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

by Jim Rudnick

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than she held up a finger to wag in his face. “Fat chance. You were probably in ‘duke land’ and missed point number seven today at the Council meeting, but Bottle has now joined the Barony, who now has eleven planets. Twelve when Ghayth votes in about a year or so. So while the Baroness missed out on the Duchy d’Avigdor today, she still increased her realm by a planet. Talk about ego,” she said.

  Tanner could tell that Helena was as impressed as he was, as Bottle had seemed to be of the mindset that existence as an independent was what they were all about. Yet, somehow, they had just joined the Barony. Something was up with that too, he knew, and he wondered how that was going to play out.

  “Final thought—and I see you’re in that space too. As a duke, you need to think on bigger issues—Confederacy-wide issues. Spaceships and the like, you leave to those who serve you. Your job will be to govern … something that I know only some of—but will, of course, help all I can.”

  Tanner stopped her. “Helena, might it be possible to get my aide—Lieutenant Ayla Kiraz—away from the Barony Navy too? Or, is that too much to ask what with all the happenings of today?” he wondered.

  Within seconds, Helena was busy making notes on her PDA, and a moment later, she patted his arm. “I will check first on whether or not she might like to come over to the Duchy d’Avigdor Navy—course, it’ll all be one navy one day when I take over the Barony,” she said with a wicked grin on her face. She dropped her hand onto his arm, and he clasped it with his own.

  “Bitten off more than I can chew comes to mind,” he said.

  “Yes, but your sister has a chance now—and so do the billions of people in the duchy,” Helena said as she squeezed his arm.

  The Sword made the jump to Neres in seconds, and they were now waiting for clearance down to the navy yard landing base. More to do and more to worry about … he thought. Somehow, he knew there would be more of those “can’t fall asleep” nights ahead too.

  #####

  As she had ridden back to Neres City and the Barony Palace, she didn’t think she would be this way. She was so angry she believed she’d be stomping the floors and breaking up furniture once she was in the private residential area of the palace.

  Instead, she was coldly remote.

  She had just missed out on the single best opportunity to gain new planets for the Barony, and she had been outsmarted by her son-in-law, Duke Scott.

  While that infuriated her and she wondered what her blood pressure might have hit in the past few hours, she now was walking around her dead husband’s old private study on the third floor of the residential part of the palace. She carried her wine but no glass; she swigged it directly from the bottle, ignoring how cold her hand was from holding the bottle of Quaran Pinot Grigio.

  She had asked about the contents of the dressers and closets and even the big walk-in closet her stepdaughter used over in their part of the palace. In moments, she’d learned that they were empty. Helena and Tanner had surreptitiously moved all of their personal effects out of the palace. “Probably into the Sword, then to Juno, and now to Neen,” she said to herself as she took another big swig of the white wine.

  “Damn them—damn the dead duke as well!” she yelled. The Barony should have been the home for the billions of duchy citizens. That would have given her more planets than any other realm in the RIM Confederacy—and she would have become the new Council chairman.

  That was her destiny, she knew.

  Ambassador Bedre had no inkling that Tanner and Option Number Two were going to be exercised earlier today—that she was sure of.

  The Caliph had even thought that his play of releasing the Tillion vid and blaming the event on the Duchy d’Avigdor, while faking the Barony signature on the production of the vid, would work. She knew better and she was sure that others at the Council table would as well. The fact that the whole Tillion issue—point number nine on the new business part of the Agenda just hours ago had been tabled for the next meeting was something else to think about for later.

  But what had really surprised her was when she had glanced at the new Master Adept when the person to whom the duke had left the duchy to was named. She had known. She had known and she did not do anything about that, which she would have to think about more.

  But now Tanner was not hers. He was the new Duke d’Avigdor, and that meant that he was an equal—no longer beneath her. He was a head of state. The duchy with its six-planet realm was only half the size of the Barony, but still it mattered.

  He was now a worrisome competitor.

  He knew about Ghayth.

  He knew about the aliens—the Praix—and much of their secrets that he and his crew on the Atlas had found and been able to re-engineer for Barony use.

  Behind that wall tapestry lay a door that went directly to the trophy room where someone had kept their kills from other worlds—worlds too far away to be able to be reached without cryonics. The Praix, she knew, were involved, but that was one secret she had not shared with anyone else.

  There were many, many secrets within the Barony, and because of Tanner’s marriage to Helena, he could now use those secrets, the ones he knew about, to his advantage.

  He had friends all over the Barony Navy and even on the Hospital Ship, and she needed to think about that too. Perhaps I should purge the Barony of all of them? she thought. Send them all to ITO to be hard-rock miners for their remaining lives. Or just kill them. All of them, the new duke as well…

  She swigged from the bottle again, and the remains swished down her throat. She threw the empty bottle into the corner of the room where it smashed against a statue from God knew where.

  “I will be the chairman,” she said, “and it will be soon.”

  She barked at the study AI and demanded another bottle of the Pinot Grigio. ”It better be here in seconds …” she snarled.

  Yes, she thought, maybe the best way to win was to simply rid the Confederacy of any threats to the Barony …or in thinking more about it, maybe it might be time to find a way to use the new Duke….

  Epilogue ~

  He’d slept well, he thought, for at least the past few hours. Then, he’d slid off the bed and had been lost for a moment or two. It was his first night in the bedroom he and Helena had been asked to use this first night in the ducal palace. His palace concierge was a stickler, it seemed, for what was right and proper, so he’d begged the new duke to give him one day to make the real duke’s bedroom chamber livable, as he’d called it, and Tanner had been so tired he readily accepted.

  Helena had led him almost by the hand as they made their way up the three escalators within the public area of the duke’s palace to the residential wing. They’d been put in one of the unused head of state bedrooms, which were held for use for visitors at any time.

  She had been so much help, and the big press event of hours ago had gone well. Ambassador Bedre had introduced him as the new and rightful Duke d’Avigdor. Professor Bowen, the Confederacy constitutional expert had vetted him, and he’d had a turn at the microphone himself.

  He’d welcomed the viewers and his new citizens to what he called a new day in the Duchy d’Avigdor, and he’d been as honest as he could have been. While he hadn’t bothered pointing out to the viewers that he was new to the position of being a duke, he felt that they knew that.

  He’d been short and sweet in his first speech, but he had offered that he had an “open door” policy and that any citizen could be heard. Off camera, Ambassador Bedre had frowned when he said that, but that was too bad. Tanner wanted to know what his citizens wanted and what was important to them—just like he did when he’d been a navy captain in charge of his crew.

  He padded over to the washroom thinking that at forty plus, perhaps he went to the john more than others. He shook his head as he peered at himself in the mirror. Gray at the temples, a pot on his lower stomach that looked like it might grow, and even, as he leaned in toward the mirror for a be
tter look, a couple of gray chest hairs too.

  “Wonder if the citizens need to know that,” he said to himself as he grinned at his face in the mirror.

  “Wonder what the citizens will want from me?” he said to himself as he padded back to the bed and slid in beside Helena, crabbing over to spoon her from behind.

  He wrapped an arm over her waist. The new duke needed some downtime, he thought, and he slowly drifted back to sleep.

  BOOK THIRTEEN OF THE

  RIM CONFEDERACY

  Captured Aliens

  by Jim Rudnick

  Prologue ~

  The Praix had been in a hurry, suffering from technology issues, yet they still made the seventy-nine thousand lights in less than an hour. That was the first leg into this new galaxy, and it was to be followed by more than a hundred more lights, as the ship tried to hide its real destination by using both inward and outward milk-run locations in the Milky Way. It took more than four days to travel, double back, jump again, then back again, and finally inward and then outward, as it hid its real goal.

  Copper plates at the back end of their huge craft almost glowed as they repelled away from the hastily jury-rigged satellite that they’d set up only a day ago. The Engineering Flock had handled it, and they swore that it would work. Not as quickly as the satellite that had been destroyed months ago on their home world, but it would get the Praix ship, the Wisp, to its destination.

  As it took a path away from its home world, behind it, their home lay in waste and ruin.

  As the central core cluster of the SagD Galaxy, the Class III cluster had been more than the head of civilization for that small galaxy. It had taken more than fifty millennia for the Praix to rise from the branches of their home world trees to becoming the most powerful sentient race in SagD Galaxy.

  They had settled on planets in the surrounding local group of galaxies spread out over almost five million lights. There were now dozens of thousands of Praix colonies, and here in SagD, they were being destroyed.

  From where the invaders of SagD had come, no one knew; not a single beak had been able to define where they had come from. But come they had. These invaders did not communicate. They asked for nothing. They simply appeared in a system and eradicated any ships they found. And moved on. And took nothing.

  With more than ten thousand worlds in SagD being settled and colonies opening up still every year, the Praix had prided themselves on their ability to be a sane and civilized master race. Yes, some small factions had troubles being assimilated by the Praix, but with their superior technology, all had fallen before them. Some had been eradicated. Others offered slavery to remain alive at least. But all had fallen before the Praix.

  Conquerors seldom faced new forces that could withstand them—or defeat them. And from what the Praix had seen, these invaders were simply eradicating anything they found. Everything they found. The appearance of this new unknown race with their smaller faster ships had been a surprise.

  The Praix had fallen at each encounter. The new invaders had sent out a beam that destroyed their ships. Their planets had been simply burned up as the invaders dropped a bomb into their sun, and the resulting nova had ended all life within the Cinderella zone.

  The invaders moved like a black curtain across SagD—destroying ships and putting out suns.

  This was an invasion that had never been countenanced before ... the death of an empire—at least in SagD.

  So the Praix had run.

  Huge freighter ships were converted into refugee ships, carrying them away to other galaxies where safety might lie. From the large and small Magellanic clouds, Bootes, Ursa Major, Fornax, and Andromeda too—all had been sent ships, and tens of thousands of ships had fled SagD.

  There was no other way to look at it, and this ship, the Wisp, had been well down the list when it came to safe havens to run to. As there were few other locations, the Wisp had been sent into the vast Milky Way Galaxy to a location where the Praix had once considered for colonization in this galaxy—Ghayth.

  The Ghayth colonization experiment had gone awry when the enormous freighter ship had crashed onto the planet itself, and their slaves had been deposited onto Eons. They’d not been back in twenty millennia, but the recent Ansible notation from Ghayth spoke of the ability of someone there to be able to be brought into the Praix fold.

  At least that’s what the crew on the Wisp thought, and they all perched, waiting to drop out of sub-space and into orbit around the planet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As he turned away from the console, Tanner sighed, and across the small sitting room, Helena grunted loudly.

  “My darling,” he said contritely, “is there a problem—one that this husband cannot see at all?” he asked.

  While he waited for a reply, she toyed with the ends of her beautiful blonde hair. I love the color of her hair, Tanner thought, it’s the color of honey and those ash tree leaves in the fall on ... on ... what the hell is the name of that planet? Her pink onesie made her look a bit like a Garnuthian rabbit—all soft and cuddly.

  She looked up at him, her tablet in her lap as she sat draped on the comfortable loveseat across from the desk where he was working. The grin on her face spoke more to him of testing than teasing. She eyed him and then clicked the tablet a couple of times, and something he couldn’t see came up.

  “Ready?” she asked, and he nodded in response.

  “Name of the third planet to join the Duchy d’Avigdor, year and duke of same?” she inquired as she looked down at the answers on the screen that he still couldn’t see.

  “Um ...” Tanner said, “that would be Dover—joined the duchy almost two hundred years ago under Duke Samuel d’Avigdor. Right?” he asked, and she smiled a smile that said yes.

  “Planet with almost no native economy yet enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes?” she replied.

  “Anulet, due to it being kept as a native ecology sanctuary. Hunting is the real reason the planet does so well,” he said as he unconsciously rubbed his right leg. He recalled being caught by a Jael, the biggest carnivore on Anulet and almost being the animal’s dinner, which had been a close call. Time spent in a robo-doc, followed by the lifelong friendship of Duke David d’Avigdor had been the result of his only trip to Anulet.

  Tanner smiled and continued. “The tourist economy there is outstanding, and it grows as there are more and more ‘neo-ecology’ buffs coming in monthly.” “This must be a growing concern here on the RIM as well as inwards. We keep Anulet pure—yes, there is hunting allowed but all controlled and licensed by us. Yes, there are many continents with tours—water-rafting tours, waterfall tours, hiking the huge sub-arctic canyon tours, canoe and kayak tours ... the list is long, but keeping Anulet pure is a good thing.”

  Helena nodded once again. “And what about Waterloo,” she asked.

  He drew a blank. Waterloo, he did remember, had joined the Duchy d’Avigdor almost seventy years ago. The planet was based on the economy of its large mineral deposits, and that meant that it was heavily industrialized as far as mining went. But all of its raw materials—ores and precious metals and rare earths were sent off planet for processing.

  He fumbled that answer and realized it as he paused to try to find more in his gray matter to help boost his answer up to being current and correct. He had nothing else, he realized, and he shook his head.

  “You added just the past weekend,” Helena said as she turned off the tablet in her lap and took a drink of the Quaran Syrah they were sharing, “that you thought there was a great possibility to help Waterloo—by adding in refining and smelting industry too. At least that’s what you said—not that I know what might even be needed to do that kind of world building,” she finished off and emptied her glass too.

  Tanner got up, went around the desk, and plopped on the loveseat beside her, carrying the rest of the bottle to share with her. He smiled at his wife and swept a long blonde lock away from her face as he poured. “One thing is f
or sure. Knowing as much about your realm as you can learn—pound into your brain—is a good way to be a better Royal. Just wish that David had left me a ‘Blood of the Duchy d’Avigdor’ book like you Barony Royals have,” he said.

  She nodded. “Maybe there is one, but with David leaving us so soon, perhaps he’d just not yet gotten around to leaving its location available for whomever was to follow.”

  They were talking about the book, which existed, as far as they knew, only for the Barony. It held the knowledge of the current Baron—or Baroness—written and then passed down from generation to generation. That book had triggered his quest to go to Ghayth on a test drive of the then newest Barony ship—the Atlas—on its shakedown cruise. The book held more, much, much more, and its hidden pages lay now in the duke’s office here as it belonged to Helena. It might have instead gone to the current Baroness, but Helena’s father, the baron, had given it instead to her—with the caution that it was never to go to his wife.

  “If there were such a book, surely he’d have left some information about it on the chance that he might not get the opportunity in the future. At least I would think so ...” Tanner said, sipping the supple wine as he talked.

  “And you, Mister Duke? Where did you leave that hint for whomever will follow you,” she asked with a hint of irony.

  He grinned at her. “Everyone knows that wives outlive their husbands—and you know it’s in my office in the wall safe behind the huge hologram of the RIM Confederacy. And you have the combination too—we must thank Ambassador Bedre for that. Hey, maybe we should change that?” he asked.

  She nodded and said, “Sure, have the AI change it to something you and I would know—and no one else?”

  He grinned at her still. “How about how many times we made love that first night on the Sterling?” he said.