by Jim Rudnick
“Which, of course, is not true. So far, our IT team has not yet found out exactly who did this—and yes, we do know already that the suspect vid was not shot by the Barony either. So far, it’s an ongoing investigation—but no blame can be assigned as yet to any RIM Confederacy realm,” he said and looked around at the members.
No one said a thing, so he nodded and slapped a gavel down on the table lightly. “Carried, and next is the issue of the—”
The Baroness interrupted. “If I might, please, Mister Chairman, may I ask a question—about our guest, please?”
Never knew there were that many shades of white ... if there is any such thing, Admiral McQueen thought as he gave the Baroness his attention and waited to see if Gramsci would allow her to continue. Perhaps tints might be closer, he thought, as there were tiny differences between her white boots, leggings, blouse, short jacket, and even the scarf she wore tied into her hair. All were white, yet all were a different color. Trying to figure out what colors the head of the Barony was wearing made the admiral’s head hurt, so he gave up.
Gramsci gestured to the Baroness, who nodded and continued. “My question is just to confirm—as we were told before this meeting—that the alien here cannot hear us nor for that matter does it have any idea about what it is we are discussing—correct?”
Her question was on point, McQueen knew, and he’d asked the same question twice today.
“I will pass that question along to the Master Adept—Ma’am?” the chairman said.
The Master Adept smiled at them all and then nodded. “The Praix do have ears, but they are unable to understand what it is we say. They do not have vocal cords, so they do not talk. Over the past few hundreds of thousands of years, their race lost the ability to speak—all because of their superior mental abilities which allowed them to be telepathic. They can use their minds to speak to each other—and to us, the Issians. And that is why they came here to make us, once again, their servant race. We can both use speech to talk to the lesser races, as they call them, and communicate telepathically to them as well—the perfect match. But as you know, we refused to once again be the Praix slave masters, as they called us twenty thousand years ago,” she said.
Perhaps it is my own feelings here, but to me, it sounds like is was more than happy that the enslavement of the Issians had not happened, McQueen thought. True enough.
“So no, while we talk only using voice, the Praix can hear it, but it is all alien speech to him. It means nothing unless we—either Apostle Jelinek or I—send the gist of what is said here to him. And we are not doing that,” she said, and the Issian sitting over beside the Praix against the bookcases nodded.
“Fine, then hopefully that will suffice, Baroness?” the chairman asked, and that got assent from her readily. “Back to the Agenda—one more item, that is, the recent mission—joint mission, I’d like to add, of the Barony, Duchy d’Avigdor, and the Caliphate too—into Pentyaan space. It came to our attention, via the crew interviews held on Neen—um … from the ‘also-rans’ who spilled the beans, as they say. Seems that the three of you here have some kind of a joint venture happening? May I inquire—on behalf of the RIM Confederacy—officially, what the hell is up?”
The admiral sat up a bit straighter. This was news to him. The three culprits looked at each other, and the Caliph spoke up first.
“We—the Baroness, Duke, and I—decided to send off a ship, our own Crimson I, to Pentyaan space to look around. It’s a simple exploration mission—with the proviso that should there be any opportunities that might present themselves, the captain would get back to us soonest. And so far, not much has presented itself, so far—but we are hoping—and that’s all the news we have on our partnership,” he finished off.
The chairman tapped one finger from one of his six hands on the table. Slowly. Over and over, as he was thinking. “You are aware of the rumors of the breakup of the Pentyaan Oligarchy into smaller warlord kingdoms, are you not?”
The duke took this question. “Yes, Chairman, and our report from the Crimson I of last night confirmed those rumors as being true. Which—as I’m sure you can agree—is an opportunity for the RIM Confederacy too. Expansion is always something that every single member wants, and this huge space, with its twenty-three realms or warlord kingdoms, as you put it, might be just what we’re looking for, Chairman,” he said.
Today as all days, the duke wore the white Duchy Navy uniform, and he sat nursing a large bottle of water. He stared straight at the chairman, the admiral noted, and that made him smile inside. The duke was a comer, no doubt about it.
The chairman nodded and then asked one more question.
“The captain of the Crimson I is—”
“Captain Bram Sander of the Royal Duchy Navy, Chairman,” the Baroness interjected.
That took a moment for them to all digest; none of them missed the fact that the captain was an Issian. There had never ever been an Issian at that rank in any RIM Confederacy navy. But not a word was said.
“Fine,” the chairman said. “Now to the Praix issue. All else we can deal with at our next meeting, so … Master Adept, would you care to speak to this item?” he asked, and he folded four arms over his chest. One hand still held the tablet while the other was leafing through a folder in front of him.
She looked around the table, and McQueen tried his hardest to see if he could feel any little tendril of mind linking in his own head, but he could not. He leaned back in his chair, ready to listen to what the Issians had worked out with the Praix. He knew that it might—most likely would—change the future of the RIM Confederacy—but how Was the question.
“We have talked at some length—well, mental talk, that is—with the Praix on Ghayth. Your Commander Williams was a real help for us, Baroness,” she said as she looked to her left and smiled at the woman in white, who dipped her head in reply.
“The Praix, as I think most of you know, are, well, housed is the word perhaps, in a brand new hangar on Base-1’s landing port on the planet. That gives them some big interior space to fly, which is always a good thing for any avian race. Also, the commander added in full perch facilities that we provided plans for, as well as supplying the Praix with hygiene items, latrines, and even full Praix cooking facilities. Like most birds, they eat, or at least can eat, raw food—and they are omnivores with some items that are very much staples. And again, the commander was a great help in finding sources for same and then providing those foodstuffs on a constant basis. My best regards to that man, Baroness,” she said, and she dipped her head in return acknowledgment.
“But the real work was the discussions between the Praix and us trying to decipher their past—well, their current past—and why they chose now to come to the Milky Way. That, we thought, was the crux of the matter, and it was not easy.,” the Master Adept said.
“How so?” the Caliph interjected.
She nodded to him and almost shrugged. “Because, that was the one thing that they were most loath to divulge. We got the honest, at least as far as our own ability was able to tell, honest thoughts that they did want to come here. To start in the RIM, on Ghayth, and first, get us back as their slave masters. Then to go through the RIM Confederacy, realm by realm, enslaving us all—some more than others, but we didn’t get any kind of a list. But the part that we could not get out of them—for more than a month at least—was why now? What prompted them to leave their SagD galaxy and come here? The captain claimed, as did just about every other Praix, that it was just their own choice. But, and this is usual for all brains when you’re looking at forty-some-odd of them, one Praix had a different thought. One of them was worried about suns. Suns going out. Suns turned off by the invaders. All of which meant nothing to us—until we called the captain’s bluff.”
She half-smiled at the chairman and then went on. “While we had so little information, we pretended to have more. The nice thing about using telepathy between an Issian and a Praix is that one can hide thoughts and in
formation from the other. Easily. Or one can show it.”
She turned then to look at the Praix who still was perched back against the bookcases. “So the Apostle Jelinek held that thought—the one about stars that went out as the invaders were responsible for same—in her brain as we talked once more with the captain. He could see that she knew the truth but that I was either unaware, or hiding it. It caused him to, well, to rethink, perhaps, his position, and he came clean, as you humans say. And his story was pretty much the apocalypse for the Praix. The invaders, he said, were simply eradicating anything they found. Everything they found. They moved into a system and dropped some kind of bomb into the system sun. That made the sun go nova and ended all life in the Cinderella zone. It was like,” she said, “a black curtain was being dragged across the SagD galaxy, one star at a time.”
Admiral McQueen spoke up quickly. “So that means that if they were running from a superior race, survival was the reason they came here. Pretty much running for their lives, I’d say.”
That got nods around the table.
The Master Adept nodded too and then turned to look at her Issian Apostle. “Jana, please tell the Praix captain that we now all know of their plight. And that we are searching for an answer to see if we can help. But that such a solution seems to be beyond our own meager skills.”
The apostle dipped her head to indicate she would do just that, and she stared up at the tall alien beside her.
It took only moments, it seemed, as the two stared at each other. The Praix did shift his talons a bit on the perch and leaned to one side for a moment. Then the Issian turned away to look back at the Master Adept.
“Ma’am, it thinks that there is no way that such inferior—that was the word he said—species could succeed when the Praix themselves, with fifty millennia of civilization behind them, could not. But he did thank me—well, us—for trying. But he also sent through the thought that when the stars here begin to go out, we will know real fear. At least that’s the word I think he meant—fear is not a word in their vocabulary it seems, Ma’am …”
The Master Adept nodded and thanked her apostle. “Which is what we now know to be true, sad as the news is …”
The chairman looked out the wet raindrop-covered windows and said nothing, the admiral noted.
The whole committee sat quietly and let that sink in.
“Anyone know how many settled systems the Praix have—or had—in SagD?” the Doge asked.
They all looked at the Master Adept who looked at her apostle who looked at the Praix. She must have asked the Praix that question as moments later she said, “There were more than twenty-nine thousand settled systems in SagD, and the captain says their holdings were normally growing by a few hundred a day. That, and he also added that the Praix had settled more than twenty or so galaxies within more than five million lights from SagD too. From Fornax to the Clouds, they were the top of the food chain—until the invaders came, that is, he added.”
The committee members stared at one another as they all thought about those numbers.
“And for these invaders to finish off all of SagD—surely that will take centuries, right?” the Baroness asked.
“At, say, two hundred stars a day—it’d take less than half a year before SagD is dark,” the admiral said.
“Of course, there is no way to know how many novas they’re producing per day, but if they put their nose to the grindstone, we’ve only half a year to come up with a plan.”
“A half year,” the Doge said, “to save the galaxy? Good grief … is that what we need to do …” he asked, the depression in his voice so very noticeable.
“A few things to consider, and yes, Admiral McQueen, your math is correct in that we probably have at least half a year—or maybe centuries. Because, more importantly, what we’re missing is that the Praix have already colonized other galaxies—the Milky Way is not the next one. It could be any of the galaxies that the Praix was colonizing over the five million lights their empire extended to.”
That seemed to help a bit, but the Doge was still shaking his head. “Oh, we have some real problems—in that the Praix are running from these invaders and they’re so far ahead of us that we won’t stand a chance. Now that old human saw of ‘would the last one leaving turn out the lights’ comes to mind,” he said as he sounded even more depressed.
“Which is why we broached this idea to the Praix. That we take some of them to the wreck on Ghayth, and they give us its secrets. And their own ship. And the warehouses we’ve found on the Ghayth arctic and other continents too. We were ably helped in this by the Baroness, and she will allow us access to the whole of Ghayth. And as she has made the promise to share all of the Praix secrets from Ghayth with the RIM Confederacy—we thank her here publicly.”
That got some table knocks from the meeting attendants, and even Admiral McQueen smiled and knocked on the table too.
The chairman looked down at his Agenda and sighed. “Okay, we appear to have the Praix issue in hand—now, let’s deal with those unimportant ones—trading, economy, and the political unrest over on Olbia. Trading first, and that gets you all this handout …” he said.
As the meeting clerk went around to hand out the thick document about some kind of trading issues, the admiral took in what had just happened and thought, Either we have six months ‘til we face these invaders or hundreds of years … I know which one I’d like to face …
#####
At the edge of the landing port, where the gate led out into the city of Crisus, Bram and his party were met with what could only be called a show of strength. Ahead of them in what Bram thought looked like a truck sat twenty armed guards. The cab of the truck was tall enough to hold another guard, standing up, who had his hands on some kind of an automatic weapon. It was not pointed at the RIM group, but it looked like it was on a gimbal that could swing the gun to bear on them in a second. Behind it sat an empty carrier, which Bram assumed would be for them. The driver of the carrier ignored everything going on around him.
While Bram was looking at that, the door opened on the small shack that sat beside the bar across the roadway, and out marched Sithe Ogrunder, the Crisus citizen who worked for the warlord. He was smiling and that was a good sign.
“Belts on,” Alver said, and they all reached for the small switch behind their silver power belt buckles. Once that switch was pressed, they were totally protected from everything but the .454 Casull projectile weapon. Bram followed suit, remembering that on the ground—any ground—the major was the man in charge of security for the mission.
No one noticed anything with the belts, which was fine. Their protection would probably never even be tested—or so they all hoped.
The communications section warlord, Ogrunder, waved them around the bar across the road. They were soon ensconced in the now full little bus-like vehicle, and the lead truck with the guards moved away. Following closely behind, their driver kept a short distance between the two, and there really was no way to look ahead. Instead, they watched to each side, seated two by two with Bram beside Daika, Alver beside Lieutenant Walton, their science point man, and then the four marines. Each wore the power belt and each was carrying the .454 Casull sidearm—a nine-shot automatic—with two clips each on the holster sides.
I feel armed and dangerous, Bram thought. I feel like I am the king of the hill. And then he grinned to himself. This is all the belt talking … The feeling of being invulnerable was one he’d never ever had to be conscious of, and he did like it.
As the vehicle drove on, the city of Crisus went by on their left and right. Ahead, the machine gun guard was holding on to the side bars around the turret he was in, and over his head, one could see just the top of a few buildings that eventually flowed by their vehicles on the left or right.
The buildings appeared to be newer with what Bram could see looked like a bustling commerce in and around them. There were sidewalk cafés, office towers, and restaurants. A few small parks held
buskers and tables with what looked like arts and crafts items. No one, Bram thought, would be willing to spend the time and effort to sit in a park trying to sell homemade jewelry or crafts if there wasn’t anyone who wanted to buy same. Years ago, Bram had learned this was one of the easiest ways to see if a community was vibrant and growing.
Crisus was alive. So that meant that, at least at first thought, the population was happy with the status quo.
Not a good thing then for my mission to find new realms for the RIM, Bram thought, but still good for trade possibilities for the duke et al.
He sighed, but then he remembered this was the first of the twenty-three worlds in the Pentyaan system, which was now known as Warlord space. Perhaps other opportunities would come by, and he shrugged since he knew it would all unfold in the near future.
He sent a quick tendril of a mind link out to Warlord Ogrunder. It wasn’t enough to let him know that he was being scanned by an Issian brain, but it was enough to see what the man was thinking.
“Great that we took the main way to the warlord’s buildings” was the thought that was on the surface. Below it was a sense of dread that Bram could not see any clearer at this distance or in these circumstances. A busy ride in an open vehicle, with much other input, made anyone’s brain too unfocused for him to get a real read. Maybe later, he thought, just as the big carrier ahead of them moved off to the right-hand side of the street and turned, and their driver followed.
They passed through an arched driveway in a solid wide and long building. The stone used to build the structure was a shade of gray with a bit of rusty red mixed in with it. The two vehicles went through that portal which was about thirty feet wide. Inside the archway, there was a courtyard, which must have been a hundred yards square. The building had three stories and a multitude of windows looking down at the wide cobblestone courtyard. The carrier with the guards and the turret gunner pulled off to one side, but their driver instead drove straight across the cobblestones and stopped at what looked like a reception committee.