by Jim Rudnick
“I come before the Confederacy Council to make the following presentation, to be decided today,” he said, and he lifted his tablet to read from the screen.
“Whereas, we, the undersigned, feel that the RIM Confederacy member planet Leudie is using the normal Customs application process to hurt our Faraway trade practices, we hereby declare that if the RIM Confederacy Council does not adjudicate our claims at the next council meeting, we will begin the process of having Faraway leave the RIM Confederacy as a member planet …” he said.
There was no tone that said or else, but that was surely understood by all present. He sat and looked around the table and waited as voices were raised, and the chairman had to bang his gavel for quiet, which he got eventually.
The member from Leudie rose and spoke first—or perhaps, she thought, he interrupted first as he ignored the gavel that tried to drown him out, and the chairman stopped trying after a few seconds.
“We, the Leudie member of the RIM Confederacy Council, have the exact same presentation to follow this Faraway one—we thought it prudent that the council know that both of the trading realms of the Confederacy are either getting our rulings on every single one of these Customs issues—else we leave too. That would leave the Confederacy with no trading realm members … you’d be on your own with no way to buy or sell anything commercially,” he said. The threat wasn’t implied at all; it was simply stated as a matter of fact. Voices were once again raised with cries of ‘no’ and arguments of ‘we won’t let you.’
Now, she thought, as she moved her hand over top of one of the chairman’s arms lying on the table right beside her and squeezed. She stood and held up her hand, as he was banging the gavel down on the stone pedestal to try to gain order. After almost a full minute, she noted most had quieted, and she spoke up so all could hear.
“You all know me. You all know that I do not make claims that cannot be backed up. I am here today to make an offer to every single member realm of the RIM Confederacy—we are launching our new Barony Drive today,” she said as she clicked a button on her tablet, and every single Confederacy member’s own tablets chimed with the incoming message and attachments.
“What I’ve just sent to you all is proof—verifiable proof as per the attached documents—that our Barony Drive is available for any member here to put on their ships. Once installed and trained, it provides almost instant travel between any two stars on the RIM. Or in the galaxy for that matter. Instant travel with no costs at all and in less than seconds …” she said, and the room was totally still.
Some members were already scrolling through the documents supplied, while others hadn’t even looked down at their tablets but were just staring at her. A few chose to call out.
“Really, Baroness? Instant travel between stars for no cost? What kind of nonsense are you spinning here today?” one asked.
Another said, “What about the Perseus engines we’ve already got on our ships? What are they, garbage now?”
There was more talk, and yet on the whole, the yelling was kept to a minimum, she thought.
The member from Hope asked, “Are these test results verifiable, Baroness? Can we trust them?”
She looked at him and then the whole room. “We have the Atlas here on the landing pad right now. We will take any or all of you on just such a test flight so you all can see for yourself. You pick a planet anywhere on the RIM, and we’d go from here, Juno, to there in seconds. You may doubt my documents, thought they are all verified and filed with the Confederacy Council clerks, but you cannot doubt your own personal knowledge. Juno to anywhere in seconds …” she offered, and she noted many nodding heads around the table.
No one spoke for a moment, and then the question she’d been waiting for came.
The Caliph looked at her directly and asked, “And at what cost will the buying of this Barony Drive be priced.”
She nodded. “We appreciate that the product—this new product—will be launched here on the RIM to our Confederacy members only, so we have priced the Barony Drive to be one credit per ship. A single credit …” she said, and the room was quiet—quieter than she’d ever heard it.
They mulled that over. They were probably thinking about why the price was essentially free—and what that might cost them later. Someone got to that point soonest.
“And if the price is only one credit—what’s the catch? One credit to go to say Roor, but to come back it’s, what, a million credits?”
She shook her head knowing this was going to be a tough sale but one that she could handle.
“Not at all. One credit per ship, one time. You go where the Barony Drive takes you and you come back too. You will, however, have to sign an agreement, indicating that you are responsible for your own ships as this is what we call borrowed technology. We did not invent this—we found it. We’ve used it over the past year, and it works perfectly, time after time. All nineteen of our Barony Navy ships have it installed, and we use it daily. This morning I was on Neres when the Atlas came from Ghayth to pick me up—and here I am on Juno just after lunch. The Barony Drive works, and as a Confederacy member realm, you’ll get it for a single credit per ship. We do, however, intend to file this with Gallipedia, and when it’s time, we’ll roll it out moving inwards. The costs to those non-RIM Confederacy members will not be a single credit per ship, you’d realize,” she said, and she grinned at them all.
“So, we’re like your BETA testing group,” the member from Randi said, and that got a nod from others too.
“Sort of, yes. Our ALPHA tests with our own nineteen ships showed no errors, no mistakes, no issues at all. One credit, members, is all it costs …”
She looked around for more questions, and there was only one more at present.
“How far does this work? Can I point this drive at, say, the galaxy center?” the member from Bottle asked.
“We have tested it, and our longest flight was thirteen hundred lights—done in twenty-eight seconds. No problems at all, as the drive works perfectly,”
“All of this is interesting,” Minister Gibson, the member from Faraway, said, “but we are ahead of ourselves. We have a motion before the Council—as do the Leudies too.”
The chairman tilted a head at the Faraway member and asked quietly, “As this Barony Drive will be available at what is essentially a free cost to Confederacy members only—do I understand that Faraway still has the same presentation on the table? Either our Confederacy Customs acquiesces to your demands or you leave the Confederacy as members?”
The Leudie member rose. “I hereby rescind our presentation and will return it back to our own planet government for further study,” the trader said.
Obviously quicker to see what the Barony Drive meant than the Faraway member, she thought.
Minister Gibson, however, was not a trader and had a job to do as he rose once more. “We need an answer to our presentation,” he said once again.
She rose to answer him. “While it appears that the other presenter here today understands what it means to have the Barony Drive as a part of their ships—for you, Minister, here’s what it means if you do not have same. Your ships go one or even two lights a day. You will be competing with all other ships here on the RIM, member ships, mind you, that can go and get their goods and be home for lunch. At no cost at all. While I’m sure your ultimatum may have made some sense to you as a bargaining chip before we announced our new Barony Drive, now all it means is that every single member is quicker than you and at no costs for transportation like fuel and maintenance. I’d say that’s a move—the ultimatum, I mean—that is now irrelevant … but of course, it’s up to you …” she finished off and was pleased to note there was an embarrassed blush on the Minister’s face. Obviously, he’d not thought this through.
He nodded. “Then I, too, will rescind our presentation and take it back to Faraway for revisions,” he said as he sat, cheeks still ablaze.
The chairman nodded to the clerk who quickly move
d along through the last few Agenda items, and in less than a half hour, the meeting was called.
She did rise then to let them all know that the Atlas would be lifting off in thirty minutes from the landing field just across the base, and anyone who wanted to test the Barony Drive was, of course, still invited.
She clicked her tablet to let the Atlas know they were on their way and that catering should also be notified.
She turned as a hand touched her arm, and Admiral McQueen was at her side. She nodded and let slip the breach of protocol that her person had been touched and half-smiled at him.
“Admiral? What do you think of our announcement?” she said.
He looked at her and shrugged a bit. “Ma’am, as long as there is no catch, I can tell you that this will change the RIM—and as I’m ready to order a Barony Drive for each of our Navy ships, I’m hoping that there is no catch at all, Ma’am,” he said.
She nodded. “Nothing that we’ve found in almost a year of testing, Admiral. And yes, changes come all the time …” she finished off.
#####
On the premise that the trip was a good thing, the Baroness agreed, and in twenty minutes, they had docked with a shuttle over Ghayth to pick up her admiral and were now seconds away from Amasis to see Captain Lazaro.
“This Barony Drive will take some getting used to,” she said as she sat on the bridge of the Atlas, sipping a tea and kicking her foot up and down as she looked over at Tanner.
He nodded. Kondo had only asked them to consider traveling to Amasis two hours ago, and yet here they were, now in low orbit above his planet and waiting to take the shuttle down to the capital.
The Baroness had no idea why her captain had asked for them both to meet with him—but out of courtesy to the prime minister, she also thought she could pay her respects at the same time, as they were heading to General Hospital to meet Kondo. After quick shuttle flight down and in less than a half hour, they were striding onto the floor where the prime minister’s room was located.
Tanner noted there were few people waiting in the waiting room and there were no vid trucks or news reporters in the driveways or the lobby either. “Seems like there is no news at all, that’s worth reporting,” he said to himself and did not call attention to that little detail to the Baroness.
As they got to the room, Kondo was waiting outside, and he jumped to his feet to clasp Tanner and did a very small bow to the Baroness. He grinned at them both.
“Today—well, it’s a little thing, but it’s big for us—Dad was able to hold his own spoon when he got his morning yogurt,” he said proudly. The fact that a prime minister of the major Barony manufacturing planet could hold his own spoon was not lost on either of them, and they both oohed and ahhed and made nice about same.
“Come in at least and say hello,” Kondo said, and they did just that.
The Baroness’s EliteGuards had to wait outside and were not happy, but the room was only so big.
Inside on the bed, propped up by pillows, the patient looked—well, he looked like he was there and not there, Tanner thought. His eyes were open, and they would slowly turn to face the speaker in the room but at a speed that meant that the conversation had gone from the original speaker to five more speakers and still the patient was behind.
He couldn’t handle the thought that this man was the prime minister, and he hoped the Baroness would also be more than polite, but his hopes were more than dashed.
She looked at the man who ran Amasis and then at Kondo. She looked back at the patient, then again at Kondo, sighed, turned, and left the room.
Tanner grabbed Kondo by the biceps and held him firmly. “What you know, what you’ve lived for the past few weeks, we did not know—please try to understand that she is in charge of, what, almost a hundred billion Barony citizens on all our planets … so you can perhaps understand what she’s now facing …” Tanner added.
Kondo slowly relaxed and eventually nodded. “Yeah, got it, Admiral. But I … well … I think that he’s much better. But that’s the reason why I asked to meet with you both. Let’s go down to the cafeteria and talk,” he said, and he left the room, Tanner in tow.
In the cafeteria, the EliteGuards stood around their table but at a respectful distance, and one had fetched some coffees for the Baroness, Tanner, and Kondo.
“My first in, what, a year maybe,” Tanner said to himself, as he lifted the coffee.
The Baroness spoke first as was her Royal right. “Kondo, I had no idea. I am sorry that your father—my prime minister—is so bad off. What is his prognosis, if I can ask?” she said.
He nodded to her and grasped the cup with both hands. “Ma’am, there’s been some damage to his cognitive abilities, due to oxygen being cut off by the heart attack. It was not a major one, but the lack of blood to the brain, hypoxia they call it, means that he’s not himself. They say that he can get better, and that he will need full physio and psychology therapies along with physical rehab too. I think, however, as the team has explained now for weeks, that this process will be long and time consuming—but successful, of course.”
He sipped a bit of his coffee, and Tanner thought that what came next was a bit stilted—as if he had to say it but didn’t want to.
“I’ve asked for you two to come and visit with my father—but I have another reason too. His party—the Labor Party—has asked me to accept a temporary position as the designated leader of the party—which will mean that I’d be the prime minister. But I’ve said no dozens of times … and I then accepted as they pointed out that if I do that—the prime minister’s job would be held for my father by me—and I can then give it back to him when I resign the Party once he’s healed and well enough.”
Convoluted but it did make sense, on one condition, Tanner thought.
Kondo’s father must make a full or close to full recuperation and be a viable prime minister once again. That thought was obviously not lost on the Baroness either as she spoke again.
“And if he does not sufficiently recover, Captain?” she said plainly.
“That, I have not countenanced, Ma’am, but I will do the job—while being very much babysat by the Party at the same time. It may be only, say, six months or even a year at the outside, but I wanted to speak to the two of you at once so that I can say to your faces—that I do not want to give up my captaincy in the Barony Navy. I want to take, like, a sabbatical to do this to support my father but be able, once that it is done, to return to the Atlas. Ma’am, please … Admiral, please … that is truly my calling—being a navy captain,” he said, and his voice cracked a couple of times as he asked for their permission.
Tanner looked at the Baroness who simply looked back at him as if to say you’re the admiral.
He nodded to Kondo. “We—rather, I—accept your request for a sabbatical, Captain. You are hereby relieved of the duties of the captaincy on the Atlas and will come back to full duties when requested. I will notify admin and HR about this, but it’s not really a problem. And we would expect that you keep both the Baroness and I up to date on your father’s recovery too. Finding a good captain is difficult, keeping them even harder, so we’re trying to keep you with us, Kondo, for as long as we can. I’ll have the stewards pack up your quarters on the Atlas, and we’ll drop them off today. Please … do stay in touch, and remember, running a planet is nowhere near as much fun as captaining a navy ship …”
The Baroness nodded, and they finished their coffees quickly and left Kondo to run the planet.
#####
It was a full three weeks later, but eventually a mutually agreeable location was reached, and both the Leudies and the Faraway groups met on the small moon off Farth in the visitors lounge of their dome station.
On one side of the lounge sat Trade Master Lofton of Leudie, and he had only two others with him, both of which sat too but in another setting off to one side, on the right.
On the other side of the lounge, Minister Gibson sat and faced the Leudie. He h
ad come alone, but his tablet was on full record, and he told the Leudie just that as he sat.
“Us too,” Lofton said, and he sat for a moment more and then spoke.
“We do not like many—most of the Custom’s applications that you Faraway traders have applied for. Nor for that matter, do we much like Faraway itself either,” he said as he dipped his head to the alien across from him.
“Then we’re equal as we Faraway citizens have little regard for any Leudie—or their snakes either,” the minister said, and he too dipped his head to the alien across from him.
They stared at each other.
“This Barony Drive works, and I understand that they’re installing it on just about every ship on the RIM,” the Leudie said.
That got a nod from the minister.
“And after it’s fully rolled out on the RIM—it will change how things are transported here too. Anyone can, it appears, just jump to anywhere else on the RIM and pickup what’s needed and be home in less than a few minutes. That affects us Leudies,” Lofton said, and he then pointed across the table and added, “and you Faraway citizens too.”
The minister once more nodded. “And you wanted to meet today to discuss exactly what?” he said, but he thought he already knew.
“With trading under such big new pressure to meet these new time frames, we have an idea. We would like to propose that if we drop all of our current Customs applications, will you drop yours?”
The minister had had an idea this was coming, so he had gotten some leeway to work with from the Faraway government, and this was within his boundaries to handle.
He nodded and said, “Yes, and we’d also like to add that some of the current ones in place, we’d like to see us discuss them and see if we can’t find a way to compromise on some—maybe many of them?” he added.
That made the Leudie sit up, and from around his neck, his neck snake uncoiled a bit, the muscular coil roiling a bit.