by Jim Rudnick
Technology helped, people helped, and other worlds helped—yet for the most part, Eons still was at the mercy of her star.
We, the Master thought, are the most advanced race when it came to telepathy and our abilities were still developing; yet we suffer a home that is the most difficult of all to live under.
We need to irrigate everything we grow, and the groundwater table grows deeper and deeper every decade.
We have the RIM's biggest desalinization plants and the RIM's biggest import of water by far.
We owe the DenKoss planet almost a thousand years of indentured service for their seawater, shipped here weekly.
We owe Juno almost as much for their Academy here on Eons, which would mean that the stipend for our training of our Adepts to serve in the RIM Navy had been non-existent for almost two years. They go out as lieutenants, and until they make full commanders, they get no pay at all, as those funds get returned to the RIM Navy payroll accounts because we've borrowed against them.
She shook her head and watched over the farm out the window as a hawk, or maybe it was a falcon, cruised the edges of the overgrown fields, looking for something to kill for their lunch. It coasted and floated above the edge of the rail fence that long ago had fallen into disrepair; one part had no rails at all, and judging by the lack of real crops, there were no rodents for the bird of prey to find to feed on.
Like us, she thought. We too have little to live on—yet we survive.
That did not bring a smile to her face, yet she somehow knew there was a change in the wind.
Call it telepathy, call it intuition, call it a sixth sense ... no matter, but it was there and it was strong.
We are in trouble and today, we may have a small way out of some of our issues, if one can believe what we've been told so far.
She looked over at her aide who sat in the chair closest to the doorway that was now closed and she nodded.
Moments later in the all brown room, a vision in pink came flouncing in and the Baroness was in front of her smiling as she was here selling something.
Something the Master Adept was going to have to accept and yet somehow try to turn it to Eons' advantage.
She smiled back up at the Baroness and swept her hand to the seat beside the love seat in which she had moved to after her time at the window.
"Baroness, it is a pleasure to have you visit in person, for the first time, here on Eons. I welcome you on behalf of the Issian people," she said and dipped her head low to show her respect.
The Baroness was surprised, and she too dipped her head back at the Master Adept.
"I am honored to finally visit the city of Dessau and the Issian village too," she said and sat respectfully on the chair she'd been offered. Her blonde hair was in an updo, with a solemn style, and she wore little jewelry. Her coat was pink in color, but beneath it, she was in shades of brown that were complimentary to her overall look—that of a Baroness. At least that was her mindset, the Master Adept could easily see, and that made her think even more about what was about to happen.
If the Baroness was to be believed, she had to try to hide her real thoughts, her real feelings, and her real raison d'être—yet she was wide open.
Mind readers were used to someone they were talking to trying to hide their real thoughts by repeating in their minds over and over a nursery rhyme or something similar. The Master Adept was used to it and was able to get around that top-of-mind façade most of the time, but this time the Baroness was wide open. She could see issues that lay in her consciousness like budget issues over on Zadra with the latest force field technology costs and on Throth with the costs that were running high as well.
She smiled at the Baroness. "What can we, the Issian people, do for the Barony, Ma'am?" she said.
No better way to challenge someone than asking them right out front.
The Baroness sat back in her chair, gathering herself.
She knows she is speaking to a telepath—the best telepath on the RIM, the Master Adept thought, so this should be interesting.
"Master, I come to you today with an idea—plainly as yet undeveloped, but still an idea of how the Barony and Eons might work together to help the RIM to help the planet of Olbia. I ask your support at the upcoming executive committee meeting and our attempt to force the Caliphate to accept a referendum—instead of war."
She stopped then.
And her brain was empty, the Master Adept could see, well, as empty as any brain on pause could be.
Plainly, the issue was that if Eons supported the Barony push for a referendum on the issue of Olbia and its rebellion away from the Caliphate, then the Barony would owe Eons.
The Master Adept nodded, rose, turned away from the Baroness over to the window, and looked out at the farm in the near distance. She looked for the hawk again but could not see it in the air, and she wondered if it found something to prey upon. Most likely not ...
She turned back to the seating and moved slowly toward the Baroness.
"We can support you and your request to ask us to work toward the referendum. But as always, Baroness, what can we get back in turn? And yes, I am sorry that I have to ask in such a pointed fashion, Baroness ...
The Baroness knew then, the Master Adept realized, that the deal had been struck, and that it was only a matter of some minor items to discuss. She sighed loudly.
"We ask only for your support; and in return, we will offer to Eons the introduction of an addition of a whole new Academy Program, where we will deliver new students to the Academy on an annual basis. We will offer ten years of one thousand new students to the Academy each of those first ten years, and we will pay full Academy college rates for same. These students will at first be our own Barony citizens, but we will soon add in the new Throth planet and their own citizens too. This is an offer that we think is fair, for both the Barony and Eons. Ma'am," she said and then she waited.
The Master Adept knew this would be the offer—she'd seen it moments before it came out of the Baroness's mouth.
She also knew the college rate for a student alone would be high—times one thousand would be a real boon to Eons.
There appeared to be nothing behind the offer—other than the offer—which was also right out there to look at it.
She would accept this offer. She knew that. She saw the Baroness would now know that too.
She looked back at the Baroness and nodded her assent.
"We will fully support your referendum push, Baroness—and if you allow me to speak first, as an Issian can often sway the discussion with the first strike," she said.
She nodded over to her aide who had sat quietly well away from the conversation, and that brought in a small group of people who moved in some catering carts with wine and refreshments and some hors d'oeuvres too.
It was time to celebrate.
There was a deal with the Barony in place.
The Issian planet of Eons would gain some much-needed capital and for now, a solid alliance with the Barony. What could be better today …
####
He looked over at the far wall and wondered if he could see well enough to count the rivets in the bulkhead panels and was unhappy to learn there was not enough light in his room to let him try.
Sleep. I need sleep. I need to slow my brain down enough with no Scotch to help.
He shook his head and rolled on his bunk, and the mind's eye picture of Tibah lying on the grass, dead, would not go away.
He half-sat up, bunched up his pillow to change position, and pulled the sheet off his lower half so the cool air would help make the sweats go away, but that didn't work.
He felt again the spasms that had swept across his legs as he had been needled by some convict, and the sudden falling to the stage scared him once more. His calves were knots, and he had to reach down to try to knead away the clenched pain.
He got up and walked off the knots, or tried to, and that only partially worked, yet he paced until the pain was lessened
before he slid back onto his bunk.
He knew he had to get up soon, and yet sleep was not possible so he lay down again.
He punched the pillow again to make it more solid beneath his head, and the sound reminded him of the sound of those bodies hitting the grass. He flinched and flashed back on pulling the trigger of his Colt—how the recoil had felt and how the bullet had flown and knocked Tibah down.
He knew he wouldn't sleep.
He knew he couldn't sleep.
He knew the symptoms by now of his PTSD, and he knew the only cure that had worked was not allowed here on the Hospital Ship; he had no Scotch to put himself to sleep with, and that was the simple truth.
He flipped over, pulled back the sheets to cover himself, and tried thinking of anything so long as it was not of the prison planet that had made him a prisoner of his past. .
CHAPTER FOUR
Nathan slammed his hand down on the console off button and shook his head.
The goddamn casino had cut him off completely—no more gambling until he got current on his payments, and where he'd find 9,000 credits today was going to be a problem.
Taylor, his rich brother, had cut him off just a week ago. His mom couldn't afford another credit as she lived off Taylor too, and his sister and her husband were estranged from him—he owed them too much already.
He needed credits. It was that simple. But where to find them?
If only he had a stake, he'd jump on a cruise over to the Caliphate and gamble on their big station in person.
Win in person. That was what he wanted to do, yet it was a wish that would never happen.
He sighed and played with his touchstone—a Caliphate casino chip from his first big pot win three years ago.
Not worth much, this ten-dollar credit chip was something he kept as a good luck charm.
The amount of good luck it had brought to him was so slim he should have tossed it into a pot years ago.
He sighed. He needed those nine thousand credits and he needed them now—or by the end of this week for sure.
And the costs that were a part of being a couple were so new—he had no idea how they'd even make the weekend. He needed credits.
But where could I find them ...
And worse than that, I would have to tell Nancy about this ... this addiction is the only thing I feel so bad about, yet I still hide it. I have to ... or do I? A real man wouldn't ...
####
The shuttle that carried Major Stal down to Ghayth was full—jam packed with more equipment and supplies and another squad of Barony marines as well. He sat on a case labeled MREs, and he glanced down to see the side panel indicated it was lasagna.
He smiled.
Eating a bag of lasagna that had a shelf life of three years at eighty degrees Fahrenheit and could withstand a parachute drop of 22,000 feet meant the packaging was more hearty than the contents. He'd learned that over a lifetime in the Marine Corps. Whomever the chef had been to create these food rations should have to eat it too, he thought.
He checked his PDA, saw they were still a half hour out from touchdown, and spun slightly to his right to look at the view-screen at the front of the big marine shuttle.
Ghayth was the third planet in the Valissian system, within the Goldilocks zone, and while the screen had infrared holograms over the solid gray clouds below them, he couldn't see dickey-do-dingo. Not all the same gray, he noted, but dark grays, charcoal gray bands, steel gray tiers, and even bright shiny aluminum-shaded grays.
But all gray is all anyone who looked out could see.
The hologram on altitude flashed, and he saw they were now only 20,000 feet up, and the pilot swung a few degrees to port to set up his descent path.
"Pilot," Alver said, "I'd like to drop off the squad at Base-1 if possible before going on to deliver these MREs over at Base 5—got that?" he said.
"Wilco, Major, Base-1 it is," he said as he then steered about sixty degrees farther to port, and the holograms on screen lit up with the large red circle labeled Base-1 took its place at the center of the display. On the top left-hand side, Alver saw the ETA would be in about eighteen minutes, and he looked out a side window to see the grayness. And not much else.
He turned to the squad leader, one Lieutenant Morton, and nodded to get his attention.
"Lieutenant, just a word—at Base-1 things are still … well, still in flux, let's say. Standard navy and marine protocols but you'll find I think that some items are, well, un-orthodox to say the least. You will need to use your best judgment at times—that's an order, Lieutenant—understood?"
He had chosen to say this out loud, in the general area of the seating in the shuttle, so the whole squad would hear his briefing.
He wanted them all to know about the state of Base-1 and that if the Major ordered it, they'd all have to be flexible ... at least that was his thought.
The lieutenant nodded, snapped a salute back to his major, and added a simple "aye, aye, Sir" to acknowledge the orders.
That's one thing done, and hopefully handled.
One more to go at Base-5. That made him sit up a bit straighter, and he was going to re-think his position when the pilot said "Sir?"
He turned back to the view-screen and was glad to see the gray clouds that perennially covered Ghayth had thinned down, and below he could see dark green-forested hills and rounded mountains ahead. Huge valleys ran between some of those mountains, and he wondered whether there were rivers down at the bottom of same—then he snorted. Of course, there'd be rivers. It was raining all the damn time, so the waters would always be flowing somewhere. Just as he thought that, a lake went by, a narrow one that filled the bottom of the valley as far as he could see off to the left. For a moment, he thought he saw some kind of surface disturbance, maybe fish, and he almost drifted back to thoughts of fishing with his father decades ago on Gazaya as a boy. He smiled one more time and then tossed off those memories and looked back out the side window at the rocks that lay there. The part of the landslide that jutted into view was long and made up of rough, rocky slabs of stone that looked like they'd slid from the mountain in the last few decades. At some point in the past thousand or so years, there had been a slide of rock, which was unusual as most of the mountains were older, weathered, and forested mounds. Only a couple showed any rock at all, and the area here had just one of those formations. Or at least what had been a formation that had suffered some kind of fault, or earthquake, or something that had made the rocks slide and eat up part of the meadow where the new town was being built.
This planet is ours, he thought. We annexed it, the paperwork had gone through, and Ghayth is ours to do with as we please.
No sentient species were on Ghayth and only minor predator and prey sub-species lived there. The oceans had not been explored and the creatures that might live in the oceans were as-yet unknown..
We will get to that, Alver thought, but not yet.
All they were doing now was harvesting. Trees. They were harvesting trees and that's what Base-5 was all about as it held a huge forest.
It wasn't his job to know why the area was so populated with these special trees, just that it was. My job is to provide security for the harvests, he thought, and that's all I need know.
The shuttle whirled to port and slowed. He felt the momentum die as the pilot brought her down on the landing pad such as it was. The landing pad was designated by matted down grass, a big "X" painted in yellow to aim at, and piles and piles of skids with supplies and inbound cargo containers.
Nice to see the area is full, he thought and my job is not to hand-bomb any part of same—one of the perks of being a major.
Moments later, the all clear sounded and the shuttle doors slid open.
"Squad, disembark," the lieutenant barked, and the twenty-four marines double-timed out of the shuttle, down the ramp, and out onto the planet.
Alver followed at an amble. He watched as a marine on landing pad picket duty checked the lieutenant's ord
ers on his tablet, and he watched as the squad was pointed off toward a set of barracks tents to the southeast. Just past the landing area, more than a handful of small cargo movers were picking up those containers and moving them off toward the town that had sprung up just a few hundred yards away. In the far distance, he recognized the area where he and Captain Scott had cut down that first tree—the one that had led to all of this just a few months back. Now, with over 6,000 inhabitants here on Ghayth spread out over five base camps, the Barony had made a small footprint on the planet.
"Not enough," he said to himself, but he also knew this would change too.
He noted the new commercial space being added to the grade-level street in front of him, and that had him a bit stumped. Why add retail space to a new base—and the answer came quickly. It'd be filled with shops, restaurants, and the like to let the forces—navy and marines and air force personnel—have their own lives too. On the far right side, the new administration buildings were going up too—the sounds of construction were strong and loud, and they already had five stories built. Beside it and more to the center of the new town lay a whole building that Alver knew held offices, labs, cafeterias, and the rest of the forces' support services too. He had an office there, but admittedly, he had only been in there a couple of times. He didn't even have a chair there, but then with the amount of time he'd spend there, it mattered not a whit.
He returned to the shuttle, sat in one of the seats, and waited while the pilot signed something on the landing officer's tablet and nodded to the corporal as he left and the sliding doors closed.
"Base-5 in about twenty minutes, Sir," the pilot said as the shuttle lifted off, yawed to the east, and jumped up to supersonic speed in less than a minute.
Alver watched as the grayness partially returned and the ground now thousands of feet below was barely visible. They moved through a front, and the sound of the big raindrops as they pounded into the front of the shuttle at this speed was deafening.
In less than the expected twenty minutes, the pilot dropped down to a thousand feet and the shuttle slowed. Below it, he saw the big yellow "X" of the landing pad and the small group of barracks and quarters off to one side.
