Inwards Bound (The RIM CONFEDERACY Book 13)
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Dear Reader…
The RIM Confederacy
A Message to you from the Author
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Epilogue
next Book Prologue
Reviews
BOOK THIRTEEN OF THE
RIM CONFEDERACY
Inwards Bound
by Jim Rudnick
This is purely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book may not be re-sold or given away without permission in writing from the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means past, present or future.
ISBN-13: 978-1-988144-28-3
Copyright © 2016
Jim Rudnick
All rights reserved.
For my Susan…
Dear Reader…
Thank you for reading this ebook.
If you have borrowed this book through the Kindle Unlimited subscription program, I kindly ask that —
— you click through to the last page of this book when you are finished reading to exit the book!
This will ensure that the author is properly credited for the book borrow…
Thank you…
Jim Rudnick
The RIM Confederacy: Inwards Bound
"Tempted by the dissolution of the huge empire inwards, Duke Scott and the Baroness and the Caliph join forces to send a ship inwards bound, to find new planets for the expansion of the RIM Confederacy—led by the new captain, Bram Sander. Making a mind-reader a ship’s captain means more than one might expect, and Bram has to worry about the issues that arise.
Broken now into smaller Warlord realms, the first thing to do is to find allies and that becomes a major thrust in the RIM Confederacy ships first voyage inwards—and that leads to various new allies and antagonists too. One Warlord wants to join the Confederacy and one wants to take it over by force and the chances of that happening are real.
As the new secret mine for Xithricite is found by the Confederacy who now mines the red ore in secret, the Warlord fomenting war sends declarations to the Confederacy ship and Bram must respond. Aided by his own red ship and the Leudies gifts, he foists the Confederacy wishes on the Warlords—and the battles begin…”
A Message to you from the Author…
I just wanted to say thanks so so much for reading Book Thirteen of the RIM Confederacy!
As my Amazon bio says, being a youngster in the 1950's meant that I was a voracious reader in what has been called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. That meant that for me, my heroes were not on the hockey rink or gridiron - but instead in my local Library where at 12 I had a full Adult card (thanks Dad!) and took out more than 5 books a week.
Everyone from Heinlein, Norton, Leiber, Pohl, Anderson, Simak, Asimov, Brackett, Gunn, Van Vogt and more....I fell in love with and eventually owned Ace Doubles of my own. And while I never knew who wrote the Tom Corbett - Space Cadet series, I fell in love with them and they had a place of honor on my own bookcase too!
With that kind of an introduction to Science Fiction, it's no wonder that when I got my writing work done, I turned my own fictional side of my brain to writing same. It's one thing I know how to write - and a totally different matter to release same to the world - something that I've just started to work on....
Suffice it to say my own works are rooted in that Golden Age and it's that era that I'd like to one day be known as a teensy contributor to in some small way...
So once again, thanks for beginning my RIM Confederacy series and wait'll you learn about the alcoholic spaceship captain that is my hero, who fights and beats aliens but not the bottle!
Enjoy and remember, in a series, characters develop and mature not the way we sometimes want…instead, it's like they have a life of their own!
And while you can read the series in any order, I'd highly recommend to start with Pirates, then Sleeper Ship, Prison Planet, Ancient Relics, Hospital Ship, Desert Planet, Ruined Memories, Eons Semester, Trade Wars, Brothers Pride, Honeymoon Bottle, Captured Aliens and Inwards Bound too…and yes, there's more coming soon too!
Prologue ~
He tossed on his bunk and thought about the current state of affairs in his life.
He should have perhaps thought about his station as an ex-Adept Officer in the Barony Navy. Also ex-Barony Navy too. Now he was only a plain lieutenant commander in the Duchy Navy.
He swept a foot and most of a leg from underneath the covers and sighed. He knew he was going to amount to something, but what exactly? His life so far had been—well until the duke came along at least—pretty uneventful.
He had grown up on Eons, and his parents had been Issians but had chosen to be merchants instead of working within the cult, for a reason he’d never understood. He’d asked, he remembered, but that had been met with a shake of the head and silence.
He knew that many, many Issians, millions, in fact, on Eons had little to do with the faith, but he had gravitated toward being a faithful member since grade school when he’d seen vids of what it was like to be in the navy as a spaceman. They had definitely been recruiting vids, but after graduation from high school, he had applied and was accepted at the RIM Confederacy Naval Academy, just outside of Dessau.
He’d realized, too, that upon graduation, he would most likely be asked to swear to the faith that he would be true to Eons first and the navy second. That was what was expected by the inner circle—the ones who ran the faith on Eons. And on the RIM too.
When he graduated from the academy, he had been in the middle of the class as he’d excelled at little, but he had at least passed and had sworn his oath to his faith too.
His first posting was on the RN Marwick as their new Adept Officer under the brand new Captain Tanner Scott. Now he was his friend and mentor, but at the time, he had been scary. Tanner Scott had fought those pirates those long years ago and had done well enough to earn a field promotion from lieutenant to captain, up two whole ranks.
The days of being on the Marwick brought mixed emotions to Bram as he rolled over onto his left side and faced the bulkhead just a half an arm’s length away.
He shied away from other memories and pushed them back, rather than relive the hurt and pain of death and duty for many. The prison riot and his agreeing to resign from the RIM Navy and join his captain over in the Barony Navy was also something he was not going to relive either.
He sat up, tucked the extra pillow behind his head, and sighed. No sleep truck had even gone by for him to grab onto and slide into, and he kept the thought of Gia away.
He would like to see her, and he knew he could do that, but he resisted. That would be something to hold out for, he thought as he scrunched that extra pillow a bit to ease down a little on the bed.
Gym tomorrow in the early part of the morning, he thought and grinned to himself.
I’m getting paunchy and maybe a hundred core crunches will help a bit.
“Hurt a bit, for sure,” he said to himself as he closed his eyes once more and tried to find sleep.
CHAPTER ONE
At Helena’s pointed request, he looked at a couple of the rooms down on the first floor of the ducal palace before his guest arrived. He’d listened to her for more than ten minutes as she spoke of the need to “be” a duke not just in name but in manner too. She’d taken him to three rooms.
The green one in the colored line of salons, he’d simply hated, and he said, “Too green.”
She nodded and led on. Up on the second floor was a large salon with tapestries and sculptures and some kind of floating lines on one wall that changed via a projector on the ceiling.
He shrugged and said, “It’s okay, and if the last one isn’t better, I’ll use it.”
She grinned at him and the smile was warm and inviting.
Down the hall quite a bit was the ducal trophy room. “Full of heads and other body parts,” she said as she opened the door. “But,” she added, “this room reeks of, screams of, testosterone. It’s male. It’s huge horns and beasts and teeth—all subjugated by man. Any man. Maybe by the duke himself.”
He could tell she wanted him to use this room and he nodded to agree. “It will be the trophy room,” he said, and she smiled even more brightly and skipped away from him as he came around a standing stuffed Jael.
She shook a finger at him. “You meet with her and you try to get the deal you want—but I don’t think it’s going to be that hard—you’re her RIM fair-haired-boy, Tanner,” she said, “and I’ll notify the concierge where to bring her.”
He sat in one of the over-sized leather wing chairs and crossed his legs. Trying to work out what to wear as a duke had been a chore. He wore uniforms. He’d always worn a uniform. And while there was a uniform that the previous duke had worn, it had too much gold and braid, and there were scrambled eggs on the hat too. And medals. He didn’t like medals either.
So he’d asked his concierge for help and had nine full color line drawings in less than a day. He’d forgotten that when Royalty asked for something—it got done. Immediately. And in spades.
He had liked pieces of only two of the newly styled uniforms, so he had asked that the two outfits to be melded together with some parts from one outfit replacing other parts on the other outfit. What he had ended up with was a very minor styling change with a narrower trouser width that was still able to accommodate his boots. The epaulets were replaced with shoulder straps with the rank insignia. It was a small change but one that Tanner did like. Also, he okayed each and every rank insignia from enlisted through warrant officers all the way up to fleet admiral. He didn’t make any real drastic changes—a part of the navy world meant that an eagle meant one thing and one thing only. Captain. It meant that the wearer of the eagle was a captain. He’d held off on those changes for a full week—and then had ordered the changes to take place. It was his duchy and now his navy too.
His own uniform was what Helena called “duke light,” and he did admit it was pretty succinct.
White. Narrower legs and his best black boots. No braid or sash or scrambled eggs. Instead, the emblem of the Duchy d’Avigdor, three red planets around a blue sun on a field of white, appeared on his left breast as the uniform badge. He added it to the forearm on the right arm only, and he’d picked through the campaign ribbons and had added a few. He’d only added ones for campaigns that he’d actually taken part in—the prison riot put down, the ancient relic finds, the Memories battle, and even the most recent Praix event too. The ribbons had been made by whoever made them, and he’d had no input on their design. He chose only ribbons that were personal to him so there were few on his chest below the Duchy d’Avigdor emblem.
This was what he wore as his daily uniform. He’d kept the fancier ones with all the braid and such for state dinners and the like, but today, he was in his new Duchy d’Avigdor uniform and that made him happy as he kicked his foot in the air and looked around.
From here, he could see four Jaels. There were nine Tanalorgs, and the big carnivores were the most prized trophy on the RIM. In the corner, he saw the head of an Oved—like the one that had gored the good doctor on his last hunting trip to Anulet. There was another Oved head in the corner, but that one was much bigger than the norm. He wondered how that one was killed, and he realized all he’d need to do was to ask the palace AI for that story, but he resisted.
There was smaller game too. He saw a cat he didn’t recognize that must have been six feet long. Another animal—he didn’t even know what to call it—hung above a corner from a tree, so he figured it might have been some kind of an ape. “Maybe,” he said to himself.
He was about to turn around when there was a gentle knock at the door, and he said, “Enter, please.”
From outside, the Baroness strode in, smiled at him, and held out her arms. It would be the first time he had ever touched the woman, but he knew a hug request when he saw one, so he grasped her and hugged. She hugged him back, and he was reminded instantly that she was a beautiful woman.
She was tall with blonde hair that reached down to hang over her shoulders. Her beautiful face had high cheekbones and wide full pouting red lips. Today, her eyes were green. He’d seen them before as blue and brown and even once as pink. But today, her eyes were a green so ripe that he was now sad he didn’t pick that green room earlier.
She pulled back from him and smiled, still holding his arms. “The duke d’Avigdor—how nice it is to meet you now on equal grounds,” she said as she let go of his arms and retreated to sit opposite him, facing the big wing chair.
Helena had spent almost an hour last night trying to update his knowledge of Royals including who’s who and where on the ladder a duke was. It was all a surprise to him; he assumed that a Royal was a Royal and there was no rank among Royals. She schooled him on the ranks from emperor to baron. And she leaned quite a bit on the baron ranking—that it was the lowest of all Royals. If a table of Royals all had dinner, the baron would be the farthest from the king. He’d asked for more details on some and had found out, for instance, that the Doge of Conclusion was another way of saying the Duke of Conclusion. Some languages, she’d pointed out, change the name of the nobles, but that didn’t change their ranking.
The Baroness, therefore, was below his rank as a duke, so technically, they were not peers at all—he was her superior.
He smiled and sat too and waved at the concierge who brought in a couple of stewards with tea, coffee, and wine along with some pastries too. He favored those raisin tarts, but he waited to offer same to the Baroness. She grinned at him and seized a raisin tart right away to accompany her tea.
He had the same, and the staff left the room. He smiled once more as he took another small bite of the tart.
“Duke—may I call you Tanner?” she began. “And if so, please call me Krista. This is so nice …” she said, her voice dropping off. Helena had been correct yet once again, and his smile was broad and wide as he acknowledged the request.
“Krista … yes, Krista suits you nicely. And I’d be honored to use our first names—in fact, on a personal note, it is so nice to have you even offer that privilege. I used to be a captain in your navy.”
“And I was a pleasure girl before I married the baron. If there is one thing I know—it’s that all things change, Tanner,” she said as she popped the last bit of the raisin tart into her mouth. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth, picking up a crumb he’d never even seen, and they settled in.
“Nice of you to come to see me here, Krista. And it is nice to be able to host this … this …” and he stopped as the word escaped him.
“One might call this a detente—but that perhaps carries too much weight meaning that we were at odds, maybe this is more of new accord between the Duchy d’Avigdor and the Barony. That’s it—an accord. And yes, let’s talk. Ideas, Tanner?”
He smiled. She had captured the essence of her trip here to Neen, and as usual, she not only found a way to describe the talks but got to say “go” too!
He sat for a moment to compose his thoughts, and as he did, he was
more than conscious of those green eyes peering at him over the top of her teacup as she sipped.
“Krista, I think that I will be totally forthright with you. Honest. Frank. With that as the basis of what I’m about to say,” he said as she nodded in agreement, “here’s what I’ve been thinking on since assuming the dukedom …”
He went on for more than twenty minutes, and later he had trouble remembering exactly what he’d said. But one thing he was sure of was he offered what the Master Adept—both the late one and the new one—had said to him. That he, personally, was the fulcrum upon which the future of the RIM Confederacy seemed to be levered upon. He had no idea why. He had no idea at all, but one thing was for sure. He had been front and center of most of the changes here in the past eleven years. He now knew that this might mean more than ever before, especially if he could be proactive—rather than reactive.
The Baroness nodded and nodded often as he spoke and did not interrupt him.
“So, here’s what I’m thinking. The RIM Confederacy has about one hundred planets in our forty realms. And it’s my belief that inside the boundary buoys, there is little left to explore and bring to the Council as full new members.”
She nodded again and filled her own cup of tea from the pot.
He accepted the pot, did the same, and looked at her with as much sincerity as he could muster. “So, what I propose is a linking of three of the real powers here on the RIM—equal partners, that is—and send out a force to go beyond our boundary buoys to see what we can find. We’d push out into Pentyaan space, judging by the latest news from that area. Twenty-three realms all now in turmoil, and it’s my belief that there might be new members, even. Or new planets for our own realms.”