by Jim Rudnick
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Sounds in the Council Hall grew as more and more members were arriving and taking their seats at the table, their entourages arranged behind them. The single member present from Ttseen seated himself on his rear legs and sat up as tall as his five-foot height would allow him. Admiral McQueen liked them; they looked so much like boxer dogs that he often toyed with the idea of throwing a stick to see if they'd fetch.
Beside the vice chairman's seat was the member from Leudies’ spot, and McQueen saw the blue-skinned alien had already seated himself and was uncoiling his neck snake. He tucked the snake into the crook of his left arm on the table in front of him. The snake, of course, was still attached to the alien via the nerve port at the rear of the alien's left ear, but McQueen could see the snake preening itself as the alien slowly rubbed its belly. The symbiotic link between a Leudi and his snake went back to puberty, and these blue-skinned traders were renowned for their attachment to each other. Still made him shudder.
The fact that one of the major items today was the ongoing trade war between Leudi and Faraway was not lost on him; he hoped the member’s neck snake was asleep during the upcoming arguments.
The Baroness was already at her seat as the vice chairperson to the immediate right of the chairman’s spot. She had a group with her today including that protester from Eons, who’d accused the Issians of some pretty distasteful machinations, again all to come up later today.
Quarans were talking wine, of course. Madrigals were interested in new mining supplies, so they were locked into discussions with the Farth contingent. A couple of Altos from Randi were humming in three-part harmony for the Duke d’Avigdor’s contingent, and all was well with the Confederacy. “At least for now,” McQueen said to himself as he looked down at his Agenda.
The room still was abuzz when the chairman strode in, his six arms holding bags, folders, and even a stack of books. Being from Elbo, the home planet of the Alex’n hegemony, Chairman Gramsci came alone; he needed no help, he often said, to run the Confederacy, so he carried everything himself. The rest of the council rolled their eyes, or what passed for eyes, at the table when he said that, but McQueen had to agree that the Alex’n chairman ran the council as he saw fit.
He let the things in his many arms slide down to the table in front of him, grabbed a gavel up, and knocked it on the table. In a moment or two, all other conversations had dried up.
He nodded and said, “Come to order, please. As this Agenda will be a long one, let’s get started, shall we.” He quietly said more to the council clerk sitting in front of him in the middle of the big horseshoe table, and he sat down heavily.
The clerk read the Agenda, asked for any changes, made a few small adaptations to the order of the upcoming items, and then started with regrets over past or current matters. Before McQueen had even blinked, the Faraway member was up on his feet, slamming the table in front of him.
“We want answers, do you hear me?” Minister Gavin Gibson yelled at the whole room and kept pounding the table.
To be expected, McQueen thought, yet not so damn quickly, and he sighed and sat back to watch this play out.
The chairman banged his gavel over and over and waited until the gavel wore down the member from Faraway. “You are out of order, sir,” the chairman said dryly, knowing this was a lost cause.
“You, sir, the whole council, the whole Customs ministry are out of order,” the minister cried out and began to bang on the table once more.
McQueen could see the minister’s tail was not standing up straight nor jutting out back either but was lying on the floor behind him. Not really upset but playing the role, McQueen thought and waited once again.
The chairman banged his gavel over and over, and once again, the Faraway member eventually quieted down. “Sir, while out of order, I’ll allow us to proceed on … number five of today's Agenda, right up front. Do you have a statement to make, Minister?” he said, knowing full well that he did.
The Faraway minister nodded, yanked a tablet up off the desk in front of him, and read his comments into the record. “We, the realm of Faraway, do hereby protest new Customs charges and fees and tariffs upon our trading of various goods across the RIM Confederacy in their entirety. We feel—and we have the proof in our paid fees—that we are the subject of mercantile terrorism upon our own trades by the Leudies. We know—and there are Customs records to prove it—that this is a fact, and we ask for full intervention of these unconscionable punitive fees as of today,” he finished off, sat, and stared at the chairman.
The chairman toyed with the gavel for a moment and then turned to the council member who sat two chairs to his right. “Would the member from Leudie have any comments to make at this time?”
The Leudie smiled at the whole table but did not even look at the Faraway member. “Not at all, Chairman. We, like all members of the Confederacy, make applications to the Customs Ministry to get our approvals on various trade matters on all of the realms. On all of the products on the RIM. On new products too, and if the member from Faraway has issues with any of the fees that they—they and everyone else too—will be paying for their trades on all the RIM worlds, then the Customs Ministry is where they need to go. Not here—and I move that this Agenda item be tabled and sent to Customs.”
Over protests from the Faraway member, who was the only one, McQueen noted, this was carried easily, and the chairman had to bang his gavel for a full minute to wear down the minister from Faraway once more.
As the meeting progressed, all seemed to be much less adversarial as the items came and went.
Takan talks about a new annexation of a rogue planet were discussed and sent over to the Confederacy astrophysics for further study.
Skogg had worked out a new method of using wave power to generate electricity, and that was also tabled, but a big kudos went out to their tech teams for that work.
Bottle appeared to be asking, but not really asking, for a new classification of worlds to include vacation destination planets only with an accompanying new level of RIM taxation too, and that too was tabled.
Time, McQueen noted, for the Eons protester presentation. While he, like millions of others, had seen this woman, Kendal Steyn, speak to them all at the new academy opening ceremonies just a few weeks back, he didn’t see her here, and he looked around thoroughly too.
The Baroness rose to speak. “Thank you, Clerk, and yes, it was under the Barony auspices that we offered to let this woman speak to the Confederacy Council. I fully expected that she would be here to do just that—yet I do not see her here at all today. If I might—” She pointed behind her to an aide, who came forward to have a short whispered conversation.
She yanked her head back after a short moment of those whispers and then leaned back in to ask for more information. She nodded. She asked something else, and then she shrugged. The aide returned to her seating area behind the Baroness.
The Baroness looked down at the table, toyed with her fingernail on the tablet in front of her, and then looked up.
“Members of the Council, I am sorry, but I have just gotten some terrible news. While en route from Neres to Juno for this meeting, on the BN Coventry, a frigate of ours, there was an accident on board. This woman, Kendal Steyn, and two of our crewmen as well were badly injured. Our sick bay was able to save the crewmen, as they were not so bad, but I’m afraid that this Kendal Steyn did not make it. Even our robo-docs could not save her, and she was buried in space as per our Barony customs,” she said.
That was a shock, and the whole council was quiet.
“Might one inquire as to what the nature of the accident was,” McQueen said, as really wanted to know.
The Baroness half-turned to her left and nodded to him where he sat behind the chairman. “They were in a shuttle that took a meteor strike during a short visit to the Juno nebula. She’d never seen a nebula up close and asked, and the off-ship visit was okayed by the captain. As you know, shuttles do not have much shie
lding, and the strike was from a meteor that was more than three feet across. Instant loss of atmosphere, and she, I’m afraid, panicked, and they couldn’t get her quieted down enough to get a suit on her …” she offered, and that got some nods.
The number of meteor strikes that hit ships was low—there weren’t more than a handful in any year. Most of the crews were trained in what to do, how to get atmosphere up, or a suit on … only a real newbie was at risk, McQueen knew. Takes only a minute to die in space … unless one was trained. He nodded.
Case closed.
And he glanced at the Master Adept who’d just learned this news too.
No smile on her face as that might have been obvious perhaps—maybe he was reading too much into this very fortunate turn of events for the Issians.
No protester meant no protest, and no protest meant no worries over on Eons.
CHAPTER FIVE
The planet Randi, home of the tallest waterfalls on the RIM, had the best iron ore deposits, which was something many RIM citizens didn’t know. “Waterfalls, that’s all they ever think of,” the superintendent said to himself as he stomped down the stairs from the mining administration shack offices and went across the yard to his cart. Powering it up, he took the time to put on his seat belt. The cart with no top, windshield, or doors zoomed away on the gravel lot, and he spun the tires heading up the grade toward to field number three.
That damn field number three is causing the issue.
Iron ore—specifically the magnetite that this mine was the best producer of on Randi—came in layered deposits, ore bands some called them. The discovery of field number three just a few months back was a real godsend to the mining consortium the Randi government operated. Not only was it close to the current open-pit mines, but it was high-grade magnetite.
With its crystalline structure, it was more than eighty percent pure ferrous materials, with very little contaminant elements that needed to be discarded in the ore’s beneficiation process.
And that’s the rub, he knew—the goddamn process was breaking down again for the third time this week.
Equipment breakdowns were one thing—but a breakdown in the basics—the coarse crushing and screening of the ore, followed by the fine ore particles being passed under the magnetic separators—was an unknown. The process worked perfectly, then it didn’t, and he had no idea why. Flying in three experts—one a university professor who knew more about this kind of beneficiation than anyone else—was supposed to fix the problems and get the process back up and running and making the consortium money.
Money. It was always about money. He shook his head as the cart flew around the big left-hand corner off field number two and then down the long straightaway to field number three. He shifted his rear end as the cart hit a pothole and then leaned to the right as the track ahead slanted away from the hillside on the right. He was worried, of course, by the failure of the process, and as he had no idea why, he didn’t know how to fix it yet either.
Then, thinking again of money, there was his annual bonus which would be affected if field number three didn’t start producing the needed tons of magnetite ore that they’d already contracted and sold.
“Shortfalls hit us all,” he said, and that made it no more palatable either.
At field number three, he saw the enormous conveyors that came up and out of the open-pit mine were stopped. They were also stopped where they entered the massive processing building, and that was a real issue, he knew.
He parked the cart with a twist, and as it slid up near the steps to the building, he turned it off before it even stopped moving. He was up the steps and into the processing plant in seconds.
He went first toward the office on the left, but a clerk there shook her head at him and pointed toward the line itself. The line stretched for more than half a mile in length. Ore came in on those conveyors on the left, was crushed, then screened, and then went through the large red-colored portion of the line where the magnetic separators were located about mid-way down the line.
Contaminants and impurities were sloughed off to one side while the now pure magnetite ore continued down the line to fill the shipping container bins at the end of the line.
Only today, the whole process was stopped for the third time this week.
He looked up at the red portion, and yes, there was a team of techies there, along with a few white hats too, and he sighed as he went through a security gate, slowly climbed, and hoisted himself up to their level.
He nodded to a few of the techies but went right to his number two here in field number three and said, “So?”
The man who ran the field shrugged and said, “We’ve got issues with the magnetic separators, it appears.”
Before he could answer, one of the three experts, the professor, he thought, interrupted.
“It’s a very simple problem, Superintendent Rippa. We have removed and tested some of these magnetic separators, and they do not all pass the basics of their specs. You’ve got some kind of fraudulent products here on the line—and they’re the ones that are affecting the process and stopping same too,” he said, and everyone quieted.
“Huh?” the superintendent asked, as he had no idea as to what he’d just heard.
One of the other experts, a man from the Randi industrial association, he thought, spoke up next.
“Superintendent, what we have looked at is a random sampling of the over two thousand separators that are supposed to be magnetic and work as per the technical specifications that they’re supposed to be held to.
“Manufacturers of counterfeit products often use inferior materials without regard for meeting published ratings or safety. These knock-offs consistently fail independent certification testing from organizations such as our own.
“And we noted that each of these knock-offs,” he said as he pointed to a box in front of him, “were from one known sub-standard manufacturer. You were sold inferior products—and they’re the ones that are overheating in this case, causing the circuit breakers to trip along with the mandatory ten-minute hold on the line.”
The superintendent nodded. That he understood. Phony products sold to them by someone, and that was the next issue.
“I want to know who sold us those products—are they labeled with their manufacturer?” he said as he walked over to the box and reached inside to hoist out a small mechanical device.
The professor answered, “Yes, Superintendent, the devices that we’ve identified all come from the same knock-off firm which differs from the ones that are perfectly made and running all the time. There is no way to determine—unless we do a serial number check against recent items from the supply chain—which of these are at fault.”
Again, the Superintendent said, “Huh?”
Again, the industry representative spoke up. “Sir, what we mean to say is that the knock-offs are from the another company—yet they’re not the same specs as the ones from your normal supplier. Seems like they were lesser spec’d in items—we have no idea as to why. You’d need to quote serial numbers back to the firm that made them over on Amasis, and then find out what happened. Sir,” he said, and that made them all quiet again.
Exactly, the superintendent thought.
Serial numbers to Amasis, and why are they different?
Easy-peasy, he thought, and he hoisted the box to his shoulder.
“Fine. I’ll look after that. Get this line back up and running, and when she quits, then restart her soon as possible—we need to get the ore produced!”
Back at his desk, he slammed the Ansible button to OFF, swore and swore again.
The firm that they normally bought their magnetic separators from had simply reported to him what had happened.
Yes, they had a standing order for new separators, and yes, the specs were firmly listed. And yes, the mine’s order just a month ago had come through—but been immediately canceled by the Leudie transport ships that were on contract with the mines. No reason had been given f
or the order cancellation. But the clerk there had agreed that the kind and type of magnetic separator that the mine used was made by many firms on Amasis—of both lesser and greater technical specs. And yes, he had heard that there were new tariffs on the RIM for mining equipment.
How the firm had not notified the mine itself was beyond him, yet they claimed they did not really deal with the mines—they sold the ordered equipment to the Leudie traders, who sold it to the mines. Yet it filled their orders as always, but the Leudies were the ones who picked up the equipment over on Amasis, paid for it, and then re-sold it with their own markup to Randi. When an order was FOB ORIGIN, it meant that the costs of these replacement parts was not final until they were picked up by the Leudie transport ships and paid for then. Leudie moved them to Randi and then charged more for same as all traders did—hence the lessening of the specs to get around the new tariffs, he’d just learned. And of course, there were no worries at all if an order was canceled.
He pounded the desk.
He needed to find a way around this, as the Amasis firm told him that all the products they made for the mines were all going to be handled by their normal contract for transportation with the Leudies.
“Like they’re printing money off us,” he said, and he had his aide look up the number of the Ministry of Commerce for Randi—he’d need to get someone there to get involved.
Or else his bonus would disappear, as would the normal daily tonnage of ore …
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“Exactly how long has it been since you were out in the field, Professor Reynolds?” the dean asked.
Reynolds snorted, and his long white goatee bounced as if it had a life of its own. “It’s been, what, Nelson, more than a decade since we—you—were a part of that xeno team—were on the moons of Bottle, was it not?” he asked, although he really wanted to say you already know the answer, so why’d you ask?’