by Jim Rudnick
He said “take a look—none are loaded and yet they are all very deadly weapons.”
She half smiled at him and picked up the camera first. It looked like a normal camera, she saw the normal buttons and slots for memory cards and the like. She held it up to her eye and twisted the lens to bring the far wall into focus and she could zoom the view to by pulling the lens in and out. She put it down.
She picked up the notebook and pen next, but there was really not much to see. She pushed the end of the pen that made the pen point come out, and wrote her name on the top page. Again, no hint of anything else but being a pad and pen.
Lastly, she picked up the PDA, and once again, turned in to look at all sides, and it was a PDA. She clicked the START button, asked it where she was and got the hologram showing that she was in this Weapons Shop. There was not a single button that she could find that she did not already have on her own. It felt a bit—and she wondered if that was her imagination only but still a bit heavier.
She put it down last and looked up at the Ishtarian.
“Training?”
He nodded, and said “we do that right here” pointing at the door to the rear, “we have a training range right out back—private and we can arrange to get you the training on whichever one of these you pick out,” he said and smiled at her.
“Three” she said, “I’ll take all three” and she smiled back.
He whistled silently and nodded and went to get the paperwork.
“You do realize, that this sale is recorded only with us? There is no record of any transactions with any citizens that leaves this premise. Your purchases are yours, with no one the wiser, Mam,” he said as he began to tap information into the store’s tablet.
In twenty more minutes she left the Weapons Shop, camera around her neck, pad and pen in her hand and the new PDA was put in her large bag. She got out to the curb, looked around with a smug look on her face and smiled.
Nice day, she said. Very nice day, and she turned to go back to the Juno Hilton and read the manuals that had been downloaded onto the new PDA. Much to learn—then training starts tomorrow.
Accuracy will be important she knew….
#####
The news of the new discovery by Beedles and Ellen had been a strange one, for sure. At dinner time, just an hour ago, they’d sat spellbound as Beedles had taken the whole Xeno team along on his story about what they’d found…and how.
He started with two things—that as the ‘artifact’ guy on the team, he got listings daily of what had been found—and he noticed the simple fact that the room full of these glass filters had 31 of each. Except for the amber colored ones, that had only 30 in the sleeve on the wall.
When he added that, to the floating disk and the color that it shone down on the deck which was amber too—it came to him that maybe, just maybe these glass filters were meant to be somehow used with the disks.
Ellen jumped in and added that while she thought in many cases that patience was the Xeno teams best friend, in this case it didn’t matter. They took another amber filter to the room of disks; she added one and turned it on—and now it floated about the same two feet above the floor like the other one did.
And, Beedles reminded her, that when she turned on the steel disk holding the amber filter—she got a shock.
Interestingly, that was unimportant, till she reached for the original disk that they’d found weeks back and instead of being held off by some kind of a force field, she could grab it, turn it over and undo that amber filter and the unit went off.
Beedles looked at them all.
Reynolds, team leader began with his “now Professor Beedles, as you did say, patience would be—” but he was waved off by them all at the table.
They sat and digested that.
It was Scholes, the team language expert who said the thing that few of them it appeared were thinking.
“If that shock was the aliens method of recording say your DNA as an ID—then that might mean that you can work anything on the ship. Now that’s interesting and perhaps worth some testing too,” she said and there were some nods at the dinner table.
Tonight, in the marine mess tent outside the wreck, the cooks had provided them all with steaks and baked potatoes. Some got them smothered with fried onions or mushrooms. Hartford got his with big Cajun spices and the sweat running down his temples said hot-hot-hot! At the table beside their own, a troop of marine techies was seated and as usual they could talk about nothing but work. Servers. Networks. WiFi divers. DNS populations. Proxy testings…most of course were so far past anyone at the table’s ken, that they may as well have been speaking ancient Garnuthian. Only Hartford sitting nearby could understand what they were talking about and he smiled a few times but no one at the Xeno team table caught that.
Reynolds held up his hand to get some quiet and while that did take a bit, eventually he had the floor.
“So, here’s where I think we go with this. If Ellen has an ID that the ship’s AI recognizes—proven I’d say by the fact that the force field was turned off when she reached for the disk—say, is that what we’re going to call these things?”
Beedles jumped in.
“You know, I’ve been considering that. Think about it—the top of the disk is a solid steel circular bar about 14 inches in length. Add this to that part, that when you put on a filter—the disk rises to it’s pre-determined height. With all those colors in the filter storage room, there could be some that might make the disk float say five feet or ten feet or maybe more. Once you set it, it stays in place. If I were to say, this is an alien ‘ladder’ what would you think?”
Cheryl shook her head and said “huh?”
“Think about it—these aliens could fly. One would pick up a disk with the proper colored filter, fly inside the ship to where he needed to work or read or just loaf, say at 12 feet. He slaps the LED and the disk locks onto the floor 12 feet below and he lowers his tootsies onto the bar and no longer has to fly,” he said.
Around the table, there were some who looked a bit oddly at that. Hartford and Dr. Boxer sat with their eyes closed and after a few moments both began to shake their heads yes.
Sheldon, the Atlas Science Officer said after a very short pause “interesting hypothetical—needs testing. Let’s schedule something for tomorrow,” and that got a nod.
Reynolds said “10-4 as our marines say, let’s all meet up here at brekkie time and we’ll work out a plan. Ellen, you are to do and touch nothing till we’ve got vid cameras on you. Tomorrow, all…” he said and he rose to bus his own area as the rest of them did too.
Hartford, the lieutenant in the tech area on the Atlas was last at the clean-up station and he got a gentle tap on his shoulder.
Before him, stood a marine IT guy, a CWO and a Tarvian just like himself.
“Sir, point of order. We—marines that is, we don’t use the 10 codes at all. That seems to have slowly shrunken to a few smaller planets and their own Provost corps, Sir. Just saying, Sir,” he said and he smiled.
Hartford grinned back at him and nodded too.
“Yup, but if there is one thing I’ve learned, one never ever corrects a Professor of anything, ever. But yeah, I knew that too,” he said and he clapped his hand on the IT man’s shoulders, making the ear on that side waver and shake.
He just about turned away but then turned back.
“Chief, I’ve got a huge report to send out in about an hour—all the way by SECURE Ansible to the Barony Navy research department—network is fine, yes?”
The IT man nodded and gave him two thumbs up—an interesting sight when the man doing it has two thumbs on each hand.
Back in her tent, Professor Cheryl Scholes sat at her tablet and once again composed a message to send to Sharia—the Caliph and her lover. It covered all of the recent findings on the wreck and in a day or so, she might be able to report back that Ellen did have access to the ship as an accepted member of the crew. That would be a great thing t
o know, she said to herself as she finished the full message and saved it.
As usual, she knew that the message would go out to a proxy address so it could not be traced, using 128-bit encryption, and it was only a couple of pages so the load on the marine network that they used here in tent city was minimal.
Her message was sent when she hit SUBMIT. It joined the queue on the network, but there was a problem with that queue—everything was being held as there was a PRIORITY ONE message using the network that meant that in the IT shack, down at the far end of tent city, a marine techie looked at the now twenty-three messages on hold and simply switched their queue. Instead of it going out as it had been registered, he decided to turn it into plain ASCII, figuring what would it matter if someone were to read what a Professor thought should be secure.
All twenty-three went out in four seconds.
He turned off that queue and wondered why someone had sent something to the Caliphate, but not in his pay band…
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Three months and a bit, sweetie,” Helena said to him as she curled his chest hair and slid a leg up on his thigh as they cuddled in her huge bed in the palace. He smiled down at her and nodded.
“Yes, Mam…in just awhile, you’ll be Mrs. Scott. Plain Jane Mrs. Scott,” he said as he teased her a little.
She looked up and him and grinned.
“Well, yes, I will be that—but publicly, I’ll still be the Lady St. August—you do remember that, honey?”
Her voice he could tell had the teeniest bit of an anxious tone—but he did remember of course.
“Honey—did you forget that you—or maybe it was the Baroness, scheduled me to take what five classes on the history and protocols of the Barony of Neres? And yes, they covered what becoming your Baronial Consort would mean when it came to naming, protocols, public displays and the like. They even called in some Professor from the Neres University to teach me why I should be happy to join such a prestigious Royal family. And what my own name would be from our wedding day on—publicly I mean. I thought I told you about that, right? I will be Lord Scott—unless you bestow a Royal title on me. I was thinking of Emperor—is that a bit outlandish?” he said and he did not smile at all.
For all of three seconds as Helena’s face at first was surprised, then she frowned and then she broke into laughter.
“Emperor Scott does mind you,” she said, “sound like a very nice Royal.”
They both laughed and as he did so, her leg bounced on his upper thigh.
He grinned at her and said nonchalantly “are the real plans getting any closer to being decided upon?”
She tilted her head to one side and leaned off of him.
“Flowers—check; to be called the Baronial Rose in a salmon/sparkling rose kind of color, are speed growing now.”
She counted one on her fingers.
“Event venue—check; builders are done, final staging and finishers are going on and you’re not to visit the other side of the palace to peek at our new wing either,” she scolded him and stuck out another finger.
“Event catering—check; it’s going to be done by a combined team, from our own Baronial Chef school but with more than a hundred extra students from other schools all across the RIM. Well, sorry, one hundred students from each of the schools—hell, they’ll be feeding over ten thousand guests so there better be enough cooks,” as the third finger went up.
“Media—check; we accepted none of the teams who bid as it was thought that they would not allow us to authorize their work. So we went to the University, got their Media Studies involved—and as we are their employer, authorizations should not be a problem. We will be granting some further ones to normal news channels, Gallipedia too and more off RIM services as well,” as the fourth finger went up.
“My fifth finger is for the guests—check. We’ve invited every single Head of State and spouse, plus they can also fill up their whole table with others—tables are for ten guests. We have all the RIM Confederacy realms who’ve indicated that yes, they will attend and they as well as the head table will be in the high security area at the front of the patio. Then the force field barrier and more than nine hundred more tables with guests and press and media. Those invites went out just what, at the start of the month and I heard yesterday that there are already more than five thousand RSVPs saying yes! We will have the greatest wedding the RIM Confederacy has ever seen,” she grinned at him and then rolled back to her right to lean on his side.
He nodded.
“You know—because I told you weeks ago, that my Best Man will be the Duke d”Avigdor-but as yet, when I’ve asked whom you have chosen for your Maid of Honor—all I’ve gotten has been raised eyebrows and a shrug. Are you any closer on making that choice?” he asked politely.
She nodded at him.
“Yes, my dear. It will be the Baroness, herself. I did consider others but there really could be no better woman that she to stand up for me and sign to witness our marriage. The Baroness and the Duke, now there’d be a couple!” she grinned at him.
“Any more relevant news, my dear?” he asked as he curled his left hand to caress her hip.
She tilted her head and was beginning to shake it—and then she squealed and said “yes, yes—I forgot to tell you!”
“What I that, Helena,” he said solemnly.
“The honeymoon resort over on Bottle that we so liked—we got it,” she said and the smile on her face was broad.
“Got it? They were willing to guarantee that the resort would not take any other guests the same time—months, even, that we’re going to be there?”
“No silly,” she said, “we bought the resort. Canceled all of the bookings between the day we take over—end of month I think. And as the new owners, we will keep on all staff and there’ll be two guests only—Lord Scott and Lady St. August!”
He nodded and she nestled in even further and he did think that the actual buying of the resort was a bit ‘over-the-top’ but then he wasn’t a Royal—yet.”
Wonder what that cost? Wonder if the people who were the owners knew that they could have asked for more, or held up the Baroness for something extra. He wouldn’t ask what the price had been, but he would one day.
A resort as beautiful as that one, on the water in cabanas on stilts, with a small atoll behind them to hold services, flyer pad and all the staff.
He looked down at her.
“Maybe, when we’ve had enough of our Barony life, we can retire there, run the place and enjoy the anonymity of living on the ocean on Bottle…” he said and that got a shrug from her.
He remembered what he had to ask and now was the time, he thought.
“Oh—I had this thought a few days ago, and I wanted to ask. If you say no—I’ve no problem with a no—but I cam hoping for a yes or even a maybe. The book that you have with the history of the Barony—’Blood of the Barony’ I believe you called it. Once I’m a Royal, would it be okay to look at it, read it…but only if you allow it. I realize that this might be crossing a boundary so if you—”
She lightly slapped him on the chest.
“Course you can—I’ll bring it to Bottle and we can go through it together…there’s a few thousand years that I’ve never even looked at so it’d be good for the two of us—two, right?”
He nodded and held out his littlest finger, and curved it a little and said “two of us are the only ones who even know about the book—I so pinky swear.”
She nodded and with her own little finger she linked up with Tanner and they shook their now linked hands up and down three times. The fact that the Baroness was her Maid of Honor meant nothing to Helena, it appeared, as she wanted to continue to keep such a book private although why—oh shit, he thought, because her father must have written about his wife and that information if shared with the Baroness herself might be explosive.
He smiled down at her and then said “so, we’re good right? Know what I was thinking—wearing my Barony admirals
hat here. I think I’m going to have a fresh shuttle out of the yards—the large troop carrier sized one modified. I want to take out the engines, but leave in the small Impulse drive units, have the Barony Drive mounted and the app installed, and then use the rest of the space to build in living quarters, kitchen, bedrooms and a gym.
She looked up at him.
“How long?” she said.
“If I put a rush on it, could be our honeymoon recreational vehicle. Or some kind of name like that. Neres to Bottle in what less than ten seconds—and we can put it down on the atoll too, in the flyer landing zone cause it’s not more than about a hundred feet long.
She grinned at him and again, gently slapped him on the chest.
“That’s my admiral—what a great idea honey, we have to come up with a name for her though—let me come up with a list for further discussion,” she said and he nodded back.
Names on a list, he said to himself, is not usually how it’s done, but hey I have to learn how Royals act, so maybe this is something to learn.
And he hid the grin where he thought ‘oh boy’ and he smiled down at her…
#####
She looked around the room and made note of the way it had been staged for her presence and the meeting to come in a few minutes. Her aides knew her—so if she said a simple ‘NO’ then she was sure that they’d have others just as ready, but this was fine.
She felt that as the Baroness of Neres, the sole occupant of the almost one thousand room Baronial palace, other than servants who didn’t count, she was unaware of most of the palace space.
She had once tried to figure out how many of those thousand rooms she’d actually ‘been in’ and she thought it was less than a hundred. There were more than a dozen escalators, nineteen elevators in the palace and she’d been, she thought on four. Maybe five.
She had the most beautiful of apartments—one that she had had totally redone years ago when her husband the Baron, had passed away. But the way in from outside she had memorized and she knew how to get to her area, then back out. She did also have some favorite decks and patios up on the second or third floors above the beautiful gardens—there were more than two dozen of these structured gardens, some featuring say the flora of Madrigal or Thrones and others with the same plant from all over the RIM Confederacy and she especially liked those ones as she tried to figure out why this plant grew so much bigger and had so much more foliage on say Eran rather than Hope.