Deja Vu

by Guerin Zand

  I slammed down my drink and poured myself another. “Is that why you want to take over Earth? You want our whiskey too?”

  Heesa chuckled and washed down his laughter with the rest of the whiskey in his glass. He put his empty glass back down and I poured him another. “You still don’t get it, human, do you?”

  “And what is it I still don’t get, Heesa?”

  “I’ve been where you are, and I was tempted by all of the power the Collective had to offer me. But it’s all just their way of controlling us, don’t you see that?” Heesa had quickly switched into full-on sales mode. “They don’t want the Terrans and Trogans working together. That would be the worst scenario for them. If we formed an alliance, the Collective would be relegated to the sidelines as nothing more than mere observers.” Heesa took another sip of his drink. “I tried to explain this to you when we first met, but they’d obviously, well, let’s just say I was right wasn’t I?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Heesa.” I remained expressionless as my interrogation of my prisoner continued.

  “You were involved with one of their women, weren’t you?” Heesa slid his empty glass in my direction and I refilled it.

  “Yes, for a time. I don’t see what that has to do with anything you were talking about.”

  “Oh please, Guerin. You’re not that stupid. You wouldn’t have made it this far if you were. By having you form an emotional attachment to a member of the Collective, it made you predisposed to feel empathy for them. Just look at how you reacted at our first meeting. You can’t tell me that you came to that meeting with a truly open mind. Of course not. When we met, I’m sure that the Collective had already let slip just enough information for you to not trust me. Am I wrong?”

  He was good, but it’s what I expected from all the aliens I had met so far. Sure, there was just enough truth in his story to make it believable, but that was all. That little sprinkle of truth was going to be used to mask the giant load of bullshit he was peddling. I simply shrugged as if to say, “I don’t know.”

  “I know,” Heesa continued with his sales pitch. “It’s hard to admit when we’re being used. Hell, the same thing happened to me. I don’t suppose Julie told you about us, did she?” I shook my head no. “Who do you think recruited me? Who do you think it was that they used to form that emotional attachment to the Collective with me when I first met them? It was Julie, and let me tell you, she was very good at her job as I’m sure your recruiter was.” Heesa flashed me one of his sick little pervert smiles.

  Ok, I sort of knew this about Julie and Heesa, although Julie had never outright admitted to it. Heesa was also treading on very dangerous ground once again, as he had done at our first meeting, but I forced myself to refrain from taking the bait this time.

  “Oh, yes. Julie was very good at her job, but once I started to disagree with her wishes, all of that changed. I was soon cut off from Collective technology and their support. My world was very much like Earth back then. We had various factions ready to bring our home planet to the brink of extinction. That was their plan you know. If their assimilation attempts fail, they leave the world on the brink of chaos and the problem takes care of itself. Didn’t their interference on Earth bring your nations even closer to the brink of a nuclear war?”

  “Perhaps.” I took a sip of my whiskey. “But it was your interference on Earth that was the match that lit the fire.”

  “I’ll admit, that from your point of view, it may have appeared that way, but trust me, I was trying to help Earth rid itself of the Collective’s influence.” Heesa raised both his hands to his shoulders to emphasize his self-proclaimed innocence in the events on Earth. “Unfortunately, you were so in the Collective’s pocket, you couldn’t see what was right in front of you.”

  “And exactly what was I missing, Heesa?”

  “Are the Collective not now in control of the development on Earth, the entire Terran system? Aren’t they now pulling all the strings, including yours?”

  “No one is pulling my strings, Heesa. I’ve pissed off Julie more than a few times, and I’m still here. I’ve broken more of their rules than I can count, and still I haven’t seen this vengeful Collective you’ve been describing.”

  “But you’ve never crossed your recruiter, have you?” Heesa grinned. I started to wonder just how good his intelligence on what happened in the Collective actually was. It was true, Milly and I had never had a big argument over anything she asked of me, but most of the time it was Julie who was trying to yank my chain, not Milly.

  “Come on, Guerin. We both know that if Milly asked you to jump, your only question would be ‘how high?’” Heesa continued to grin as he believed I was falling for this load of utter bullshit.

  “The problem with your little story, Heesa, is that Milly has never asked me to jump. It’s usually Julie who tries to get me to do her bidding, and I mostly refuse unless it benefits me in some way. I would truly have to be as dumb as you must think I am to not see that the Collective is trying to manipulate me. Probably the real difference between the two of us is I saw their manipulations for what they were at the very beginning, whereas you didn’t.” I finished my drink and put the cork back into the bottle.

  “You see, Heesa. Even though you spin a good tale, you can’t hide the fact that you are what you are. Even if we ignore your ongoing slave trade, it’s kind of hard not to notice your killing of innocents or the extermination of the inhabitants of entire planets.”

  “You may see my methods as harsh, but I am up against the Collective. Their influence is like a cancer and you can’t treat a cancer. You have to cut it out before the cancer spreads.” I stood up and grabbed the bottle and two empty glasses. “So, what now, Guerin? Do you plan to kill me again?”

  “I don’t like repeating myself, Heesa, so no, I won’t be killing you this time. That doesn’t mean that someone else won’t come up with that idea on their own. I could simply give you over to the ASTN authorities and let them handle it.”

  “And if they kill me, I’ll be back again. So what would be the point in that?” He was right and I had given that some thought.

  “Well, just how long after you go missing will your people wait before thawing out the next version? Perhaps we just keep hold of you until that happens, and then return you. It would cause a lot of problems for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, in the short term, but in the end, I will still be ruling the empire.”

  “That may be, but for the time being, I think we’ll just take Desterio off your hands.” I grinned back at Heesa.

  “You're just going to take the planet?” Heesa looked at me like I was bluffing. “You don’t expect me to believe that the Collective has given you the technology, or that you have the troops to take and hold the entire planet.”

  “Come on, Heesa. The only thing on that planet is a small colony of humans and a few Trogan troops. Once we remove the planet from Trogan space, they’ll be cut off and it will be easy pickings.”

  Now I was bluffing, in part. I wanted Heesa to believe that we were planning on moving the planet. He had no idea we could simply hide the planet from him, and I didn’t want him to know that. Once the planet disappeared, he would think we had moved it and hopefully would not spend too much time looking into the alternatives.

  “Hah! Now I know you’re lying. The Collective would never allow you that kind of power.” Heesa laughed.

  “If it makes you feel better believing that, Heesa, then fine. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s if you live long enough to see it happen.” I walked over to the door and it opened. I turned back around and looked at Heesa. “But if you’d like, I can send my comm officer down here to open a channel to your troops. You might want to warn your people to stay away if you don’t want to lose any more ships.”

  I left the room. I figured I’d let Heesa chew on that for a while. The plan was to leave the Discovery to cover Destetrio for the time being. It wasn’t part of my original p
lan, but my daughters and their friends had screwed that up. This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission and no one was supposed to know we had been here.

  The team had diverted over a hundred Trogan ships from reaching Desterio and the space was clear for now. Now that we had made our presence known, I’m sure they’d be trying to reinforce their troops on the planet. With all of the ships they’d sent previously now out of the game on the other side of Trogan space, they’d be a little more cautious before sending more. Hopefully, that would last until we could deploy the cloaking system, if we still went ahead with the original plan. I wasn’t sure at the time if it still made any sense to do that, and I still hadn’t figured out what to do with our guest. Until we decided what to do, the Discovery would prevent any more Trogan ships from reaching the planet.

  ◆◆◆

  The Ryvius returned to Hell and we swapped out the fembots for the rest of our crew, the former crew of the Deviant. I had contacted Roger and Steve to figure out what to do about Desterio. Roger convinced us both that we should still go ahead with our original plan to cloak the planet if we could. From his point of view, he thought that even if we didn’t do anything else with the planet, the psyops benefit from having them think we could move a planet was worth it. He also suggested that if we were to simply return Heesa to the Trogan homeworld, that would be of further benefit since I had told him what we planned to do. Roger was convinced if the Trogan’s thought we had access to that sort of Collective technology, they would definitely think long and hard before they messed with us again. Of course, the only problem with Roger’s thinking was that he assumed the Trogans would behave rationally. Typically, wars are started by people who don’t think rationally if you asked me.

  What we had determined was that the colony on Desterio was entirely self-sufficient. The planet itself would rate about an seven on a scale of zero to ten for a Class M planet. Gravity was a bit light for humans, at about seventy percent Earth normal, but that put it about perfect for a Trogan. It was an arid planet for the most part, except for the areas around the tropical zones like where the colony was located. It was around forty percent water to sixty percent land, and a lot of that water was frozen at the poles. The area around the colony was perfect for growing crops and raising animals. Outside of the colony was the one and only spaceport on the planet.

  I wondered why the Trogans were not making more use of the planet. Maria thought that it was possible that this was like one of those special training camps we used to hear about during the Cold War. You know the ones that supposedly existed in Russia where they recreated an American town to train their teams to blend in. Maria thought it appeared that was what they were doing in the colony. Providing an environment very much like one that would exist on Earth so their agents would learn to fit into the crowds when they were deployed. Not all of them were agents though. The majority of the humans on the planet were just background and window dressing. The problem was, there was no way to tell which were which.

  Once we had the regular crew back onboard the Ryvius, we loaded up Seca and her husband to return them to the Earth ship. Sure, I could have just taken them back using the Deviant, but at this point I wasn’t letting any of the crew out of my sight. I instructed the fembots to go full speed with the construction of the security/cloaking system for Desterio now that we had all the data we needed. While we were still sitting at the spaceport on Hell, I called my two daughters, Senri, and Kelly to meet me in my office. We were all going to have a little talk.

  They were all seated across my desk when I entered the room. Before any of them could say a word I raised my hand to silence them. I went over to my youngest daughter and stared sternly into her eyes. She looked down at her hands that were folded on her lap.

  “YOU, young lady. If I catch you hanging out with any of these ne’er-do-wells again I will plant my boot so far up your backside you’ll have problems breathing. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Papa,” she said in a hushed and meek tone. Still, her eyes remained staring at her hands.

  “Now go. Your mother wants to have a few words with you, and I don’t think she’s going to be as nice as I just was.”

  Gamma looked up at me and gulped. She knew Prima was not happy about what happened on Desterio, and I was probably right, Prima was not going to be nice about it. As her father, it was my job to put the fear of God into her. It was her mother’s job to make her pray to God for forgiveness.

  When Gamma left, I walked in front to the three other conspirators and I leaned back on the front of my desk. “So, exactly which one of you three is responsible for turning my sweet little innocent daughter into fucking TANK GIRL?”

  They all three exchanged glances and slowly they each raised their hand to shoulder height. It was like a scene from that old Earth video, Mean Girls, where the three were called into the principal’s office.

  “What the hell were the three of you thinking? You just gave her a gun and brought her down to a hostile planet? That seemed like a good idea to all of you?”

  Senri started to say something and I shut her down. “Not a fucking word, Senri. You’ll be lucky if I don’t dump your sad ass on Desterio, permanently.”

  “It’s not our fault, Dad.”

  I went a little bug-eyed as I turned my attention to my eldest daughter. “Oh, so it was all Gamma’s fault, was it, Maria?”

  “Well, sort of?”

  “Oh, this is going to be good.” I stared back at Maria with anticipation. “I’m dying to hear how Gamma engineered this colossal cluster-fuck!”

  “Your sweet little daughter isn’t as innocent as you like to believe.” Maria was reminding me a lot of myself as a child. Like when I’d try and stick the blame for whatever bullshit I had just pulled on my other brothers when I got caught by my parents. “She’s been training with the crew for a while now, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer when we tried to stop her.”

  “Wait a minute. Gamma has been training with the crew? Since when?” This was the first I heard about any of this. It was kind of hard to believe what they were saying considering I still had to tell Gamma bedtime stories, or play guitar for her at night before she would go to sleep.

  “Well, for the past few years. Ever since we got back from Taes.”

  “And how is it that I never knew about this?” I don’t know why I was letting Maria even try to talk her way out of the ass-kicking she had coming. I guess I just wanted to see how far they were going to take this little story of theirs.

  “If you’d bother to come to any of the team training sessions, Dad, you would have known.” I should have seen that one coming. Of course it was my fault.

  “And I guess the three of you, and the rest of the crew, were just so busy that it slipped your mind and you all forgot to tell me?”

  The other two seemed happy to let Maria do all of the talking as they both looked to her for the answer to that question. “Well, she’s not normal, Dad. She has some sort of mutant powers that make us do what she wants, even if we know we shouldn’t.”

  I started laughing out loud. That one I definitely didn’t see coming. “So, let me see if I have this right. Gamma has mutant powers that let her mind-fuck the rest of you into doing whatever she wants. Is that what you’re going with?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, Dad.”

  “Oh no, not really, Maria. I mean, no crazier than you actually thinking I’d believe this load of horse shit!”

  “Just think about it for a second, Dad. She manipulates you all the time without you ever knowing it.”

  “That’s what daughters do, Maria. You of all people should know that. It’s not like I can’t tell when either one of you are doing it. It’s just sometimes, as a father, I decide to let you get away with it. Besides, I don’t think you have a lot of room to be calling your little sister a mutant, now do you?”

  “I wasn’t genetically engineered and grown in a test tube. Who knows what strange shit is in her genes.
”

  “Well, you may not have been grown in a test tube, but there was obviously a little genetic engineering done behind the scenes. Where do you think your Julieness comes from?”

  “Ok, but how do you explain her getting Mary Ann to build her that gun?” I just shrugged my shoulders. “Your lady friends won’t do anything for any of us without your approval, so exactly how did Gamma talk her into making that gun for her?” Maria crossed her arms and looked directly at me, like she had me with that one.

  “Who knows, Maria, but I doubt very much she mind-fucked a fembot into doing her bidding.” I simply rolled my eyes at all three of them. “If we’re all done with the fairy tales, let’s talk about you three, and your parts in this little fuck up.” Maria lowered her eyes in defeat. “As I was saying, before storytime, what the fuck were you ladies thinking? Exactly what happened to that psycho-bitch Trixy that I told you to keep an eye on?”

  Kelly figured she’d take that one and give Maria a breather. “When the shit hit the fan, she must have sneaked off. Things got a little hectic and we lost track of her.”

  “Which might be why I told you to keep an eye on her, Kelly. What would have stopped her from shooting you all in the back when you were to busy to watch her?” Kelly just dropped her head. She knew I was right and they’d fucked up. “I need people I can trust to do what they’re told, not everyone doing whatever strikes their fancy. I’m disappointed in you most of all, Kelly. You know how crucial maintaining discipline is. Now, thanks to you three, we had to leave the Discovery in orbit around Desterio to try and stop the Trogans from reinforcing their men on the ground. You just made carrying out our plans that much more difficult. We may have to abandon the whole thing if we can’t salvage the mess you left for us.”

  “It’s not their fault, Dad. I was in command, and I made the decision to go down and check things out. Kelly and Senri were only following my orders.” Maria was done being silent and was trying to protect her cohorts.