The RIM Confederacy Series: BoxSet Four: BOOKS 10, 11, & 12 of the RIM Confederacy Series

by Jim Rudnick

  Tanner had read the short summary that Koenig had sent to each of them sometime last night, and at breakfast just an hour or so ago, the information had been discussed.

  The doctor had said he had no idea why they didn’t just round up some of these Oveds and then they could shoot whichever ones they liked. That got some raised eyebrows and a rant about what was sporting when it came to hunting and what was plain butchery from Alver. He capitulated quickly on his statement, but that got them talking about hunting in general, and then they zoomed off on Oveds and why they were such a trophy. Horns, Admiral Higgins said, were the big draw, and they all nodded at that.

  As the team began to walk toward their assigned hunting grounds, Admiral McQueen sidled up to Tanner for a quiet word.

  “Duke, I have a request—well, in fact it’s an order, but as a new Royal, you might not be familiar with the full RIM Confederacy Constitution, Your Grace,” he said a bit apologetically.

  “It means that as the head of the RIM Confederacy Navy, I have the right to assign—in times of troubles—roles to anyone I see fit. And you’re up, son!” he said with a grin.

  Tanner looked at his mentor and smiled. “Whatever it is—I’m always sure that coming from you, Admiral, it’ll be a doozy!”

  The admiral grinned at him and went on. “The RIM Navy is forming a task force to deal with these aliens ... the intruders off Ghayth. I have spoken to each of the other members of the executive committee, and they are all in agreement with my decision.

  “You have been appointed as the head of the task force, but you will have the full support of the RIM Confederacy and, yes, each of the realms in the committee too. The Baroness, who owns the Ghayth planet, is also behind you. You are her ‘golden boy,’ my lad, for sure,” the admiral said with a tone of wonder in his voice.

  Tanner nodded. Sure, being the new leader of the Task Force was mostly an honorary position—unless the task force was charged with a mandate to rid the RIM of the alien intruders. That might pose a problem. While his mind went off on that tangent, he also suddenly realized that being the leader meant other things as well. One of which made him smile as he realized he now had the right to ask other navies on the RIM for loans of equipment and better navy personnel.

  Now, that might work out well, he thought as he followed the doctor now, and the meadow got deeper in depth as the grasses were more overgrown.

  As Tanner walked, he noted they followed Koenig and walked in a straight line, and they did so for almost a mile, as the meadow disappeared. At that point, they entered a lightly wooded treed slope. As they entered the trees, Koenig stopped and waited while everyone caught up with him.

  In a low undertone, he said, “Here’s where we’ll spread out ... Duke, you go in about, say, one hundred yards, and then turn to your right and try to follow the edge of the trees—then the doctor, then Bram, and lastly the captain. I’ll stay here on the edge of the woods and the meadow as it meanders along. Use me to mark your place and speed, but do NOT go quickly. Walk normally—Oveds have great hearing, and it’s important that you sound like another Oved to a bull that might be resting, bedded in the woods. I’ve got a cow call on your PDA—turn it on, and it will make that call to alleviate any strangeness a bull might be feeling as you walk toward them. It will play when it needs to—and yes, we do know from past hunting trips that bulls often take some siesta time here in this big tree stand.”

  “It made sense,” Tanner said to himself as he nodded and took the lead turning to his left and slowly and quietly walked deeper into the woods. Unlike his last trip to Anulet when he and the late duke had been after Jaels, those huge bear-like creatures, these woods were less thick. and he could see ahead at least fifty or so yards before the trunks closed off his sight. He dodged around some of the lighter smaller trunks—aspens, he thought, as the bark was a light green in color. Eventually his PDA throbbed on his wrist. He had gone far enough, and he then turned to his right to move ahead through the copse.

  To his right, he could see the doctor and then Bram was next, but he couldn’t see who else was there.

  He walked slowly. He was careful to not make a sound—and the first cow call that seeped out of his PDA made him jump. If that’s what a female Oved sounded like, he was sure they led a solitary life. He shook his head and pushed through a clump of some kind of deep overgrowth, down a dip, and up the other side. Hunting. I’m hunting and it’s fun. He had to tell himself that already more than once and that made him smile. This trip was for his groomsmen to help put some closure on the murders at his wedding more than a year ago. And it appeared, at least so far, to be working okay.

  He pushed a group of branches off some kind of a fir tree and stepped around a bigger one ahead as he noted that here, deeper in the woods, the trees were getting closer together.

  His PDA throbbed, and he looked down at it. It had one word on it: STOP.

  So he stopped. And he waited. Well to his right, he knew his hunting group was spread out, and he could now only see the doctor who was also stopped. He moved a little to get a better line of sight around some particularly thick cover, and yes, he could see Bram, but he was still walking.

  He thought that perhaps Koenig was doing some kind of a wheeling maneuver—anchor him and the doctor at one spot, and then have the others walk to drive any bulls toward him.

  He grinned. Hunting was okay, and he hoisted the Merkel to now sit on his shoulder at rest, From behind a tight group of trees about thirty yards to his right, a bull Oved was hoisting itself up and out of the deep cover.

  He grinned again. The bull was walking stiff-legged at first, working out any kinks perhaps, and then the stupid cow call went off on his PDA.

  The bull stopped short, and up went his head to sniff and look toward Tanner. The Oved was massive, at least the proverbial ten feet at the shoulder, and the huge rack of horns was shiny, bright, and full of tines.

  He slowly, very slowly, moved the rifle a bit, trying to find the safety with his right thumb as the rifle sat upside down on his right shoulder.

  “Where ... where was that damn—got it,” he said to himself as his finger carefully and quietly slid the safety off.

  He knew he was frozen in this pose until the Oved decided what to do, and as he pondered that, there was a loud bang of a shot, and the Oved sprung to its left and dove out of Tanner’s sight.

  “What the hell,” he said to himself as he leapt ahead and tried to follow the huge animal as he heard the doctor yelling, “I got him ... I got him.”

  After Tanner dodged around a smaller group of saplings, he could see the Oved. It was charging the doctor who was jumping up and down looking around—and not at the Oved that bore down at him.

  “Doc—find cover,” he screamed as he pointed the gun at the Oved as it closed on the doctor.

  The doctor was surprised by first the Oved that he now saw charging at him—then at what Tanner had shouted from twenty or so yards away. Somehow, he dove to the ground and rolled to try to dodge the quickly closing Oved.

  Tanner had one shot as he stopped and waited a whole two seconds as the Oved moved out from behind the trees and toward the doctor’s position. He squeezed off a single round at the area behind the Oved’s front left leg into his chest, and yet the Oved didn’t even slow down.

  The Oved also dropped its head to gore the doctor who was lying on the ground, and it must have gotten lucky as the doctor cried out in pain. The Oved raised its head, its feet now scrabbling to get away, and it charged back the way the hunting team had come, crashing through the undergrowth and right through smaller saplings.

  Tanner had reached the doctor’s side, and as he did, he pushed the emergency button on his PDA and was happy to hear all of his team come crashing through the woods toward them.

  He turned the doctor over and noted the man’s face was frozen in pain. He turned the doctor to one side and saw blood seeping out where the Oved had gored the doctor. The horn had first hit the light hunti
ng parka and then entered the doctor as the Oved bore down on the doctor. The Oved’s horn had left a piercing hole. That was where some of the blood was coming, but as the Oved had lifted its head after that piercing, the horn had then ripped open a long furrow of skin, and that was the main source of blood loss. The Oved’s horn had torn the doctor open from just below the shoulder blade down almost to the waist.

  “Let me see,” Koenig said as he pulled off his pack and whipped out a small first aid field kit. He used a knife to open up the doctor’s parka, noted the wound, and nodded. “Not lethal. But the doc won’t be dancing a jig for a while,” he said as he quickly ripped open a package of white powder and poured it all over the wounds. He reached into the field kit, took out a pain pen, and jammed it into the doctor’s upper arm—twice, Tanner noted—and in moments, the doctor was no longer yelling in pain.

  “I can’t see the wound ...” Doctor Etter said.

  “Psychiatrists don’t need to see wounds,” Koenig said nicely as he began to bandage up the wounds. Long butterfly tapes went on the furrows before and after the gore piercing. For it, he packed the hole with some antiseptic gauze and then slapped a round bandage on same.

  As the rest of the team stood around, Koenig rose.

  “I’ve called the copter back, and we’ll get out of here double-quick. But a hunting post-mortem is in order. Doc—you were way out of line to shoot the Oved ... it was too close, it was startled, and it was more than able to defend itself. Next time, wait. See which way the wind is blowing. It could obviously smell you and the cow call was not a factor. It knew it was in trouble, and if you’d stood and waited, it would have gone on away from you. But that shot—you must have hit it—got it’s dander up, and you paid for that. Thank god we were hunting Oveds and not Jaels,” he said as he flung a sideways glance at Tanner.

  Right. Good advice, Tanner thought, and he picked up the doctor’s rifle. Craig helped the doctor by offering up a shoulder, and they all prepared to leave the wooded area. Koenig did not head back toward the meadow but led them through the wooded area.

  Tanner tapped Koenig on the shoulder. “It would be easier walking if we headed back to the meadow, especially with an injured man. Any reason why we are still in the woods?”

  Koenig replied, “Because, Duke, we have an injured animal ahead of us—so we need to fix that before we leave the woods.”

  They continued walking with Koenig at the front, following a path the Oved had obviously taken—judging by the small groups of trampled weeds and the branches ripped out of trees overhead. Koenig paused to look at some of those lower markings, and in one case, everyone saw some drops of blood.

  As they came up a small rise, Koenig held up a hand. “Let’s take a moment, shall we? The Oved is ahead.”

  Tanner went right up to stand beside the guide master, and down below them in a swale of thick weeds was the Oved, lying on its side, breathing hoarsely. Koenig held out a hand to prevent Tanner from doing anything, and moments later the Oved shook all over, and its breathing stopped.

  Koenig moved the safety on his own rifle to off and went around the swale to stand on the other side. He gently walked down a step or two and pushed the Oved’s massive rack of horns with a foot, keeping the rifle aimed directly at the beast.

  “Dead—he’s dead, right?” the doctor croaked.

  Koenig nodded. “Took a shot to the lungs—they filled with blood—and yup, he just died. Good shot, Duke,” he said.

  Tanner wasn’t sure it had been his shot, and he had to say so. “But Guide Master—the doctor shot the animal first—maybe it is his kill,” he said.

  “Yes, he did, but that bullet hit the Oved here,” he said as he pushed on the rack of horns, and they could all see that the rack looked huge and perfect—except for one point. “See this point? A G5, I’d say, that is so newly broken off that I make the call that this is what the doctor shot.

  “Imagine what it might be like to be startled out of a sleep, rise, and then get a big point shot off your rack. Would make the whole Oved head ring like a bell—no wonder he turned to attack the doc—umm, that yelling didn’t help much either.”

  The doctor nodded. ”It definitely is the duke’s kill,” he said which ended the matter.

  As the whole team walked around to look at the Oved, Koenig was busy making a note of the exact location of the kill on his hunting PDA so the lodge staff could retrieve same later. They did also take a moment, over Tanner’s protests, to take some pictures. Tanner’s friends would hear not a word as an excuse, and they had Tanner drop down to his knees to kneel beside the Oved for some of the pictures.

  As they walked back, Koenig said, “Will make a wonderful trophy, Duke—with that missing point, the story can be told that will make folks laugh right out loud,” he said, his smile broad.

  Tanner nodded as they left the huge wood stand and headed toward the helicopter that awaited them. Back to the lodge and then the dinner and then back to Neen, Tanner thought, but one thing is hopefully done—that my friends now have a new experience to think on, whenever any of them looked back ... the wedding now hidden behind the Oved hunt on Anulet ...

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The drone ship came in from sub-space, and as usual, the Ghayth station had no clue a ship was arriving. Long-range sensors were unable to track inbound ships because of the speed of the new Barony Drive; therefore, ships arrived before the long-range scanners even sounded a gong.

  Not that this was a ship really; it was a drone ship, about two hundred feet long, with the usual Ansible arrays and the Impulse drive that any ship used at sub-light speeds. The drone ship was now turning to its starboard side, lining up to face the Praix ship more than thirty times bigger. That bothered the helmsman on the Wilson, and he hit the alarm button right away.

  The alien ship sent out its usual ultra-bright teal ray, and it touched the drone ship for a second or two. Nobody had any idea yet what that ray did; all anyone knew was that any ship close enough to the alien ship was bathed in that teal ray.

  Klaxons sounded and Captain McDonald, who had been just outside the bridge door talking to someone from engineering, strode in to take the captain’s chair. “Klaxons off, please, Helmsman,” he said, and he stared at what lay in front of the space station.

  Fixed in space in low orbit, the Wilson was almost ten miles off the alien ship that hung at the same orbital altitude.

  Beside the station lay three Barony ships—the frigate the Coventry, and two cruisers, the Whitney and the Newton. They were poised to help protect the space station via their own weaponry should it be needed.

  But this new drone ship lay off to one side, and as McDonald watched, it was now closing on the huge alien craft.

  “Ansible, call that drone—if there’s anyone on board—and get them to back off; tell them we’ve got the situation in hand,” he barked, and his Ansible officer was soon using her throat mic, but it looked like it was to no avail as the drone continued to close.

  “Ansible, hail the navy ships, I want that drone stopped before it causes an incident. ASAP, Lieutenant,” he said, his voice rising.

  As the frigate moved out toward the drone ship and the Whitney followed, McDonald had a sick feeling about it.

  “Sir, no one aboard that drone—RIM ID puts it as a Novertag drone, Sir—but I can’t get through to them either. Some kind of a thermal storm in their system, it appears, Sir,” she said as she once again covered her face with the megaphone part of her throat mic and began to try to raise someone before something happened.

  McDonald was on his feet before he knew it, and he barked again to his Ansible crewwoman. “Urgent EYES ONLY to Admiral McQueen, pipe through our full data to him—vid and analytics too. I want this recorded, and I want—”

  The flash of a nuke as it met the force field around that alien ship was intense, and the filters slammed into place over the view-screen on the Wilson. The huge red and yellow intense beams of light as the tactical nuke we
nt off were bright enough to make a man go blind for a few hours until the photonic entropy of that blast would wear off, and McDonald was grateful the filters had snapped up so quickly. Despite the filters, he had flashing spots all across his field of vision, but there was still work to do.

  “Ansible, to the Whitney—code Station 9-DD6—destroy that drone now,” he said.

  With no one aboard, he was risking only hardware, but that meant any further ordnance on the drone ship would also go off when the Whitney used her energy pulse cannon to bomb the drone ship out of existence.

  But before that could even be sent, the force field around the alien ship suddenly glowed a deep, deep violet. From that field, a lobe reached out toward the drone still miles away, and it covered that distance in less than a second. It touched the drone ship—and the drone ship disappeared.

  Nothing else happened. There were no further explosions of other ordnance nor was there any ship debris.

  The drone ship had just disappeared—in its entirety.

  The long lobe of that purple color slowly sank back inside the force field, which slowly faded from violet to being invisible as it usually was seen.

  “Ansible, belay that order to the Whitney, have her return to her station,” he said.

  The bridge was quiet. He pondered what he’d just seen. “Science?” he said quietly.

  Behind him at the science console, the station expert on all things about science shrugged. “Sir, I’ve no idea. What we just saw was an unprovoked attack on the alien vessel, which was handled by them on their own. My own gauges and analytics showed a 1.8 percent increase in the power levels of the force field they use to cover their ship as it reached out somehow to simply make the drone ship disappear. I’ve no idea on what kind of science that might be—past my ken is what I’m saying, Sir. But I did just see it with my own eyes ...” he finished, his voice a bit frustrated sounding to his captain.