by Jim Rudnick
This is what I’ve become—a person who solely looks for hard-to-make recipes for the palace AI. She shook her head and quaffed down the end of the glass of cider
”I will find something to spend my time on,” and as she said that to herself, she thought of her brother, but she threw out that thought quickly.
There would be no thinking of Tanner. Not until he came to see her in person—she had no position on him at present.
She did wonder about her mother once again, but she pushed that aside too. The doctor had said she suffered from a delusional state due to her mother.
She knew now that the Tribunal was right and Tanner was innocent of the death of her sister Nora. But her mother had said no, the Tribunal was wrong. She had kicked Tanner out of the house as soon as the Tribunal had ruled. She had said over and over that Tanner was the reason why her favorite daughter had died. That had grated on Gia’s nerves for years.
She shrugged and said, “AI, more cider, please, but five degrees C colder.”
Moments later, she heard a beep from the wall unit where these things appeared. She got up, went over, and slid the door open to retrieve her colder cider. And it was colder, and she liked that. The fact that AI was probably recording her every move in her apartment she could ignore, but not being able to get a cider at the right temperature was inexcusable.
Soon, it would be time to ask for that dinner, and while she was sad to say it, it was the highlight of her day.
#####
Trade Master Lofton bowed his head as he entered the small gym and was now in the presence of the duke. He had walked over from the doorway to stand in front of the Royal, and as was customary, he bowed.
“Not needed, Trade Master Lofton, friends do not need to lean on state protocols. Welcome, Niels,” the duke said, and a breath punctuated every single word. The duke was working on a rowing machine, and rivers of perspiration ran down his temples and coated his shoulders. While it looked like he was tuckered out, Niels made no assumptions. This was a man, he knew, who was very hard to read.
“Duke, thank you for the EYES ONLY and the chance to speak to you,” he said.
The duke nodded and continued to row, row, row as he stared not at his guest but at the display monitor on the rowing machine in front of him. “Wait just a minute please …” he said, and he suddenly increased his rowing speed. Pushing quicker now with his legs and his large forearms bulging as he pulled on the machine’s oars, he counted out loud. “One, two, three …”
After getting to what must have been his goal of one hundred, he slowed and then pulled a foot from the push rod stirrups, and the whole machine slowed down. He nodded to his guest, and as Niels watched, he stood and grabbed a towel from a stack of pure white gym items and waved the trader over to the side. He sat heavily onto a bench and pointed to the one across from him as he toweled off the sweat from his head and arms. Dropping the towel into his lap, he reached for the water in the big bottle on the bench and smiled at the Leudie.
“Please excuse my few minutes there, Niels—had to finish my routine,” he said as he chugged down the water in big gulps.
“Not a problem at all, Duke d’Avigdor,” Niels answered.
“I need to ask you something—so I thought it better asked in person, and it concerns, yes, the power belts that you so kindly donated to the recent mission over Ghayth,” the duke said. He looked directly at his guest and a small smile now appeared on his face. “I wish to know if we can re-borrow those belts—well, actually, I’d like to know how many you have and whether or not I can once again borrow them?” he asked.
Niels leaned back and took that in. It was an unusual request but one that he could speak to. Being a full member of the Leudie Trading Rules Group, he was one of the top thirty traders on his planet who made the rules for the rest of their traders—the whole Leudie economy, in fact. The belts had come to them after they’d sent a trader ship inward more than three thousand lights, and the trader had found them and brought them back. But they’d only been able to get sixty of the belts—at least at this stage. There had been some grumbling about that, and he knew this would be addressed at the next meeting; there would be a vote to send a ship powered by the Barony Drive to the same system to see if more of the belts could be obtained. But right now, there were only sixty.
“Might I ask, before I answer, Duke, why you might need them? Lending them to help defeat the aliens was one thing, but surely there are no more threats here on the RIM, are there?” he asked. As a trader, Niels needed more information before giving an answer. Gaining information was one of the tenets of any successful trade, and this was no different.
“Yes, surely. I am mounting a mission—of exploration mostly—into Pentyaan space. We will send one ship—the Crimson I, so you know that the Caliph is a partner on this too as well as the Baroness. That ship will be exploring—looking into the rumors of the breakup of the oligarchy and how that might be good for the RIM Confederacy. Should there be any kind of issue with some of the planets we visit, we’d just like to have belts on our marines. Not in any way for aggressive force—but to supply invulnerable defense is all we’re after. Might that work for the Leudie realm?”
Niels thought on that, and seeing an advantage, he smiled back at the duke. “Duke, it also comes to me that there may be some kind of new planet gathering—into whichever RIM Confederacy realm, as a part of our own realms. That would mean that there would be brand new trading opportunities. So yes, while we have thirty belts available, I can offer that we would, again, lend them to the Duchy d’Avigdor for this mission, on the proviso that should any new trading opportunities arise—that Leudie be granted exclusive access to those planets. For, say, a period of ten years. Would that work for you and your mission?” he asked.
He’d held back thirty belts, and he’d also asked for exclusive rights for ten years. That would make the Leudie Trading Rules Group a group of happy campers. Nothing could destroy the belts, so he risked nothing, really. So instead of sitting on a shelf somewhere on Leudie, the belts would be out helping to gain new markets for the Leudie traders.
The duke’s head tilted to one side, as he thought about that offer. And then he nodded. “Done. That’s an offer that I find more than acceptable, so yes, we will proceed based on that,” he said, and he smiled at Niels as he once again toweled off his arms.
Niels smiled. “We will send them to?” he asked.
“Just here to the duchy navy yards, attention please to CWO Hartford. He’ll get them all shipshape and will sign the manifest no problems at all, Trade Master,” the duke said as he rose. He tossed the towel over one shoulder and smiled once more. “I thank you, Niels, for the quick grasp of the situation and how we both—the Duchy d’Avigdor and Leudie—might turn this exploration into a real opportunity for us both,” he said.
Niels nodded back. “Add in your own ‘luck gene,’ as we Leudies call it, and I think that we—the whole RIM Confederacy—is in for new opportunities, Your Grace.”
The duke shook his head. “I’ve no idea about this ‘luck gene,’ Niels, but I do know that our mission is going to be successful—aided by you and your belts. So thank you,” he added, and he clasped Niels by the shoulder and patted his shoulder a couple of times.
On the way out, led by a Provost guard, Niels smiled to himself. A good deal had been reached—ten years of exclusive trading on any new worlds that came into the RIM Confederacy. He well knew that was something any trader would be proud of.
#####
The silver eagles lay in their box, now open on the table in front of Bram, and he just stared at them. Silver eagles with their wings spread—the insignia of a captain in any man’s navy. He had just opened—been ordered to open—the box by the duke who sat and was still grinning at him. Seated in the duke’s office in the administration building, they had been talking now for more than one hour.
Tanner had been explaining what his next big mission was to be—the joint venture p
artnership between the Caliphate, the Barony, and the Duchy d’Avigdor. He had taken quite a while to show why this had to be the RIM’s next big move—at least why he thought so. He also took the time to explain the various partners he could have chosen—and why he’d picked those two. He shared how the partners had contributed too—the Crimson I and the Defiant were their buy-ins.
Bram had asked many questions and had drilled down on some things that Tanner as yet hadn’t even decided. Whose navy regs would the Crimson I be under? What were the rules of engagement should there be conflict? More questions followed and Tanner just waved them off by saying those would all be decided by the captain—the new captain.
He had laid a box in front of Bram on the table and directed him to open it.
The silver eagles shone brightly in the fluorescent lighting in the room. Bram put the box down and raised an eyebrow. He stared at the eagles for a moment and then seemed to need to wait for a moment.
So Tanner waited and didn’t say anything.
A couple of minutes later, Bram nodded. “I take it you mean me?” he said, his voice a bit incredulous.
Tanner raised an eyebrow and leaned forward.
“Me? I’m well below a captain’s rank, Your Grace. This is … this is—”
Tanner interrupted him quickly. “This is a field promotion, Captain Sander. You’re as of now a full Duchy Navy captain, and your first captaincy will be on the Crimson I. You will lead us into Pentyaan space to see what we can see. You are the captain, and you will report to me and me alone—I will look after our partners—and the admiral too. There is one small catch—not a deal breaker at least how I look at it. And, there is a hidden advantage too. Your XO will be Daika Rostrum—the Roma refugee—and that comes as a part of the Baroness’s buy-in,” Tanner said.
Bram nodded. He knew her, of course, since he had spent time—both on and off a ship—with the refugees. “But wasn’t Daika a captain?” he asked.
Tanner nodded. “Yes, and that’s not the real hidden advantage, but still a positive one. You get an XO who’s sat in your chair before—a bonus for sure. But the real advantage is that Daika is just back from a month of being in Pentyaan space. She was involved in Xithricite mining and exploration, and she knows that space; after all, the Roma have been trading and scavenging throughout the Pentyaan space now for years.”
Tanner stopped selling and waited.
Bram reached for the eagles and grinned at his mentor. “Your Grace—thank you so much for this opportunity, I will not let you down. Do we as yet have a date for the start of the mission?” he asked, his grip tight on the box of eagles.
Tanner grinned at him. “You’re the captain, assemble your crew and ships and resources right here—this will now be your office in our administration building. You’re good to go when you decide it’s time. You’re the captain,” Tanner said, and he dipped his head to his protege.
Bram nodded and leaned forward to offer up his hand. Tanner reached out, grabbed it, and shook it heartily. He knew Bram would be a great captain.
And no matter what the Pentyaan space threw at him, he’d more than succeed.
CHAPTER THREE
The Crimson I was what the navy called the “stretch” model of frigates, and at almost four hundred feet long, she could carry one hundred forty-five crew members and twenty-nine officers. For this mission, however, the new captain had decided to go light on personnel, and she carried only ninety crew members and fifteen officers. That had given him room to house the thirty marines in their own crew section with some small degree of comfort and privacy. Otherwise, as he’d learned when he’d talked to Major Stal before they made the final plans, the marines usually had to camp out in one of the two cargo bays, but that wasn’t an option this time. The Defiant, the Barony Xithricite shuttle, was carried in the landing bay, and to make room for her, the walls had been pushed out, which meant both cargo bays were now gone.
The major had grinned at Bram when they’d been planning the shipboard changes. “We can just hang on to some ropes maybe and that’d work—hey, we’re marines and used to second-class treatment, right?” That had gotten a laugh from all at the meeting. The Crimson I’s XO, Daika, had smiled and shared that she’d run into something like that years ago and five hundred lights away, and that story had sent the meeting off on a tangent.
But it had been decided. The cargo bays were to be made into a wider and higher space to house the aft end of the Defiant, as she was more than fifty feet too wide for the landing bay.
“That’ll get her in okay, and when we exit, it’s a straight out only,” the ship’s science officer, Harvey Walton, had said dryly.
Bram hadn’t thought it would be a problem, and they had gone on to other items.
Later in his ready room, once the meeting had broken up, he pulled up the view out on the landing port at the Neen naval yards on his console. As he had expected, there was still a lot of equipment and techies swarming around the ship. He had looked out over the yard and had seen two Alex’n sphere ships, a Leudie trader, an Alto freighter, and four Duchy d’Avigdor Navy ships too.
“All getting ready to go somewhere for something,” he had said to himself.
The work on the ship had been completed in nine days. Probably, Bram had figured, because his requests for speed from the naval yard crews had been emphasized by the duke himself. The crew had been assembled, and Bram had happily met Major Stal and had squared him away himself in the officer quarters area, having reserved him a private bunk for some degree of privacy.
His XO though had caused him some degree of discomfort at first. Daika was, or at least had been, a captain all on her own. Now, she had been demoted—not by him but by the Barony Navy—to the rank of commander. One step below the rank of captain, but surely that would smart, he thought. As he had sat and talked to her for the first time, in this same ready room, he had tried to feel her out about that demotion. His major concern was if it would play any part in how she handled the mission the Crimson I was going out on. But for all intents and purposes, plus as she probably knew, Bram could take a look inside her head at what lay behind the words she spoke.
After a quick peek in her mind, Bram discovered she was looking forward to a successful mission. She believed that if the ship found new worlds that might join the Barony, then the Barony Navy would need to grow. And that would mean that experienced navy commanders, like her, would be made into new captains on new ships. Bram had thought ambition was important to her, and he had made sure to note that in his own personal ship’s log.
Earlier this morning, the Crimson I had lifted off Neen, and using the Barony Drive, it had jumped to the edge of RIM space. As the Crimson I passed by the RIM Confederacy boundary buoy, the helm announced same to the bridge and Bram in the ready room.
They were now in Pentyaan space, and the Crimson I had left home for the unknown. Bram checked his star charts himself, having blown up the chart onto the view-screen now, and he looked at the real estate in front of him. The helm was aimed at the big trading planet of Oirus, about five lights away and one he’d never been on before. But as his XO had filled him in on same, he felt this would be a suitable spot to start their mission.
They had visited it often, she’d told him, but it had been more than five years since her last visit. Still, it was a wide-open trading planet, and the Crimson I would be no different a visitor than any other.
He killed the star chart and left his ready room to take the captain’s chair. “A damn fine thing to be able to do,” he said to himself yet again.
Sitting in the captain’s chair, he looked up at the bridge view-screen and noted the blue planet below. With no space station, they had to await the Oirus landing port notifications. As he looked around, he saw there were three other ships in low orbit.
“Guess there’s a queue?” he said to his helm officer.
“Roger that,” Lieutenant Shelia McCray answered, “and we wait, Sir.”
He
didn’t know much of the bridge crew yet when it came to their foibles and personalities, but he knew right off the bat when he’d interviewed for bridge crew that McCray was the one. A tall girl at almost six feet in height, she seemed to have forgone all the items that made a woman a woman. She had a bald skull—shaved or depilated daily, he suspected, as it was so shiny. She wore no makeup at all. Her eyebrows were bushy yet they did suit her look. Big wide earrings swung from her earlobes, and each finger had a ring. A woman for sure, he noted, that couldn’t hide her great figure yet seemed to not care a whit. She would be all business, Bram had thought from the first moment they’d chatted, and he had hired her on the spot.
While he watched the view-screen, the flashing icon that came up from Oirus appeared on the sidebar.
The bridge Ansible officer, Lieutenant Peter Brush listened to the message in his ear buds and then half-turned to speak to the captain.
“Sir, just granted landing pad number nineteen—and we can go down at will, Sir,” he said. Bram thought his Ansible officer was a nice young man. He was five years out of the Duchy Naval Academy over on Combat and had great performance reviews, which had sold Bram on this crewman too.
“Roger that,” Bram said. ”Lieutenant McCray, take us down.”
As the ship slowly yawed to port and InertialDrive took her down, the view-screen display bar kept up with their movement as they went down to their assigned pad.
“Science—what can you tell us about this planet?” Bram asked over his shoulder.
Lieutenant Harvey Walton grinned. “In twenty-five words or less, not much, Captain. But here’s the basics. Been a part of Pentyaan Oligarchy space for over three hundred years. Global population of almost three million. Big industries are mining and manufacturing—but we’re talking medium-grade tech here. Nothing that we don’t have already out on the RIM. Trading center is in the capital called Crisus, and that’s just adjacent to the landing port below. Should be a real hodgepodge of ships already landed, as this, I’m getting from Gallipedia, is the planet’s big trading holiday. Well, it’s ten days long ,and this is only day three, Captain ...” he said.
