by Jim Rudnick
The camera was the one. With a great display and zoom, it would allow her to locate, zoom in on, use the cross-hairs and take a great shot.
What any Gallipedia reporter should be able to do…
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Bram sat in the small cafe, off the street in a quiet cul de sac, and sipped his ade.
Hot. Juno was hot and this time of year, unless you were in the shade, you worked up a sweat in no time. He’d been there only twenty minutes, waiting for the Admiral and he could feel his armpits were soaked already.
He’d ordered a fruit ade, and it came in a tall glass that was frosted over with condensation in the short distance from the bar inside to his table outside. At least there is shade, he said to himself as he looked up at the big umbrella.
Around him, as it was lunchtime, there were lots of other guests too. He felt bad, in that he was taking up a table at lunch hour and not spending the kind of money that the cafe owner might like to see—but then that was the way it was today.
He looked across the street at the patio there and smiled.
He could see Gia, sitting and reading something on her tablet as she read and ate her lunch at the same time.
Moments later, he felt a touch on the shoulder and heard a quiet “pay no attention to ranks, please,” from admiral McQueen who slid in beside him on the chair next to him.
He nodded and slurped on his ade and then smiled at the admiral.
“Nice to see you, good that you could get here for lunch…” he said and he couldn’t salute but that was what he wanted to do.
The admiral nodded and said, “while I look over the menu, can you tell me what looks good as well as where she is,” he said quietly.
Bram nodded and laughed to try to hide his newness to all this.
He pointed over the side of the menu for the admiral, while he said “directly across the street, in the bright yellow top—she’s reading from her tablet as she eats her lunch,” he said.
The admiral nodded like he was taking a recommendation and then put down his menu. He looked around the cafe patio and then across the street.
There, in the bright yellow top, a young woman sat and read and every once and awhile, took another bite off her panini sandwich of some type. She was young—say thirty or so. She was in shape, McQueen could tell, because her thigh muscles were big under those shorts, her calves full and muscular too.
She chewed with force. Each bite was clean, as her teeth severed the crisp bread crust and the contents too. She swallowed and every three or four bites, she put the sandwich down to have a large swig of her own drink, bottled water it looked like.
She didn’t pay attention to anyone else. She was obviously able to focus and stay focused as nothing beside or around her took her eyes off that tablet.
He looked at her and wondered what had prompted her to come to the RIM now. What she expected and more, what Tanner would have to say about this.
He wondered if he should tell Tanner about her arrival before the wedding. So far after much consideration, he had decided not to do that. No sense in spoiling the ceremony for him—he could be told right after and McQueen once again validated that plan of action and smiled at Bram.
“Okay, lieutenant, thank you for your help. Mission is over and I think we’ll just file this away till after the wedding. I’ll make it my responsibility to hold this information and tell the admiral once the ceremony is over. No sense in adding anything extra to the things he’s got to worry about,” the admiral said.
Bram nodded.
“Sir, yes Sir. I’ll also keep it on the down-low and wait for your lead on this, admiral. She is a very pretty young woman, though if I can say that, Sir,” he said.
“Mind on your work, lieutenant,” he said dryly, like any such advice to a navy man was heard and followed.
He nodded to the server, placed his order and added “to go please,” and they talked small talk till the admiral’s order came out in a bag.
“I got that, Sir,” Bram said and he got a very polite “thank you, lieutenant,” in return as the admiral gathered up his own lunch and left the cafe.
Bram continued to sit alone, and eye her across the street. She ate like it was a job that needed action. She read, he noted pretty dang quick too, watching her swipe the the screen to the next page. She had her legs crossed, and the top one bounced at a regular beat, the muscles on her top thigh bulged every second.
He sat and finished his ade and asked for another.
And he sat and watched her finish her sandwich, her own bottled water and she put the tablet to rest and looked for a server. She cashed out and got up and put the tablet into her bag, and walked with some stride down the street.
He followed, even though the mission was over and noted that she went directly to the big downtown Public Library. He took his time following her in but stayed close enough to see that she went down the wing that held the pubic consoles and took a seat at one.
An hour later as he sat well away and leafed through his twentieth magazine, he realized she was going to be there for the day.
He smiled…good to know that she liked bottled water and paninis, he said to himself…he’d learned not much more…
Still, she was one hell of a good looking woman….
CHAPTER EIGHT
On Neria, on the landing pad, inside the CN Roc, the Caliph’s personal destroyer, he sat in his quarters at the small table beside the floor to ceiling windows. Outside, he could see the slightly brown tinged atmosphere of his home planet and the browns in all shades in the distant dunes. Here on the planet’s only landing port, there were ships from all over the RIM. Sphere ships from Alex”n, huge Eran ships, four or five trader ships that said Leudie all over and a RIM Navy frigate, the Henderson lay to his left, taking on supplies. Ships come to Neria on their own business and that makes us richer each and every day.
The fact that it was the humans who had this gambling addiction or disease or whatever one might call it. The Nerians didn’t gamble and they learned to instead own the casinos to make the margins that gambling afforded them. Nice margins too, and they ran casinos on all of their own eight worlds, more than forty more space stations above various realms on the RIM and were even thinking of going to the Pentyaan empire to open up new casinos, and those talks were going well.
His trip to Neres had been unexpected this morning and the Roc had taken all of ten seconds, give or take a few to get home from Neres and the Baronial palace. He had held the box given to him all the way back. He had not put it down; instead he kept saying over and over to himself ‘at home…at home’ and he was home now.
He looked back inside from the outside view and down at the box.
He opened it slowly and took out the red ampule and then unfolded the instructions.
Pretty simple. Drink the fluid. Swallow.
He thought for a moment that if this was a plot by the Baroness to murder by poison him and the Master Adept and the Duke all at once, then it was a masterful one.
Because no matter what the other two did—he was taking his own personal dose right now.
He pinched off the end of the ampule, tilted it into his mouth and then swallowed it down.
Done.
I’m going to live to be two hundred he said…
On Eons, in her quarters, the Master Adept once more looked over at the side table in her room and at the box.
She knew that what was inside would most likely double her life expectancy, but she knew that the dose would go unused. She knew when she was to die and was in the process of arranging her departure but with as much secrecy as she could.
The dose in that box would not—could not help her.
But she did know someone that in fact it might help and she called in her aide.
“Sit please, Jacklyn, would you?” she said.
It took her twenty minutes to explain enough background to be able to reach for her hand, to get a mind link.
In the next
minute, the aide’s face was shocked, then surprised…and finally happy.
The Master nodded towards the box and the aide rose and went over to it.
She opened it there, read the very short instructions and then in one gulp, swallowed the contents of the red ampule in a second flat.
She smiled and almost curtsied to her Master, and then left the room…
The Master Adept rose to go once again to stare out the window at what lay below, deserted farms and buildings and what she had done in her forty years of being the Master. She had been unable to get the climate to right itself, that was for sure, but all of the R&D credits that they’d spent over the years on astrophysics still said that the star was in the change from it’s once higher radiation levels as they were reducing each year for the past six years.
She smiled a little at that and got ready for her replacement as the new Master Adept and hoped that she would be on time.
She did like Gloria but she was young….oh so young in mind and life experience too…
The Duke d’Avigdor was ambling on the natural turf on Anulet, one of the planets of the realm that belonged to the Duchy. He should have gone home as there was a whole raft of items that needed his attention. As the Head of State for the Duchy, he was the one who yes, delegated much to others—but then had to peruse briefing papers on all of those items to make an informed choice. Sometimes if he chose wrong, the price of avocados went up for a full season. Other times, a recession hit and some of his citizens lost homes and jobs. So he did more than he could to get as much information so that his choices were not bad for the realm.
But today, after leaving the Barony just an hour or so ago, he’d had his pilot take them to Anulet, the big hunting planet that was so much a bucket list item for hunters all across the RIM. And further too.
He thought that here, where the only things that mattered were life and death, would be the place to decide what to do.
Yes, he said to himself, at this morning’s meeting, he had sounded like he was sure of how he felt when it came to this longevity vaccine.
He had no children. He had no wife, and in recent meetings with advisers, they were most apologetic, but they thought that he should know that if he died, rather when he died as he had no heirs, the Duchy would be in trouble.
He was told that in most cases, the realm would be wide open to other Royals who might like to make offers or to other political groups to carpetbag their way into control of one of his planets. He had more than thirty billion citizens—and to them he owed more than lip-service. To them, he owed a chance for a better future.
One of his advisers had questioned the group on the longevity vaccine and had half jokingly said that if he took same, he could have a whole new life. One where he’d find a wife and have a heir and provide for the Duchy like his own father had.
That’s what made him choose Anulet as the first stop on the way home.
The ampule would be an answer for sure, that actually could help him—and his realm.
That did not get a smile from him but what it did do was to think that maybe he was just rationalizing his true wants—that he wanted to live twice as long.
He shook his head and pulled the ampule out of his shirt pocket, snapped the top off and swallowed the liquid. He took a chaser slurp of the bottle of water and swallowed that down.
For whatever reason was the right one…he wondered what the next hundred years of so here on the RIM might be like and then broke out into a big grin as he realized that he just might find out…
#####
They walked the lobby or foyer as it was called and Helena thought that if this was going to be the entryway to her own area of the Baronial Palace, then it surely was big. Spacious. Yes, one might call it spacious. On the floor beneath her soft leather boots, the material that she’d okayed, was supposed to be marble and she thought that it looked so different from what she had okayed, that she put an arm out to stop the Baroness as they did their final inspections of the new palace wing.
“Baroness—is this the same marble that we asked for?”
The Baroness nodded—”yes, Helena but I did okay the change to this softer color with the quartz veins—do you like it or should we have it torn out and replaced?”
Helena shook her head “no, not at all, I think these wonderful veins are so shiny and bright on the grays of the marble, but that might mean a problem for staff with keeping it clean?”
The Baroness waved her anxiety away.
“Not a problem, my Lady—that’s what staff is for. Come, let’s begin on the left side, work our way up and then down the right hand side. Aides, please lead us on…” she said and the small group of a dozen or so, led the way.
They first went down the major hallway on the left and as they reached each of the newly constructed, designed and staged rooms, an aide called out the details of each in turn.
“This one, Mam, is what we called the small parlor. Eleven hundred square feet, rugged over hardwood planking from Thrones, four separate and distinct setting areas, all centered around the fireplace suspended from the ceiling. Artworks, include a full set of what’s called impressionism master works from Carnarvon, to be rotated monthly. Coved ceilings, with those beautiful wooden beams and rafters made from the three-tone woods from Eons. We thanked the Master Adept for this kind offering too, as these trees are very much endangered in their poor climate. Lighting, from Amasis and another special thanks to Prime Minister Lazaro for the gift of same. As you can tell, Mam, as this is the closest room to the lobby area, we believe it is where you will do much of your public meetings and interviews and the like. It is both comfortable and yet posh, simple but yet thick with the history of the Barony too. On that wall, we are going to feature an etagere with displays from all of our realm planets. Course, we are having some difficulty finding a suitable set of items from Ghayth—but we have our local base commander working on something now…” she said as she backed out of the way and the Baroness and the Lady walked into the room.
It was as had been described by the aide. It was both casual yet formal and as she had pointed out, it would be the place that the majority of the visitors to the wing, would be hosted in.
She nodded and then looked at the Baroness for her opinion.
The Baroness nodded too.
“Seems like you will do just fine here, Helena. Set up to be both useful and yet still holds the promise of being the Barony palace that is traditional.”
The aide made some kind of notes on her pad and led them across the hall to the next room, called the Library.
“As you will be able to see soon, what we have done is to put the rooms that you will use for public guests, all on the outer walls of the wing—the small parlor, the large parlor, the conservatory, the State room, the State drawing room, and on the other side” she said as she pointed back across the huge lobby area, “the State dining room, the State Ballroom and the State gallery too.”
She then pointed to the inner walls of the new wing.
“And on the inner walls of the wing, that go through to other behind the public access areas, are the more private rooms, like the Library and the red parlor and the music room to begin with, so let’s start with the Library here,” she said as she opened up the large door and they went inside.
Books, Helena said, so many many books and as she whirled to see the rows of top quality milled book cases and on shelf after shelf, the books. All sizes and colors of dust covers and then whole sets and groups of series with similar sizing and colors too.
“More than seventy thousand tomes, all on all the usual types of subjects—everything from fiction to non-fiction, from business to history too. Plus there is a large section of a complete curated Barony specific set of about four thousand books and collections over there,” the aide said as she pointed to the blue tinged bookcases on the main area to her left.
They walked the room for a minute and while the Baroness pulled a couple of books down to
leaf through them for a moment, Helena did not. She just looked at the room and its large group of seating options she noted that you could entertain a visitor here as well as study a book too over on the higher bench seating too.
They went through the first floor completely, took a ride up on a service escalator that was hidden from public view and that got them the second floor, where more private rooms were located. It was here, that the State bedrooms were located, where they would house other Heads of State perhaps or that kind of guest. It was here, that the State salon rooms lay; the State throne room, the State drawing rooms, the State library room and the State Conservatory too. Largely made available to guests to the wing, but guests who had a large degree of trust as friendlies meant that they would have access to both all the State rooms as well as their own State bedrooms too.
As they took the final escalator up to the third floor, it was here that the most secure areas of the wing lay. This was the floor with the large living apartment that would house us, Helena said to herself. She had wanted to see these areas first, but had allowed th aide to do her final inspection tour with her own itinerary.
She went right up to the large double doors of what was named simply ‘the apartment’ and she opened up the door and went inside. She walked and toured each of the rooms, including a butler’s pantry, a small parlor with comfy seating and a set of windows that looked out onto a courtyard that held a whole cadre of gardeners working on plantings and landscaping too. She especially liked the great room it was called as it had a high sculpted ceiling, floor to wall windows looking out on palace grounds and for her, a wonderful grouping of large wing chairs around a fireplace that was built into the glass windows too.
She nodded. Bedroom next and she walked off the great room, down a gallery of artwork and to the single doorway ahead. She opened up that door and smiled. It was everything that she’d asked for and more. Huge emperor sized bed with it’s six poster knurled and carved wood posts. It was so big, that the room itself should have felt cramped, but with more than three thousand feet in this room alone as the aide said, it was simply the major piece in the room. Off to one side, she’d asked for a small gym area with her favorite machines—the rowing machine, the treadmill and the free weights too. All were colored to match the overall palate of the room in it’s teal and salmon shades.
