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

by Jim Rudnick

  She looked at the Baroness who was looking at her, and she smiled.

  “Good, we were all worried about how this single room would be received—nice to see that staff did okay,” she said and she dipped her own head at the aide, who was suddenly blushing.

  “Mam…yes if anything is not right—just let us know. We can still make changes as the wedding is just a month away and we will get them done in time, Mam,” she said, her face now a deep red. Getting a compliment from the Baroness didn’t happen often, and it was obvious that she was flustered.

  Helena nodded and said “so far, not a change—oh wait. In the Gallery coming down to this room, I saw a lot of art—but can I ask that some Enkian art be purchased and put up on the walls too. Well, added to our Baronial collection, but displayed here—is that okay?” she asked the Baroness.

  “Make it so,” the Baroness said to the aide who was now writing feverishly on her clipboard.

  “Enki—yes Mam, I’ll source a whole series of their best and get you a group to select from—would say the day after tomorrow be alright to send them through to you, Mam?”

  That got the aide a nod from Helena and they moved on to other rooms, walking and listening to the presentation of the aide and then viewing the room.

  “Something else to think upon, Helena,” the Baroness said as they walked arm in arm.

  “You must be—well, firm I would suggest is the tone to take with the admiral. That while he will become a Royal with the wedding to you—that he will never be a true Royal. Consort is the term they use when the commoner is a woman, I’m told and that is what I was to be—until your father changed the rules. But I am now the Baroness and I’ve changed the Constitution back—you will become the new Baroness, when I’m gone. And I doubt that you’d use Executive Action to change the Constitution back to allow him to become the Baron. You will rule the ten planets and the almost one hundred billion of our citizens. And it is your children who will rule—whomever is born first will become either our next Baron or Baroness. You know that. He must as well. Can I have your word—promise that you will have that talk with Tanner?” she asked as she stopped and turned towards her step-daughter.

  Helena smiled and nodded and said “consider it done, Baroness,” and she tugged on her step-mother’s arm and together they went down the hallway to follow the aide.

  “EliteGuard stations on each floor and on each arm of the wing, of course,” the aide was saying as she pointed off to the side to a plain door that was mostly hidden by the decor.

  “AI is the best that we have, and it will be keyed to the family voices only. Codes to be issued for various levels of security and emergency calls too—we will arrange to have the palace IT people to visit you at your own convenience and work on acquiring the proper items,” she finished off and continued to lead across the third floor….

  Much more to see—we’re only halfway through the new wing, Helena said to herself and she was glad that her boots were comfy…

  #####

  Though she had been instructed by the Baroness herself, that she was in charge, the wedding event planner knew that with the bride being a Royal and her step-mother too could be a problem. But so far, she’d only had that thought, so far most had gone well.

  They began inside the new wing, in the large foyer. Well, that’s the word that she used with Royalty—to her it was a lobby. She had the wedding party line up, bridesmaids on one side, the groomsmen on the other.

  She went first to the Groom and smiled at admiral Scott and had some small words with him. He really was not a part of the area that she was in charge of, the ceremonies as he would be alone waiting for all of this to happen. Up on the altar, trying to stay calm and cool and he had to wait while all of the wedding party slowly moved down the aisle towards him, to fully populate the altar. And she did warn him—well perhaps more of a caution, that he would feel lonely and very much the focus of every set of those ten thousand eyes. He would do well to remember that it was his day too and to concentrate on breathing slowly and steadily. Men get by these few minutes of abject terror in many ways, and her best advice was breathe, just breathe.

  She smiled at him and he went to sit down and watch the dress rehearsal proceedings.

  She turned and went over to the men standing in a large group to one side and asked them to please form a line and she would place them in the order that they were to use up on the altar.

  She first went down the row of groomsmen and introduced herself to them all. The Duke was the Best Man, and she instructed him that he and the Baroness would lead the way down the main aisle to take their own places up on the altar. After him, in order of where the Groomsmen would stand, came admiral McQueen, then lieutenant Sander, then major Stal, then admirals Childs and Higgins, Prime Minister Lazaro, captain Craig Templeton and last the Ikarian Ahanu the representative on the RIM Confederacy Council from Throth.

  She instructed them all on etiquette, on what wedding ceremony standards the Bride wanted to have followed—traditional standards it seems worked best. She reminded them that they would be expected to follow her directions once she began the real dress rehearsal that would happen shortly.

  She smiled at them all and noted that to a man, they were focused and ready to be coached, which was a good thing.

  She did let the Best Man know that it would be his pace of walking that would set the whole tone of the formality of the ceremony so he should pay particular attention to same.

  She smiled at how simple all this was, but that for some reason, too many wedding party members messed up during the ceremonies and that this could not happen at the biggest wedding to ever come to the RIM Confederacy.

  She then went down the row of the twenty bridesmaids and introduced herself to each of them one by one. When she got to the Maid of Honor, she smiled demurely at the Baroness who seemed to be having a good time with all of this. Of the other nineteen women, most were ladies-in-waiting, there was an Issian named Gillian who was a special friend of the bride, there was an cousin from Neres too who the planner had no idea about at all. Each was told what to do on the upcoming wedding day next week.

  How they were to match up, one on each side of the groomsman so that when they came out in a threesome, they would all go directly down the major aisle in the middle of the seating area, and then when they arrived at the lower step of the altar area, to split up. The two bridesmaids were to go to their left and line up, and the groomsman to the right.

  Once the ten groups of threesomes were done, moments later the bride would be presented and then walk down the aisle to taker her place up on the altar, beside the groom, who would have been waiting there for her.

  It was the traditional setting for a wedding and she went over it three times, just to be sure.

  She might have gone for four, as she watched during the third run-through and everything was fine, some small issues with the speed which some of the threesomes used was too fast. But a look from the Baroness said no way for a fourth rehearsal and that was final.

  She bowed her head to the Baroness and then to the Bride and she accepted their congratulations on a job well done.

  She smiled at them both.

  The wedding rehearsal party was about to start and they all went back into the new wing, turned to their right and went down to the State dining room, that was set for the thirty or so of them. The palace Chef had outdone himself and while what was served was not the exact same menu as would be served at the wedding reception, it was close and there was more of course than what anyone could finish.

  The Groom rose and thanked them all for coming and that while he didn’t have a role in the ceremony, other than just saying ‘I do’ which got him a laugh or two, he was thankful all the same.

  The Baroness rose to thank one and all for coming to the live dress rehearsals and that she knew that in just two short weeks, they would be a large part of the success of the wedding.

  The Bride rose then and did the
same but offered up an interesting note…that she was personally thanking them as well. That for her, it was the single most important day of her life. And they had been chosen by both herself and her Groom to be their own friends to help celebrate their marriage.

  Everyone was more than happy and the good feelings were all about the wedding only two weeks away…

  #####

  She had forgotten what it was like out in the field. With more than ten years of experience working for Gallipedia, she had like all journalist new hires, started out in the field. She had spent hours and days in unfruitful discovery of many many things. Life expectancy of the Mancaht albino beetle meant actually sitting and waiting for a hatch, waiting for the beetle to come out of it’s pupae stage to full adult. And then counting the hours till it found a mate, reproduced and then died. Some said it was more than twenty hours, others that it could be longer. She knew what the answer was because she lay in the fields on the farms on Mancaht, with stop-watch after stop-watch counting first the minutes and then the hours. Then file the story and the next assignment, and she did that for years till she moved up out of Field Producer levels to Editor and that had been the end of her sixth year. Six years of this kind of boring, mind numbing hurry up and wait time wasting effort—to reach a goal.

  Her goal today was to wait her turn in the line, to get accredited credentials to the wedding coming up. As the Senior Gallipedia Editor within what, say a few hundred lights, she was certainly going to be a media personage for sure. She looked past the person right in line ahead of her. Some kind of hold-up three people ahead with some kind of issue about their credentials and while the reporter up there wasn’t yelling, the conversation was increasing in decibels quickly.

  She ignored it. There was nothing at all that might happen up there that could affect her own creds being granted, so while she felt for the fellow there was nothing that—wait, maybe there was…

  She yanked the camera off her shoulder and started it up and then moved out of the line to shoot behind her. There were only two other journalists behind her and they grinned and one even posed for the shot. She grinned back and moved up the line all the way to the front and backed up a few feet to get the now red-faced reporter and the lady on the other side of the counter in the same two-shot. The reporter stopped and sighed and then went back to arguing his point but the lady who was in charge of handing out the credentials and checking on validations didn’t respond. She just stared at Gia and then held out a hand to get her to stop.

  Gia did not stop, just looked up and said “act natural…Gallipedia is gonna love this…you know, Barony slow-down on credential issuance…act natural…” she said and she pulled the camera back up to her face and squinted through the eyepiece.

  “Wait…wait….sorry, that just can not happen, Mam,” the lady said.

  Gia could tell that this was new to the woman, but that she at least knew that bad press before an event blows up big time and any story that accompanied these kind of photos would be viral. She also knew that whatever the issue was with the reporter at the desk, it was long forgotten.

  She waved at the woman and said “okay, sure…not a problem, just that this line is like so slow…” in a voice that she thought was more of a small whine, just what she had wanted to impart.

  The lady tilted her head and nodded a bit and then quickly rubber-stamped the creds of the guy at the head of the line and she said “next” quite loudly.

  The fellow came back down the line and slipped her a card—he was a pool reporter for about a dozen dailies over on Amasis, which she knew was one of the Barony realm worlds. She tucked it away and in no time, she was at the front of the line, facing that same woman.

  “Yes, you are…” the woman said, her hand resting on the large file hamper on the reception counter in front of her.

  “Gia Scott—Gallipedia field reporter, here to cover the wedding for Galli,” she said nicely.

  The woman didn’t grunt an answer but that was the impression that Gia got.

  Instead, she leafed through the hamper and finally found a large brown manila envelope with the big capital letters on it that said GALLIPEDIA—SCOTT—OKAYED and she opened it up and spilled out the credentials.

  There was a lanyard with a large plastic placard that listed her name, her employer and a photo supplied by Galli too. At the bottom in big red letters it said MEDIA-FULL ACCESS and that was what Gia had wanted to see.

  She was in.

  The woman went on about MEDIA access and what that meant and that at no time was she going to be allowed to leave the red boundaries that indicted the MEDIA areas only. And that she could not bring in anyone else either as an aide or anything like that. One pass for one person. She looked at Gia’s shoulder and said “your gear please?”

  Gia had nothing but confidence as she piled her camera, notepad, pen, and PDA in front of the lady.

  She picked up them all, one by one and nodded after looking at each with a degree of study. As she put them down, one by one, she pasted a small micro-dot of an ID tag on each and as she did so, she looked at Gia.

  “These all pass muster—nothing else allowed unless you bring it by the MEDIA office in the new wing—we’re in what’s called the small parlor to the left off the main entrance lobby. Got that, Ms Scott?” she asked and Gia could hear a teensy tone of ‘I’m the boss of you’ type of tone, but that didn’t matter.

  She was in.

  She picked up her placard and lanyard and tossed it into the envelope and made to leave.

  “Full wedding ceremony times and places are inside that envelope too. Along with the wedding reception details too. We’ll see you there, Ms. Scott,” and she smiled broadly.

  She was in.

  As a fully accredited MEDIA rep…with access to the whole wedding party and the ability to ask them to pose this way and then that way….

  #####

  Prime Minister Kondo Lazaro held the microphone in his hand but he was so busy laughing, that he almost dropped it on the table. They were all in the back of a major restaurant on Amasis, the Kenyon Cafe it was called. It had a huge reputation as the best restaurant in the city and there was not a doubter there tonight.

  He shook his head and said “thank you, Admiral Higgins—your comments on how our illustrious groom was able to get some things done on Eons was most informative—especially how some of the Professors came to like him,” which got a further set of whoops around the table.

  The Stag for admiral Tanner Scott had been a wonderful success.

  Kondo had arranged to send out nine ships, and using the Barony Drive installed on the small Amasis navy fleet, had brought each of the groomsmen directly to the planet and down to their naval base. They’d been picked up there and limo’d over to the Kenyon Cafe and had been warmly received and ushered into private rear dining room.

  All ten of them were there, and while it was supposed to be just a supper and talks about Tanner, it had somehow turned into a roast as groomsman after groomsman rose to offer up ‘a few words’ on their friendship with the admiral.

  Kondo himself spoke about how they’d first met at the crew interviews for the new ship, the BN Atlas. About how the admiral took a cursory glance at his huge personnel file and had hired him as the ship’s XO on the spot. He had added that when he’d gotten his first star becoming a rear admiral—he had insisted that he get the captaincy.

  Admiral Childs went next and pointed out that it was him, that the admiral had come to after the convict riot on Halberd where he’d had to kill some of the rioters—and give his resignation of the RIM Navy captaincy of the Marwick. He did make a small point that he was happy to have had the admiral with him on the building of the new RIM Naval Academy on Eons and he’d know more…much more that he had been happy to ignore at the time.

  “Of course, the fact that the admiral had created a celebrity—at least in his own mind—of Professor Nigel Watkins who still blogged almost weekly about his being one of the �
�major speakers’ at the grand opening party. Makes one laugh as no one remembers the man’s speech—remember it was directly after the Protesters video insert that said that the Issians were murders.” He sighed and the group sighed with him.

  Major Alver Stal grabbed the mic and wouldn’t give it up for almost a half an hour. He spoke too about being picked for the Atlas crew. About how the two of them—mostly the admiral he conceded, had found the disks that were now a part of the Barony Drive—and had gotten their use totally backwards, which got a huge laugh. About how the admiral cheated running up the stairs and then had carped all night at having to buy beers for the marines on Ghayth. Least it was just my own squad, he said as an aside and that too got a chuckle or two. He raised his beer in a stein and said “to the admiral” and chugged it right down and waved for more.

  Dr Sam Etter, the psychiatrist from the Barony Hospital ship grabbed the mic and ducked as Alver pretended to swipe at him and said simply “I met the admiral under what can only have been a low point—but I can say that he has been more than successful since those days. I would also admit that if you think you’ve hidden a weapon in your office, don’t think that the admiral doesn’t know exactly where it is—something that the whole Hospital ship personnel teams are damn happy he was able to do. It’s also my task tonight to offer up the first ever “Hospital Ship Walk in Space” award to the admiral who I understand was out at absolute zero for almost a full minute,” and that got more whoops and another toast too.

  Captain Craig Templeton rose and said simply, “the admiral ensured that when he left the RIM Navy, he insisted I was told that I get the captaincy. I was a good XO and rising up to captain a full cruiser meant that I had lots—too much too I think at times to learn how and what to do. And when I was not sure, I just thought of the line ‘what would Tanner do?’ and that worked each and every time. He held out his glass of rum and coke and smiled, “to the admiral—may he live a thousand years as the old toast goes…!”