The RIM Confederacy Series: BoxSet Four: BOOKS 10, 11, & 12 of the RIM Confederacy Series

by Jim Rudnick

  “Hello Majestic! Good time to dock as we’ve got a real dearth of other ships,” the ensign over on the space station called Station One, said and that was good news to the Majestic crew. Speedy docking meant that shore leave would happen earlier than they had expected and with two days on Juno coming up, that put smiles all around the crew faces.

  While the ship made some adjustments via the helm officer, the captain turned to his XO.

  “XO, send down a wake-up call to the sleeper decks, please” he said and that got a speedy “aye, Sir” from him.

  Below, on the lower decks, tech teams who’d been standing and waiting began to move down the rows of cryonic tanks, to awaken the sleepers who’d been scheduled to be delivered to Juno.

  Lead off techs, walked the rows, clicking on the AWAKE buttons on each of the tanks that held just such sleeping passengers and while there were quite a few, still others were left to sleep to fulfill their own destinations. While Juno was the furthest out of the galaxy that one could buy a sleeper ticket for—the Majestic once unloaded would after shore leave time, head not back inwards but instead down the arm of the RIM Confederacy to slowly curl to the right and towards other systems and empires.

  Following the lead techies, came the actual wakeup techs, and it took only a few minutes for them to lift the lid of the sleeper tanks, ensure that the occupant was doing okay as the liquid cryonic fluids were draining and that in about a half an hour, the sleeper would be fully awake and up and moving on their own.

  Aliens sometimes caused issues as they sometimes had other needs in that some needed massage of leg or wing joints and others needed warming more than humans. Yet all the sleepers got the same med services from the techs that were needed and in no more than two hours from the Majestic docking with the Juno’s Station One all were up and mobile.

  Being a sleeper and just finding herself on Juno’s station, Gia Scott was almost glad of being in great shape and being fit.

  Almost, she said to herself, as training was so very hard when you were just into your thirties and that made her grimace as she realized that being asleep for the past few years meant that she needed to visit a gym and sign up for full rigorous training right off the bat.

  She carried her small carry-on bag with her as she made the long walk back up the sleeper tank row towards the stern of the Majestic and she noted that many other sleepers were barely moving at all. Some looked shell-shocked and she knew that they’d be going down to Juno in much later shuttles—she wanted to be on the first one, so she strode a bit faster. Walked on her toes for a few strides, then actually trotted for a few steps too.

  She could move okay. Not as good as she’d be in an hour, but for Gia, it was always measuring your current abilities and what one could handle should there be trouble. Not that there was likely going to be any on Juno.

  She got to the long escalator that moved her up slowly from the lower sleeper tanks area up and up and to the departure levels of the Majestic and she joined a few straggling passengers who had flown to the RIM but not as sleepers. She got in the line at the actual ship’s lock and walked out and off the Majestic, to find herself in the long corridor of Station One leading to Customs and Health.

  She smiled at that. Customs—don’t have any and Health—make my own she had always felt that and this entry to Juno was no different. Ahead of her was the baggage carousel and she could see her bright red bag already doing it’s circles as she moved up past some other waiting passengers to grab it.

  She hoisted it over the lip of the carousel, glad for all those curls she’d done over the years to give her such extraordinary muscle tone and she pushed a button on the top. From inside the framework of the bag, wheels dropped down to lift the bag up off the station deck and the meager AI beeped twice. No matter now where she walked the bag would follow.

  She looked around and as it was late in the evening local planet time, there were only two Customs desks open so she picked one line and waited, her bag followed and in no more than twenty more minutes she presented herself at the counter-top and smiled at the bureaucrat behind and pushed her tablet towards him.

  Nodding, he said simply “your business on Juno would be…” and he looked at the tablet as she answered him.

  “Here on behalf of Gallipedia—I’m a field journalist on assignment is all. Not much new I’d guess inwards so they sent me to the RIM to look around,” she said.

  Of course, not really true, she knew. She had yes worked for Gallipedia back on Branton for a few years and yes, she was a journalist and yes, things inwards were slow. At least compared to what I’ve got planned for the RIM and him, she thought.

  “Okay, got you,” the Customs man said.

  “Importing anything?” he asked and he nodded to the large poster over his shoulder that listed things like food items, animals or insects, alien items…” and she simply shook her head.

  “Bag goes here” he said and nodded when she’d gotten it under the canopy of the scanning device and in a moment later a single chime rang out.

  “Bag is clear. Welcome to Juno,” he said as he applied his thumb to a screen capture area on her tablet and made some kind of entry to his own console.

  She grinned at him. Grins always worked well and were instantly forgettable, she knew. Frown at someone and they’d remember, but grins were invisible to the memory.

  “Thanks…” and she clicked the bag AI button one more time and walked off towards the shuttle area ahead the signs said.

  As she walked, she didn’t think about Gallipedia or Branton or even Juno her new location.

  Instead she thought about what she’d do to him…and the smile on her face was like it was painted on.

  Notice and verification of her entry to Juno and the RIM Confederacy as had been entered by the Customs clerk were saved to the daily log. This of course, included full particulars of her and her personal history too. It sat on that daily log, and at the end of that shift, it would be moved over off the dailies into the archive for the week and then into the database storage areas for safekeeping…

  #####

  EYES ONLY Ansible chats were about the best thing that the Caliph hoped would disappear now that the Barony Drive was being installed and used. Sitting at a console, talking to someone was one thing—and yes, information could be relayed and deals struck, but it was so much more fun doing it face-to-face.

  Like me, he thought for the umpteenth time as he dipped his head in an informal bow to the Baroness as her face came on screen.

  He was seated in his own quarters in the Caliphate tent palace that was a stronghold in the desert on Neria.

  Sharia al Dotsa, the leader of the eight planet realm of the Caliphate of Neria, was without a doubt an force to be reckoned with, he said to himself. And the Baroness of Neres was his only real peer when it came to the RIM Confederacy and his machinations on what mattered to him and his realm.

  She was today—and he knew that he’d never seen her look the same twice—wearing some kind of very severe olive green type of top—not a blouse or a shirt or anything he could think of calling it. It was a top that seemed to just float on top of her skin and not actually touch her. He really couldn’t see her trousers or shoes or anything else as the camera only caught her top half—but he had the inkling that like the top, it would be ‘out there.’

  “Baroness, so nice to see you and to take my call, as well,” he began and she nodded back to him as she sipped something from a cup in front of her.

  No sense in beating around the bush.

  “Baroness—I am asking today to have this EYES ONLY, so that we can perhaps discuss the Ikarian vaccine. I would very much appreciate an update on the convict testing over on Halberd—and of course, when we might expect to get the actual product for our own testing too.”

  He lied of course.

  He already knew the results of the testing over on the RIM prison planet, Halberd. And he knew that there was a positive result and that the vacci
ne would most likely be released to the owners of same as a new and very valuable product.

  And the Baroness was the owner.

  “Yes, Caliph—thank you for the chance to help the Caliphate in this area,” she said.

  He wondered if she really meant it and then shook that off—of course she didn’t mean it….

  “The results yes, for the first six month period of the testing are in—and they’re promising for sure. Appears that there is a positive change in the neighborhood of better than 30%,” she said.

  She lied a bit. The results said 41% positives were reached.

  “And yes, once the final three month period is concluded, we will then publish our results and consider going into production of the vaccine for sale here on the RIM. That’s sort of counting our chickens before they’re hatched, but we envision that there will continue to be positive results. And you will of course, be one of the earliest recipients of same—you do know that, right Caliph?”

  Her smile was there and as she sipped her cup of something, and he nodded and smiled back to her.

  She knew as he knew, that the vaccine would be a success. The fact that one would be able to procure the vaccine, take same and then live hundreds of extra years was what he was after—as he admitted all the RIM was after too.

  She would find a way, he knew, to capitalize on this longevity vaccine.

  She would be richer than ever—but in truth that did not bother him as much as the suspicion that she was already taking the vaccine herself. She would live longest and that was a major part of the enmity he felt to the Baroness.

  He made small talk for a minute or two more and she did confirm that yes, that the Barony Drive as of now propelled just about every single ship on the RIM. That the speed of travel had increased so much, that new tour companies were now clamoring to get the same drives installed on their ships too. That, she said they were considering but at this point it was still RIM Confederacy member ships only.

  She gave her goodbyes, and she was gone.

  He sat and thought about the vaccine and that she had confirmed what he’d known anyways that the tests on the prison planet were positive.

  Now, he needed to figure out how to get the vaccine before it’s general release.

  He also thought about his own lab team who had made some headway in developing a clone of the Barony vaccine, from his previously stolen samples. He had Jocko to thank for that sample—even though it had cost him his life.

  A life for a longer life—that sounded like a fair trade, he believed as he thought more on the vaccine and how hundreds of years of his rule would be good for Neria….surely it would be a good thing…yes…

  #####

  Trader Master Niels Lofton waited and was more than a bit perturbed that he’d already wasted almost an hour in the hallway outside the inner sanctum room from where the planet Leudie was ruled. At least that’s what everyone said—his own father included.

  He’d been called and he had no idea why the rulers wanted to see him—and again he stopped in his own mind. Rulers. That’s what they were called by the traders who operated within what were called the Leudie Trading rules.

  Again, he stopped his thinking. There were so many items that he just took for granted, terms that upon reflection, meant something else other than what they actually translated out to be.

  Rulers. A body of the top thirty traders who set the rules for all the other hundreds of trading vessels that plied the RIM Confederacy. One had to be invited to join that group. One had to have had an exemplary career as a trader to even be thought of being invited. He had no such career as yet…at least not yet.

  Leudie Trading rules. The items that each and every single Leudie trader followed—to the limit, to trade. Everything from the number of cargo manifests that each ship could maintain at one time to the number of crewmen each ship could have. Everything from what kind of margins could be charged as a range of credits to what kind of interest could be charged to clients who were late payers. All things having anything to do with trading—moving cargo holds full of goods for one client from one RIM world to another.

  Here in Factor, the capital city on Leudie, he’d been in the ship yards getting repairs done to the damn thrusters on the Tynes again—third time this year. He’d been using his PDA non-stop trying to find better injectors and see if he couldn’t get a discount and to no avail when the unit locked up with an incoming EYES ONLY with a big security lock on same.

  He’d smiled, thinking that it had to be good news. Then he’d frowned as he thought it might also be bad news and finally, he just answered the thing. He’d never had such a call come in and the face that sat in front of him in the projected hologram was a face he didn’t know. It was of a man, and he sat in front of a plain wall behind him, so there was no hint even of who it was and what he might want.

  He had stared at Niels, and then he spoke.

  “Master Trader Niels Lofton—you are commanded to come to the forty-ninth floor of the government building in Factor. You are commanded to come to see the Leudie Trading Rules group—the Rulers at exactly noon today.”

  The PDA quit the message send and the hologram faded.

  He was a bit surprised—in fact he was more than that…he was shocked.

  The Rulers wanted to see him. Why? What had he done? What had the Tynes done to make such an appearance a commanded appearance.

  So at noon, he was there. He was directed to sit and wait by someone who looked like an assistant assistant something—hardly the kind of first impression that he expected. So he sat. And he’d waited. And now almost an hour later and he was still waiting.

  And thinking. About just about anything and the nagging doubts about what those new injectors would end up costing him was at the back of his brain.

  The door across the hall opened, and that assistant assistant person came out and waved him to come in.

  He rose and did just that and as he entered the room his guide pointed at the single empty seat at the large square table.

  Around it, the members of the Rulers sat, all staring at him.

  Each was dressed in the usual Leudie black cloak with the dark dark green inserts. Each had a tablet in front of them and some were working on same, but all the eyes did take that instant to look him over. Each had the traditional neck snake that was now uncoiled and relaxing on their shoulders. Each had the toque, black and green with the insignia of the Rulers—three gold bars in a row.

  Hope they like what they see, he said to himself.

  He smiled at them all, not knowing who was who and he sat.

  And they sat. Not a Ruler spoke to him. They just sat too.

  He wondered if he should…and then he did speak first.

  “I was commanded to appear here today at noon. My ship, the Tynes, is over in the yards, waiting for new injectors to be installed and as yet I’ve not found a set that I can afford. So time is very much of value to me—could we get to whatever the reason is that I was called here?”

  “For a trader, one would think that he would be able to count,” one said over on his left.

  He stared in that direction—then he counted the number of three bar Rulers at the table. Twenty-nine was the number, but everyone always said that there were thirty Rulers. So one was away.

  “And once he’s counted, might he realize that he is now seated at the table with us—as one of us?” another said over on his right.

  That caught him by surprise.

  If the Rulers had to have thirty members—and there were now thirty of them at the table—that meant that he was a Ruler.

  He grinned at them all.

  “And for how long?”

  “And he catches up pretty quickly. Good choice, I’d have to agree. Next item on the Agenda, please” and one of the many assistant assistants in the room rose to read off an item for discussion.

  Ruler. I’m a Ruler, Niels said to himself and that grin just would not go away.

  While
the whole meeting thing and Agenda following thing was not so new to him, it was apparent pretty quickly, that he was expected to be up and running with an opinion on anything and everything.

  Talks went to the issue of trying to meld with the Faraway group on the Merilda and their mining equipment tariffs that were under review. Only a few talked on this, and he had not a word to add—so the group agreed to lessen the factors being charged by another twenty percent. Carried.

  The talks on trade were mostly what was covered, but there were two items that had some importance to him as a trader—and to the RIM Confederacy as well.

  The first of them was on the Barony Drive. It had been almost impossible to get quick installations and training done for most of their trading fleet so far. Of the more than three hundred Leudie trading ships, so far only eighty had the new drives installed. The Barony was doing about five new ones a day—but because the Leudie ships were classified as commercial ships, they came behind all f the Confederacy member realms with Navies. Navy ships got immediate installs and that was just what it was as the Barony decided upon the install timetables.

  Seems, Niels learned, that the Faraway ships were also being held back too, so that was a good thing.

  Talks did go to the point that being able to go from UrPoPo to Eran, the full width of the RIM which was eighty lights, in less than a minute meant little to the movement of goods. Clients still wanted them to contract the delivery date so it was a matter of just changing an item in the paperwork.

  The last item of the day was the roll-out of the new finds, from the Leudie ships that had gone inwards thousands of lights and what they still needed to discuss on same.

  Everyone, Niels thought, understands this—but not me. I have no idea even as to what was found on this trip, as he interrupted.

  “May I ask please—as the newest member at the table, what it is that you are even talking about? What was found on the latest trip inwards?”

  He sat as the table got quiet. Some faces turned from one to another and then someone over on his right spoke up.