by Guerin Zand
“Yes, seriously. And this new look of yours, Dad?”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?”
“It’s got to go. After your meeting, you need to get cleaned up and make yourself presentable. Maybe I’ll call the twins to help you. I’m throwing you a dinner party tonight and you’re not going to meet the guests looking like you do.”
“Whatever. Did you invite my crew?”
“Yes. Your accountants will be there. Senri declined.”
“I assume Cindy was invited as well?”
“Yes.”
“Can you seat her next to me?”
“Why? Is there something going on between you two?”
“No. I’m just trying to be nice.”
“Ok. Come on. Let’s go see Milly and Julie. I’ll be sitting in on the meeting.”
“Why?”
“So you’ll behave.”
“Good luck with that.”
We headed back to the office, and as my daughter said, Julie and Milly were both sitting there enjoying a drink. Why didn’t my daughter offer me a drink? I walked over to Milly and she stood up to greet me. She gave me a big hug and I gave her a little kiss.
“Hi, Milly. How have you been?”
“You care all of a sudden?”
“We’re not going to start like that, are we?”
“No.” Milly smiled. “Nice look. I hope you didn’t go out of your way to get all dressed up for us. The gun really makes that outfit.”
“Ok. I’ll say it one more time, so listen up. You too Julie. I’m a pirate, and in piracy, image is everything.”
Julie stood up, walked over to me, opened her arms, and gave me a sad little look while she waited for her hug. I relented, gave her a hug, and said, “Hello, Julie.”
“We’ve missed you, Guerin. Ouch!” She backed away and looked down at, well, where would you think a perv would look. “Was that your gun or are you just happy to see me, Guerin?”
“Very funny, Julie. Maybe instead of spending the last 200 years coming up with that line, you might have spent a little time cleaning up this shit hole you call a universe.”
We all took a seat. Milly moved a glass in front of me and poured me a generous amount of Pappy’s. I reached into my bathrobe pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes.
“Anyone mind if I smoke?”
“YES! What is wrong with you, Dad?”
I put my smokes away. “I thought you were just here to sit in, daughter?”
“Well, maybe if you’d try to be a little less offensive, I might not have to say anything. What’s wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve been actually having a good time up to a few hours ago.” I sipped my whiskey and shrugged my shoulders.
“Well, it’s time you put this little pirate fantasy of yours away and join the rest of us here back in reality ville.”
“Dear God! What have you two done to my daughter? She sounds so, um, she sounds so Bree. And what’s with that onesie, Maria?”
All three of the women began to laugh.
“Ah, like I said, we’ve missed you, Guerin. While you’ve been busy out doing whatever...”
I interrupted Julie. “You mean cleaning up your shit?”
“That’s why we keep you around, isn’t it?”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“But let’s talk about what you’ve been doing. You’ve been going around pretending to be Bree?”
“You should thank me for that. There’s a lot of worlds out there that think the Bree are pretty cool thanks to me. Your reputation was shit when I first started out. I’ve got the whole arrogant thing down, but I’m still having a lot of problems with the boring part.”
“Yes, I’m sure of that. But what about all the killing? How many people have you killed playing your little games?”
“Probably not near as many as the stories you’ve heard. I can still count the number I’ve killed on one hand, and the ones I did, deserved it.”
“According to you?”
“Yes. According to me, Julie.”
“So, are you telling us that you weren’t, how do you say, spacing, all of those crews found floating around the universe?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Sure, the spacing was my idea, but I wasn’t the one doing it.”
“Then who was?”
“You too, Milly?” She just shrugged her shoulders.
“Listen, we liberated a lot of Trogan slave ships, and the people who were taken as slaves weren’t happy about what happened to them at the hands of those crews. We’re talking hundreds of captives at times on one of these ships. My crew couldn’t control them when we set them free, and I can’t blame them for taking a little revenge on their captors. They aren’t exactly nice people we’re talking about. The slaves made a bloody mess out of a few ships and it was a pain to clean them up before we sold them. No one wants to buy a cargo ship soaking in blood and bits. I had to put my foot down. I said they could toss them overboard, but I’d shoot the next asshole who made a mess on one of my ships.”
“So, their deaths weren’t you’re fault? Is that what you want us to believe?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Julie. Are you responsible for all of the deaths that occurred on Earth while I was your emissary?” I had her on that, so she decided to drop it.
“Ok. Well, let’s talk about stealing my shuttle.”
“I didn’t steal your shuttle. I made a lawful salvage claim in ASTN space. You’ll have to fight with the ASTN bureaucracy if you want to argue about that, but the shuttle is mine now. End of discussion.”
“We’re not going to take your precious spaceship from you, Guerin. We just want to know how you managed to steal a shuttle out of our docks with no one noticing.”
“I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to say this, Milly, but I didn’t steal the shuttle!”
“Then you’re saying it just somehow magically found its way out into an ASTN trade route that was rarely used by anyone but you?”
“I wouldn’t say magically, Milly, but yeah.”
“Ok, I’ll play along, Guerin.” Milly was smiling. “Do you have any idea what that somehow might have been?”
“Well, I mean, I could guess?”
“Why don’t you?”
“Come on, Milly. It involves a lot of monkey logic, and I’m really not trying to be mean, but simple monkey logic seems to be beyond the grasp of you Bree. You always get these glazed looks on your faces when I try to explain shit to you. Then you act surprised when I get it right, as if by magic. Hell, from the look on my daughters face right now, I think you may have taken that ability away from her in all that training.”
“Very funny, Dad. If you go slow, I’ll try and follow along and translate for the Bree in the room.”
“So, you’re part of this interrogation?”
Maria just gave me a look. It was actually one of her mother’s old looks.
“Ok, here’s the simple version. Someone else must have stolen Julie’s shuttle.” That’s all I said. I thought I had broken it down so it was simple enough for them to understand.
“And do you have any idea who that someone might be?” Milly’s grin grew bigger. She knew this game. This was the Bree game. The game they always pulled on me. Only answer the question asked and offer nothing else.
“Of course.”
“Who?”
“The person who would benefit from that the most.”
“Ok, Guerin, let’s stop playing around. Who? What’s their name?”
“Well, Julie of course, Milly.”
“Me? Wouldn’t you benefit the most?”
“Not really, besides, I said you wouldn’t be able to follow the monkey logic. Just skip back a few minutes and you might remember I said it was someone else, so I’m obviously not talking about myself. Why must I explain everything over, and over to you people?”
“Ok, Dad, I’ll bite this time. Why w
ould Julie do that? Don’t give me one of your mocking answers. Explain it to me.” Maria twisted her head and gave me this stupid look I remembered from her childhood.
“Ok. Let’s go back to Julie’s incessant need to play mother. Her little boy ran off and was being all bad and shit, but she still needs him. After several years go by, she realizes I’m not going to run back home. What I was doing out there did actually help her out.”
“How did what you were doing help me out, Guerin?”
“I’m out there keeping the Trogans occupied. If Earth’s progress didn’t meet the schedule this would give them some breathing room. But it wasn’t just me out there. Once we started to get a reputation, a lot of other bounty hunters started hitting the Trogan smugglers as well. It’s quite a profitable business if you ignore the risks.”
“If you were doing such a good job, why would I give you a shuttle?”
“Well, with the increase of seizures of Trogan vessels hauling illegal cargo, the Trogan government got involved. They started to use a substantial number of their military to try and keep those smuggler routes viable. With the Trogan military getting into the game, I needed an advantage, a shuttle. Now I keep the Trogans busy fighting the Dread Space Ship Vengeance and its daring Captain Roberts.”
Maria started to giggle. “That’s what the D.S.S. in the ship’s name stands for, Dread Space Ship?”
“Duh, Maria.”
She was laughing out loud now.
Julie waited for Maria to stop laughing and said, “You still haven’t said why you think it was me.”
“Julie, you’re the only one that could have gotten on your shuttle without being noticed. You would know how to disable the transponder, not me. It made sense to blame me for the shuttle’s disappearance. It gives me a bad ass reputation. I mean, a guy has to be a pretty bad dude to steal a shuttle under the almighty Bree’s eyes. Who wouldn’t believe I was stupid enough to try and steal your shuttle?”
Maria smiled. “He has a point there.”
“Let’s just be honest here, Julie. You’ve been watching me the whole time. I don’t know if you implanted some brain tracking thought recording device, or whatever, but you knew exactly where I was and what I was doing. That’s how the shuttle magically, as you like to say, popped up practically right under my nose. The fact that the shuttle was yours was also a bit of a clue.”
“Nice theory, Guerin.” Julie tried to remain expressionless, but I could see her cracking.
Milly looked at Julie. “You knew where he was all this time, Mother?”
That was the first time I ever heard her refer to Julie as Mother. My eyes opened wider.
“We knew sort of where he was. After Heesa’s assassination and the sudden appearance of this Bree named Roberts, I went to the Council. They approved the surveillance. We weren’t watching him all the time, and I didn’t implant him with some sort of tracker.”
“Whatever.” I just rolled my eyes. Once more monkey logic prevails. “It’s like I told Cindy. No matter how hard I tried to get away from you, I just ended up doing your bullshit in the end.”
“Did you know about his plan to kill Heesa, Mother?”
“No. We both knew he was up to something, but I didn’t know any more than you. He managed to keep that plan to himself somehow. While we’re talking about it, I just want to say that we don’t approve of what you did, Guerin.”
“Blow me, Julie.”
“Dad!”
“Besides, it was a rescue operation and not an assassination. Two young damsels were being tortured to death by that shit bag and I rescued them. Heesa just happened to step in front of my gun when it went off.”
“Enough! Both of you! Why do you go out of your way to mess with Guerin, Mother? How long are the two of you going to play this childish game?”
“Well, I guess you should ask your mother. I’m not the one...”
“Just stop it, Guerin. You like playing these stupid little games as much as she does. Look at yourself. You look like a little kid in a Halloween costume.”
“Hey! A lot of women find this look very attractive. It’s worked well for me over the past couple of centuries.”
“Dad! No one wants to hear about your slave girls.”
“I don’t have any slave girls. I have a couple of sweet accountants, but no slave girls.”
“Oh, please.”
“You know, Maria, a lot of daughters would be proud of their father, risking his life to free slaves from slave traders. Maybe you should sit down and have a long talk with the twins about how great their life was before they met me. I’ve never taken advantage of any of the slave girls. You can ask Milly, Julie, Bart, Gladys, whoever. They’ll all tell you I was always a gentleman. You’re the last person in this universe that I’d expect to believe all the bullshit stories about me.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s just there were a lot of stories. You didn’t exactly try to stop the spread of those tales.”
“You’ve definitely spent too much time with the Bree, darling. Sure, there were a lot of stories, and it definitely helped with my reputation. Don’t you remember the story of the Dread Pirate Roberts? It was because of that reputation a lot of the Trogan ships would simply surrender and we avoided unnecessary killing. The spacings stopped after I got the shuttle and was able to use the transit portals to remove the crews to our brig. Yes, we built a brig on our ship just for that purpose. But none of you care about the specifics, do you? No! As far as all of you are concerned, I was just out there plundering slave girls and becoming the worse serial killer in all history.”
Julie looked doubtful. “Then tell me, Guerin, if you weren’t killing all these Trogans, what happened to all the missing ships?”
“They aren’t missing. The cargo ships we seized were sold. Their crews were normally turned over to the local authorities to deal with. The military ships, on the other hand, were just accidentally misplaced on purpose.”
“What does that mean?”
“I would use the transit portals to send their military ships to parts unknown. Sometimes, although rarely, I’d just send them back home. Sometimes I’d send them a long way from home, and sometimes, if they were in the claimed space of another government, I’d send them into the middle of that system’s defenses and let that local government deal with them. Am I the only one who knows how to use the transit portals?”
“As usual, Guerin, you spin us a wild tale that seems to be only loosely related to reality. Why don’t you just admit that you were doing all of this for your own enjoyment, and not to keep the Trogans busy as you would like us to believe?”
“You want me to say I was having fun? Sure I was. I enjoy the pirate life. The hours are good. I’m my own boss. You know I like to have fun while doing my job, Julie. For some reason that just pisses you off.”
“No one told you to go out there and keep the Trogans busy, did they?”
“Well, no, but nobody seemed to have a problem with it either. If you didn’t want me to do it then you wouldn’t have given me your shuttle.” Julie gave me a look, we both knew the truth. “You could have always sent somebody after me to haul my sad ass back here, but you didn’t. Don’t act like I wasn’t doing exactly what you wanted me to be doing. You always try to make it look like I’m the bad boy, when in fact, you’re just using that to cover your own actions.”
“I don’t even know how I should respond to you, Guerin. Let’s just forget it and move on. We have some serious issues that you need to attend to.”
“I don’t see why you need me to deal with the issues in the outer moons, Julie. Roger and his team should be able to handle it.”
“They have their own issues to deal with, Guerin. Besides, the problem in the outer moons isn’t simply a human issue. We know that the Alacians have a small presence on Ganymede, and they’re influencing events.”
“Wait a minute. You’ve let another quarantined race get a foothold in our system while I was gone? How is th
at my problem now? Shouldn’t you fix your own mistakes?”
“Guerin, blaming us doesn’t fix the problem. You’ve had dealings with the Alacians, and it’s your problem because we gave you the responsibility to handle unauthorized visitors back when you first started working on Earth.”
“Sure Milly, we agreed to deal with them in our system, but you’re responsible for enforcing your own quarantines. The mighty Collective screws up and now you think it’s my problem. Besides, these Alacians are as bad as, if not worse than the Trogans.”
“Also,” Julie continued. “you’re familiar with the mother of the governor of the Ganymede colony. Her name is Mei Zhu, she’s the daughter of your old friend Lihwa Zhu.”
“Her daughter? That’s impossible. Her daughter would have to be close to 200 years old now.”
“Well, the average human lifespan has increased to almost 200 years now, but Mei was one of Roger’s recruits, so she has had some help from us.”
“It just keeps getting better, Julie, doesn’t it? If she’s one of Roger’s recruits, then shouldn’t he be handling it?”
“He’s tried, Guerin, but as usual, there’s a lot of politics involved. He’s seen as a supporter of the core alliance like you were seen as an American supporter during the Chinese aggression. We all think that, as a bit of an outcast, you might be seen as neutral. Also, the fact that you saved her mother’s life might make her a bit more open to talking with you.”
“So, I’m officially an outcast now?”
Julie shrugged her shoulders. “Isn’t that what you aspire to be? You obviously don’t want to live within the rules of our society, or any other. What would you call yourself?”
“Free, Julie, free.”
“Free from what? Responsibility? Obligations? Caring?”
“Free to choose my own life. I can’t be what you people want me to be. Isn’t that obvious by now?”
Milly put her hand on mine. “Guerin, we’re not trying to make you be anything. You are who you are, and that’s why we need you.”
“Right. You need me to go there and get my hands dirty, so you don’t have to.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?”
“They haven’t told you about the Alacians?”