by Jim Rudnick
Oversee meant reading … way, way to much reading, he thought, as he hit the PAUSE button on his console and looked up at her. Any break in reading spreadsheets on budget concerns over the new administration building was always to be enjoyed, he thought and he sipped his tea.
“Sir, know that you’re not one to have vid feeds displaying on the wall monitor—so I thought I’d come in and let you know soon as it appeared. Captain Lazaro’s father—Hector Lazaro, the Head of State of Amasis—has been taken very ill … they’re saying that it does not look good, Sir,” she added, and he nodded his understanding.
Kondo would be going home immediately, and that was to be expected. That might change their plans to go to Ghayth tomorrow, but he’d see.
He smiled at her and said, “Thanks, Lieutenant, keep me up on any changes, will you please?” and he turned back to his console to see an emergency message from the Atlas waiting for him, the icon now gently chiming for his attention.
He pressed the ACCEPT button, and Kondo’s face came on screen with a look that said it all. “Sir, I’m not aware if you know, but my father—”
“Just heard, Kondo. Take the Atlas on Barony Drive home, and stay as long as you need to. And my sympathies to your dad,” he added.
“Sir, don’t need the Atlas. We’ve outfitted the shuttles here with the Barony Drive too, so I’ll take one of them over to Amasis—easier to say the Atlas was close by that way too. You go ahead with the Ghayth trip—and I’ll keep you updated on my father’s health, Sir. And thank you too … muchly appreciated, Sir,” he said, his voice cracking only once.
Tanner said quietly, “You should also think about what the outcomes of this could be as well—I’d hate to lose the best captain in the Barony fleet—but there may be other issues that you’d need to consider too, Kondo. Godspeed, lad,” he said, and the screen faded to black.
Losing Kondo to Amasis was something that he too would need to think on, and that would mean some rearranging of captains all across the whole Barony fleet perhaps.
He sighed. Being an admiral did have its perks, but then it also had its issues too, and he sighed one more time as he went back to his spreadsheets with a note that he’d need to stay on this until it was done.
“At least,” he said to himself, “the next Captains Council meeting would interrupt same in a few hours.”
#####
He wondered first how in the hell he’d even got dressed without his aide’s help—she was so far ahead of him in mostly everything that he seriously thought about making her a lieutenant commander right now. Or maybe later, he reasoned.
The temporary meeting room for the Captains Council meeting was set up as perfectly as it could have been—her attention to detail was impressive. There were the nineteen seats for the Barony ships’ captains all with a desk pad centered in front of each place setting with a pad, pens, and a tilt-able tablet too, should they need to see anything. Each of the chairs was so perfectly aligned that Tanner wondered if she’d used a tape measure to get them so properly equal.
Over on the far wall was a table with coffee, tea, soft drinks, water, and a large double-sized tray of baked goods. He eyed a chocolate iced cupcake, then remembered his uniform pants were a bit tight, and shook his head. Maybe the gym tonight would be a better idea.
He walked the whole room, doing a lap around the big set of tables set into a large horseshoe shape. In the middle, yet off to one side, sat two ensigns he didn’t know who were going to act as council clerks, he thought, and as he stopped to point at them, Ayla spoke instead.
“Sir, yes—this is Ensign Bear and Ensign Deacon—they’re my aides on this. I will be the usual council clerk if it pleases you, Sir?”
He nodded. At the crux of the table was his place, and he took it and looked down both sides of the table as it curved away from him.
“This will do nicely, Lieutenant. Job well done,” he said and meant it.
She nodded and then coming closer to him, she said quietly, “Sir, if I may? I would think that if you came in last—made an entrance when all the captains are already here and seated and have socialized for a few minutes—that would work best, Sir. Shows that you are the one in charge as they’d all be waiting on you, Sir?”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded, and said, “I’ll be in my office—PDA me when it’s show time,” and he walked out of the room and down the long hallway on the second floor of the old administration building. At his desk, he just couldn’t bring himself to put back up on screen that damn spreadsheet with all its macros that he was supposed to be able to work with and change and make the numbers all ratio about. Instead, he said to the office AI, ”Please put the Neres City vid feed on the wall monitor,” and he sat back to watch what some called the news.
News indeed, if one could say that the latest celebrity who divorced the latest other celebrity was news. He realized t he really had no idea about modern civilian culture—on any planet actually. He didn’t watch vids, so he didn’t know who was a celebrity from a dogcatcher—if the world still had dogcatchers. He watched as a new mining venture out on the asteroid belt announced their claim on a chunk of rock a mile wide that appeared to be pure iridiumand. They were already being courted by many RIM Confederacy planets for the mining rights. Another piece was about the latest small changes to some of the inward planets that were not a part of the Confederacy but did trade with same, and on and on and on.
His PDA chimed, and glancing at it, he saw his lieutenant had just messaged him they were ready for him.
He smiled. He stood and checked his appearance in the mirror on the back of his office door and noted he still had a crease in his uniform pants, his admiral stars were shiny on his collar, and the ribbon salad on his chest glistened properly too.
“Time,” he said, “to be an admiral.” He walked back down the long hallway and entered and went right to his position at the head of the table.
His lieutenant said, “Admiral in the room,” and everyone jumped to their feet. There were twenty-two salutes, which he allowed to stay there for a few seconds before he saluted back and said, “As you were.”
Captain Eleanor Vennamo rose and took the floor immediately. “Sir, we, the captains of the Barony fleet of ships, welcome you—and we welcome you to the admiral’s position with both respect and sincerity. Glad to have you, Sir,” she said and that got a rousing cheer of “Booyahs” from the whole crowd of captains present.
She grinned at him and then sat and waited for his response.
He grinned back at them, and then thinking no time like the present, he began his first meeting of captains with a degree of earnestness.
“You are all captains—and so in my world, you are the best and the brightest nineteen Barony citizens that there are. No exceptions and no equivocation is what you’ll get from me as your admiral. If I can’t be honest with you all—then I’d need to step down,” he said, and he meant it. They were what made the Barony strong—and he’d never forget that either.
“So you all know—the Captains Council clerk is my own brand new aide, Lieutenant Ayla Kiraz, and Hopian, and if you know Hopians like I do—you know that she’s going to be the best thing I’ve done in a long time. Ayla, take a bow, woman,” he said, and she rose with what he thought was a bit of a blush and then quickly sat back down.
“If you want me—message me on my PDA anytime on any planet, and I’ll get back to you soonest. You can also contact my aide too, if you need to know more about anything else that needs explaining. That’s how we’ll work best, I think. Got it?” he asked, and there were both nods and table knocks around the room.
Good, he thought, now onto Ghayth. He’d thought long and hard about this and the news from the planet, and he had made the decision that his captains needed to know, end of story.
“On Ghayth—as you know it’s our newly annexed planet, a wreckage of an alien ship—a huge alien ship—was found by accident.”
The whole r
oom buzzed with questions, which he let go on for a few seconds.
“The wreckage I’ve not yet seen, but the only ones privy to that find are the Baroness and five others, of which I am one. And now you nineteen too. I do not want there to be any secrets between us all—you know what I know would be my own mantra. The ship is half-buried in a set of foothills off a beach in the southern hemisphere, I’m told. She’s an old wreck as there are foliage and growths all over the ship, but it does appear that she hit at slow speed—this was not an accidental downing by an aggressor. At least that’s what it looks like—videos will appear on your tablets now, please, Lieutenant,” and he nodded to his aide.
The captains all leaned in to get a good look on their place-setting tablets. The short video was shown and some captains made comments.
“Seems like she’s more’n half-buried as I could see thruster ports on one side, and they’re always at the rear of any ship,” one said.
“More likely that she maybe ran out of fuel and just plowed her way in, maybe,” another commented.
“No hull breaches I could see on the existing hull armaments,” another said.
He nodded. “As yet, I’ve no idea, but I intend to go tomorrow and look at her myself … which gets us to another issue, the Barony Drive.”
A couple of the captains nodded, but he knew there were still more at the table that had no idea what that term meant.
“Barony Drive is what we, a very small group by the way, call the anti-grav powers that came to us via Ghayth more than a year ago,” he began and took the time to explain how the Atlas had discovered those trees that floated on the blue plates and copper-colored plates. He went on to show that the latest use of same—the new Barony Drive as it was to be called—came from the brains of CWO Hartford, a Tarvian who had re-thought the whole idea behind such technology. He had discovered that these plates would be more than simple anti-gravity devices, but the plates could power a spaceship from one gravity well to another, depending on the amount of the bio gel that was used.
Audible swallows echoed around the table, and discussions went on for almost half an hour until Tanner broke up the discussions.
“I have gone from Enki in the UrPoPo system to Juno—twenty-three lights—in less than ten seconds. You have my word on that—it took less than ten seconds for the copper and blue plates to push the Atlas twenty-three light years. We did not use our engines, we did not do anything, just add the gel, and pop, there was Juno’s sun right out front.”
Again there was talk, and he thought this was a good thing, as they all began extrapolating about just how far one might be able to use the Barony Drive, what might be the limiting factors, could a nebula lean on the drive, and more.
He let it go and then knocked the table with his knuckles, which quieted the room.
“As of today, I’m hereby issuing an order fleet-wide. Each of you is to book time with Lieutenant Hartford to get the Barony Drive installed on their own ships. Each is to also take on a pilot from the lieutenant too, to learn how to use the Drive and to comply with the best practices for same. As of now,” he said, “the Barony fleet as a whole uses the Barony Drive as its main FTL transportation.”
Someone said, “Lieutenant Hartford, Sir?” and he simply said, “Field promotion that I did myself last week.”
Someone else said, “Sir, if we show up in seconds, word on this is going to get out quickly here in the RIM Confederacy, Sir.”
More nods and murmurs came from around the table. He was ready for that, and he explained it to them in full.
“It’s technology that we found and we will use. We have no idea at this point why it works or how it works—so let’s call the Barony fleet our BETA test users. You can and will answer any and all pertinent questions with simple answers. It’s new technology that we are testing, and once it’s proven, the Barony will make it available at a price, of course, to the rest of the RIM. You will not, of course, explain about our copper and blue plates, the gravity well satellites, or our bio gel either—those would be trade secrets that customers will one day have to pay to know about. We use it. We alone. And yes, for those of you who are thinking ahead, this will eventually change FTL for the RIM—and for the galaxy one day too.”
He smiled at them all and held out his hands, palms up.
“What I guess I’m telling you all is that we’re all in this together. Which is why there are no secrets between me and you all either,” he said.
Captain Flannery of the frigate the Sterling rose and began to clap his hands, and in less than a few seconds more, all nineteen of his captains were following his lead, and the captain went on for a full minute until he stopped and waved them all back down.
“Sir, begging your pardon. But thank you … for a long time, I’ve felt like a mushroom-living in the dark and getting manure tossed my way. But today, I think, is a change. Glad to have you as my admiral, Sir,” he said.
All the captains again stood, clapping or knocking on the table.
Tanner let it go for a bit and then rose himself, and they all stopped and were seated.
“We live the life of navy men and women—it’s not easy sometimes, I know. But under my leadership, you’ll always get the truth as I see it and you’ll get it first. Dismissed,” he said, and he strode out of the room as more ”booyahs” followed him out the door.
#####
It was so much nicer to sit in a captain’s chair once more, Tanner thought, as he wedged his rear into the deep padding of the Atlas captain’s seat on the bridge. No more reading. No more reports to delegate out, then update, then modify, then finally authorize, and then file them away. Who in the future generations would ever need to look back at budget overages on a moon base outpost on ITO was the question. The question with no answer. He grinned as he turned back from the Atlas Science officer, Lieutenant Commander Karl Sheldon, to the helm.
“Lieutenant Cooper, take us out, lad,” he said and the simple fact that he gave a command made his smile even bigger.
The Atlas slowly rose on her thrusters, as the lieutenant took it nice and easy on leaving the naval base landing port, and he spun her slowly to port. At about one thousand feet up, he goosed the throttle a bit, as he pulled her back using the ship’s elevator arrays to change the pitch, and up and up the Atlas went, now moving at the speed of sound and beyond.
At low orbit, the helmsman leveled her off and slowly took her out of orbit toward the system sun using the Atlas Impulse drive. In less than four minutes, he had found the spot he was looking for, turned the ship toward the far reaches of the RIM borders, to the Valissian system sun about forty lights away, and he slowed and then stopped the Atlas at that point.
He half-turned to the admiral and said, “Sir, we’re good to go on command,” and his finger sat above a toggle switch on his helm console.
Tanner nodded and paused for a moment before he said, “Go!”
Lieutenant Cooper flicked the toggle switch, and every eye on the bridge was on the huge view-screen ahead.
Several suns went by pretty quickly—Halberd’s sun, Merilda’s sun, then Eran’s suns, and then the Valissian sun was dead ahead.
They’d arrived in less than eight seconds the sidebar showed on the far left side of the view-screen.
Eight seconds for about forty lights.
No engine. No fuel used. No real time used either.
Tanner shook his head. “Remind me to buy a big first round for whomever the hell invented this drive—and Helm, over to Ghayth please,” he said.
Lieutenant Cooper nodded and said, “Aye, Sir,” and the view-screen danced as he turned the Atlas away from the Valissian system sun and out to the third planet toward Ghayth. They zipped by Valissia herself on Impulse, but Tanner had no reason to visit on this trip.
In and out. Explore if possible, get an idea of what this wrecked craft was all about, and then back to Neres.
He instructed Lieutenant Irving to Ansible ahead and let Major Stal
know they were on their way in and to book landing space at the new naval base landing port.
It took still almost a full half hour, but eventually, the Atlas was down on the landing tarmac, and they were met by the major and a small group of officers.
“Sir—congrats on the admiralty, Sir.” Major Stal snapped to attention but had a big grin on his face.
Tanner couldn’t help himself as he stepped forward and clasped his friend around the shoulders. Hug over, he stepped back and said, “As you were” to the group, received introductions to the majors staff officers, and introduced Bram and Science Officer Sheldon.
“Small group, Sir?” the major inquired.
“Small and confidential too, Alver. We want to visit that find in the south,” he said, not knowing who here on the tarmac knew about the alien ship.
Alver nodded and turned to his aide. “Lieutenant Dirks, get me that pilot I like—Jamie something—and get me a shuttle too. Some of us are taking a ride with the admiral, it appears,” and the aide was on his PDA in less than a second.
As they stood and chatted at the foot of the Atlas landing ramp, Sheldon sidled up to Tanner and whispered in his ear. “Sir, seems like this confidential find is more widely known than we thought,” he said and that got a nod back.
“Too damn hard to keep something like this a total secret—over beers in a mess or as a part of general chit-chat, it seems it will find its way to out itself,” Tanner said, and Bram chimed in with “Exactly, Sir.”
For the next few minutes, Tanner heard about how the city was growing and how the base camps were beginning to attract new settlers too—never mind the huge pioneer dowry that any family who emigrated to Ghayth got from the Barony either.
“We’re going to be a big planet one day,” someone said
A pilot strode up to stand in front of the major and saluted as he came to attention. “Sir, Lieutenant Jamie Oliver, reporting,” he said and snapped the major a salute.