by Jim Rudnick
He nodded.
“Aye, Ma’am, noted,” he agreed and nodded a few more times to ensure she received the message that he understood.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Richmond over at the Helm said, changing the focus smoothly, “we have permission to move to landing pad number nineteen, which is over at the far eastern side, Sir. Closer to the LRT, Sir,” he said, trying it appeared to the Lady to smooth things over.
“We’ll take that pad, Lieutenant. Quickly too, I might add,” she interrupted her captain who sighed to himself, and he waved his okay to the helmsman.
Still standing on her tail, the Sterling suddenly sped up as she drifted to the left and moved down at higher velocity. Three minutes later, the clouds wisped away and the towers of buildings surrounding the landing port here on Rhiclur, the capital city, were slowly rising around them.
Big, tall, wide, and what could even be called spacious, the Ttseen towers were all the architecture rage in the past few decades. The façades were usually decked out in the local equivalent of variegated marble, but were heavier with the reds and bronze stripes of native minerals from the local quarries. Windows here were transparent, as in all cultures, but here they used transparent aluminum, so tough that it was said no Ttseenian could ever break a window, but they still tried. Rite of passage some called it, though to her knowledge, no one ever had been able to do that. She sniffed and sipped the final drops of her tea and rose.
“Captain, I’ll be disembarking with the first group. Please ensure that we can get over to the LRT with ... with little ... more irritations, Captain,” the Lady said and turned to leave the bridge. Taking the stairs, she went down one deck to the twenty-ninth to her owner’s quarters, and after a quick outfit change, she moved over to the lift and dropped down to Deck One. She noted as she walked toward the boarding escalator entrance that four of her EliteGuards, black uniforms and shining blue boots and all, dropped in behind her. One she nodded to she thought she recognized but then remembered there were more than eighty EliteGuards on board. What were the odds, she thought.
“Ma’am,” one of them said, “we have been told that there may be a slight delay—“
“Royals are not ever delayed,” she said and, she strode right through the boarding area and then mounted the top of the escalator ramp as the guards struggled to keep up. Ahead of her on the landing pad, there was no waiting transport to get the party over to the LRT station hundreds of yards away. What was waiting though at the bottom of the ramp was the usual group of bureaucrats, most likely Customs, Heath, and Cargo officials, with their tablets or clipboards of papers and forms. Ttseens were short and looked like boxer dogs. When you put a few of them in a circle, they looked more like a pack of dogs awaiting someone to throw a stick.
At the bottom of the escalator, she paused and stared at the tallest of those bureaucrats and simply raised an eyebrow. Flanking her, her EliteGuards moved into formation around her side and back, each standing at the ready, one hand on their sidearms, those Needlers that demanded respect. That tallest bureaucrat paled as his whiskers trembled, and he mumbled something that she could not hear, and she waved him closer. He trotted over closer, and as he came closer, she spoke.
“Yes, I will need transport over to the LRT. Can you arrange that, please?”
The Ttseen, a Customs officer, quickly spun around to search the landing tarmac behind him and then wheeled back around with a small leap. His face was the typical Ttseen mottled brown and white furry muzzle, and his whiskers pulsed as his lips pulled back from an impressive set of teeth. A small line of drool sat in the corner of his mouth.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I know nothing about any transport as I’m with Customs—“
“Then you’d better learn quickly, Mister Customs man, what can happen to someone who is not helpful to a Royal, and as the daughter of the Baroness of Neres, I will one day sit on the RIM Council ... so ...” the Lady said and tilted her head at him.
Her foot tapped against the tarmac concrete, and in heels it sounded ominous. The Ttseen Customs officer turned and ran back to the small Jeep that had brought the agents out to the Sterling. In a moment, he’d jumped on the microphone off the dash, and as he barked into it, she could tell he’d spoken to someone.
A short time later, a larger powered bus pulled around a corner from the main building to the east and drove straight toward the Sterling, and they boarded it quickly to move to the LRT. Twenty more minutes and she was leaving the lift up on the top floor of one of the Ttseen towers, the one that housed the Barony Embassy, and she clicked her heels loudly as she marched down the corridor to the ambassador’s suite of offices. Behind her, the EliteGuards pushed by the Provost Corps Embassy soldiers that tried to cut them off, but they were having none of that. Reaching the closed door, the Lady rapped her knuckles on the door sharply, twisted the door handle, and walked right in.
Behind the door, a Provost sergeant stepped up quickly and seemed to want to block the way but was quick to slink back against the wall as the Lady St. August strode into the outer offices. She looked neither left nor right but pushed ahead directly through the large open double doors inside the private office of the ambassador. As he tried to stand up behind his desk, she waved him back down.
Small man, she noted, as the ambassador slowly took his seat and seemed like he was somewhat surprised at her presence.
“Surprised, Ambassador Drummond?” she said as she too sank down on one of the chairs facing his desk.
He quickly shook his head as he wiped his chin and almost stammered his answer.
“No, Ma’am, no, we had been told you were expected, just not for another hour or so. My apologies as we had not yet set up transport—“
“Yes, I suspected as much, Ambassador. But I am here now. And I need to ask why I was summoned here and for what?” she said, her toe tapping once more.
“Ma’am, I know not why—but that as soon as you arrived, I was to give you this office for an EYES ONLY with the Baroness herself,” he said as he rose and twirled the monitor screen on the corner of his desk to face her after keying in some typing.
“Leave,” she said curtly and then watched the twin crowns of red and blue on the screen slowly dissolve into a view of what she alone knew was her stepmother’s private office on Neres, more than forty light-years distant but with Ansible in real time. The room was empty and she turned her attention to the screen once more.
The Baroness appeared on screen and came over to sit at her desk to speak to Helena. No love lost, Helena thought, but if I ever want to sit at the RIM Council table, then I’d best know how to comply for now.
As if the Baroness read her mind, she started by stating the obvious between them.
“Helena, we have an issue that we need to speak on, about the future of the Barony, and that future will one day be your own,” she said.
Blonde, tall, and with a physique that meant only body shaping by the finest bio-surgeons, the Baroness had come up to sit at the top of the Barony by using what God and money had given her. She had met the Baron more than a decade earlier inward past Pentyaan space and past the systems beyond at a pleasure world and had captured his heart—not to mention his Barony too—when they had married immediately.
A couple of years later, the Baron had died due to overwork and living far too much like a younger man, and the Baroness had become the head of the Barony, a realm of nine worlds—soon to be 10 Helena knew as soon as Throth became a voting member of the Barony once the Ikarians were settled in. From renting a room on a pleasure world to owning nine planets, the Baroness had excelled, and Helena knew this was a formidable force here on the RIM.
“What needs to be done can only be done by you, dear,” the Baroness said and then followed that with a furtive look around her as if to say what came next was more than private.
Leaning forward, Helena heard her stepmother outline her plan to make a real change in the Barony future and at the same time cause major disruption
to the RIM Navy too ... and for the first time in years, she was alarmed at what she heard.
She listened. She asked questions. She thought and then asked more questions and received more answers. And when she had no more queries, the Baroness looked at her directly.
“Doing what has never been done before is sometimes daunting—but trust me, stepdaughter, it can be done. You need to use all of your wiles to get this done. I don’t care and neither should you what this costs as long as it gets done. You will succeed is the only outcome. Look at me, the Baroness of Neres, and one day if you want to be able to say that, you will do this successfully,” she said almost to flaunt her position, but as Helena knew, she made sense of this plan, as the screen EYES ONLY went back to black.
Later in the transport bus back to the Sterling, Helena realized there were no more questions. Just a well-thought-out set of steps to follow like those old dominoes that must fall one into the other then the next and the next. Each one was dependent upon the one in front of it to make the whole thing work.
My job, she thought, as she rode the escalator up into the Sterling, is just to get those items all in a row ... and to be able to sway the Captain ...
#
The Marwick shuttle was at what some might call low-level altitude but others might call dangerous. Above the waves, yes, but not by more than fifty feet, and Lieutenant Hendricks, the pilot, was focused on nothing but the sea ahead of him. The rest of the away team watched in silence as the shuttle cruised at more than a mile per second, leaving a furrow behind them as a wake never seen before. With a blue sky, the deep ocean blue and the white wake furrow behind them, it was a trip in duo-tones for sure, Tanner thought. He’d requested this low-level flight as it was something no one as far as he knew had ever done. Even the three Provost Guards who accompanied the away team to look after the convict were staring out the large shuttle view-ports at nothing but ocean, whitecaps and all.
“On my home world, Captain” Lieutenant Rizzo said, “we have a sport called boarding, where you ride a wave coming into shore or behind a boat, and it’s tons of fun. Well, ‘til you remember that if you’re dumped off the wave near shore, that they make sandpaper outta sand, Sir,” he said and unconsciously rubbed his left thigh and hip.
“Something I’m sure you did over and over, right, Rizzo,” Lieutenant Elliot chuckled and rose from his seat pretending to balance on just such a board, which got a few cheers from the rest of the team, and even Radisson, the new ensign, was up on top of his seat boarding the shuttle herself.
“Settle down,” the XO said and that got the group back into their seats, and he eyed Radisson a bit to let him know that kind of shenanigans was frowned upon. Least it should be ...
As they cruised across the ocean, it became apparent even at this speed that the number of islands was very low on this heading. They never had to avert their course to go around any, and they only saw a line of islands in the distance to port once. At more than 3,600 miles per hour, they were moving quite quickly, and in a little less than two hours, a line of islands appeared ahead.
“Slow, Lieutenant Hendricks, we don’t wanna cause any issues on arrival,” the XO noted and Tanner nodded in agreement.
“Aye, XO, Wilco,” Hendricks said, and they slowed noticeably as the line of low-lying islands came more into view. Once volcanoes had risen here from the ocean floor to breach the waters and slowly build landmass, and Tanner could see evidence of that easily. But it had been a long time ago, as the volcanic cones were now all worn down with green vegetation that went right to the summits. One of the islands though still had a taller mountainous peak, and as it came more into view, one could see the power grids coming up and out of the crater that marked the volcano.
“Power generation is volcanic, XO?” Tanner queried and sipped again at his plas-cup of coffee, sweetened with the one thing he liked more than everything else.
“Affirmative, Sir, small the AI says, but still enough to power the local residents, uh, 9,000 souls. Plus they have a full fishing fleet, a fish factory cargo ship, and yes, the local jail. ETA in less than twenty minutes, Sir.”
As the shuttle climbed and slowed at the same time, they could see the lush scenery that lay on the shores below—first the blue of the ocean lightened to azure, then teal, and almost turquoise as the sand and volcanic rock climbed up out of the ocean depths. Beaches that stretched for miles went by as the shuttle climbed up and up and then crested the low-lying hills on the island of Gravity. They flew for a mile or two only at that height until they began to drop away down to the other side of the island.
Ahead, tucked in a large natural harbor, lay many boats: boats at anchor, boats moving under power, and more boats tendering their catch to the fish factory ship that lay against the big moorings at the edge of the water. Tanner wondered what they had caught today but then figured with the ocean all around them, it mattered not a whit. The town crept up the slope of the island away from the harbor and was laid out in a semi-circular style, with a large central park area about halfway up the slope. From where the shuttle came over the edge of the town, Tanner could see the houses and neighborhoods up top were larger and more posh than the lower town center areas. And from here, he could also not discern what might be called a jail at all. Catching the helmsman’s eye, he pointed to the park as if to say it looked like the spot to try to land.
“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Hendricks said, and the shuttle yawed and swooped down to be near the center of the park and landed slowly, pointed toward the harbor. The Provost Guards stood instantly and moved to the airlock to be the first ones out the opening door. Moments later, the away team had joined them, and they stood in the shadow of the shuttle alone in the park.
“Um, XO, you did get confirmation about our arrival, yes?” Tanner said as he too looked around and saw not a soul. Park, empty, he thought, and looked down at the harbor and around the few town streets that they could see. No one.
The away team looked at each other, then looked around again, and then looked back at the captain, who shrugged at them and held up his hands open to the sky.
“I’ve no idea,” Tanner said, “as to what to do now—“
Sirens sounded from speakers they could not see, but the volume was so loud they almost all jumped at the sudden shocking sound.
“What in hell,” the XO said, and they all turned to look around to see if anything was different, and it took a moment to notice.
“Sir,” one of the Provost Guards said, “it appears that the power has just been turned back on ... as it was off when we landed, Sir.”
“And you’d know that how?” the XO said dryly.
“Because we are on the Newton Security channel, Sir. We have to be as a part of the network, and we received word in our earpieces back about the time that the lieutenant was boarding his shuttle seat, Sir. Power went out all over Gravity as the Power Plant was having some issues, but that’s not all, Sir. Our convict was the one they had to ‘borrow’ out of the local jail and march up to the Plant on that peak behind us. It was she that got the turbines out of their fubar deal, Sir,” the Provost said.
Tanner tried to comprehend what he’d just heard. The part that really stuck out was the convict pick up was a woman—one who could handle a volcano power plant issue. He shook his head.
“XO, let’s find out what the—wait, Provost Sergeant, can you ask for someone to bring us that convict here—here in the park, I mean?” he said.
The Provost Guard gave a quick “wilco” and then used his throat mic to speak to someone at whatever Newton Security command might be.
“Sir, their ETA is nine minutes ... a heli-hover in directly from the Power Plant,” he said as he pointed up and behind them.
While the away team stood around and waited, Tanner had turned to watch that peak above them, especially at the cut in the volcanic cone where the power line towers marched down the slope toward Newton. A minute or two later from that cut in the cone, a round
ish looking heli-hover craft rose above the cone and moved swiftly down toward them in the park. It was only a few miles, and the craft moved down and down, and then it was in front of the away team, landing fify feet away.
As the door popped open on the passenger entry side, only two people got out, both clothed alike in orange jumpsuits with air tanks on their backs and tool belts asunder with tools of all kinds.
One of the Provost Guards must have barked some kind of a command to his team via their voice mics, and they all formed a wide formation, their sidearms in their hands. Not another person moved on the away team as the orange-clad passengers walked up at leisure and stopped facing the away team. One motioned to the other who pulled off their mask and helmet and then shook out what was matted long red hair.
“Sorry there, Captain, but had a job to do. Didn’t mean to put you behind, timeline-wise ... but my real allegiance is not to the Confederacy, but to Newton,” she said as she continued to run her fingers through her hair that glistened with sweat.
Oddly, Tanner thought, it made it shine as brightly as a fire-plug.
“Provost Sergeant, at ease,” the XO said, and the guards holstered their weapons but moved to stand between the away team and the passengers.
It was then they noticed the other passenger had also doffed his helmet and mask and had the same reddish shade of what little hair he still had, also glinting with sweat.
“Captain—my apologies. This is Muri Ankara, your, well, I suppose she’s your convict soon as I turn her over to you—but know, Sir, that she is also my daughter—and I would imagine that you’d like an explanation, Sir?” he said quietly.
Tanner nodded and stared at the beautiful redheaded woman and her father in front of him.
“Power Plant is just about my daughter’s life’s work—she fought to get us the funding to build this micro-plant. She went to school over on Juno and then Carnarvon for the education to manage same. And she installed every single nut and bolt to get us the power from the volcano you see behind you, Sir,” he said with pride in his voice.