Trade Wars (The RIM Confederacy Book Book 9)

by Jim Rudnick

  Graduates from the Alex’n technical skill schools were scooped up by every single world that needed skilled ship repair crews. There was even scuttlebutt about signing bonuses and moving expenses and more. Alex’n techies were the best as everyone knew, and they were always at a premium when it came to getting new shipyard help.

  On one of the main dry docks, RT-09, a group of Alex’n was arguing with a Leudie captain and his mate.

  “NO. Plain and simple, Trader,” the Alex’n Customs man said for the umpteenth time.

  “We cannot allow this shipment of magnetic couplers into Alex’n—under any circumstances that will not entail the new charges on magnetics. And yes, again, Trader Captain, they are new charges on all magnetics, and yes, they were duly applied for with the Customs ministry, and yes, they were investigated, considered, and duly passed. That’s the way things are done—as you well know, Trader,” he said as he swiped his tablet to close it down and then faced the big Leudie squarely. All six of his arms hung down on his sides, and he cocked his head at the Leudie captain.

  “Either you—the transport of these magnetic couplers—pay these new fees or you do not unload the cargo,” he said.

  The Alex’n foreman standing on his right squawked loudly. “Wait … wait … we need those damn couplers—got two jobs on sphere ships that need them STAT! We don’t care who pays, but we need those couplers,” he said and pointed at the Leudie.

  “Either you ante up for these or we’ll cancel the order right here and now. I’ll order from someone else and never ever use your services again, Trader,” he said as he thrust his jaw forward, all six of his hands on his hips. He looked like he meant what he’d just said.

  The Leudie took a moment before he answered. “New charges mean changes in prices,” he said pointedly at the foreman.

  “No changes in prices would ever be under consideration as we get the items at the quoted prices. It’s how everyone buys anything, and we’re no different. If you had big extra charges to your trip here—say an anti-matter leak or the like, it’d not change the price already contracted for. Choice is yours, Captain,” he finished off as two of his hands were now searching for something on his tablet while two others were down at his side. The last two were both pointing at the Leudie as if to say decide.

  The Leudie did not smile. He did not frown. He did nothing for a full minute.

  And then he nodded.

  “We will pay these new magnetic overcharges as per these new Customs fees. But we are not happy about this as it eats into our already too slim margins,” he said. He turned to his mate, and together they made a couple of entries on their tablet.

  The Customs officer’s tablet chimed three times. He looked down, nodded, and then keyed in something else, and the Leudies’ tablet chimed as well.

  “Transaction done and confirmed,” the Customs officer said as he and his group walked away.

  The foreman grunted, said, “Just get ‘em unloaded STAT and over to RT-09 soonest,” and he walked away.

  The Leudie captain didn’t smile and didn’t move. He said, “Where do you think this brand new magnetics tariff came from, Mate?”

  “Faraway, of course. They are the most lacking realm in the Confederacy when it comes to magnetics—hence their application to tariff all others who have the advantage of having more of same. Had to be them, right, Sir?” he asked.

  The Trader captain Nodded emphatically. Exactly … this was a Faraway move.

  #####

  As the shuttle came to rest on a smooth area of the beach sand beside the lake, everyone on board was up and out the door as soon as the all clear chimes went off.

  Major Stal took charge almost at once, ordering his marines to take point as well as rear, and then he stopped cold. “Umm … Sir? Sorry about that—never entered a red zone with an admiral before,” he said a bit sheepishly.

  Tanner nodded and said, “Go for it, Major. We’ll follow your lead here,” and he, Bram, and Karl took up their positions in the middle of the eight of them as the group slowly walked toward the alien ship.

  The clear part of the beach ended quickly, as they were now picking their path among the rocks that had been blasted out of the crash site ahead. Parts of the ship itself were also lying around them too for more than a hundred yards as they slowly walked closer to the wreck site.

  “Sergeant, clear that piece ahead, please,” Alver said as he pointed at the gigantic piece of detritus that lay just off to the left.

  It looked like it had been some kind of an array. It has the requisite conical dish and a whole raft of antennas too. Tanner took a good look, but he couldn’t recognize a single thing that made him feel he knew what the part was—other than the dish and antennas. Maybe they were only a dish and antennas, he thought and reminded himself that he couldn’t use his own human past and experience to judge what he saw.

  “All clear,” the sergeant said as he’d done a full walk-around of the large array or whatever it was.

  They walked on another few yards, and then they had to make a choice of which side to go along as the ship had plowed into the small hillside ahead dead on—and they chose the right hand side. The grayness of the typical Ghayth sky was a cloud over them all.

  Still with an armed marine on point, they walked down the side as Sheldon, the Atlas Science officer, began to take video on his tablet and make notes.

  “Admiral, this appears to be a simple design, judging by the skeleton of the craft that we can see. Large I-beams form the foundations of the structure around which these hull plates are welded. Welded, I’m assuming, by the way. The size of those I-beams is much larger than our own I see too—at least twice as large. Plates look to be almost a full two inches of whatever kind of alloy that they used, again, much thicker than what we use even on our destroyers,” he said as he took panoramic scans with his tablet video camera.

  They walked forward and found a large wide opening, about one hundred feet in length, which might have been a landing port.

  Alver said, “Could have been a ship boarding or landing port with a force field curtain. If we could get up there, we can get aboard—but it’s like thirty feet up.”

  Everyone realized that was not going to be possible and continued exploring the shipwreck. Not a single hull icon, name, or anything was on the remaining hull plates. Ghayth had slowly been reclaiming the ship, as there were green molds, moss, plants, shrubs, and even smaller trees and vines creeping out of every single hole they could see in the hull. Once in awhile, birds would fly out of holes well above their heads where they had made their homes inside and raised their families. No rain right now, but the feeling of an upcoming shower was obvious to them all.

  How long the ship had lain here, no one knew. But it would have to have been hundreds of years, everyone thought.

  Bram stopped and held out an arm to stop everyone else. “I know you’re wondering if I’m getting anything, and as it just happened, I knew you’d all want to know too. What I get is not a mind that I can look into, or for that matter, any thing at all. But what I’d call an entity is here. Something that is quite aware of us—me especially, it seems—and yet it’s like it’s not awake or in some kind of stasis perhaps. I do not get a sense of anxiety from it about us being here—nor anything to worry about either. It’s like it’s asleep is all I can get …” Bram said, and his voice was as mystified as ever.

  Tanner nodded. “If that changes, let us know STAT,” he said, and they continued to walk down the side.

  As they drew closer to the area of the ship that had actually hit and buried itself into the hill ahead, there were fewer I-beams and pieces of hull plating. Eventually just the solid hill was ahead, and the smooth hull plating disappeared inside same.

  “From the angles I see and the length still outside the hill, I’d think that there is about the same amount of length ahead as behind—we’re about halfway down the length of the craft. That’d put her at about two thousand feet or so overall. Qu
ite a craft, by our standards,” Sheldon said with respect in his voice.

  Tanner knew that the Atlas, at eighteen hundred feet, was the biggest ship on the RIM. The Ikarian sleeper ship, at almost fifteen hundred feet, had been the biggest alien craft that’d ever been seen on the RIM. And here at their feet lay a ship that was about two thousand feet—or maybe even bigger.

  “We need to get inside,” he said.

  Alver nodded, turned around, and led them all the way back to the stern. They turned to their right and slowly moved past the massive engine exhausts toward the left side of the downed craft.

  Sheldon, still tapping on his tablet, nodded. “Big, big exhausts, we note. Curiously, they’re magnetics—and they still have, like, what …” he said as he got the tablet up closer to his face to read the fine print in the full sunshine.

  “Still at eighty-nine percent of capabilities too, pretty good—oh wait, let me …” he said as he squatted right there and put the tablet on his knees. With both hands, he typed, computed, and then typed again. He smiled up at them as he rose back up to stand.

  “Seems that the eleven percent that is missing—if I can trust using our own human algos to run against their magnetics—took more than twenty thousand years to get to this point. Which means that this craft has been right here at least that long. Or that it’s crashed since then, as we don’t know how long the ship was mobile before the crash. But yeah, I’d say about twenty millennia would be a good working paradigm,” he said, and that got them all thinking.

  As they rounded the far end of the stern and started to walk down the left side of the ship, Bram spoke first about halfway to the hillside ahead.

  “The essence of what I see, or feel, or whatever, is now more aware of us. And—this is hard to believe—it’s opening up a way inside. I don’t know that—but that’s what I think it’s saying. It’s not galactic English or mind reading or whatever—it’s like just a set of ideas or comments appear in my brain. Fully developed so that I almost think it’s my own thoughts—but with a … an … an accent that is not me,” he said, and he pointed ahead on the side of the wrecked ship.

  Almost below their eye level, there was an airlock port. Perhaps it had been an entry point at one time, but it was open. It was full of green moss on the floor, yet there was still enough room to crawl in on all fours.

  The marine on point took up a position on one side, and Alver knelt down to look inside, as they got right up to the airlock port. He looked inside and then flicked on a powerful flashlight on his combat vest, and the airlock port lit up.

  All were now squatting and peering inside, and it looked like a simple airlock as ahead there was another doorway that was closed.

  “Room for us all—but then if we go in and hell breaks loose, there’s no one out here to help or pick up the pieces or report back either,” Alver said.

  Tanner nodded. “Away team to be me, Bram, Alver, and one more marine. Rest stay here and we’ll keep in PDA touch. If anything goes wrong and you out here can’t help us, then report back to the Atlas STAT and get the marines out here in full.

  “Karl, I’ll put you on my PDA as a conference call status too. If you see something, then speak up, right?” He waved off the Science officer’s protestations that he was more important and should go inside first before any marine, but Tanner was having none of it.

  “Next time, you’re on the team, Karl. Now … you can see what I see and you’ve got your orders,” he said, and he crawled inside the port.

  All four of them were now inside the port, and Tanner nodded at Alver who grabbed a large switch beside the inner door and pulled it down.

  Nothing happened for a moment, and then the outer door behind them slowly closed. Once closed, the inner door opened, and the way ahead was in front of them. That was a shock for everyone.

  On the inside of the ship was a large open space with doors along the upper level walls in a strange layout. Some were open and some were closed. Ghayth had already made herself known even here inside the ship, as there were small areas of growing weeds and plants of some kind.

  A rodent squeaked at them and ran off in the bushes toward aft. Some of the hull plating was not present either, and sunlight poured in like a painting, Tanner thought. The big beams of gray daylight ended where the ship had buried itself in the hillside, and that was only about a few hundred feet ahead.

  Tanner wondered about their host, and as he made that question go to Bram, Bram said nothing, and even a quick query got a not feeling a thing from him, and they just stood and looked out of the port area. The floor ahead was missing some floor panels, so one had to watch their steps, but it did go toward the bow of the ship.

  And off they went. Carefully, and cautiously, they all walked along the corridor walkway.

  “How would one get up to the next level of those doorways?” Alver asked, and that got no answers that anyone was happy with other than just jump from Alver.

  The walkway intersected with some cross-walkways that veered off to port and starboard too, but they stayed on the main one that seemed to run the length of the main axis of the ship.

  Where the walkways intersected, there were no notices of which led where—at least in a language they could read. Instead, the main walkway they were on, running the axis of the ship, had a single solid circle on the floor. The intersecting walkway was similarly labeled but with a series of three of those same filled-in circles.

  “We’re on number one,” Tanner said, “and this is the intersection with number three walkway. That’s what I get from this—Karl, do you agree?” he asked his Science officer via his PDA and received a confirmation.

  They all walked on and after more than two hundred feet, the bright gray light ended and darkness lay ahead. Alver and his marine turned on their vest-mounted flashlights at full power, and the walkway ahead was well lit as a result.

  More side walkways came. Some were labeled what they thought was number eight as there were eight circles. Above them, the area where the open doors were placed in the huge vaulted ceiling area now was lower and became even lower as they got closer to the front of the ship.

  “Bridge—if these aliens had a bridge—should lie ahead,” Alver said.

  Tanner nodded. “Easy does it here … we’re the aliens on this ship,” he reminded them, and their pace slowed a bit.

  Another few feet ahead was a door—a closed door—and it would stop any further progress.

  At the door, Alver, who was in the lead, looked for a large switch like the one in the airlock, and there was none. As he played the light over the whole bulkhead the doorway was situated in, no toggle, switch, or security plate could be seen. Not a single way to open the door. On the coving above the doorway, an empty circle was carved into the ceiling cove.

  On the floor lay the single solid circle they’d come to expect on this walkway but with a new icon beside it, an empty circle of the same size, same as the one on the ceiling.

  “No idea on that one,” Karl’s voice chimed in off Tanner’s PDA, and they all nodded.

  Stumped, Alver turned to Bram and raised an eyebrow.

  Bram shrugged. “I’ve no idea here on what to do. I’m still getting that same sort of welcome from the entity—but not a single idea or word on how to get by this doorway. No clue at all,” he said, and they remained standing and looking at the sealed doorway ahead.

  “Shuttle doesn’t have an industrial laser on it perhaps?” Tanner asked, and Alver shook his head no.

  “Then we’re done here for now. As we leave to go back, Bram, if you get anything, then let me-us—know. Back to the shuttle for now,” Tanner said, and he turned to lead the way back to the airlock port to leave the ship.

  “Sir, permission to try a couple of the side walkways to other areas?” Alver questioned before they left.

  “Not now—I want to come back with a full xeno-archaeology team. I want this to be kept quiet, but it needs more than we brought with us today. No shame in
that, but with Bram getting some kind of entity, we need to be even more careful. This isn’t going to be a case of finding working new technology lying on a shelf for us to find and use.”

  Bram nodded and then stopped them from moving away from the sealed doorway. Instead, he fished in an inner pocket, found a coin, and asked them all to move back, well away from the doorway.

  He too moved well back and then threw the coin at the door with force.

  It never hit the door but simply disappeared before doing so. No noise, no flash, nothing at all, as the coin just disappeared.

  He nodded. “Thought so—admittedly a bit late … but the door is protected by some kind of an alien force field. Not like ours that can be seen via the blue shimmer of light and the like. Their field is still up and working and ignored Alver who got close and even touched the door. It must have been able to tell that our human flesh was not to be concerned about—yet a metal object flying at the door might cause damage, so it disappeared. Where the coin is, I’ve no idea. But I’d suggest that caution is used by whomever we do get to come and give this another attempt to gain entry,” he finished off.

  Tanner nodded. He’d not thought of that kind of a test, but he had been glad to see Bram had, and the results were to be reckoned with next time around. A xeno-archaeology team was the next thing they needed to use.

  He said, “Alver, we’ll have to build up some kind of a presence here. I’ll get the xeno team—well, with Karl’s help too—together; can I ask that you personally look after security here?”

  Alver replied, “Aye, Sir—right away,” and they all turned to carefully walk back to the air lock port ahead.

  As they moved along, Tanner wondered what kind of technology could still be up and live after at least two thousand years of being buried into a hillside…and if there was something here for the Barony…