Deja Vu

by Guerin Zand

  “I guess I didn’t think it was important enough to mention, Guerin, but now that you asked about the human agents, I figured you’d probably wanted to know.”

  “Fine, Fro, but what has any of this to do with Rosemarie’s baby here.” I pointed to Trixy since it appeared the reference confused them both.

  “She’s willing to take you to the human colony if you’ll agree to rescue a few of her family members from the planet they’re being held on. You still have access to Collective technology don’t you? I mean, you can still use the Vengeance to get into Trogan space, right?”

  “Maybe, Fro, maybe. But why would I bother? As fun as meeting her family might be, I really don’t see an upside to knowing where that colony is or rescuing them.”

  “I’ll pay you, alright shitbrain? I have built up a sizeable fortune over the last few centuries and I can make it worth your while.” Well I wasn’s surprised at all by that. I mean, another old woman willing to pay for my services was not that unusual of an occurrence. First time it happened, I was in college. Even then, I wasn’t that desperate for money.

  “I don’t need your money, granny.” I stood up. “If that’s it, I’ll be going. I need to visit the medical center on my ship to fix this brain injury.”

  “You may not need my money, asswipe, but what do you think will happen to you and your crews when the ASTN finds out you haven’t been paying any of the applicable sales taxes on the goods you’ve been selling out here? I think they call that smuggling, which makes your little group smugglers. That’s still a serious offense in the ASTN if I’m not mistaken.”

  “She has a point, Guerin?”

  “No, she doesn’t, Fro. We are not members of the ASTN and therefore not in the position to collect taxes in their name. Similar circumstances occurred back in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries back on Earth, with the selling of goods over the internet. One of the largest companies on Earth today, Zon, ran into this issue. The law was established that it wasn’t their responsibility to collect sales taxes for governments if they had no official business presence within their territories. It was the individuals who made the purchases, and subject to that government’s rules, that were responsible for paying the applicable sales tax. In fact, nowadays, all of the Zon offices are located in rather large automated space facilities located at the various Lagrange points in the Terran system to avoid the issue altogether. My teams are simply the delivery service that transports those goods from companies in the Terran system to the ASTN worlds. Taxes aren’t our problem since we’re actually not selling anything. If you have a complaint, you need to raise that issue with the original seller.”

  “So, you’re not going to do a thing about the humans held captive in the Trogan empire?” Trixy looked like she thought that this mess was somehow my responsibility. I didn’t.

  “I don’t understand how either one of you think this is my problem. Sure, the humans working as Trogan agents are an issue we’ll have to deal with, but as long as they’re in Trogan space, they’re not a problem.”

  “But if you knew where they were being held, you could monitor the humans there and that would help you track down any agents the Trogans try to smuggle out of the quarantine.” Trixy’s attitude was changing, and if I had to guess, she was pleading with me at this point.

  “And we can probably find that planet on our own now that we know it exists. We’re not some group of inter-galactic mercenaries for hire. If you have your own ships and fighters you want me to sneak past the quarantine, that’s one thing, but we’re not going to do your dirty work for you. Why should we risk our lives to rescue your family?”

  “Guerin, how long have we known each other?”

  “It’s been a while, Fro. I’m not sure why that makes any difference.”

  “Well, I think I know you better than most people. You’re not going to just leave those people to the Trogans. That’s not something you’d do, and you know it.”

  “This is different, Fro. First off, granny here doesn’t give two shits about any of those people either, except for maybe her family. She only cares about her own interests, but those are not my concern. The other issue is just the number of humans we’re talking about here. We’d need enough fighters to secure and hold that planet long enough to get all the humans off of it. I don’t have an army that is capable of that, or enough ships. Even if I did, it would mean a lot of casualties on our side, not to mention we’d be initiating open hostilities between the Trogan empire and the Terran system. I don’t even officially represent the Terran system or any of their interests out here.

  And even if you ignore all of that, Fro, and we were somehow able to get all the humans out of the Trogan empire. Hell, how many of them are already working for the Trogans? We’d just be helping the Trogans get their agents out of the quarantine and making it possible for them to infiltrate the Terran system on a massive scale. Heesa would probably thank me for it.”

  “Could you at least bring this issue up with your people, Guerin? You never know, maybe they’ll come up with a way to handle this, maybe not, but it couldn’t hurt to have a few more people look at the problem, could it?”

  “Fine, Fro. I’ll talk to the rest of the teams about it, but I don’t think any of them will see it any differently than I do.”

  Froshjen stood up and shook my hand. “That’s all I ask. Thank you.”

  “I’ll come with you. I can—”

  “No! Absolutely not! I don’t want you anywhere near my ship or my crew. We already have enough issues to deal with.” The last thing I needed was to ever see this woman again, let alone take her with me to meet with my crew.

  “But someone has to plead our case. It’s not like—”

  “I SAID NO! What part of that did your old feeble brain not get? There is absolutely no way in hell I want anything more to do with you. PERIOD! FINITO! End of story!”

  Chapter 6

  Another Stupid Idea

  As we entered the Ryvius via the loading ramp, Kelly came to greet us. “Um, Captain? You think bringing back some bar slut is a good idea with your wives onboard?” Kelly knew I had gone to a bar to meet Fro, so I guess at first glance one might easily mistake Trixy for your everyday run of the mill bar slut.

  “It’s not like that, Kelly. Take her into custody and perform a full cavity search. Don’t leave any stone unturned, if you get my drift.”

  “Aye, sir, but…”

  “She’s human, a possible Trogan agent. We need to make sure she’s not bringing anything onboard and there’s no surveillance equipment hidden on or in her.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Kelly signaled for two Rangers who were working security to escort Trixy and give her a good going over.

  Trixy was putting up a fight as the two men easily overpowered her. “Be careful. She might have a bionic snatch, or who knows. I’d be careful where you stick your fingers.”

  “You asshole! I’ll get even with you for this dickweed. Don’t fucking think I’m going to let this slide.” Trixy continued her stream of profanities as the two men carried her off.

  “A real charmer, huh sir?” Kelly smiled as she pointed to my head wound. “Did she do that?”

  “Well, it was the whiskey glass she smacked upside my head that did it, if you want to get technical about it. Although I do think the fact that her hand picked it up and swung it in the direction of my head was probably the ultimate cause of my injury.”

  Kelly laughed. “You sure know how to pick them, don’t you, sir?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll be in medical getting my head wound taken care of. Hold her in the brig until I’m ready for her, Kelly.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Soo-jin Kim, the Ryvius’ medical officer was in medical waiting for me. Kelly had contacted her over private comms to let her know I was on my way down there. Soo-Jin was a competent medical officer, but she was a Korean and had a thing for mid-twenty-first century K-drama
flicks. That would have been alright, except she had gotten pretty much every other female onboard into watching those flicks with her and they were playing almost 24/7 up in the crew lounge.

  It reminded me of college. I’d often go to the student center for a quick bite or a beer in between classes. Without fail, the few women who actually went to my college, it was an engineering school without much more to offer so there were very few women, would be all cozied up in front of the tube watching their soap operas all day long. Although there were not many of them, they were strategically located around the TV set to prevent any man from changing the channel. I saw a few men try, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.

  Of course, the K-drama situation had caused a lot of problems, so I had to put my foot down. The men controlled the video selection in the lounge on Mondays and Wednesdays. Pizza night was also K-drama free, but the women could vote on the selections. Of course, this meant the men usually lost the vote on pizza night, but we usually put up a good fight.

  Anyways, I made it to medical and Soo-jin patched me up, good as new. I had a bit of a headache, but I had whiskey for that. While she was taking care of my injuries, she updated me on the latest episodes of the various K-dramas they were all watching. It’s not like I was into them, or anything like that, but it helped me understand my crew better and I didn’t feel so lost when they were all talking about them when we’d get together for meals or drinks.

  Actually, this K-drama addiction was popular in the Terran system and throughout the Collective worlds that had contact with humans. I think Nancy was somehow involved in this entertainment phenomenon as an offshoot of her Rebellion business, and there was a lot of stream activity related to the fan clubs. You couldn’t go to a gathering on a main ship or Collective station where the topic didn’t come up. You had to just shake your head at the thought that this was what we humans were contributing to the galaxy. On top of it all, they were fucking reruns of shows from the twenty-first century!

  It wasn’t just K-dramas though. The Three Stooges were considered something quite special in the Collective. There were advanced studies in their learning centers that tore down the Stooges videos, frame by frame. They were convinced that hidden inside of these videos was the key to understanding the human condition. Nancy even got a few hundred humans to participate in one of her experiments where she would monitor the human subject’s reaction to the Stooges videos. Then she’d switch them to another non-Stooges video. The subject could switch back to the Stooges by hitting a button. It reminded me a lot of the tests on Earth where the mice were given one button for food and another button for cocaine, or something similar. We all know how those tests ended up.

  I know, I’ve gotten a little off topic here, but whenever I stop and think about things, things like this, I just can’t help but think, why bother? What was the point of this thing we called life if it all boiled down to was K-dramas and the Stooges? I mean, I signed up to be a spaceman and to me that meant adventure. I was sorely disappointed overall with this universe. I wanted to space-surf the corona of a red giant, travel at exactly the speed of light, take a selfie, and send it to Einstein back in his day. Instead, we spent most of our time arguing over who was really the evil mastermind, or who would end up shagging who, or, if Curly actually new the proper way to defend against Moe’s eye poke, why didn’t he? So today, although getting a glass smashed against your head doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, was actually one of my better days so far this year. I guess maybe there was something to all of that Stooges research. But today wasn’t over yet, and I had this feeling that a stupid plan couldn’t be far behind.

  I had Maria, Kelly, Huiliang, and Senri meet me in the Captain’s office. I invited Huiliang to join us since Maria had mentioned she was getting a bit bored with her normal duties, and, well, let’s not get started down another rabbit hole. The conversation started out with all of them asking about our new guest, and what had happened. Of course, this discussion pretty much went on without a word from me. A consensus was reached that I must have fucked up again. Once that was settled, I was allowed to speak. The first thing I did was activate the viewer and conferenced in Steve, Jackie, Roger, and Katie. I also used the comms to have security bring Trixy to my office.

  “Hey Roger, I went to meet with Froshjen. Well, as usual, it just opened another can of worms. I’m not even going to waste your time trying to explain our little meeting, instead I brought a guest for show and tell.”

  I signaled the two men working security to enter the room with my new friend.

  “There you are you fucking asshole. How dare you have your men treat me that way. When I get out of these—”

  “Shackle her to that chair guys.” I pointed to an empty seat at one end of my desk. “You didn’t happen to bring a muzzle with you, did you?”

  “Oh, Dad.” Maria got up and headed over to Trixy. “We don’t need the shackles.” She proceeded to electronically unlock the wristlets that were keeping Trixy’s hands bound together and stuck to her waist. They had totally stripped searched the crazy woman and dressed her up in an orange jumpsuit and sandals. “I’m his daughter Maria, and you must be Trixy.”

  “My condolences on your father’s impending death!” Trixy snarled with a bit of spittle to emphasize her point.

  “You guys did check her for cooties, didn’t you?” I asked the security team.

  Trixy lunged in my direction, but Maria stopped her. “Please, have a seat.” Maria gave her the universal open hand gesture signaling the chair was for her. “You’ll have to excuse my father, he can be a bit of an—”

  “ASSHOLE!” Trixy screamed out. Pretty much everyone else in attendance was just watching the little hell beast, waiting for whatever she was going to do next. I’m sure more than a few of them were placing bets over the private comm channels.

  “Well, yes.” Maria responded with a bit of a smile. “On his good days.”

  Roger, in his usual strictly business persona, refrained from laughing and asked, “So what is this all about, Guerin?”

  “I’ll let our guest, Trixy, try and explain it to everybody, Roger. Maybe someone will be able to tell me why I even bothered meeting with them today. By the way, she’s human, if you can believe that. Go ahead, granny.”

  Trixy was fuming, but Maria seemed to have her somewhat under control. I wasn’t too worried. I had a 45 strapped to the bottom of my desk. “As I was trying to tell this dick sponge, I know where the human Trogan agents are coming from, and I can take you there. For some reason, shit for brains over there, doesn’t’ think that it’s important.”

  “Guerin?” Roger was a bit confused. “You don’t think that’s important?” I probably should have been a little upset that there didn’t seem to be any question in Roger’s mind who she was referring to with that “shit for brains” comment, but I let it slide.

  “Well, you’ve just heard the teaser, Roger. Wait until you hear the entire sales pitch.”

  Roger looked towards Trixy. Don’t ask me to explain how a holoimage can tell where a person is located and look in the right direction. It’s just more incredibly boring math and trigonometry. Just accept it. “Ok, Trixy. Is there more to the story?”

  “I offered to tell cunt lips here where the human colony was located. In exchange, I just wanted some help rescuing a few of my family members.”

  “Are you telling us there is a human colony on some planet out here? How is that possible?”

  “It appears, Roger, that all those old stories of alien abductions might have a bit of truth to them, if you believe this psycho-bitch. According to her, the aliens have been taking a few samples here and there from Earth for centuries. When they’re done with them, they’ve been selling them off to the Trogans. For their part, the Trogans have been letting them breed while increasing their lifespans using their medical science. Now there are tens of thousands of these humans in this colony.”

  Roger didn’t appear to be phased by what I ha
d just said. “So, where is this planet, Trixy?”

  “It’s in Trogan space. If you agree to my terms, I’ll take you there.”

  “See, Roger. She doesn’t want to tell us unless we are stupid enough to try and go to a Trogan world and pull off some hair-brained rescue mission. I say we toss her loser ass back where I found her, and we can find this planet on our own. We don’t need her help.”

  “But it would save us a lot of time searching, Guerin.”

  “Well, if you or Steve want to take Grandma Crazy Horse here out on some stupid rescue mission, then be my guest. But I’m not about to do it.”

  “Why not, Guerin?”

  “Because, Roger. I mean, besides the good chance we could all get killed, I just don’t like or trust this crazy bitch.”

  “Dad, could you at least try and be polite?”

  “Me be polite. You have to be fucking kidding, Maria. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but granny has some serious issues. Hell, she tried to kill me.”

  “Well, Dad. It’s not like she’s the first woman you’ve met that’s tried to kill you. You should be a little less sensitive about that by now.”

  Ok, someone help me out here. Did I miss the part in my life where women trying to kill me became an everyday normal occurrence, like taking a dump? I think I had every right to be upset about the attempt on my life earlier in the day. Even if you were to ignore the assassination attempt, Trixy wasn’t exactly the type of person I’d call likeable. She was the first attractive woman I’d seen in a long time that I could honestly say I didn’t want to sleep with. So why would I want to be nice to this woman? I was just about to form my response to Maria when Roger spoke up.

  “Is that all you have for us, Trixy?” Roger asked.

  “Yes” Trixy nodded. “For now.”

  “How many people would you expect us to rescue if we were to accept your offer, Trixy?” I couldn’t believe Roger was even considering her offer. I gave his hologram a puzzled look.