an iceberg looking shape and the camera dipped down towards it and they flew into the opening that had what looked like train tracks leading into same. The ice was blue—bluer than one could almost imagine and it was translucent with some kind of back lighting too. The camera followed the tracks and once and awhile, they flew over a set of cars attached to an engine that was pulling them outwards, laden with cargo.
In and in flew the camera, and they curved to the left in loops that descended well into the underground below the ice pack above. Eventually, the camera came to a large huge room carved out of the ice and below there was a sea of people, all loading those cars with pallets of something.
The camera then went along the complete length of the huge room, and then swooped down to go through a doorway—a very tall and wide doorway, Reynolds noted for them all, and then the camera stopped halfway down the corridor at one of those transparent steel doors. At least that’s what they thought it was, he added.
“Here’s where the items that we fired at the bridge door were found,” as the door was still closed it appeared but inside there were a series of what looked like separate boxes in a set of shelves. Most were empty, but in seven of them you could see arrows. The same arrows that had been fired by a marine at the bridge door. As well in another couple of boxes, lay some spent bullets, not-misshapen at all but still bullets all the same. There was also a coin in one—and Reynolds explained that this coin had been thrown by lieutenant Sanders on an earlier discovery tour of the ship.
“We do not know how anything launched at the bridge door in there,” he said as he swung his head down the beach towards the wrecked alien spaceship, “but we have recorded a few more items as you can see. What appears to happen is that anything launched at the bridge door is—and this is the word we’re using—is seized, transported to this room and then it just falls into a new box. Whatever protects that door, grabs the item, takes all it’s mass and momentum
out of the equation and then drops it into the box,” he said and his voice was full of wonder.
“And no we have no idea how this is accomplished, nor that might be the device doing this, nor for that matter while I’m a moron when it comes to physics—what happens to the momentum either. All we know is, try to break into the bridge door and what ever you use, ends up here…in it’s own box. Why the aliens would do this and in this manner, we have no idea either, but what we can tell you is that it is instantaneous. Launch an arrow at the bridge door and in less than a second it disappears and appears right here, no time delay or lag our testing has shown.”
He nodded to them as he realized that the light mist around them was getting a bit thicker and the wrecked ship just a few hundred yards away was almost lost in the foggy light. He sighed. Ghayth was more than a mystery in many ways—and while the ship itself was what they were here for—the planet itself was a gray gray world.
He looked at them all and noted that Beedles was anxious to ask something, so he nodded at him.
“Why tell us that, Professor” he asked, “as the how of something is rather immaterial unless we can determine the device that is doing this ‘transport’ thingy?”
Reynolds nodded to him and said “just an FYI for the team—and to let you know that their technology obviously includes some form of transportation that we can not even guess upon,” he said holding out his hands palms up.
