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

by Jim Rudnick

  She grinned and made a mental note to give the girl from Carnarvon some kind of nice gift. She was as rich as anyone on the RIM, but the gift ould need to be in balance with the act itself. In the past, she had given gifts as a tip, and the value of the gifts had far exceeded the value of the service provided. She remembered that had caused her no end of trouble.

  Suitable, she thought. She wanted a suitable and tactful tip. A case of wine—not the ten thousand credits per bottle vintage but the fifty credits per bottle vintage—would be suitable. Who’d even drink that low-level dishwater was beyond her, but it was a normal gift item.

  She sighed. Being a Baroness—when you were born dirt poor and raised that way—was difficult and required much growth. “I’ve done my best so far, but there is room to grow even more,” she said to herself as she flexed her toes one way and then the other to see the blue glow for herself.

  Back to the list, she thought, and the second alien she was mad at.

  Gramsci of Alex’n, the realm in the Confederacy with fifteen planets, was the chairman and head of the RIM Confederacy Council. She was the vice chairman and she was aiming at growing the Barony to surpass that number and take over as the full chairman of the Confederacy. It was her goal, but to do that, she’d need to think about more than just an EYES ONLY. The Caliph had evaded her, and the chairman, while he’d taken the call, had offered up not a single thing to help her. All six of his arms he’d held palms up to show that he had no idea. Honestly, he’d even said.

  She hadn’t learned if the Alex’n empire was on the list; the chairman was too smart for that kind of a mistake. She’d asked him point-blank, and he denied it. He’d said that his realm was quite happy with fifteen worlds and that someone, yes, he’d imagined, would take over the Duchy d’Avigdor. He had no idea who that might be, he’d said.

  He was lying, she thought. He must have an idea and if he knew of the list, then he’d know the Barony was on it too.

  Not willing to help at all, she thought as she toyed with the edge of her desk pad, worrying a fingernail into the seam of the leather. She looked out the window to her left and noted the always sunny day and the blue, blue sky with a few wispy clouds were there as always. Neres had exceptionally good weather, and the seasons were pretty much the same as the planet had a tilt of only four percent. During winter, the temperatures only dropped about five degrees or so.

  She looked down to the horizon that lay to the west of the Barony Palace and noted the huge towers of Neres City a few miles distant. From here, she could not see much more than the skyscrapers and towers of the core of the city, and yet, it always seemed to calm her somewhat.

  She was mad. No doubt about that, but in reality, she was mad at herself. Whatever had made her think that just asking if a realm was on the duchy’s list would work was wrong. It would take more than that.

  If she could find out who was on the list, and work against them, she had a better chance of the list shrinking to finally have only one realm on it.

  The Barony.

  She smiled at that. Ten plus six equals sixteen planets, and according to the RIM Confederacy, the head of state of the largest realm on the RIM took over as the chairman of the RIM Council.

  That was her goal. But how to get there, she wondered, and more importantly, how to get rid of her competitors quickly was the question of the day …

  #####

  Walking across the sand, an EliteGuardsman approached Tanner and Helena and stopped just short of Tanner. It was another sunny day with cool ocean breezes on Bottle, and Tanner and Helena were in their usual spot lying on a chaise lounge below a huge orange umbrella with a sweet and sour punch cocktail at hand.

  The EliteGuard cleared his throat, and Tanner lifted his head and turned to his left to see the man standing at attention in the bright sun. EliteGuards dressed in full uniform at all times, but that was something he’d look into later—after the honeymoon. The black and china blue uniforms with those spit-and-polished blue boots and the large twin crowns logo of the Barony on the left side of the chest with the military-style full collar must be hot, he thought.

  “Yes … what’s up?” he said, holding a hand over his brow to help dim the glare off the ocean a bit.

  “My Lord—an unusual occurrence. We have had a ship from Neen in the Duchy d’Avigdor arrive—with a credentialed ambassador on board who says he needs to speak to you. He offered up no information about why or what his business was—and even us saying that we were under strict privacy orders to deny anyone access to the honeymoon couple would not make him leave.

  “They’ve been sitting on the landing port now for over twenty-one hours, and they said they have no intention of leaving ’til he gets to speak to Lord Scott, My Lord.”

  The EliteGuard was nervous. Strict privacy orders was one way to put it—Helena had said, months ago, that anyone who broke that would end up digging ore over on ITO for the rest of their lives. For this guard—a major, Tanner could see by his gold oak leaves on his collar—to come out to tell them this was unusual indeed.

  He nodded to the guard, waved him away, and turned to Helena. “Looks like life is intruding—but it’s the duchy, and it may be about the duke or something. Could I see him?” he asked nicely.

  She held up her palm, the edge on her brow to see in the reflected glare off the waters, and grinned at him.

  “Lord Scott has no need to ask anyone ever for permission to do anything, dear. Well, maybe to change the furniture in our new bedroom—the choice of what you want to do, Tanner, is yours. I’m gonna have another of those punch drinks, and I think I’ll ask the chef for a light fresh fish dinner this evening—okay, honey?” she said as she leaned back into the lounge chair.

  He grinned at her, though she couldn’t see it, and said, “I’ll get your drink ordered and be back soon as I hear the ambassador.” He hoisted himself up and out of the lounge. As comfortable as they were, these lounge chairs were a real pain to get up and out of, and as he used his left hand to grip the left arm, he felt the tightness around his left clavicle and where it met the sternum.

  When the shooting at his wedding had occurred, a bullet had driven into his chest and cracked his sternum, which had pushed the bullet to the left side of his heart as it grazed the left ventricle and caused his heart to spasm. If it wasn’t for one of his groomsmen, who was a medical doctor, and being within fifty feet of a mobile robo-doc, Tanner might not have made it.. But now, after more than two months of careful rest and relaxation, it was apparent to him that while he was healed, there would always be some stiffness and pain when he moved to his left.

  He grinned for a moment. If some pain getting out of a chair on Bottle was the only price he paid for the assassination attempt, then he was truly a lucky man. Correct that, he thought as his grin widened, a lucky lord.

  He stood and stretched. He saw the EliteGuard back up off the beach, near the small pool and bar, and he made his way up the slightly sloping sand and joined him.

  “Major, I’ll see the ambassador. Please let them know and have him—and whomever else he wants to bring along—come down here to the bar,” he said.

  The guard snapped him a salute, said, “Yes, My Lord,” and rushed off.

  Tanner looked over at the bartender who doubled as their steward. “Could you please take another of those excellent punch drinks down to the lady for me, please—and then give me some privacy here at the bar?”

  The bartender was soon a mixing and pouring at light speed. Tanner sat on one of the stools and turned back to face the waters.

  On Bottle, the ocean was massive. So big, the locals claimed, that there were probably islands with societies and people that had never seen others before. He knew the planet mapping showed more than eighty thousand islands, atolls, keys, and the like, as well as the three major continents too. An audit report by the Barony team that had put together the proposal to buy this resort had agreed with the locals’ claim.

  The three major
continents were lightly populated too, which was an issue. As a single planet with no real salable economy, they would not survive for long. To resolve the issue, Bottle had become a tourist island. It marketed water and beaches for relaxing vacations, and with the raw undeveloped beauty of the beaches and oceans, it had survived.

  “Lord Scott. May I sit please, My Lord?” a voice over his shoulder said.

  He turned to look at the man who’d spoken. He was about six feet tall with white hair and looked about eighty years old. He had blue eyes—really piercing blue eyes—under white brows. He was in pretty good shape too, and he’d dressed for the beach—well, at least he had on an un-tucked short-sleeved shirt with his slacks and he wore sandals too.

  “Yes, I’m Tanner Scott—you’re?” he answered, noting the ambassador had come alone.

  Normally he would have held out his hand, but both his new wife and the Baroness had reprimanded him—Royals never did that unless the person was a very loyal, well-known friend.

  “Ambassador Bedre, My Lord. I have been in the Duchy Diplomatic Corps for over fifty years, and I have recently been appointed as the head of the Duchy Provisional Government, well, until our future has been decided,” he said.

  His voice was smooth with tones that, to Tanner at least, indicated decades of speaking to all types in his diplomatic career. It was, Tanner thought, very much like speaking to his friend Ambassador Harmon, who he’d gotten to know those few years back when the planet Enki had been admitted to the RIM Confederacy.

  Using your voice as a tool was something most people never even considered, yet Tanner knew this was not only a tool to a diplomat—but often a weapon. I’d be smart to go lightly here, he thought as he nodded to the man.

  “Ambassador, welcome to Bottle. What is it that I can do for you—and also, what might be so important that you’d interrupt a man’s honeymoon?” he asked.

  That set the ambassador back on his heels. “My Lord, I apologize for that, but it is not my own doing. I am here today on strictly confidential grounds, as I obey one of the duke’s—rather the late duke’s—codicils in his will. This was demanded of me. I do apologize, My Lord,” he said.

  Now Tanner was the one taken aback somewhat. He leaned over to his right and stared over at the bartender who’d just returned from delivering the fresh punch to his wife. Tanner gestured that he’d like one too, and once again, the mixing machine began to blend all the ingredients into a frothy foam. The bartender presented the drink and then left the bar area.

  Tanner took a healthy pull on the double straws and got a good-sized mouthful of sweet and sour fruity punch. He was going to call the bartender back and offer the ambassador one—then he cut that off. No better way to remind the man which one of them was Royalty than to not share his hospitality. “I see, Ambassador. So what is it that you’ve come to say?”

  The ambassador nodded, but it was more like he dipped his head with a teensy bow, maybe, Tanner thought.

  “My Lord, the duke—sorry, the late duke—added a new codicil to his will only three months ago. It outlines what he wanted done—should he not get to do it himself during his lifetime. As he was a … victim of the shooting just those two months ago, the will was read right after that to a closed session of the Provisional Duchy Government’s cabinet just two weeks ago. At that time, and after much advice from our legal department and even from some selected RIM Confederacy constitutional experts, I was charged with the duty to bring the late duke’s wishes to you for you to hear them. And for you to decide, My Lord.”

  He slid a small bag off his shoulder, laid it on the bar to Tanner’s left, and placed a hand on it. “Inside this is the duke’s will—we would ask please that it be kept confidential, My Lord. And there is a marker on the pages that concern this new codicil and how it might affect you—and your life too, My Lord. You have been bequeathed something …” he said.

  His voice sounded almost normal, but Tanner thought he could detect a small tone of anxiety almost hidden away behind the words. He put a hand down on the corner of the leather bag and half-smiled back at the ambassador.

  “And what exactly did the duke leave me?” he asked as he sipped again on his punch.

  “He left you the duchy, My Lord. You are—or you can be—the new Duke d’Avigdor,” the ambassador said, his voice now open and honest.

  Tanner spit up the partially swallowed fruit punch all over the bar …

  #####

  He really didn’t know what the major cause was of his newly found impatience, but it was there anyways.

  He had a sister in the Barony cells, charged with assassinating the Master Adept and the Duke d’Avigdor and wounding him at the same time.

  Yesterday, he had been presented with the duke’s will and had read carefully the codicil about what might become his future—should he wish to become the new duke and rule the Duchy d’Avigdor and its six planets.

  He had been lying on that chaise lounge for more than two months, soaking up the sun, resting and relaxing, and finding it harder and harder to get up and out of that chair too.

  He needed a gym—not a halfhearted attempt at a gym like the few machines over in the commons room area. A real gym full of marines would get him to rev up his now fatter body and get back into shape. He went off on a tangent thinking about how difficult it was to get back into shape now that he was over forty, but he brought his train of thought back to what lay ahead of him.

  He smiled at Helena. Must do this, he thought, and he grinned at her with what he hoped was his best smile.

  “Okay,” she said, as she put down her fork and reached for the glass of white wine in front of her. She sipped the wine, cupped it in front of her, and smiled back as she said, “Out with it, Lord Scott!”

  How she knew he had something to say was truly beyond him, but then he nodded as he realized she knew him pretty damn well.

  He set down his fork, the fish entree forgotten, raised his glass of white wine, and toasted her. “To my wife—who knows me better than I know myself. Care to tell me what I’m about to say?” he said nicely.

  She nodded. “You want to get back to reality—you are healed, and you have made up your mind on what to do with your sister,” she said, her voice not quite flat and empty of emotion.

  He caught that, so he tried to tell her how he felt. “Honey, yes, I do wish to get back to reality. But what to do with Gia is, as yet, beyond me. For now, sitting in a cell will do fine, I’d think. No, it’s the duchy thing that has me thinking …” he finished off, and she just stared back at him.

  Last night after the Duchy d’Avigdor’s ambassador had left at dinner, he’d simply handed her the duke’s will—earmarked where it talked about him—and he’d sat back.

  She’d read it. Then she’d reread it, put it down, and continued to eat. She had said nothing.

  He’d waited.

  She had taken a couple of bites of her dinner, and then, like just a few minutes ago, she had dropped her fork and picked up her wine.

  She’d talked to him about the Barony and how she could never ever be anything but the Baroness—true to her heritage, she’d called it. Without any malice in her tone, she had said the duke’s kind offer was up to him—but she would be the Baroness one day and that was that. He thought maybe she had meant “choose me and the Barony.”

  He’d sat at that point, for almost five minutes, and then he’d loudly announced an answer she had never thought of herself. “May I present the Duchess of d’Avigdor, the Baroness of Neres, Helena St. August,” he intoned as if he were introducing her at a formal state event.

  She started, spilling her wine a bit. She hadn’t considered that she could be both. She smiled back widely, and he knew she was on board.

  He had gone on to let her know that the baroness who married a duke would, of course, get the title of duchess. She’d have the job of being the head of state of the Barony as well as his ducal consort too. And after some time, the Barony would grow to i
nclude the duchy ... something that was dawning on her now.

  She smiled at him. “And I know a guy too … the best constitutional expert here on the RIM. One Professor Klaasjan Boven of the university on Carnarvon—he was at the Halberd anniversary event on the stage—do you remember him?” she asked

  He shook his head. “Not hardly … that was a day I try to never, ever remember,” he said quietly and looked off toward the blue of the ocean.

  She had looked off into the distance too, at the far horizon, where the calm ocean blended into the ocean deeps. She had a small smile on her face reminding him that the codicil had some other things to think about.

  He had nodded back, and they’d gone back to the delicious fish dinner.

  “Thinking what,” she said, interrupting his recollection of last night and bringing him back to tonight.

  He nodded. “Gia. I’m thinking of what to do with her. Death for her crimes I do not countenance at all—she was brainwashed by our mother that I killed Nora—which I did not do. But to carry that kind of hate for all these years and then find me and come out to the RIM to kill me—I cannot imagine what kind of a messed-up psyche she must have. But—she is blood, and I can’t forget that either, yet she took two innocent lives …” he said.

  She nodded as she took a sip of the buttery soft chardonnay.

  He went on, thinking out loud as he did. “So, what I think I’m going to do—with your approvals, of course—is to sentence her to life imprisonment but mitigate that by making her a patient up on our Hospital Ship over Neres. I will assign her the same team that I had—and hopefully, the doctors there can help her see her errors and mis-thinking and cure her of that at least,” he said.