by Jim Rudnick
“Captain Scott and Commander Lazaro, welcome. I see you’ve brought along someone who could only be Captain Rossum—do I have that right, Ma’am?” she said very politely for a Royal.
Tanner nodded to the Roma, and she smiled back to the Baroness.
“Yes, Ma’am—I am Captain Daika Rossum—I lead the Roma refugees, and we are to speak, I understand, here at this Council meeting?”
No sense in taking any time to get to the point, Tanner thought and almost grinned, and he turned back to the Baroness.
She too, it appeared, was unsurprised, and she nodded and pointed back to the second tier of seats behind her where they were to sit and await the Council meeting to begin.
Tanner got them all squared away and took a moment to move over a few rows to speak to the RIM Navy admiral.
“Sir,” he said and saluted fully to his ex-boss.
The admiral looked up from his tablet and nodded.
While not according to any man’s navy protocol, Tanner dropped his salute and spoke. “Sir, regards from Captain Siegel of the Nugent, Sir. I wanted to relay his report to you in person, Sir,” he said, and he clicked a button on his wrist PDA, which sent the message directly to the admiral.
Again, the admiral nodded. He looked down once more at his tablet and read for a full couple of minutes. “Thank you, Captain Scott. It—as I suspected—is identical to the one he sent himself just a few days ago. I am sorry that he was not able to come to this meeting, but his own opinion of what to do on the Memories issue I will be presenting on his behalf. We had to move him and the Nugent down to Carnarvon, with their power problems, as a reminder about who is the Navy. But yes, thank you for this, Captain,” he said. His eyes drilled into Tanner’s, and while they asked questions, the admiral did not.
“Sir—on a personal note, I’ve been cured of the alcohol problem, and my PTSD is being handled very well so far, Sir. Just thought—”
“Yes, yes, Captain,” he interrupted, and while he didn’t smile, it seemed like some of those questions had answers he was happy with, Tanner thought.
He saluted once more, snapped a perfect about face, and went back to join the seating area behind his Baroness.
I’m Barony Navy now. He reminded himself of that and that seemed to be okay at least for the present.
Doesn’t help an iota with what I’m going to do with my impending engagement and marriage and yada-yada, he thought as that sudden cloud appeared overhead, and he literally shook his head to clear away his love life issues.
Bustling in—late Tanner had heard like everyone else—came the chairman of the RIM Confederacy Council, Chairman Gramsci, of the Alex’n hegemony, all six arms bearing his binders, tablets, folders, and files. He plopped them down in front of his place at the head of the huge U-shaped table and looked only at the council clerk who sat awaiting him in the middle of that table.
“Clerk—regrets,” he said as two hands sorted some of those binders into a stack or two, two more hands riffled through a folder as he looked for something else, and his last two hands banged twin gavels down on the desk as he started up the Council meeting.
“Chairman—only the member from Faraway is going to be absent, it appears,” she said, which got a rousing hooray from some members already present. The fact that the member from Faraway talked of nothing but trade and their ongoing issues with all the other trading members on the RIM was not lost on Tanner, and he smiled.
Chairman Gramsci nodded, sat, and looked finally at the Agenda placed at every single one of the now more than forty realms within the Confederacy members’ seats, and after a quick glance, he motioned for the clerk to carry on.
Item after item went by, and Tanner was surprised that some here didn’t just fall asleep. Governing a group of more than eighty planets with forty separate realms and hundreds and hundreds of billions of citizens was a process that as far as he was concerned would put him to sleep. Who really cared about custom duties on Djarreer for drilling bits or on Hope for power cabling—except, of course, folks from either planet. All it was, it seemed to him, was waiting until your own issue was the one that the Agenda moved to, and then you paid attention.
It took a while, but soon the clerk read out the next item on the Agenda, which was the Memories report and the Barony recommendations.
He sat up for that as the Baroness rose to speak to that itemized issue.
“Confederacy members, you already know the back story on this. Months ago, the RIM was approached by a group of a few hundred refugees who sought to file a claim of refugee status with the Barony and, in doing so, become protected members of the Confederacy. We have—with the help of the RIM Navy too—determined that there was more—much more, it appears, to these refugees and their own history, and we have brought their captain, one Daika Rossum, here today to speak to the Council. Captain?” she said as she half-turned and motioned for the young woman to rise to speak.
The Roma captain’s studs on her boots clicked a bit as the she stood and then took a step down the stairs to speak. Black hair lay on her leather jerkin shoulders, and the twin daggers she carried at her waist stood out too, Tanner could see, and while the Council room had top-notch defensive AI, it might be interesting to see what might happen if she attempted to draw one of those razor-sharp blades.
“Council, we come to you out of what could only be called fear. Let me explain,” she said, and she launched into the history of her people and what had occurred in the past two hundred years.
She first spoke of the sudden appearance of the alien invader mother ship—and that they could not be messaged or Ansibled or contacted. That mother ship had lain above their planet for a short while and then had come the resource harvesters. They had taken ore, water, crops, and anything it seemed they wanted. Protected by their pink force fields, nothing could penetrate them, and they certainly had superior technology. Over the next two years, they harvested what they wanted.
Taking a deep breath, she continued with the story. “Only by accident did one of their cargo vessels crash, and we took it over, and the aliens ignored that too. And then they were gone.”
She took another step downward. “Once they left, the pink force field around that cargo ship disappeared. We entered and found that these aliens were avian-based life forms. We destroyed all the AI we found within that ship, added our own living and working decks to same, and the ship is now called the Scavenger—the one we arrived in here on the RIM. We have been living a life of doing that as well—we scavenge for our needs—which is how we found Memories, that lost or hidden planet, just off the RIM’s southern borders in the nebula. We found also that the planet had more than one hundred of these terraforming foundries spread out over the six continents, and yet all were still. Not powered—which for our scavenger lifestyle was a godsend.
“We took one apart slowly, finding markets for the various pieces of equipment, and we were rewarded with real revenues. So we moved on to the number two foundry, and it was then that the planet must have received some kind of signal as suddenly all were powered up and running.
“They’d burn down the jungle ahead of them, then every so often send a huge laser pulse down miles into the planet’s mantle and analyze the results and send those results up to a system satellite—for what we assumed was sending back to the mother ship.
“And yes, it was on that number two foundry where our third mate found proof that these foundries were the property of that same mother ship from hundreds of years ago. It cost him his life, and while we still grieve for him—it is the fact that the messages are not getting sent that we think is the issue,” she finished off.
The Baroness rose once more. “Further to that story, may I present Captain Tanner Scott of the Barony Atlas—who was the military head of the mission for the next part,” she said nicely and waved him up.
Tanner rose, took a step down as well, and looked at the faces around the table, thinking nothing made folks wake up like the threat of
a mother ship with superior technology.
“Baroness, thank you. We went to Memories and we did study a few of these terraforming foundries. Unlike anything we’d seen before—powered by a nuclear power unit that couldn’t have been more than a five-foot-square box. Unintelligible language on console screens and icons too—we have no idea on anything that was so labeled, sad to say. After much discussion and yes, the authorization of the RIM Navy and our own Baroness, we did the following. We had KappaD annex the planet, to give them jurisdiction of same. We then agreed that we would need to stop these foundries in their terraforming missions, and we did that in a simple bombing run of both the Barony and the RIM navies. All such foundries now lie in ruins on the planet. KappaD will be reimbursed from our own Treasury, and we have already committed to that,” he said. Now comes the tricky part, he thought.
“We know this, Council members. That whomever owned these foundries will most likely check via perhaps a probe or a personal visit to Memories. It cannot be hidden that they were all bombed out of existence. So the owners of same may be upset. It was postulated by Captain Siegel of the RN Nugent that we—the RIM—could be seen as the culprits due to the KappaD annexation—and that the Roma refugees are now citizens of the RIM—so one way would be to undo all of that to stop any kind of blame,” he said.
“But, one should always remember that blame is incidental to what is really the point—that the foundry owners will want some kind of justice or payment—”
The Master Adept from Eons jumped in. “Or war. They could simply hover above KappaD and begin their harvesting, if it really is these alien asset reapers we are discussing.”
The member from KappaD was now almost apoplectic. He rose, then sat, held up his hand, waving it at the clerk for recognition, and then rose again. “Council members, this is unacceptable. We—KappaD—hereby and forthwith rescind our order of annexation, and we will hold the RIM Confederacy totally liable for any and all issues that might come from this. You told us to do this—and now we learn that there may be war?” he sputtered out, his voice loud and his tone flat.
The chairman banged first with just one gavel—then added his second—as the back and forth didn’t slow, and finally he rose and banged them both in unison which slowed the infighting and quieted the room slowly. “Would the admiral care to speak to this?” he asked calmly.
“Aye, Chairman—thank you,” Admiral McQueen said as he rose to speak on this. A mature navy man, still in the prime of his life, he’d faced many trials and tribulations in his navy past, and this one was no exception.
“Council members, in my past—as well as some others here in the room,” he said as he looked to his right at Tanner, “we have faced this kind of alien invader before. Superior technology we know can be worked around; mother ships can be destroyed; aliens can be defeated—all of that is true. I cannot guarantee that as I do not yet have the needed data to be able to do so, but I can tell you this much. Superior technology from two hundred years ago is not today what one might call superior. We can face any foe—we are navy men,” he said, and that got quite a few knocks on the table from some of the members as a signal that the speaker spoke truly.
The admiral sat and once again, some of the members began to bicker back and forth.
Chairman Gramsci waited for quiet and addressed the Council. “Council members, please. We know nothing about any invaders or mother ships. Nor for that matter, do we know where they might be now or ten years from now. Let us not get intimidated by the worst-case scenario type of fears. If they come, they come. They could turn to Pentyaan space as it’s beside Memories too, or further inwards toward Seenra space too. We cannot be swayed by what might happen—only by what does. If I’ve heard correctly—then KappaD wants to formally rescind its annexation of Memories.
“Clerk, as this is a non-voting matter, enter that into the records—Memories is now a free planet, outside the boundary of the RIM Confederacy, as we as the Council need only to also rescind our own motion of last Council meeting to expand our borders to encompass the nebula and all systems within same. And while I do not subscribe to the belief that this will ease our own role in all of this, we no longer have the jurisdiction in that area. Clerk, record it as so. And next item,” he said, and the members got back to the governance of the Confederacy itself.
Sleepy time, Tanner thought, grinned to himself, and tried not to actually fall asleep as the next item up was on the planet Quaran’s commitment to its Chardonnay reserves and it wanted to cut the reserves down significantly to try to open up new markets.
#####
“Sir,” Lieutenant Irving said from the Ansible station on the bridge, “Chief Warrant Officer Hartford has a strange request, and the cargo deck officer of the day has relayed this to me for approvals, Sir.”
As she finished speaking, the request appeared on Tanner’s console monitor. It appeared that the chief wanted to take out the largest cargo shuttle the Atlas had over to his engineering deck for some special retrofitting and then up to high orbit off Juno for some space time. No further explanations, but under the part of the online form that was supposed to be used for description, there were only three words: under captain’s orders.
Tanner grunted, keyed in his authorization, and wondered what the hell Hartford was up to now, but he didn’t worry about it. If there was one thing anyone might say about Hartford or any of the crew that came from Tarvos, it was that the extra thumb gave them all the more to work with. Smart. Inquisitive and about the best—no, really the best—in technology and IT anywhere.
“Just okayed that myself, Lieutenant, but do me a favor, please? Monitor same for, me will you please, and just let me know what she’s up to?” he said.
“Aye,” the Ansible and Helm officers of the day responded in unison.
The Atlas had been on Juno now for two days as the Baroness wanted to go back to Neres and wanted to talk to him about something. He had no idea as to what she wanted. But he did know that when your superior springs a meeting on you, you have to be able to finesse the issue for sure.
No idea on what’s coming, but that’s okay, I can handle it, he thought as he noted that his left hand had crept down to sit on his left knee but there was no anti-PTSD pattern being tapped out at this point.
Safe ... he thought, but not sorry—least not yet.
Today was their last day in port, they’d been told, so the crew had had some shore leave, and he only wished it could have been more.
He’d visited Navy Hall and looked up some old navy friends last night and yes, had even gone to a bar or two but had drank only water. Still do not feel the need for the alcohol, he thought, which he knew was as it should be, but still he felt somehow that the cure was too easy. Still, no Scotch.
Two of his old navy buddies, both from the RN Kerry, a frigate that he’d served on himself several years ago as the XO, said that they were being seconded out of the fleet over to the RIM Navy Academy on Eons. It was under a massive expansion, and the numbers of cadets were increasing exponentially. His friends would be rated as assistant professors while stationed there.
He did commiserate with them that looking after a room full of cadets couldn’t compete with looking out at the stars onboard a navy ship, but they were only going for a year. Probably help the résumé, one said, to which the other had said, yeah, help us if we’re looking to teach not sail out into space.
They all laughed, and Tanner listened to what was new out on Eons, the Issian planet just outside the RIM and about fifteen lights away. Not much else was new. The planet’s climate had tanked a few hundred years back, and the drought and resulting crop failures were constants. The large blue system sun had radiation variances that were pronounced—at least until it settled, the climate was always going to be under attack. He’d nodded and listened and wondered what Eons life would be like, and then he realized he’d never need to know, and he had smiled as the talk had moved on to other items.
All in
all, he’d had a pleasant night, and with today being liftoff day, they’d be home in Neres in less than a week.
He looked down at his reports icon and saw that there were only four outstanding. He clicked the first one and began to read about hydroponics and that the resulting increase in mineral solids was somehow affecting their beets. He sighed.
After one more report which he read, made comments on, and then archived, he got up and went toward the tea station for a refill. As he went by the helm, Lieutenant Cooper put out a hand to call him over to the helm console.
“Sir, we’ve been monitoring the chief and his cargo shuttle, and so far there’s been little to report. The shuttle moved back and forth and made some jumps of less than a mile and then back—nothing, Sir, but testing something I’d think. But Sir, just thirteen seconds ago, the cargo shuttle disappeared, Sir. She’s not on our scans at all—and while we are planet bound, that’s out for more than two hundred thousand miles, Sir,” he said as his hands flew at his console keyboard and control panel.
Ansible officer Irving piped up as well. “Sir, all he said to us was ‘back in about ten minutes,’ and then the cargo shuttle disappeared, Sir. No track to trace, no sign of their Ansible address even, Sir. The shuttle is gone,” she said, and her hands too flew on her control panel.
Tanner stood still, thought about that for a minute, and came up with nothing. As far as he knew, the chief was still testing the blue and copper plates and their ability to control just how the anti-grav could be manipulated. But not disappear? How had he accomplished that? And more importantly—
“And Sir, they’re back,” the helm reported, and his Ansible officer nodded too.
“Should I contact them asking for a report?” Lieutenant Irving asked as her hands went to her keyboard.
“Not at all—just ask the chief to join me here in my ready room soon as he’s back on the Atlas. Continue monitoring, please, but do no harm to his trials, please—got that?”
