Secrets of Rahjen by Tom Shepherd

Author:Tom Shepherd [Shepherd, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781701395725
Publisher: Bookbag Press
Published: 2019-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

After a few hours rest we reported to Warden Taal’s teleportation station for secure transport to the capital. I felt a little cheated, since a trip in the starboat offered more views of this earth-like yet alien world with its seas and mountains, forests and arid wastes, and scattered cities along the way. Perry, Zack and Aaron wanted to go with us, but Keshikka’s mother had summoned only Mark, Tanella, and me.

Keshikka had already beamed to the capital, so we three defendants in the Lutzak extradition battle stepped on the little platform and swirled in tornadoes of light once more. The Princess waited at the other end. She provided a running commentary about the capital city, Rahjen Central, which spread from this tower as far as the eye could see. The old Galactic Capital lay on the island continent of Lesser Kiiepjayd at the opposite side of the planet, so when we teleported from the Estates at Kina-Reilon by dawn’s early light we arrived in the capital near sunset.

Although Rahjen Central was another seafront locale, this wasn’t a compound with gardens and residences but a sprawling urban center on sandstone cliffs overlooking a semi-circular bay. The city and Eastern Ocean were clearly visible from the teleport terminal atop a minaret overlooking the multifaith Temple of the Dark Stars.

We got a magnificent look at the ancient capital of a former Galactic Empire, and the signs of old wealth lingered after the power had long eroded. Tall crystalline towers, perhaps a little dull with age, stood guard over broad avenues where surface vehicles zipped along as if business was booming. And it was. According to Keshikka, the Empire may have lost its political and military clout, but it retained dominance in one vital category of civilized life: Money.

Legal tender. Lettuce, bread, chips and cheddar. Everything from pocket cash to bins of tin like Scrooge McDuck. It was the banking center of the Galaxy—like the Swiss Banks, Cayman Islands, Fort Knox, Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bitcoin and PayPal in one stop shopping. All transactions processed on a no questions asked basis. Princes, Parliaments, Pirates and profiteers did business in Galactic Credits.

Keshikka said, “If Dengathi amphibians want to buy a cargo of Golophinx diamonds from the Carrooban Flock, the Frogs pay the pink penguins in Galactic Credits drawn on the Central Bank of Rahjen.”

Processing her example, I had no idea who bought what from whom, but they transferred funds via Rahjen. That part I got. The Galactic Credit was a digital asset and the Central Bank of Rahjen was its payment system. CBOR had issued Galactic Credits since the Empire’s heyday. Its computers safely transferred negotiable units from buyer to seller, corporation to shareholders, contractors to suppliers. Even freakishly alien star nations who spurned the humanoid dominated vestiges of imperial civilization still did business in the only medium of interspecies, interstellar exchange.

Even in unexplored space, way remote from the frontiers of the old Empire, races of intelligent creatures who had never seen a humanoid nevertheless bought and sold goods and paid for services rendered in Galactic Credits.

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