by Jim Rudnick
Everyone who had accompanied Bram emptied out of the carrier and turned to follow him over to the group in front of the large staircase going up and into the building.
Bram stopped a few feet short and looked at them all; there were about a dozen of them in what looked like a stage production usher’s uniform. Large epaulettes jutted out six inches from their shoulders. The military style hat had a big swoop on the top and more scrambled eggs on the brow than he’d ever seen before. Facing forward in the center was a circle in blue that held three smaller rings of a salmon color, and in the middle was a diamond that was coal black. Bram guessed that icon represented the Warlord’s Coalition, but its design and colors meant little to Bram.
I’m glad the duke doesn’t have us wearing uniforms this gaudy, Bram thought. These folks like more like courtiers than military men. Bram’s eyes widened as he took in the rest of the uniform, which was even gaudier. The pants were extremely wide at the knee and then tightened to tuck into the salmon-colored boots. Covering the chest on the left side, the shirt had row after row of ribbons with medals below the ribbons too. Lots of medals, more on this group of warlord acolytes than one would find in the whole marine forces in the Barony, Bram thought.
He ignored all of that as the short man in the front of the group stepped forward.
“Welcome, RIM Confederacy citizens, to the Warlord Coalition here on Oirus,” the man said and threw a salute.
Bram snapped back one in return.
“The warlord awaits, please follow me,” he said, and he turned on his heel and went up the stairs quickly.
The group from the RIM went next, and they were followed by the rest of the well-uniformed courtiers.
They went through a large triple doorway, then straight ahead over a beautifully marbled floor in grays and whites, then down a long corridor to a big door on the right. Their guide simply opened up the door and then stood to the side.
As Bram walked through the doorway, he realized he was in a very formal presentation room. The long narrow carpet ahead led to a set of ten stairs and up to a dais where a man—the warlord, he assumed—was already seated. On either side stood people Bram thought might be the warlord’s advisers or counselors. He ignored them, walked the whole way down the long carpet, and then stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“May I present, Warlord, the RIM Confederacy captain of the Crimson I, Captain Bram Sander,” a voice from the group to one side of the warlord called out.
Bram nodded and then mere seconds later, he bowed Deeply and then stood.
“We recognize the captain and offer our warm greetings to the RIM as well. So good of you to visit, Captain. What can I offer you—refreshments perhaps?” he asked.
Bram kept a straight face as he took in the warlord’s appearance. So many gold leaves on that hat. Looks like the biggest pile of scrambled eggs I’ve ever seen surrounding that icon badge. He wore the same uniform as the members of the group who had met them at the building’s entrance, but the warlord wore a sash in bright red of some kind of shiny satin fabric. On it was that same icon badge and some stripes that must mean something to others but meant nothing to Bram.
Bram smiled and said, “No thank you, Warlord Tunander, we are all fine. Instead, might I make a request that over the next few days, we sit and discuss new trading opportunities for the Warlord Coalition and the RIM?” he said pleasantly.
As he was talking, he sent out that little tendril of a mind link to see what he might find on the warlord’s mind. And he found, unexpectedly, that the warlord was interested in one thing and one thing only.
Revenue for his coalition.
The warlord was interested in incoming revenue that would help him balance his small budget. Bram received that image quite clearly, and he knew he should have guessed that up front. A new realm with few trade deals and probably all in the red meant that the man in the big chair needed to build his treasury.
The warlord smiled at him. “We think that will be a wonderful way to see if there might be ways for each of us to profit from new trade opportunities,” he said, and he motioned to one of his advisers on one side.
A man crept up, leaned over to listen to the warlord, and made some comments back. And then he stepped back.
“With the big holiday upon us, we have some state functions we cannot move nor change, so the closest time we can have those talks is two days from now. In the meantime, we will take you on a short tour of the coalition—you will visit each of our worlds besides Oirus and then we meet. It will give you and yours some extra information about us and our worlds, and in that way, perhaps, we can have a widely based new trade pact,” he said.
On the face of it, Bram thought, that does make sense. He nodded and agreed, and in less than a minute, the RIM group was out of the building and onto the same small vehicle to return to the Crisus landing port.
As they rode along, still behind the turreted carrier of guards, he wondered if that had gone as it should have. So far, everything was as it seemed, Bram thought.
So far, there are no little clinkers on the horizon like my grandfather used to say—even though this is an “absurdistan” type kingdom, but my grandfather would then add at least not yet ... guess I better be prepared.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was not at all surprising to Bram to see that the faces looking at him all still had eyebrows that were arched up as high as they would go. Five members of the coalition group were in front of him on the landing pad at the bottom of the Crimson I ramp. He’d gone down same to meet with the group who were going to be taking his party on the tour to all the other coalition planets, and he’d made all ten of those eyebrows arch up with one sentence.
“Well, yes,” he had said as he considered the offer to go over to one of the coalition ships, “but if we go in our ship, we can make the whole tour in a few hours.”
All the eyebrows had lifted, and the five members just stood there and looked at each other.
The leader of the coalition group, their usual escort, Sithe Ogrunder, had smiled halfway and then asked, “How might that be possible? The tour, as I’ve already said, is the full size of the coalition and that is approximately twelve light years across.”
He was careful, Bram noted, to not make any kind of a statement that Bram might have just exaggerated or even lied. Bram smiled at the man and took the job of explaining the new Barony Drive to the group, and those eyebrows stayed up. “Come aboard, and you’ll see—we’ll be on this first one on your list,” he said as he held up the tour itinerary sheet he’d just been given by Ogrunder, “in less than five minutes. And yes, the Barony Drive—available to any and all RIM Confederacy member realms—might also be a part of any trade deal with the RIM too,” he said, knowing that would be a major card to play.
Minutes later, they were all ensconced in the seats behind the cockpit of the Defiant, and at Bram’s command, Daika, his XO, took her up and out. Getting the coordinates to Ventos Prime, the first planet to visit today, took a moment, and then she nodded over her shoulder to the captain.
“And we’re off …” Bram said and the Ventos sun, in the cross hairs of the view-screen, suddenly jumped, and in six seconds, there was a chime, and the Defiant popped out of sub-space.
“Sir,” Daika said, “this is um … Ventos Prime, I believe it’s called,” she said.
The sputtering and looks of incredulity from their guests was well worth the showing off, Bram thought and nodded back to her. “Very good, XO, please take us down when we’re okayed by the landing authority,” he replied.
Beside him in their seats, the coalition guests were taking notes, and one was recording the bridge view-screen including, he noted, the sidebar that said their time of flight was six seconds.
When it comes to cards to play, the duke will have a really good hand with the Barony Drive in the pot, Bram thought and grinned.
The authorizations came almost immediately, and the Defiant went down on a slow long glide
to port. After gliding down a few hundred miles from high orbit, a normal-looking planet lay beneath them. Blue oceans, brown and green continents, and banks and banks of clouds filled the view-screen. A ring of islands was easy to see too, and Bram wondered if they might be like Bottle—the RIM Confederacy planet that had just joined the Barony yet was still everyone’s first pick of a planet to vacation on.
As they moved a few more miles down, the cities below could be seen, and one of the coalition members shared that the planet’s capital, Lazar, was the big city on the ocean’s coast where the landing port was located. The landing port was surprisingly huge. Many ships were already down, and it was no real surprise to see what they were doing—loading up some kind of liquid cargo.
“Oil is what Ventos is rich in, and it is a real moneymaker for the Tunander Coalition. These ships trade our refined petroleum—gas, diesel, petro-chemicals, propane, and all the plastics too—and ship it to our trading partners. We do quite well on Ventos.” Ogrunder smiled as he boasted about the first stop on the tour.
After putting the Defiant down and then getting the confirmation from the landing authority, Daika spun in her chair and said, “We’re okay, Captain. Shut her down?”
Bram thought on that for a moment and then held up a hand to hold that conversation.
“Can you tell me, Ogrunder, what exactly this tour entails? We’d just like to learn about the planet, and you can’t do that sitting on a landing pad in the capital. Nor for that matter by meeting officials and smiling …”
The coalition group leader nodded back to him and spread out his hands. “Captain, this was not my doing—but yes, there are probably twenty or thirty planetary officials who wish to meet you and tell you what a great planet Ventos is—and that was by the warlord’s doing, Captain.”
His hands were tied, but Bram decided right there and then that he was the captain and it was his ship. “So, let’s be Defiant,” he said to himself.
“Sorry, but we don’t have the time or the interest for that kind of diplomacy. Pilot, let the landing authority know that we’re going to take an aerial tour first. Then time allowing, we’ll come back. Daika, take her up soonest,” he said.
She spun back around in her chair, made some console moves, and moments later, the Defiant Inertial Drive lifted the ship up. At about a thousand feet, she spun the ship to move inland and away from the ocean. She took her up in a long slow rise, and in a few more miles, the Defiant was at ten thousand feet and moving over the landscape just below.
The first thing they noticed was the huge tri-level pipelines that came from farther west and went right into the city and to the landing port. The enormous pipelines probably carried thousands of gallons of product in a few seconds, and that was how the refined products were delivered for transport off the planet.
Every hundred yards or so, there was a trailer with a white roof, which probably held maintenance tools and crews or some kind of workers. As the Defiant went over a ridge, still following the tri-level pipelines, a cloud of brownish smoke and smog appeared ahead of them, and they headed for it.
Huge refineries up ahead were the source for the brown cloud. Bram saw three of the large structures and wondered if there might be more, and he nodded to let Daika know to zoom over that way. As the ship moved close to the refineries, even though Bram had almost no experience with the oil industry, he could tell these were massive works. Five rail lines with the liquid carriers that held crude petroleum were lined up as far as he could see. Each liquid carrier was waiting to unload and then go back to wherever the wells were to get more crude oil. There was a cloud of refinery smog and smoke that poured out of the many smokestacks, and while he didn’t ask about it, Bram wondered about environmental concerns, but that was obviously not a worrisome point for the coalition.
The ship moved slowly around the whole works, refinery by refinery.
Ogrunder spoke up to try to explain what he thought might be helpful. “Ventos is, yes—how you say—a ‘cash cow,’ I think the phrase is, for the Coalition. The warlord is very protective of Ventos, and all those white-roofed trailers you see are guard shacks. Guards are used for each and every single refinery and, yes, at the landing port too, but we didn’t get to see them there,” he said.
Bram didn’t know if that was a dig at his decision to not take part in the meeting of the officials, but then he didn’t really care either. This was not about diplomacy at this point; it was about seeing what cards other player held.
“I take it that the oil industry I see—or would see all across the planet—is government owned?”
Ogrunder nodded. “Yes, the whole industry was privatized when the oligarchy broke up those three years ago. Our warlord made sure that Ventos was in his control, and that was his first planet that came into the coalition.”
“And government-owned-and-controlled industry is chock full of manipulations, trading restrictions, and making sure that the planet is just that—a cash cow for Tunander. We get that, and we applaud his initiative,” Bram said, and he dipped his head in a tiny bow.
Sewing up a planet to join a coalition with only one member so far must have been an interesting opportunity, Bram figured, and that was something to consider when it might be time to negotiate with the warlord.
“Take us up and out to high orbit again, please, XO,” Bram said, and he ignored the gentle reminders from Ogrunder about the greeting party still waiting back at the Ventos landing port.
“We need to get the tour done today, so we’re off—where to next, please?” he asked and made sure the XO got the coordinates too.
“Jannah is the second one today, and I will need to insist that we do go down onto the capital’s landing area. There is no real landing port or such things here. This is a water planet—except for the single island continent down … down there,” Ogrunder said as he pointed to the landmass ahead.
The XO yawed the Defiant to the starboard side and then took a long slow glide toward the landmass ahead. It looked smaller as they got closer, and that was, at least as Bram supposed, because in the middle of it were huge lakes, all ringed by a set of mountains. Or at least that’s what Bram thought it looked like, and he pointed at that area on the continent.
Ogrunder smiled. “Those are what we call—well, what the citizens of Jannah call—the great lakes. They hold all the fresh water on the planet—the rest are their salty oceans covering ninety-five percent of the planet. And it’s those great lakes that are a source of the power on Jannah,” he said.
Bram nodded and realized Jannah was much like one of the Duos planets of the RIM Confederacy. There, the control of fresh water meant everything—from irrigation to drinking water to life itself. He thought he’d heard of that kind of world as a hydraulic empire type. He had no idea if that was correct, but he shook his head once more as the XO turned to look at him.
Instead of aiming at Royce, the capital, she took the Defiant down to a few thousand feet and skimmed over the ocean. Going over a very sandy wide beach, which did look inviting, she flew the ship straight over the capital and right on by. It was a small city of about a hundred thousand, he thought. From what he could see easily, it was an agricultural community. Farming was the industry here on Jannah and the water to do that was controlled by the warlord.
Neat. Simple. And an easy thing to manage. Very much a planet that wanted to stay on the right side of their warlord, Bram thought and smiled.
Ogrunder smiled back at him. “We think that millions of years ago, a huge meteor hit the continent, which we can now see as the crater’s edges are those mountains, and the great lakes are in the crater center. I’ve actually been to them, and they are the deepest, purest water bodies I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Alver said, “I noted that back in Royce, there were many of those white-topped trailer buildings too, just like back on Ventos?” While he didn’t say anything specific, it was apparent there was a reason for that question.
“Yes, thos
e, like the ones that are on Ventos, are the barracks buildings for security guards and military police and the like,” he said.
“And that’s where we’re headed next, to the last of the coalition worlds—to Parauda,” he said, and he smiled once more as the XO powered the Defiant up and off the planet.
At about high-orbit level, she kicked in the Barony Drive, and the Defiant pointed at the Parauda system. In seconds, they were again in high orbit but off a totally different looking planet from the last one.
Green. Parauda looked very green with huge expanses of forests interspersed with lakes and rivers and, yes, the seas that existed on almost every planet. The planet had a familiar look with all the green and blue, and yes, the white banks of clouds were there too. As the Defiant moved downward toward the ground, Ogrunder pointed out the way for the XO to aim. In a few minutes, they were cruising over the plains area behind a big range of mountains, covered in snow.
“It’s winter here on Parauda, and that means that our military training gets even tougher. Too far away to see, but on those snowfields, we have more than twenty thousand soldiers in training. Each year, we graduate about that same number, and we then lease them out—well, the warlord does that actually—but they are in demand by all of the realms here in warlord space. Our military training is without a peer anywhere—even, I assume, in the RIM Confederacy too—so that means that we are still expanding our facilities, and it’s a drain on the coalition treasury for sure. Not that it won’t be handled—the Tunander knows how to do that,” he said, and he nodded too. Then he nodded again, as if, Bram thought, he was trying to convince himself. But that was beyond his pay grade, and he just smiled back at him.
He asked the XO to give them a tour, and over the next few minutes, the Defiant found two camps with hundreds of tents in each, a full school, too, buildings, and roads, and even from up here, troops could be seen marching and doing drills.
