by Jim Rudnick
Kondo got up and put an arm around his little brother. “All true, Kasmer—but let’s try to stay positive, shall we? Mom and Klara don’t need to dwell on that—and neither do we. Let’s just hope for the best, shall we?” he said and hugged his brother at the same time.
The two of them separated and then turned to look out the windows down at Seville. It was a mild late spring day, the blue sky scattered with clouds, and folks below were wearing light jackets, Kondo noticed. The fact that the planet’s prime minister was here in General Hospital meant that there was vid truck after news truck after live trucks all lined up in a long row on the street outside the hospital grounds. Police had been summoned to try to shepherd them all, and even from here, he could see cameras pointed right up at the windows that he and his brother were staring out of right now.
Kasmer turned his back on the window. “Have you made any decision as yet—on the party request?” he asked his voice quiet but still wondering.
Kondo also turned to keep their conversation private from those cameras and field reporters below. They didn’t know if the press below actually had lip readers down there, but better safe than sorry.
“I have no idea. I’m a Barony Navy captain—with the best ship on the RIM—why the hell would I ever consider leaving that to join the party? And they’ve got some nerve asking me that while dad lies in a coma …” he added, his voice critical yet somehow not harsh.
The deputy and a few cabinet ministers had corralled him just yesterday with the offer that should his father not make it, then they thought he would make a fine temporary replacement to take over the leadership of the party—the planet really—until the election in two years. Then, they added, he’d run for the office and be duly elected … if he was interested.
Kasmer nodded but added, “If it’s one thing that Dad showed us over the years, it’s that the party always comes first … hence their needing to know what to do if Dad can’t resume his leadership. Seems like a normal thing for them to do … but yeah, I hate even thinking about it too. You’ll decide when you decide,” he said and squeezed Kondo’s arm and went over to sit back down.
“Eight and a half hours ‘til we know more,” he said, and he picked up his tablet to pass some time.
#####
“Well, this has to be a first,” the Baroness said, and she laughed right out loud.
Sitting in one of the more formal parlors in the palace, in a setting that was four full couches arranged around a large coffee table, were the Baroness, the Lady St. August, Gillian, the lady’s Adept officer, and Admiral Tanner Scott and Bram, his Adept officer. Three aides of the Baroness who were in charge of the complete wedding event also sat around the coffee table.
Tanner smiled at that and he too thought that a wedding officiated by the Master Adept of Eons with the maid of honor, Gillian, and the best man, Bram, also being Issians was a bit unusual.
“Is certainly strange—makes one think that the wedding vows will be pretty serious,” Tanner said, and that too got a grin from most in the room.
“Go on, please, Linda,” the Baroness said, and their head of the wedding event team once again went on.
“As I said, Ma’am, the Master Adept will be at the rehearsal party, she indicated, so we have only to work on getting out the wedding party groomsmen and bridesmaid invitations at this point. I take it that those final lists are here today,” she said, trying not to sound so firm but still remembering that some in the room were Royals.
The Lady St. August smiled. “I have my list here today—there are twenty names on it … Tanner?” she asked coyly and tilted her head to one side.
He grinned back at her and matched her head tilt too. “I also have my own list, and there are only ten names on it—so is that an issue?” he said to Linda.
They both looked at her, turning those head tilts to her.
She smiled at them and shook her head. “Not at all. We often find that the numbers are not the exact same—in fact, the two-to-one numbers of twenty-to-ten match up nicely … I can see a wonderful procession down the aisle and later in the reception presentation too. Lists, please,” she said so politely, and both were passed over to her. She handed them to one of her aides, and then she turned the page in the wedding event planning binder.
Tanner noted they were very close to the front of the binder and that it was at least three inches thick.
In a new section, the talk turned to the stuff that put Tanner to sleep; flowers were discussed first. Not the color and kind but what kind were they getting the best botanist on Neres to develop for the wedding, and would it have enough time to grow before the date?
The choosing of the date itself had taken the first hour of the meeting today; everyone had an opinion, but it was obvious that the building of the wedding pavilion had some input too. Earliest could be in seven months at the end of the winter season. But, the wedding planner had argued very successfully that buildings often ran long, so they should aim at the spring instead, and the date of March twenty-first was chosen. Nine and a bit months from now, on the first day of spring, which was a nice touch, they all agreed.
The Baroness had also offered that she was pushing pretty hard on the construction firm that was working now on the pavilion and then on the new wing to be added to the palace for the happily married couple to live in afterward.
Back to the flowers and some decision had been made as the talk had moved along to the cake, and Tanner zoned out again.
He sipped his tea, finished it, caught the eye of a steward standing off to one side, and hoisted his cup up to ask for a refill, which he got quickly and courteously too.
Gonna have to think on this when I’m a Royal, he thought, in, what, a bit more than nine months from now.
And, he thought, there was the matter of a title too … Helena had said she’d make him a lord the day after they married, but he was not sure about that. He had received the peerage papers from the Baroness that explained that when a commoner married a Royal, the commoner, if male, was not automatically granted a peerage title at all. But that could come from the current head of state within some limiting rules. For instance, it had said, just because he was marrying Helena, when she inherited the peerage of Baroness, he would not be made the Baron. That peerage title went with the inherited bloodline—and that was not him. He could be made a lord or something similar, but he’d never be the Baron of Neres—but if he had a son by Helena in the future, that would be the child’s title one day. He was to be a consort, it seemed.
Fine with me, he thought as he sipped that fresh tea. Earl Grey, he noted and smiled. In his scotch days, he could tell you how long it had aged in oak to the year—and now when he drank tea almost exclusively, he was able to tell what kind it was but little more than that.
The meeting had now turned to music, and the number of various live entertainment offers to play was astounding, Linda said. More than fifty very well-known, high-quality performers or bands or orchestras had offered to play at the reception. Some, she noted, had also offered up a fee too, to be allowed to play, and that number was now up to thirty thousand credits, and she shook her head.
That much, to play at our wedding, he wondered.
Good gosh … wonder what the valets out in the palace parking lots would offer. He grinned to himself.
Bram nudged him with a mental push, and he stopped daydreaming and stared over at Helena who was staring at him.
“Sorry, honey … what was that?” he asked politely.
“We’re on honeymoon, honey. And Linda has asked if the data on that will be public, and if so, if she can begin the process of going out to RIM Confederacy worlds and asking for their own presentations? If public, that is … do we want that?”
He thought on that for a moment and then shook his head. “Let’s keep our honeymoon destination private, shall we? Maybe I’ll take you inwards to Kinross or the like,” he said, and that got a smile from her.
“Fine, I’ll ma
ke a note of that—private honeymoon arrangements to be made by the bride and groom is what I’ll report via the news channels. Let’s move on,” she said as she turned another index section in the big binder on her lap, “and move to rings, please …” and Tanner once again went back to day dreaming….
#####
“Okay, we’ve got all our ducks in a row,” Professor Reynolds said.
“Except, what do we do if this does not work this time?” Professor Scholes said.
He was about to get a whole slew of answers from the assembled xeno team—but Lieutenant Commander Sheldon interrupted them all.
“We know the basics … door appears to be protected from any kind of assault level attacks. We have arranged to use a low powder charge, small caliber weapon to fire at the door,” he said as he pointed to the .18 caliber rifle in the hands of a marine about ten feet away.
“We know that we have full recordings on—so we won’t lose any data on this test. We know that we also have some of the team members inside the bridge watching the console to see if such an attack will register on that monitor. It does make sense, as our more-than-capable technological expert, Lieutenant Hartford, pointed out that anyone on the bridge would want to know if there is an assault on the bridge entry door. That’s being recorded under his watchful eye too, right now.”
Sheldon moved out of the way and behind the pile of sandbags that had been placed on the one wall to protect the test watchers. He smiled at them all and then called out to the marine.
“Countdown and then fire, from five, please, Sergeant,” he said.
The marine hoisted up the small carbine to his shoulder and gave the count. “Five … four … three … two … one … fire!”
The report was loud even for such a small, underpowered shell, but still it rang in their ears as this was a very small all metal corridor.
They stared at the bridge door, a solid panel of steel, in a slightly dingy beige color.
There was no sound of a ricochet and no mark on the door’s surface—not a single empirical piece of evidence that the bullet had reached the door. It did not lie on the floor. It had simply disappeared.
Moments later, the door opened from inside the bridge, and Lieutenant Hartford stood there with a big smile on his face.
“Got it! The monitor did change slightly as soon as we heard the gunshot—there is a new icon up in the top right-hand corner and it’s flashing. It’s a set of circles, one over the other, five of them. And it’s in amber, so that might be the color these aliens use to indicate an issue that needs attention. But the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is—where did the bullet go?” and that had them all stumped.
Professor Reynolds said, “No idea—but that’s a question that we’ve got a lot of time to answer,” and he turned to the rest of the xeno team.
“We’re okay so far. More exploration is on the list for tomorrow. ‘Til then, I’d like your reports all turned into the xeno database by end of business today, and I can collate same and get them back to the admiral by tomorrow in the AM. Great job, everybody,” he said, and the test broke up with smiles all around.
CHAPTER NINE
On the BN Exeter, Captain Mel Magnusson was having none of it.
He’d been instructed directly by Lieutenant Hartford on the installation and testing of the new Barony Drive units as had his own Exeter techies too. They’d all watched as the copper plate had been placed on the rear of the ship, just above the Tachyon Drive exhaust. It had to be centered, right over the new port drilled in the hull to allow the bio gel conduit to be applied in the best practices conditions as the lieutenant had ordered. The hull was tested twice, for full space-worthiness and sealant integrity, and all had worked out perfectly.
They had lifted off from the navy yard on Neres to test the ship and the drive by going on a pre-determined flight to Juno or thirty-seven lights and a bit. The test would be recorded by the Exeter’s AI and transferred over to the Barony administration for their records, and it went off perfectly.
The trip to Juno had taken less than ten seconds. Once the helmsman learned how to align the ship to the satellite that sat close to the sun with the blue plate that pushed out the gravity well power of the Barony Drive, they had returned at the same speed.
But the captain was not satisfied.
“XO,” he said on the Exeter bridge, “that was, what, less than forty lights, right?” he asked pointedly.
“Aye, Sir,” he replied.
“Did we get a threshold for the drive that listed the outer limits of the power of the gravity well?” the captain asked.
“Sir, no … all we were told was that we just align, lock onto the blue plate, and the plate sends us to the star that we’re pointed at,” the XO replied.
“So … we can point at any star, right?” the captain said, now pretty sure of his reasoning.
“Sir, yes … but a caution that we need a satellite at that new star to be able to get back using the Barony Drive. Without that, we’d be using Tachyon Drive speeds of one light per day. Of course, we do have three of the blue plate satellites down in cargo bay number seven, I believe, Sir,” he said, wondering why this was important.
“Has any other Barony Navy ship gone ‘off-RIM so far that we know of, XO?” the captain asked.
The whole bridge crew of the frigate got the measure of his questioning at once, as heads turned to look at him.
“And yes, could we, say, set a Barony Drive course for a star a thousand or more lights away—arrive, drop a satellite, and come back in minutes?” he asked.
That got him a nod as well as an “Aye, Sir.”
The bridge was quiet while the captain digested that.
“Maybe the Exeter should be the first Barony Navy vessel to give that a try, yes?” he asked the whole bridge, and that got a resounding group of “Ayes” back at him.
“XO—let’s pick out a star at, say, one thousand lights away … surely a record that the Exeter will be proud of.”
The XO nodded and put up a new star chart on the bridge’s view-screen, and they all watched as he narrowed the focus for stars that lay at least one thousand lights away—inward, of course. Then, the XO swung the focus to the left, and there was a group of stars all with an orange background indicating a realm. He brought one of the stars within that realm to the center of the display and increased the magnification of same.
“This is the Earldom of Kinross, Sir. About thirteen hundred lights inwards, and this star holds the admiral’s home planet, Branton, Sir. If we’re going to take a real flyer—then this could be the target—as I’d expect that there might be a bit of push back from the admiral that we did this. But we went to his own home world, so that might get us a hall pass, Sir?”
The captain grinned at him and nodded. “Absolutely great destination, XO. Helmsman, use those coordinates and then give us a countdown to the Barony Drive jump, will you please?” he ordered.
“Tactical, go to battle stations for the ship—no klaxons, but do get the ship squared away before we jump,” he instructed, and the bridge scurried to get all their ducks in a row.
After more than five minutes of the ship getting prepared, the captain went on ship-wide and let the crew know that once again they’d be testing the new Barony Drive but at a much longer distance.
The helmsman looked over his shoulder to the captain and asked, “Are we good to go, Sir?” and that got him a “Roger, initiate the Barony Drive” order.
Ahead on the view-screen, the star at the center of the display was solid in hue, and then it flashed for about thirty seconds … and then it was solid again.
Nothing was felt by any member of the crew. Not a single issue or problem was recorded by the ship’s AI either. Not a thing changed at all, except where the Exeter now lay.
The Exeter was lying out from the sun that now lay just off the port bow, and ahead lay a planet the ship’s AI said was Branton, small but still glistening in the sunlight as it lay out
side of the location of the Exeter in full sunlight.
The XO nodded. “Sir, all reports in from all ship’s departments—not a change or any kind of error noted. All crew are accounted for, and not a single one noticed any kind of change at all. Seems like our Barony Drive distance test went off successfully, Sir,” he said, and that got a whole bunch of grins on the bridge crew faces.
The captain nodded. “Sidebar the planet’s properties, please, and record all of this,” he said, and on the left side of the view-screen, the planet’s information was displayed.
“She’s a tidal-locked planet, Sir,” the XO called out, and it appeared he was right.
A tidal-locked planet was one that showed the same face to the item that it revolved around—in this case the sun. That meant it was always daytime on one side and nighttime on the other. It was warm—hot even on the sunny side—and much colder on the dark side. What that might have done for inhabitants was an unknown. But the sidebar did report there was a minor irregularity in the planet’s orbit itself, but the scope of that was beyond the ship’s AI.
The captain nodded again and said, “Helmsman, launch the satellite, please, positioning to be in same exact distance as the ones back on Neres if possible.
After some computing work and a few more button pushes, the view-screen left the look of the sun and Branton and instead followed the Exeter probe that took the satellite off the ship with a rocket flare and then toward the sun. Forty minutes later, the helmsman touched again his console keyboard, and then the sidebar in front of them all reported that the probe was in position.
“Place the satellite, please,” the captain said, and that got an “Aye, Sir” back, and the sidebar in a moment reported that the satellite was now in position and stable.
“Double-check that orbit?” the XO said, and after more checking, it appeared that all was well.