Trade Wars (The RIM Confederacy Book Book 9)

by Jim Rudnick

  Moments later, it rang and he said, “talk,” and there was a new hologram streamed above the PDA. A Farthian face appeared.

  Big eyes and sweeping ear lobes were one thing, but the real stopper, most of the RIM thought, was that the race had a very odd nose—four nostrils, each large and in a single row across the face. No real protuberance, just the four large holes each clogged with nose hairs. While the hologram was pretty detailed, it couldn’t pick up that kind of detail, and for once, the Leudie trader was happy with what he saw.

  “Mr. Faron—it’s Trade Master Fox here—with your order of embryos—but there’s a problem with the order. Seems that there are new tariffs on embryos—specifically the exact same ones you ordered. We didn’t know—so there will be a twenty-five percent overage on your order costs. And in future, we’d like to know these kinds of things before we accept an order …”

  He said it calmly. He said it almost nicely. He said it so as it’d be the content of what he said that would get through to the client, rather than how he said it. He’d been a trader for longer than most, and that meant that he knew how to sell.

  The client just stared at him at first. “Umm … twenty-five percent more … wait … what?” he said.

  He sat back it looked like and then shook his head. “Wait, Trader. You bought these goods—you own these goods. We buy them from you at an already negotiated price and one that is in our contract with you. If your costs go up—then that’s your costs—not ours. Is that not what FOB ORIGIN means and that is stamped all over the contract forms? This sounds like a problem of your own, not ours, Trader.”

  He was not mad, but the Leudie could tell that he felt that he was right. And the fact that he was right made this tougher. “I do understand what you are saying, Mr. Faron, but if you look past the first few pages to the last page and the special clause near the end of the document—number twenty-nine, I believe—it quite clearly says that if there are Customs issues, that they can be renegotiated at that time. This is that time, Mr. Faron,” he said. Perhaps that might work, he thought.

  Mr. Faron looked at him and tilted his head to one side. “Trader. We buy these embryos, move them from the trays to full cryonic tanks, they take another four months to be born, and then we feed them, raise them, and in another year and a half, it’s off to the abattoir, and we finally get revenues back.

  “We take the long road here, Trader, as you know that on Farth, we have a real lack of large native animals for protein. Hence, we import these frozen Garnuthian cattle embryos. And all the items that are our costs are figured out to the penny. We cannot afford any increase on this lot of embryos. So our answer is either you honor your contract with us—or we refuse to accept same with these new charges. Your choice, Trader … your choice.”

  He looked like he meant it. His face was firm, his voice just as firm, and from what the Leudie could see, there was no way to get back his twenty-five percent.

  He nodded. “We will eat those new tariff costs—we will lose money on this contract—but we will be adding in surcharges to every single contract to follow to re-capture our costs,” the Trader said.

  “Then we will simply get more than one quote and take the smaller quote. Or the faster delivery. Or the one that is best for us, Trader … we will not forget this either,” he said, and the hologram disappeared.

  The trader sighed and said to his PDA, “Recorded content to be archived—send one copy EYES ONLY to Trade Master Lofton and one to the Leudie Taskforce on Customs in the capital.” He didn’t flinch, but the thought of the twenty-five percent leaving his revenue stream was disconcerting.

  Still on board his ship was a large order of cloth textiles from Madrigal to Quaran—more than a million feet of newly woven and colored textiles, in fact. The revenues from that order alone would cover the whole trip even though they’d lost credits here on Farth. In trading, there was often a balance, but still the loss here had been upsetting; he’d have to find out why the changes had been made to something as unimportant as embryos, frozen or fresh eggs, and he sighed…

  CHAPTER SIX

  In one of the smallest rooms in the Ministry of Commerce for Randi, the clerk who received the file sat and then tried to re-read the complete file once again. His job was to validate the claims by anyone who had issues with commerce on Randi. Not a hard job, he knew, but one that required the ability to read a file and get to the bottom of what was being said.

  “This should not be a difficult one to fathom,” he said to himself, repeating the exact same phrase for the third time this morning.

  “It boiled down,” he said to himself, ”to issues with Superintendent Rippa’s iron ore mine and goods received from a Leudie trader vessel just last month.”

  Products ordered from one firm over on Amasis had been substituted with products from another by the Leudies. These new products were not of the same technical specifications as the ones the mines had originally ordered.

  As the products were FOB ORIGIN type,the Leudies owned the products until they were paid for by the superintendent. Or his accounting department—that is somewhat closer to the truth, the clerk corrected himself.

  Solution is not that hard, he reckoned as he made notes on his tablet.

  So … I’ll just instruct the superintendent to not pay the invoice for those new parts—as they do not have the proper specifications.

  He ran through the outcome of that instruction. The Leudies will not be paid for these parts and will eat those costs. The superintendent will probably need to re-order new parts. The superintendent will probably not pick a Leudie trader for this order but instead pick a Faraway ship.

  The clerk sighed and shook his head. With a new order placed with Faraway, the mines would be in breach of contract for supply transport as those contracts were set for a year. That could escalate hard feelings between the Leudies and Faraway, which meant this might be taken to the RIM Confederacy Council for them to argue about.

  “But I’m safe in my thinking,” he said to himself and then went over it all again.

  It’s not a difficult one to fathom …

  #####

  The head of the processing area over on field number three looked over at the technician and received a thumbs-up.

  He double-checked, and the man nodded and said, “Shut her down.”

  He placed his palm on the security plate at the station on the line and then said, “AI, shut her down—all items and areas, complete stop, please.” Why he always added the please when he talked to a computer, he had no idea and hadn’t for his five decades of life, but he always said please when he ordered AI to obey him.

  He pushed back the wave of salt and pepper hair that often drooped over his brow and tried to get it to stay back but failed yet again. He waited while the plant AI did what it did on command. He sighed.

  Plant close-downs were often fraught with issues as the ore itself was not removed from the conveyors when they stopped.

  As he watched, the whole processing plant seemed to slow down as the conditioned air that was forced through quit suddenly, and within a minute, the lines, belts, couplings, and bearings all slowed.

  The far end of the processing plant, where the iron ore came in on the conveyors, still held the raw untreated magnetite ore. The center part of the line where the ore was crushed, screened, and then went into the big red-colored area was also silent as it came to a stop now too. The line of conveyors off to the right that went to the shipping containers stopped too, and the falling ore that sounded like pouring water was silent.

  The entire processing plant was stopped.

  He’d heard at one time what it cost the firm when the line stopped—thousands of credits per minute—but he couldn’t remember that now. All he knew was that when the line stopped, his bonus was in trouble, and one wanted to envision that.

  He waited and a moment later, the AI had checked all the points of connections, all the conduits had been shut down, and all the fail-safes had
been disengaged.

  The plant was truly stopped, and the icon on the screen in front of him flashed just that.

  He nodded to the techie and said, “Full shutdown enabled and verified. It’s yours …” and he turned to go back up the few stairs to the administration offices and to watch, if he cared to, through the big windows up there.

  “Plant’s down,” he said to himself, and when he reached the office, he had someone check for him.

  The Leudies had confirmed they’d be there by seventeen hundred hours today, promptly at that time.

  He looked up at the clock—it was only eleven hundred hours, and that should be enough time.

  Against the line, below where he’d just been standing, were the cases of the new replacement magnetic couplers that were going to be put into service on the line today. With nine techies down there with wrenches, the job of replacing those knock-off parts would be done in time before the Leudies showed up.

  It took almost the whole time to get the job done, as each techie went, found the listed part via the serial numbers, removed the knock-off, replaced it with a part that was up to specifications, and then checked it off on his tablet.

  Superintendent Rippa showed up around sixteen hundred hours, sat beside the processing plant manager, and watched.

  Not a word was said.

  At sixteen hundred and thirty hours, the head techie came up to the office and said, “Done. You can restart …”

  The processing plant manager nodded to the techie and looked to the superintendent. With a nod from the superintendent, he got up, went over to the plant console, and keyed in his security clearance. Next, he keyed in to start the line from all the way back to the left side—finished material before raw material—and acknowledged the AI as it asked for permission to restart.

  “You’re good to go, yup,” he said, and the plant slowly got up and running as the line began to move again.

  After five more minutes, the reports coming in on screen showed that the magnetic couplers were now running at a full capacity and the ore that was going into the shipping containers was the required eighty percent minimum that it was supposed to be.

  He smiled and saw the superintendent was smiling too.

  The front door opened, and three Leudie traders entered and walked over to the reception counter.

  He was about to offer his office for the talk, but seeing the superintendent’s face, he said nothing.

  This was not going to be a social call.

  No sense getting involved.

  He slid the folder over to sit between himself and the superintendent, quietly introduced the head Leudie to him, and then shut up.

  The superintendent stared at the Leudie for a moment before he nodded his head and said, “Good to meet you, Trade Master Djenny.” He opened the file in front of him.

  He read for a few seconds and then looked back up at the Leudie. “Our line was just restarted after being down for most of the day. We took off, from the magnetic couplers section, more than 180 of the last batch of magnetic couplers that you supplied to us about a month ago. We replaced them with the same units, but those units were the required technical specs to operate on our line.

  “The ones we replaced are all below, in boxes, and they belong to you, as we hereby refuse to accept these lesser spec’d units. They do not work within the needed tolerances of our processing line, so they go back to you. And yes, that means that we will not be paying for those items either,” he said, his voice strong and full of conviction.

  The Leudie stared at him, and as he did, the neck snake around his collar began to uncoil. “Those parts will not be accepted as returns, Superintendent. You accepted them, you used them, so you cannot just return them. We will get paid for them, that’s a certainty,” he said.

  The superintendent shook his head. “Not ever is when you’ll be paid for providing knock-offs—we’re told that this is what this kind of fraudulent device is called. You changed our specs—you did that. So they belong to you. Our new parts run perfectly, as you can see,” he said, as he gestured toward the plant out the big windows where the conveyors were moving along nicely.

  “New parts? We did not provide any new parts, so I doubt that—wait. Who did the transport to you of these new parts,” he asked, his voice loud, as from beneath the coil of muscle around his neck, the head of his neck snake poked out, its tongue flicking in and out.

  The superintendent ignored the implied threat of the snake and said, “We arranged for other transport with our newly contracted carrier, a Faraway master trader. You—and your own firm—are fired. Clear out your boxes of knock-offs by end of business today, or we’ll simply toss them. You’re done here—and I mean all of Randi too … not just the mines,” he said, and as he did so, he leaned forward.

  The neck snake darted out toward his face but stopped short by an inch or so, mouth agape, large viper teeth dripping with venom, but it did not strike.

  The superintendent reared back and then slammed the counter in front of him. “Out, get out …” he barked at them and pointed to the door.

  The Leudie was still, but then as the snake pulled back, he stepped back and said, “You’ve not heard the last of this …” and he spun on his heel.

  The three of them marched out of the offices and down the stairs to the parking area. Moments later, a waiting robo-cab spun its tires as it fled the offices and went down the road toward the city.

  The plant manager said, “Uh, Sir? Other than that damn snake, I’d say that went fine, right?”

  The superintendent nodded. “Sort of took me by surprise, that snake. I thought that they never attack … but that was close,” he said, and only now could one see the sweat on his brow mixed with that shock of hair. He swiped at it with a sleeve and noted he’d need a report on this encounter as well as a copy of the security tapes for the whole day too on his console by first thing tomorrow, and the manager nodded his agreement.

  He left moments later, and the plant manager turned to watch the line chugging along in perfect harmony.

  Snakes indeed… he thought, no wonder the Leudies were so despised on the RIM …

  #####

  “And I’m telling you that function surpasses form every time,” Professor Ned Beedles said as he sat on the number three walkway inside the alien wreck. The xeno team had been here all of three days, and each day had meant they spent more than twelve hours inside the vessel. Looking around. Studying. Researching. Taking notes and videos. Walking all over the huge vaulted interior of the ship yet not going into any of the other spaces.

  “Rules are meant to be followed. You make one mistake, and I’ll send you back to Neres with your tail between your legs,” Professor Reynolds, their xeno team leader, cautioned before he even told them about the mission.

  Before the cruiser the Whitney had even left Neres, they’d been on the tarmac awaiting their departure confirmations, and he spoke to the ten members of the xeno team quietly in a sealed room.

  “We will be on Ghayth in less than a few seconds. Don’t ask why or how. This ship—like all the Barony Navy ships—has had upgrades to our drives. Neres to Ghayth in less than ten seconds is about the time it takes. But that’s not what you’re here for,” he said, as the team looked at each other in wonderment.

  Less than ten seconds, he heard muttered by a few, but he ignored those mutterings.

  “When we get to Ghayth, there is an alien shipwreck that we—this team—is now in charge of. As the xeno team of record, it’s up to us to make all the necessary and needed investigations into the aliens’ culture, language, artifacts, technology, medical, and society values,” he said and that got them all silent for a moment.

  But one spoke up.

  “Professor—do we at least have a time zline on this crashed vehicle? How long since she went in?” Professor Miller Vincent, the xeno team member in charge of culture and law asked.

  That got a nod from Reynolds who said, “Yeah … about twenty tho
usand years ago, it seems …”

  Everyone stopped and stared at him.

  Twenty thousand years was a long time to be able to sift through for clues to the aliens themselves, and the conversation in the next few minutes was broken by the notice that they were leaving Neres—and seconds later that they were now in low orbit around Ghayth.

  That shut them all up, and a few heads shook, but those twenty thousand years were the major conversation piece.

  The first day had been spent looking at maps of the interior and what had been mapped. With over two thousand feet of ship to work with, drones had flown every square foot of the enormous vaulted interior.

  “They could fly,” Professor Ellen Irving, the one in charge of customs and society said.

  “No other way that as yet has been mapped to allow anyone to get up there to those next rows of doorways. No stairs found by the drones either,” she said.

  If a race of aliens could fly, what would the interior of their ship look like? Maybe like this one was the premise, and working with that, the mapping and reckoning went on.

  On day two, they’d walked the walkways—paying careful note to the numbering system too. One of the drones had noted and recorded that some—not all—of the doorways that opened up to the huge interior had the same icons for numbers on the door sills. The icons weren’t large enough to see from the floor of the vault of the ship, but if flying, like the drone had been, the icons were noticeable once you drew close.

  There were some interesting areas in the aft of the ship where the hull plating had been mostly lost and the I-beams were thicker than up in the middle section of the ship. Engines appeared to be there, but they were simple-looking blocks of some kind of metal and organic alloy. You could push on an edge and it would depress, but there wasn't a single recognizable way to get in to the engines. No bolts, no arrays, no manifolds, and no way to undo an access point. Just a smooth six-foot cube.

  There were some tubes or conduits feeding into the cube, but they did not try to pull them out.