by Jim Rudnick
Tanner nodded. Tossed a healthy shot of scotch into the Dukes glass….and then his own too, and said to them all.
“I thank you all. Dinner tonight is going to be a culinary treat—but it pales beside the friendship I have with you all. This table holds friends that I have had save my life; have fought aliens with and won; have cleaned me up when I needed support and that’s as important a fact as there is. I thank you all, now, one more thing,” he said as he put an arm around the Duke’s shoulders.
“My Best Man will be the Duke d’Avigdor—David, and he has already accepted too. That makes me even happier….now, let’s eat! Stewards, begin the dinner please…”
#####
On Branton, the dawn never comes. Nor for that matter, did nightfall. Not where the few million inhabitants lived in the narrow band that runs north to south beside the whole lit up side of the planet.
Tidal locked planets were those that kept one face towards it’s sun all the time. 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 meaning that one side was always day, one side night. The habitable zone was narrow, only a few hundred miles wide from almost pole to pole. Inside it, the climate and weather and temperatures were acceptable—at least to some degree.
The capital city of Astillon, on what the planet called the Starboard side or the side that was on the right hand side of the face that presented itself to their sun, averaged a daily temperature of about ninety degrees. Every day the same. Every day of bright sun with few clouds and even less rain. It’s almost half a million inhabitants knew that life on Branton was a rubber stamp of yesterday.
On the other side of the planet, the Port side as it’s commonly called, the only other large city on Branton was Vulnerix, a smaller city of less than two hundred thousand Brantons, they had the exact same weather. Both of the sides of the planet, Port and Starboard, were so similar that you could never tell where you are by looking outside.
The long habitable zones ran from the boreal forests in the north to the same in the south, each zone ending about a hundred miles away from the north and south poles. What that meant was that to try to get from one side to the other of the planet was difficult. The distance was almost fourteen thousand miles—far too much distance to try to use land based transportation. You’d simply boil up any kind of vehicle, not to mention the costs of lives either. Flying was one way, but the distance again was too much. You needed a shorter haul and that’s where the Looper stations came in.
At the very top end of the Starboard habitable zone, was a huge launch port, matched by one over on the Port side too, only two thousand miles away. Each was the same kind of station, where a sub-orbital rocket would be launched and climb up to the stratosphere, coast and then drop down onto the Looper station on the other side. Looper trips were quick, not very dear and for the most part, not that dangerous it seemed. It’d been years since any issues had been serious enough to cause anxiety to the hundreds of passengers who used the Loopers to go from side to side of Branton. The fact that there were also two more Looper stations in the far south too meant that there were always seats available for the passenger who just had to get to the other side of the planet.
Closer to the night side, where the habitable zones ran right into the darkness, there were always issues with the coldness of all black days and nights. Temperatures directly opposite the sun, ran to minus two hundred degrees and warmed slowly to about zero or so where the light from the always lit day side of Branton existed. Cold, yes, un-inhabited, yes and yet needed by the Branton population at the same time. It was here that they found ice to move to the habitable zone to create water. It was here that many of the needed ores and metal deposits had been for billions of years. They were mined in terrible conditions but the ores were shipped back in heated railway cars along heated railway tracks to use in smelting in the habitable zones.
Between the all day side and the all night side, Branton was an exercise in the best of all possible ways that humans can find existence that works. Ingenuity, imagination, entrepreneurs…Branton was the home in the Earldom of Kinross that many many young men and women left…only to return to years later as a success.
Above Branton, sat the space station named the Entreaty, and she was large as she should have been. Holding up to twenty bays for ships coming in or out, the docking was always busy and today was no different. Fresh in from the Hercules system, about a thousand lights inwards, the cruiser the Manhattan was docking and as usual, there had been a wait too. The bridge crew had berated the Entreaty landing admin about not getting priority treatment as they had to wait for a smaller local system ship to finish their refueling and then for them to leave and clear out the space.
The Manhattan captain was fit to be tied and immediately sent a verbose and nasty Ansible message to the Entreaty commander about the idiots that were on the landing admin crew when they were docking and yet the Manhattan was successful in gaining her berth and their crew slowly shut down the big liner and the passengers were all either disembarking or the cryonics crews were awakening the sleepers.
More than a hundred people were getting off on Branton, and that included all types of passengers.
One of those passengers was the realm’s Gallipedia administrator in person. Gallipedia of course, was the galaxy wide Ansible supported database on everything. Need a picture of the light blue and bright yellow poisonous leaf trees from a planet thirty thousand lights from you—no problem. Need the background on a job candidate who says that she worked for nine years, local time, in the Taylor system—no problem.
Gallipedia was big—the biggest thing in the galaxy when it came to knowledge and that was it’s real charm.
That, the admin named Ruby Monfort, was one thing that everyone could relate to—it was the place to research anything and everything.
As she bustled along the landing ramp, her papers on the tablet in front of her, she smiled as it was her first ever trip to Branton.
She had worked her way up to being the head of the whole Earldom for the firm and that had taken over twenty years and some postings on planets that barely had air never mind any kind of civilization. She nodded to a couple of other passengers who’d engaged her at dinners over the same items that they all did—censorship of knowledge and how Gallipedia did so do that. She defended the their database as always and made good solid points but at the same time, she did in her heart of hearts agree that sometimes, it did appear to be true.
She met the Provost guard at Customs and he looked at her and then at her tablet, then at his and grunted and he passed her on to the Customs officer. She stepped the three steps to the counter and placed her tablet on the counter. The Customs officer nodded and looked at the tablet, touched to make a confirming check-mark on his own tablet and her tablet beeped the “admitted to Branton, indefinite stay, on business for Gallipedia” and it beeped one more time as she was now officially allowed to take the shuttle down to Astillon, the capital city on the planet.
Never been on a tidally locked planet, she said to herself as she took the moving walkway ahead all the way to the Departures area and saw that the next shuttle was in ten minutes. She nodded to herself and then used her tablet to make an Ansible call down to the Gallipedia office. While she’d never been there in person, she knew the staff intimately and asked for the office manager, Debbie.
They talked for a moment and both agreed that the Manhattan was a great way to travel and that she’d be there, in the office in about two hours. Ruby needed time to check in to her hotel first and freshen up and then take a robo-cab in, and that would take some time.
Checked in, freshened up and even wearing a new outfit, Ruby got out of the robo-cab and noticed the following, as her very much nerdy brain took over.
Astillon, she’d seen as they came down in the shuttle was a beautiful
city, with many green parks and spaces that were not so heavily commercialized or industrialized. For a city with that half a million inhabitants, it looked at least from the shuttle down from the Entreaty, like a city that was planned to be both beautiful and fully livable at the same time. Which is what it was, she knew as that was one of the first sentences in the city’s own Gallipedia page. Landing at the shuttle port had been pretty easy, and quick and the robo-cab only had to go about twenty blocks or so to find her local Gallipedia offices.
She thought the place looked fine—storefront, with a large awning that kept the sunlight off the front window. On Branton, depending on where you were and how the premises were oriented, there was always a need to block the sun that never moved and never went down either. This time, the awning was slanted from the store front on the right hand side to jut out on the left hand side.
She went through the door and the receptionist got up immediately to come over.
“Ms. Monfort, this is such a privilege to meet you—welcome to the Branton Gallipedia office, Mam,” she said and she shook the heck out of Ruby’s hand.
She nodded back and they made small talk for a minute and then out came the office manager Debbie that she’d come to see in person. More of the staff came over too and it was small talk city for a full ten minutes. Eventually Debbie told them all to get back to work cause the boss might think that all they did on Branton was talk and not work on Gallipedia business.
That got chuckles and the staff drifted off back to their own desks and cubicles while Debbie walked her back down the hallway to her office and she closed the door behind them.
Ruby sat and said yes to a tea and while they made more small talk the receptionist brought in that tea and then once again the door was closed.
“To business, Debbie. Here’s what I think we need to talk about. For some reason, someone here on Branton, has accessed files on the Gallipedia database that in fact were private. That’s not a big thing, as the content that they looked at were detailed files of a small—very small group of systems way out on the rim of the galaxy. An area called the RIM Confederacy is the victim here and and that really is a pretty minor offense…but I’ll still need all of the the past five years of staff personnel files as this all happened about four and a half years ago.” she said as she sipped her tea.
Debbie looked at her and tilted her head.
“Ruby, do you know for sure that these breaches of the database for this RIM place, came from here?”
“We do—there are other protocols that the culprit did not know about and we were able to track those errors back to the servers right here on the Ansible systems in place. It’s really not a big thing—we often have staff that uses Galli to look up old spouses or childhood sweethearts and the like. Sometimes, they think that they’re getting smarter than our own security systems and they do try to circumvent say the privacy systems and find out which company is poised to make a killing in the market and they think all they need to do is to jump on the bandwagon. Not so much of a surprise when they’re caught…” she said and took another sip of her tea.
Debbie stared at her and tilted her head.
“No, that’s just me mentioning what we’ve found over the years. No matter what kind of people we hire and train and get to ‘buy-in’ to the whole gestalt that Galli is—sometimes you end up with questionable types. Not this time, more than searching in this RIM Confederacy files for some people by name and the like. Not a big thing—but the thing that is pretty disturbing is that this same person, tried to hide their searches. They did some deleting and some re-arranging of log files to appear that their searching had never happened.”
She sipped more tea.
“It was a very good job and we only caught all of this because one of those names that was searched, was in touch with Gallipedia Central—a complaint Ansible message about recent Gallipedia decisions out on some planet named Eons, and that meant that Central used all of their Admin power to find any mention at all of that name. So that over-rode all of the hiding and deletions and work that this culprit of ours, in this office did to get information on that name, even these four plus years later…”
Her tea was empty and she held up her hand to tell Debbie that she was fine for now.
“And the name of that person—both searched for and then complained?” Debbie asked.
“Captain Tanner Scott of the RIM Confederacy…” Ruby said…
CHAPTER TWO
Halberd Farm Warden Shavren slammed down the phone and cursed till the air around him was fraught with his spit. As a Quaran, the alien race that looked like lizards, when they were upset, they tended to have their words sprayed out with saliva too. It was something that every RIM citizen knew to avoid…just move away and stay dry.
Today, he was alone in his office and he’d just been dressed down by the Halberd Max Island Warden, Lorenz. It seems, according to the man, that his requests for further files on some of the test convicts was putting his staff into overtime. Again. And that’s what he’d called to yell at him for.
He slammed his hand onto the desk in front of him and then turned to look out his windows. From here, the scene was one of serenity and calmness and peace. Close up, he knew different.
There were convicts out there—true, they were farm convicts, so they were guilty of lesser crimes and as such had either been sentenced to the farm or had earned their way there from the Max Island out in the bay.
Close up, they were farmers. They looked after the livestock and the crops that were grown to feed the livestock and yes, even to sell retail to make funds.
Budgets are budgets and as the head of the three thousand convict farms, he was the one who had to look after making ends meet.
Hence, he remembered as he rose to go and stand in the windows, his hands on the shallow counter under the sill, that when they had been asked by the Barony to test this vaccine—he’d asked for what kind of revenue stream would come along with the tests. They’d told him that there were no budgets to speak of—but of course, there would be one million credits sent to his general accounts to be split up at his discretion for distribution among the one hundred convicts that would be the test subjects.
The tests had been pretty easy to run too, he thought as he watched three of his convicts try to rope a cow in the far field. They had no skills when it came to using the rope, that was for sure. The cow however knew how to just stare and then take a step or two to avoid the loop that they were trying to place over it’s head.
Like the tests, he said to himself, like the tests.
He smiled at the lack of cow roping skills and then turned to sit back and go over the few files he had received already.
Max Island warden Lorenz, had said that was all that he was getting so far for his RUSH needs; the rest would come in normal hours and would probably only be a few a day.
Files. He needed the files to qualify the data it appeared, so that the test subjects would be verified back to the Barony Ministry of Health. At least thats’ what they told him and the had also mentioned that until they had same, they would be holding future payments. That is what prompted him to get RUSH requisitions out to the Max Island administration offices. And that is why Lorenz had screamed at him.
He wondered what would happen if he’d told Lorenz about the million credits, and that made him smile. The credits were going in directly—so far more than four hundred thousand had been deposited and then immediately sent to an account over on Quaran—his account.
He looked down once again at the files and sighed and opened the first one.
Convict came from…Farth. Fifty-three years of age….and medical history said…no. Not a single liver issue at all in his whole life.
He checked the console in front of him and noted that this convict….yes, he’d been a part of the test that had actually received the vaccine rather than the placebo side. Test subject had been getting the vaccine monthly now for the full six month tests…and ye
s, he noted, the liver showed changes. The genes were changed and the cells whose name he could never pronounce were also positive where they should be. Another plus on the chart and that meant that so far the tests were running a 41% positive rating.
He grinned. Looks like the Barony labs had a winner and that meant that one day—soon he knew, the vaccine would be made available to the RIM and maybe more too.
He needed to get these ones done today; tomorrow he’d be getting a few more and by the end of the week, he figured, he’d have enough medical verifications to file the six month final reports.
That should get the funds turned back on.
That should get the next set of tests up and running and the whole thing would be over in about a half a year more.
He smiled again and even though he wanted to just get the work done, he knew he couldn’t get a subordinate to do the work. It was his baby, he said to himself as he stretched out a long green leg and rubbed his instep against the bottom edge of his desk.
Itchy, wonder why I’m itchy, he said to himself as he scratched hard against the sharp edge of the desk.
Wonder who’ll finish first, he thought—the cow ropers or me…
#####
Off Juno, well yet out from their space station, the Majestic dropped back into normal space and that of course was an expected occurrence their bridge crew knew.
“Ansible down for permission to dock, and let’s not get too too delayed, shall we?” the captain of the Majestic said to his Ansible officer.
“Roger, Sir—message going out now,” the lieutenant said and in a moment or two, a face appeared up on the bridge view-screen that filled the whole space up with a smile.
