by Guerin Zand
“But the Guides already influence our lives on Taes through the naissarance. I don’t understand why they’d need help with that.”
“They only make vague suggestions through the contact they make with your people through naissarance. It’s not like they can pass on a lot of specific knowledge through your dreams. They can point your people in the right direction at times, but it’s still up to the Taesrins to learn mostly on their own. It may even be detrimental to your people’s advancement since you rely so much on this naissarance to help make decisions. I don’t know exactly how long the Guides have been influencing Taes, but perhaps they screwed up and that’s the reason that your neighbors are so much more advanced. Maybe by getting me involved they believe they can fix that.”
“How can you know for sure, Guerin? All of this seems very confusing to me.”
“I can’t be sure, Scirla. It may be confusing to you, but you are always asking questions, aren’t you? I think it’s perhaps your curiosity that makes you special. The reason you were chosen. It’s funny, I never talk to Prima about things like this. She seems to prefer lecturing me and trying to stop me from doing stupid shit.”
“Prima is only trying to protect you, Guerin. You take a lot of risks and she worries about you. She’s seen how bad the universe can truly be, and she doesn’t think you take that seriously enough. Maybe you shouldn’t complain about her lecturing you and pay a little attention to her warnings. You mean a lot to her, and you need to realize if something were to happen to you, you wouldn’t be the only one hurt. You’re being a little selfish not taking her concerns a little more seriously.”
See, this was just one simple example where my wives would take each other’s side over mine. There was no winning, so I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, “I guess you’re right.”
Scirla rolled over and kissed me passionately. Just as I was about to think I was going to be rewarded for being such a good boy, Scirla said, “Shouldn’t you be getting out of bed, Guerin? You need to get working on the family breakfast. I’m sure everyone else will be getting up soon.”
And there you have it. It was Sunday, at least somewhere on Earth it was Sunday, I think? Every Sunday we would have a family breakfast and I would cook something up in the galley. This was sort of a tradition and it gave us a break from the normal daily replicator breakfasts. It was also the time of the week when both of my wives would enjoy reciting their grievances with me from the preceding week. My daughters would also make their issues clear as well during the family breakfast, but mostly they just enjoyed watching my wives pick on me. I got out of bed, showered, changed, and headed into the galley.
When I entered the galley, I found Gamma and our dog, Alpha, already there. After my last inquisition over the Taes incident, we had gone to Earth for a short visit. Maria teamed up with Gamma to force me into getting them a puppy. The descendants of the Cerda family, the family that had once been the caretakers of our ranch in Panguipulli, Chile, were still breeding border collies. It just so happened that while we were there one of their dogs gave birth to a litter, imagine that. What a coincidence. Anyways, Gamma picked out her favorite, a sable merle female like my dog Kat back in the day. She thought Alpha was the perfect name for the first space dog. I didn’t bother to tell her that a dog had already been into space centuries before. Of course, we had to reconfigure several of the normally unoccupied rooms on the main level of the ship into a green area for the dog to take care of business. The girls equipped Alpha with a dog tag to wear on her collar that would open certain doors on the Ryvius for her automatically. The whole crew enjoyed having Alpha onboard and that dog had it made. There was always someone to play with or tickle her tummy.
Gamma was feeding Alpha and giving her some fresh water when I entered the galley. “Good morning, Papa. Alpha wants to know if you are going to make us bacon this morning.”
“Oh, Alpha wants to know?”
“Yes, and she wants pancakes too.”
Alpha had come over to me to greet me and I bent down to pet her. “Don’t you worry Alpha. I’ll make you some bacon and pancakes. Did Gamma by any chance tell you what she wanted for breakfast, Alpha?”
“Oh, Papa. You know that Alpha can’t talk.”
“Then how did she tell you she wanted bacon and pancakes, smarty-pants?”
“She doesn’t talk to me either, silly. She looks at me and I can tell by her look what she wants.”
“Well then maybe you can look at her and tell her that she needs to eat her dog food. She can’t live on bacon and pancakes.”
“Ok.” Gamma pouted. She leaned over to Alpha and took her head in her hands and stared her in the eyes. She looked back up at me and said, “Alpha is not very happy about that, Papa.”
“She’ll live. Is your sister going to be joining us this morning?”
“Yes.”
“I guess we should break out some carrots or something. What do you think?”
“She likes pancakes, just not the bacon. Why do you pick on Maria so much, Papa?”
“I could always pick on you more, Gamma, if you’d prefer that?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll go set the table for breakfast.”
Gamma was chronologically eleven-years-old at this time, while her physical age was closer to fourteen-years-old due to the circumstances of her birth. She was grown in a lab on Ganymede and her growth had initially been accelerated in the gestation tube. She was physically a three-year-old when she was taken from the tube. We had found from the records on Ganymede that the day of her birth was May 10, 2261. She had spent over three years in that lab before I found her. What this all meant at this time was the teen years and puberty were just around the corner. Need I say more?
Gamma came back to the galley after she finished setting the table. The rest of the family had arrived, and she was preparing tea and coffee for everyone. While we were on Earth, I picked up a restaurant grade coffee machine, with an espresso maker and all the bells. I don’t know how I overlooked adding that in my original design of the ship. The replicators made a decent enough cup of Joe, but it still wasn’t as good as fresh brewed. Gamma came over to check on me while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing.
“Everyone is hungry, Papa. How long until breakfast is ready?”
“It will be ready in a few minutes.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gamma reaching for a piece of bacon. I quickly reacted and slapped the back of her hand with the spatula I was using to flip the pancakes as she tried to slip away with a slice. It was an old family tradition dating back to my childhood. You’d let them get the goods in their hands before striking. This way they thought they got away with something, but not without paying for it.
“You can wait young lady.” Gamma smiled as she bit off half the piece of bacon and handed the other half down to Alpha. “And so can Alpha. You know you shouldn’t be feeding her human food until after we’re all done eating.”
“But it’s a family breakfast, and Alpha is family too.”
“Don’t give me that nonsense young lady. You put her in the Captain's mess and don’t let her out of her corner until we’re done eating. Don’t let me catch you feeding her from the table again.”
Of course, she was going to ignore me. I was pretty much used to the women in my life ignoring me. It still made me feel better pretending that she was going to listen this time. She did take Alpha back to the Captain’s mess and had her lie down in her bed in the corner. Then she came back to the galley and helped me get the breakfast out to the table. She had taken the coffee, tea, and juice out to the table when she took Alpha to the Captain's mess. She quickly grabbed the tray of bacon leaving me with the pancakes to bring out. Before she had gotten through the door she had stolen another piece of bacon from the tray. She again bit half off for herself and tossed the other half over to Alpha in the corner. I gave her one of my looks and she just giggled in response. I went back and grabbed the fruit salad that Gamma had
made up, mainly for her vegan sister Maria.
As we all passed around the plates, Gamma was the first to start the family talk. “I heard from Milly yesterday. She was helping me out with my math studies and she wanted to know if I had thought about attending one of the learning centers.”
“What did you tell her, Gamma?”
“I don’t want to go away to school. I like living on the ship, and I don’t want to leave Alpha behind. Besides, I can still study on the ship.”
“But you might like it at one of the learning centers. You’d have kids your own age to hang around with. I’m sure I could get them to work out something so you could bring Alpha with you.”
“No way, Dad!” Maria seemed to have a problem with that idea. “Alpha is the ship’s dog. She’s our mascot, like the dalmatians on the old firetrucks.”
“You told me when we got Alpha that she was for Gamma, Maria. Don’t tell me you were lying to me.”
Gamma started to giggle while Maria tried to find an out.
“It was for Gamma, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love Alpha too. The whole ship loves Alpha. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the crew either.” Alpha’s look pretty much said what I was thinking, bullshit! Alpha let out a little moan and Maria shot the dog a dirty look. Alpha buried her head under her paws. As Maria reached for a piece of bacon she said, “Besides, they don’t have bacon on the Bree stations.” She held the piece of bacon down under the table and Alpha ran over and snatched it from her hand.
“Maria! What have I told you about feeding the dog from the table?”
“Whatever, Dad. I’m over 250-years-old. Would it kill you to stop treating me like a child?”
“Yes, it would.”
Prima reached over and put her hand over mine. “Guerin, could you not pick on Maria during our breakfast.”
“She started it.”
Maria stuck her tongue out at me. Once again, Gamma found this amusing. Alpha was watching us all intently, but she was only looking to make sure we left some bacon for her.
“Still, why do I have to go away to school, Papa?”
“So you can grow up to be as obnoxious and annoying as your big sister. Don’t you want to grow up to be like her?”
“Very funny, Dad. Don’t listen to him, Gamma. You don’t have to go away to school. He just wants to abandon you like he did me.”
“No one abandoned you, Maria. I kept in touch.”
“Sure, you didn’t even call me for almost twenty years.”
“I was ruffing it out in the unaligned worlds. It’s not like they had phone booths I could use to call the Collective.”
“Whatever, Dad. Even after you stole the Vengeance, you only showed up every few decades. I think that counts as abandoning me.”
“First off, I didn’t steal the Vengeance. I don’t know how many times I have to say that. Second, if you're as grown up as you just said, why are you whining about it like a little girl?”
“Can you two please change the subject?” Prima was always the referee at these little get-togethers. From my past experience, arguing at the table was normal family behavior.
“Ok, well, Julie called me the other day. She wants us to run an errand for her.”
“Oh, great. You told her no, right?”
“No, I didn’t, Dad. I said we’d talk about it. The rest of the crew is fine with it, we just need you to agree to it.”
“What is it this time? Does she want us to pick up her dry-cleaning?”
“She wants us to go check out what’s happening on the planet Klantzu. The last ship we intercepted trying to smuggle slaves to the Trogan empire was from there. According to Julie, they’ve always been one of the more civilized worlds out in the unaligned worlds. She thinks that there may be some outside influence at work there.”
“Absolutely not, Maria. How many times do I have to say that I don’t want us to be the Collective’s police force. What if we do find something going on there? What are we supposed to do about it? It’s one thing to stop some pirates and smugglers, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to try and take on a whole planet. I’m not going to risk our ships and crews. Let the Collective take care of it if it’s so important to them.”
Normally that would have been the end of it. For some reason Maria was not going to let it drop.
“But you’re the one that’s always taking on these slavers, Dad. It’s not really a risk for us to go there and check it out. They don’t have anything that could threaten the Ryvius. If we do find something there, I’m sure we could handle it.”
“How can you be sure? You have no idea what’s going on. What if they’re Alacians? What if there’s more than a few of them? We now know that there are several Alacian colonies out on some of the unpopulated worlds, and they have a breeding center on at least one. They may be cut off from the Alacian homeworld, but they're still a danger.”
“Fine. I’ll just get Steve and Jackie to take me there, and we’ll handle it without you, Dad.”
“Good luck with that. You know damn well that Steve and Jackie won’t do this. Are you forgetting that Jackie is Bree? The last thing she’ll ever do is interfere like that. That’s why Julie came to you with this.”
“I don’t care. If you’re not going to help, then I’ll find a way to do it without you.”
“And without my ship and crew, young lady.”
“Why is it that you get to decide what we should do or not do? Aren’t we supposed to be a team?”
“We are a team, Maria, but we also have a mission out here. Just because I let them wrangle us into helping patrol the area for Trogan activity, that does not mean we’re going to take on all the problems in the unaligned worlds. Sooner or later we wouldn’t have time to do what we actually came out here to do.”
“But it was ok for you to decide on your own that we’d take on the problems in the Taes system?”
“That was different. There was no chance that what we did in the Taes system would be heard about in this sector of the galaxy. I also gave everybody a chance to decide for themselves if they wanted to be involved. If we take the Ryvius, my ship, to Klantzu, then I will be involved and I don’t want to be. The mission in the Taes system did not affect the Rangers. If we go to Klantzu, it may cause problems for the Rangers’ mission. Why can’t you see that, Maria?”
“Fine. Don’t get involved then.” Marie stood up and made a rather noisy exit from the Captain’s mess.
For some reason, Maria and I had started to have these little fights over our mission more frequently. She was heavily influenced by Julie and Milly, and they were both using her to influence me in my decisions. I told Maria so, but she insisted I was just being paranoid. I thought things were going to be better between the two of us after the Taes inquisition. She told me she was proud of me for what I had done, so I thought she might actually understand me a bit. But since that day we seemed to clash more and more. She couldn’t understand why I’d refuse to do these “errands” for the Collective, while at the same time I’d get the crew take action in some questionable circumstances. She simply couldn’t see the difference when it was my idea versus an errand for Julie.
Julie knew that this caused us problems. She could have gone about this in an entirely different way. Instead of asking us to run an errand for her, she could have just passed that information on to us and let us decide if we wanted to handle it. Maria wanted to run off, guns blazing, and just jump right into this Klantzu problem head first because Julie asked her to. There were a lot of factors to take into account in the unaligned worlds. Being unaligned, a lot of the worlds were not members of the ASTN commerce system. The Rangers were out in this area of the galaxy to open up trade relations with ASTN worlds. If we started stirring up trouble in the area, the ASTN worlds might have an issue with that. It could blowback on them as well. Sure, I had a problem if Klantzu was being used to run slaves, but there were smarter ways to handle the issue other than popping up on their doorstep and tel
ling them the Collective sent us.
It was almost a month since our big argument over Klantzu. It was Maria’s birthday and we were celebrating her birthday, as well as mine since her’s was August 9th and mine was August 10th, with one of our pizza nights. We were all having a lot of fun when Maria asked us to join her on the bridge. Most of the crew, those not working, found a spot on the bridge as Maria went up to Senri at the pilot’s station and handed her a set of coordinates. Senri opened a portal and the Ryvius came out in orbit around a Earth-like planet. Other than the different shapes of the land masses, it looked just like Earth. From the readings I could tell the gravity, atmosphere and climate were pretty much Earth normal, give or take a few insignificant digits. The one unusual thing was that the planet and the entire system were not listed in the Collective's navigation database.
“Happy birthday, Dad.”
“What is this place, Maria?”
Just then Senri spoke up. “We’ve been interrogated from the surface. Our Bree access code is being requested.”
Maria leaned over the comm station and brought up a viewer and entered a code and responded to the query from the surface.
“The code was accepted,” Senri said as she looked over to confirm this fact with Maria. “They are standing by to receive the new owner on the surface. They have transmitted the coordinates.”
“This, Dad, is your birthday present from Julie, Milly, and me.”
“Excuse me. What is all of this about?”
“Well, I asked the two of them to help me find you a proper birthday present. I mean, what do you get a spaceman who already has everything. They suggested you might like your own planet, and I agreed. What do you think, Dad?”
“Real funny. What, is it infested with giant flesh-eating cooties?”
“No, well, at least I don’t think it is. Quit being so paranoid.”
“Trust me, this is exactly the time to be paranoid. What is this place that it doesn’t even register on the Collective navigation records?”