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

by Jim Rudnick

  Book. I need to read the book, plus, perhaps I need to know more about the wreck of the ship over on Ghayth. How can I find that out, she wondered.

  Call the aide. Ask. She’d be able to help a bit, she thought and so she thought clearly “aide…can I talk to you please” and the door opened on the side of the room and a black robed acolyte entered to stand in front of her…

  Questions….there would always be questions….she said to herself…

  Epilogue ~

  Tanner was slogging across the sands….he was hot and he was tired and more than anything, he was thirsty.

  Water had run out more than two days ago, and in the 120+ degree heat, under the broiling sun of Branton, he knew he was in trouble. Ahead, he could see the horizon that held the much cooling climate of the starboard side of the planet. Where the temperatures were down forty degrees at least and where there was water.

  The dunes here were not so steep anymore, and as he walked first up one and then down another, his feet went down only a few inches with each step. His feet were also a mess he knew; he had known hours ago, that when you lose feeling in them, that meant that you’re doing damage to the flesh.

  Not that worrying about his feet was something that he really cared about; the pain in his chest was much more on his mind than any other worries at present.

  Ahead of him was a woman.

  A woman who walked like she was not in any kind of pain or need.

  She strode along the dunes, right up one side and down the next.

  She never turned around, but he knew who it was…it was his sister Gia, who’d shot him.

  And who had shot and killed the Master Adept, and the Duke.

  Both his friends. Both worth more to the RIM than he ever could be and still she walked on ahead.

  At one point, he’d lost his footing on a very steep dune and had fallen and rolled and rolled and had found himself when he sat up to be close enough to yell at her.

  “Gia….for God’s sake, stop…Gia…” he’d screamed but she hadn’t lost a step.

  She just walked on-wards, towards the cooler horizon.

  His chest when he had looked last, had an entry bullet wound, that was leaking blood occasionally. When he’d had to almost crawl up the last big set of dunes, at the top he’d taken a breather, and had noticed below him in the sand, a wet spot. He’d jabbed a finger into it and had sniffed it and then stuck his finger in his mouth.

  Blood. My blood, he knew.

  Loss of blood meant many things, all of them bad and all of them meant that his time in the dunes would be short.

  He trudged along, wanting to get to the horizon, for it to get cooler…and still there were miles ahead of him…

  He wanted to yell at her again.

  But instead he just walked.

  Hot searing sun, it’s rays beating down on him.

  He couldn’t do anything but walk…and wait for the horizon…

  BOOK ELEVEN OF THE

  RIM CONFEDERACY

  Honeymoon Bottle

  by Jim Rudnick

  Prologue ~

  He rolled to his left, leaned up on his elbow, and looked as usual to the horizon. The blue of the ocean faded right into the blue of the sky, and he was in paradise. Beside him, slowly adding more color to her already deep tan, his bride lay dozing in the bright Bottle sun.

  Every day was like the one before. Each day started with a clear blue sky and an early morning breeze that took the heat off one’s body, and by late afternoon, there were always some clouds and the heat mellowed out as the occasional cloud obscured the sun.

  Since they owned the resort, their requests were promptly met. All Tanner had to do was clear his throat, and their casita AI would immediately call a steward who’d trot out to the edge of the pool to take a drink order. Or a snack order. Or an order for just about anything he could ask for.

  He’d jokingly asked Helena once if he could order the steward to kill the cook as he’d not really liked a dish—and immediately he’d turned white and had choked back his grief. Having lost a friend like the Duke d’Avigdor just a month ago and the Master Adept as well, he realized his attempt at humor was not something that he countenanced at all. Helena had cuddled him, smiled at him, and calmed him, and they’d gone back to tanning in the sun. The funeral for David, the Duke D’Avigdor, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, and he was thankful he’d had such great support.

  On Bottle, at their resort, all he had to do was to recuperate. His chest still showed the scars of the gunshot wound and the robo-doc surgery that had saved his life. As brand new scars often do not tan so well, his chest looked odd, he thought. His physiotherapist, who still came to see him every other day to assist him with the exercises that were supposed to help, told him that was to be expected.

  Tanner thought the exercises did help a bit, as he leaned on his left elbow and stretched a little to test the newly grown sternum and its musculature. No pain anymore, which was good. Maybe it was time to have physio say only once a week, he thought.

  He lay back down, and closing his eyes, he wondered for the millionth time today what Gia was doing.

  She was still being held on Neres in the same jail he’d been kept in a few years back. She had no rights as a citizen of the RIM Confederacy, as she was obviously guilty of killing two people—the Issian Master Adept and the Duke d’Avigdor—both his friends. He wondered what she thought she was doing when she’d come to his wedding to kill him. Why she couldn’t accept that he had not killed their sister Nora—not even by accident as the Branton Tribunal had found him innocent—was something he didn’t understand.

  He thought about what he was going to do with her. When he and his bride had left for their somewhat delayed honeymoon on Bottle, the Baroness had told him she would hold Gia until he returned and he would decide her fate.

  He rubbed his chest, felt the still rough scar edges, and wondered what Gia’s fate might be …

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Baroness lay half-reclined on her loveseat and toyed with Gracie, her pet cat. At least she called it a cat. It had four legs and a sort of feline face, which was enough for her. The fact that it walked sideways crossing one leg over the other to move was not worth even thinking about. “A cat is a cat,” she said to herself as she stroked its back just above its two tails. Of course, cats purred, but Gracie was mute as she stretched up to get the maximum itching from her master. The Baroness sighed and reached over with the other hand to the table at her side.

  The wine was gone, she saw and thought about calling for more, but then she stopped.

  The ambassador of the Duchy d’Avigdor was due in just a few more minutes, and she had her issues with how she wanted to play the man.

  With six planets in the realm, the duchy was small but still a very worthy prize. At ten planets, her Barony was now the second largest realm in the RIM Confederacy and she was always looking to expand. One day, she was sure, the Barony would be the biggest realm in the Confederacy, and she couldn’t wait forever for that to occur.

  The leader of the duchy, David the duke d’Avigdor, had been killed during her stepdaughter’s wedding just a month ago, and the duchy was without a leader. A pro-tem provisional government along with guidance of the Executive Council of the Confederation was now running the duchy d’Avigdor.. The combined group was charged with the duty to preserve the duchy but at the same time to plan its own future without a hereditary successor as the next duke.

  She grinned and said, “More wine. Same as last time, please,” and the sitting room AI chimed back that her order had been heard and acted on.

  In less than a minute, an EliteGuard appeared from a side door and quickly removed the empty glass and replaced it with a full one.

  Red. She was drinking red for a change, from the best Quaran burgundy vintages they had. Her wine sommelier had offered that it was fine to drink now—it was already aged five years in Anulet oak—but if she chose to buy s
ome to lay down in the cellars, she would be able to drink the very enhanced vintage for at least another twenty years. That had interested her somewhat as she normally drank light whites and their age was not so important she knew.

  She’d ordered a hundred cases and had even gone down the two elevators and the escalator to the sub-basement floor to see them in the cellar. With more than thirty thousand bottles, the Barony cellars were something to see, she had thought. First created by her husband years before he’d even met her, his love of Quaran wine so great that the size, depth, and breadth of the cellars was well known all across the RIM. She had added little, but as she walked the aisles between the racks of bottles, she knew she’d never get to drink all or even a healthy percentage of the wealth of wines around her. She’d instructed her sommelier to present her with a new red each week for her to taste and try. Last week’s wine had been just too, too much like tasting sweaty socks for her to enjoy at all, and she’d commented about that. The sommelier had nodded and had said this kind of wine, a Côtes du Rhône clone, was often associated with that typical smell and taste—too much yeast was the reason he said. She remembered nodding, as if she understood that, but she had added never again, please to that offering.

  Today, the red was from a grape she’d never tasted before—at least that’s what the sommelier had said. The Nebbiolo grape, he had said, was the king of grapes. This wine had been aged for more than ten years in Anulet oak, using old often-used casks that imparted slow, slow oaky tastes to the vintage. She sipped it once more and smiled.

  “Truly a king,” she said to herself, “just like I should be,” and that got a real out loud laugh.

  The side door opened up once more and an EliteGuard came over to her. “Ma’am, the ambassador of d’Avigdor is without. Should I let him in?”

  She sat up and Gracie moved over to take the far end of the loveseat as she rose to straighten her appearance and tidy her hair. That took her almost two minutes, and then she nodded to the guard who left the room to return with the ambassador.

  Humans tend to all look the same, she thought, and when they have a diplomatic rank like an ambassador, they are very particular about their appearance. The man was just over six feet tall with wavy white hair, and his face was handsome in a mature way. His blue eyes were focused on her as he walked the distance from the far door to stand before her.

  He half-bowed, as she was Royalty, and he smiled as he held out his hand to her. “So nice for you to be able to see me, Ma’am. The duchy thanks you for the opportunity to speak to you,” he said.

  She nodded back, clasped his hand for a second, and then turned to retake her place on the loveseat. Across from her on the other loveseat, the ambassador sat and leaned forward toward her.

  When she reached for her wine, she saw he did not have anything. Trying to be hospitable was one way of winning over a diplomat. “I was just trying this new wine, would you care to join me with a small glass, Ambassador?” she inquired.

  He hesitated, and she watched the indecision flicker over his face as he contemplated accepting a drink even though it wasn’t noon. He nodded and said, “Yes please, Baroness, I’d love to try it too,” and he smiled.

  She nodded and moments later, the EliteGuard presented him with a glass of the wine too.

  She held out her glass and toasted to him. He followed suit, swirling the vintage in his glass a couple of times as he took a big sniff of the bouquet, and then he took a good-sized sip followed. He sucked in a bit of air then too, aerating the vintage in his mouth, and then swallowed it, savoring the mouth feel and the long-lasting finish too.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Ma’am, I have never ever tasted anything so … so … so regal. This is a Nebbiolo, Ma’am, but so much better than anything I’d ever had the opportunity to try. Thank you so very much,” he said as he took another sip too and then set the glass down.

  She nodded and made a mental note to gift the man with some of same, and then she smiled at him.

  “So glad you like it, Ambassador,” she said.

  She did not offer up anything else as she was playing a wait and see game with him that she often did with people who came to her looking for something. She had no idea what it was that the man—or the duchy—wanted. She wanted him to take the lead.

  He smiled at her and leaned back.

  “Ma’am, I come to you today to make an offer—directly from our own Duchy Provisional Government about the future of the duchy. As you well know, Ma’am, the duke had no heirs. No natural-born child to inherit the dukedom—which puts our realm in somewhat of a predicament,” he said. His voice was polished, and he had the oration skills that came with decades of diplomatic talks.

  He knew where he was going, she thought, which meant that the Duchy had plans …

  “So we would like to talk to some other realms—other meaning the few that we think would be a great candidate for us to, well, the word merge comes to mind. We would like to be a full partner with an existing RIM Confederacy realm, and the Barony is one of our candidates,” he said and smiled at her once more.

  We would love to own the duchy. She smiled back.

  “We would certainly love to begin those talks, Ambassador. Might I ask how many candidates there are that you have under consideration?” she said sweetly, sipping from her glass and showing her enjoyment of the wine to him. Nothing better than reminding him of what was in his glass too, she thought.

  He looked away and then back at her. “Ma’am, that is not something that I’m allowed to mention, but I can tell you that the list is very, very short. In fact, we’ve already been approached by almost a dozen other interested parties too. But we’re using our own list and vetting each of the candidates, Ma’am,” he said.

  She nodded. As she’d thought, RIM Confederacy realms were all interested, but most were much smaller than the duchy. There were only a couple bigger or about the same size, and the Barony alone lay right on their borders too as the closest candidate. That was a good sign, she thought.

  “Then please, have your team get in touch with my own and we can at least begin talks, Ambassador,” she said.

  He nodded and reached for his glass one more time. He sipped the last of the wine and smiled again.

  After he’d left, the Baroness sat and contemplated this new issue. While she had to admit the Duchy d’Avigdor was well worth the effort as a prize, she did have some misgivings about the other candidates.

  I need to find out who else is on that list and what I might be able to do to erase them as competitors—not a real problem, she thought. Not hardly at all …

  #####

  He rolled to his left and tucked the single top sheet between his legs. For the tenth time, he tried to fall asleep. He lifted his head to glance over at Helena, who was snoring lightly on his left. He watched her chest rise and fall with each breath, and he wished he too were asleep. He laid his head back down on the pillow and turned a bit so he could see the ceiling of the casita and its layered roof of reeds in the slight glow from the ocean just outside. Somewhere up there was that green gecko that he’d spied often over the past couple of months spent here on Bottle.

  “Some honeymoon,” he said to himself. “Me, my bride, and my gecko.” Not that the lizard was a bad casita roommate. Sometimes, he chirped a few times or even in a long string of chirps that made him feel like he was the trespasser here. No matter, as usual at night, the gecko was hunting prey to eat, and against the dark brown reed ceiling, he couldn’t see the greenish lizard at all.

  He rolled a bit farther back to stare straight up at the ceiling.

  Sleep didn’t come with his mind a mesh of ideas and complications and issues he had to get ahold of, but after two months on Bottle, he knew that what he needed to do first was to go home. Back to Neres and the Barony Palace to work out what his new duties as Lord Scott might be.

  “Too many issues to think on,” he said to himself, and for some reason the duke—his best man at his weddin
g—jumped into his consciousness.

  He had so very much liked the man. As a mentor, the duke d’Avigdor had been very helpful to Tanner when he’d arrived here on the RIM only a decade or so ago. He had credited the duke with saving his life when he’d been ambushed by a Jael, the huge predator that lived on Anulet. The duke had blasted him from the rear as the Jael had been standing over him, and the Jael had died, which had saved Tanner’s life. But then the Jael’s mate had showed up, and he’d been the one to shoot that snarling beast, and the duke’s life had been saved. By him. Each had saved the other, and the two dead Jaels had paid the price.

  He’d been injured with a broken leg, and time in the robo-doc had been needed to fix that injury. The Duke had thrown a huge planet-wide party in honor of him for saving his life, which had been more than enough. It had really not been a planned thing—getting ambushed on a hunting planet by the trophy that you’re looking for had been one thing—and both he and the duke had escaped with their lives.

  He shook his head slightly, and a few drops of sweat came off his brow and dripped on the pillow. He rolled all the way over onto his right hip and crawled to the edge of the bed to find cooler sheets to lie on. He smiled to himself.

  The duke had said something to him at his bachelor party—that he had a special honor for Tanner and he’d find out after the wedding. Gia, his sister, had shot and killed the duke at the altar on his wedding day, and Tanner had not found out what that honor was—until the duke’s funeral.

  Heads of state and their funerals, he’d not known, were a very big thing out here on the RIM. Every single Confederacy member and all of their realm planets sent representatives—heads of state themselves in most instances. He’d been just out of the robo-doc after being shot at his wedding, and he’d insisted on going to Neen, the home planet of the Duchy d’Avigdor, to attend the funeral. His new wife and her stepmother, the Baroness, had insisted on sending along a full medical team too, which was a pain, but they’d all gone to Neen to attend the event.