by Guerin Zand
“I hadn’t really thought about that,” Roger had a puzzled look. “But perhaps yes, I’d like to review the layouts first. I’m not as familiar with the designs as Steve and Guerin are, so I’ll go over that with the two of them and get back to you. Can you still start the construction without that information?”
“We can do that. Just be aware that if you take too long making up your minds, it would affect the delivery schedule.”
“We should be able to get back to you fairly quickly on that,” Roger replied.
“If I might make one suggestion?”
I looked over at Julie. “What is it, Julie?”
“I know Roger said you should put recruitment off for now, but I have discussed this with others, and Cindy in particular. She is interested in joining your little endeavor and I would suggest you take her up on the offer. She is an experienced captain, which you could obviously use with four more ships in service, and she would bring with her a wealth of knowledge.”
“And it wouldn’t hurt for you to have another spy among us, right?” No matter what, I don’t think I could ever except any of Julie’s offers without a hint of suspicion.
“Come on, Guerin.” Roger threw me a little smirk. “She’s right. Besides, you and Cindy are friends. I don’t think you have to be so suspicious.”
I just rolled my eyes and said, “Fine.”
“But, while we're on that subject, I’d also like to make a suggestion.” Roger paused for a second. “I want to bring Diane and her family in on this as well.”
It had been a while since I saw Diane. Yes, she had finally got married and she had a pair of young twin girls that were a little younger than Gamma. I think they were about ten years old at the time. I’d purposefully been avoiding getting Diane involved. I wanted her to be able to enjoy her family. We owed her that much.
“She’s got a family now, Roger, and I’m not sure we shouldn’t just let her enjoy it. Maybe later on, when her kids have grown up.”
Katie jumped in to stop Roger from responding. “Guerin, you need to let go of all of that guilt. What happened to Tim wasn’t your fault. You are the only one that thinks you’re to blame, so why don’t you let us make Diane the offer and let her decide?”
“Because, Katie. You know damn well Diane would never turn down such an opportunity. The only question Diane would have is, when can she join us.”
“You’re probably right, Guerin, but she would never forgive you if you left her out of this.” Katie smiled with one of those “you know I’m right” smiles. Still I was hesitating. That’s when Julie jumped in.
“She wouldn’t have to move out here, Guerin, to be a part of all of this. She and her family could choose to live on any of our stations or main ships, even another Collective member’s homeworld.” I hadn’t considered that. “She and her family would be as safe as anywhere if that’s what you’re worried about. Also, her children would have access to our learning centers. I know you think that’s a good idea since you want to send Gamma off to one of our stations for her education.”
Ok, that was part of the reason I wanted to send Gamma off to the Collective station. The other reason was I didn’t even want to imagine what a terror that little girl was going to become once puberty kicked in, let alone live through it. She was already showing a little too much interest in some of the male members of the Ryvius’ crew.
“Ok, ok. Fine. Make the offer to Diane.” I threw my hands up in surrender. “Is there anyone else you folks want to recruit while we're not recruiting?”
“No,” Roger smiled. “But, as soon as we get done with the cloaking system for Desterio, I’d like to get our manufacturing center here started on five more of those lightning class shuttles. I see a small vessel like that being quite useful.”
“It might be best to send that task off to our Collective facilities as well, Roger.” Ok, Julie was actually trying to be helpful. Now I was really suspicious. “You’re manufacturing capacity here is somewhat limited and probably best used to help build up this facility.” Roger nodded to signal he agreed. “Just review the current design and make any changes you need. Then Guerin can send the design to me and I’ll handle it from there. We should be able to make delivery at the same time with the other cruiser models.”
Right, and this way she could add some hidden monitoring devices. The truth was, I wanted her to, so I would have a talk with her about that later. If we were going to keep these ships out of the hands of others, we’d need a way to track them and recall them if needed. These devices also had to remain a secret that only a few of us knew about.
“Ok. If we’re all done here, I’ve got a lot of work to get started on.” Roger turned off the mini-viewer he’d been using to take notes on. “Let’s get together tomorrow, Guerin and Steve, to go over the ship designs so we can get them out to Julie, ASAP. Then Steve can take me back to Earth, I’ll talk to Diane, and get started with Nancy working on her transition as the new Collective ambassador to Earth.”
We all got up and started heading off in different directions. I was heading up to my quarters with Maria and Julie was tagging along.
“Could I bother you for a ride out to Milly’s station, Guerin. I’d like to get working on those manufacturing schedules.” Julie looked at me differently than I ever remembered. I mean she wasn’t leering, smirking, or looking at me funny in any way. I think this look was what one might even refer to as sincere?
“Don’t you still owe me a little favor, Julie?” I was referring to the little talk I wanted her to have with Gamma about going off to school. “I have another idea, why don’t I have Maria take you, and Prima and Gamma can tag along?”
“What’s up, Dad? What are you thinking?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one to guess, Maria.” Julie grinned. “He wants me to have a talk with Gamma about coming out to one of the stations for her schooling. He’s thinking it would be best to do it where we could show her what’s available instead of just talking to her about it.”
“Yea, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, Dad. I hope you aren’t expecting me to just abandon her there though.” What a little shit my eldest daughter had grown up to be. How could she believe I would have considered anything like that.
“I’m hurt you’d even think I would suggest something like that, Maria.” She simply raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I was just thinking you could take Prima as well and make it a girls-only outing. I thought you would all enjoy that. You can take the Deviant.”
“What about Scirla?” Maria asked.
“You can ask her if she wants to join you. I just suggested Prima because she’s not overly enthusiastic about Gamma leaving. I figure if you can get Gamma excited about going off to school, it would help if Prima knew it would make her happy.”
“So, you just want us to do your dirty work for you, right?” It hurt that my own daughter trusted me about as much as I trusted Julie.
“No. I just think maybe you two could do a better job of convincing them that it was the best thing for Gamma.”
◆◆◆
It had been almost a few months since Prima, Scirla, and my daughters had left for Milly’s station. I hadn’t expected them to stay away for so long, but perhaps that was a good sign. As long as they were enjoying themselves, I guess I really didn’t care. I hadn’t bothered to give Maria any specific instructions as to how long they should stay on the station, nor did I tell her to come straight back when they were done there. What was the point? It was obvious that anything I told my daughter not to do, she was going to do anyway. I figured if I didn’t give her any specific instructions, she’d have to figure out what would annoy me most without any help from me. When they left, the only thing I said was, “Be safe and have fun.” How do you rebel against that?
Meanwhile, back on Hell, I still had Heesa in custody. Roger, Katie, Steve, and the crew of Discovery had all left. The fembots continued their work manufacturing the cloaking system for Des
terio. The crew of the Ryvius were keeping busy exploring our new home. I felt sort of bad for keeping Heesa locked up for so long, so I started to take him with me and Alpha on our morning walks. I would occasionally let him out to join the crew for dinner. I was a really terrible jailer and it sure wasn’t a job I’d ever volunteer for. This also gave Kelly a little break from her punishment of being responsible for Heesa while he was in our custody. If Prima had been around, I would never have let Heesa out. A large part of Kelly’s responsibility had been to make sure Prima didn’t try and get to Heesa and extract a little revenge of her own.
I have to say, some of the conversations with Heesa were quite interesting. I know that sounds weird, but a lot of people enjoy watching the docu-vids about mass killers and evil doers from days past. Imagine if you had Hitler or Stalin as your prisoner, and you could have long talks with them about why they did the things they did. Of course, most of their side of the conversation would be justifying their acts, and Heesa was no different. He pretty much blamed most of his actions on the Collective and the need to rid his world of their influence. Some of what he said I could sympathize with, but I never felt like becoming the emperor of the Terran system and taking over the rest of the galaxy.
If you take a look at the history of emperors on Earth, especially when Rome was in its prime, you will find being emperor was a good way to ensure an early and most likely unpleasant demise. Almost all the Roman emperors were murdered, and many of them by their own family members, quite often their wives and children. Even the ones that were said to have died from natural causes were most likely poisoned. Back in those days, it was impossible to tell the difference in most cases. Of course, the only way to guard against this was to kill off those family members before they killed you, which was why paranoia was also a very common trait amongst emperors.
Sure, being emperor might be fun in the beginning. I guess that was what made it so tempting to some, but sooner or later you’d realize it was a curse, and the only way out was your death. So, you have to ask yourself, who the hell would want that job? Not me, that was for sure. And somewhere, in your spare time, when not avoiding assassination attempts, slaughtering innocents, boffing your sex slaves, and the paranoia, you still had to rule and manage the empire. Which was something I had no desire to do either. Maybe that’s why the Collective chose me. They knew I was simply too lazy to try and conquer the galaxy.
At least on Earth, and in many other worlds, the idea of a single powerful ruler, be it an emperor, monarch, or dictator, faded into the past history of politics. Most political systems were now just that, systems. There wasn’t a lot to be gained by killing the top dog. The next leader would be a member of that same system and chosen by some process that the system had in place. The policies that may have inspired the assassination of the previous leader would still exist. Sure, you had to work your way up the system, and your stay at top was generally only a temporary position, but you still got to slaughter a few innocents, boff your sex slaves, and all the other fun stuff that emperors did. Although you would only remain at the top for a short time, at least you left office still breathing and you didn’t have the rest of your life consumed with paranoia. Assassinating a previous top dog had no real benefit to the assassin whatsoever and was pretty much unheard of. Yes, these political systems let the politicians have their cake and eat it too.
What I realized after all of our little talks was Heesa really had no choice anymore. Once he started down that path, that was that. He was a prisoner to that life and you can’t blame someone who simply does what they have to do to keep living. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making excuses for his actions. Generally, this type of person was a sociopath to start with, and although that may or may not be their fault, it doesn’t make them immune from having to answer for their actions. You can’t blame a mad dog for being mad, but you still put it down.
Now Heesa was obviously not an idiot. He avoided being killed by a family member by not having any family. As far as assassinations, well, he had his clone farms set up to pop out a new Heesa, basically a dead man’s switch of sorts. He got me with that one. I sure as hell didn’t see that coming. There was no telling where, or how many of these secret clone facilities he had in Trogan space, and maybe even outside of it. Killing him again would have been a big waste of time. So I had decided that I would simply return Heesa back to Trogan. I didn’t tell Heesa that. His not knowing probably made his incarceration worse. I just had to wait until after we carried out our plans for Desterio to return him back home. I had already let it slip in our first conversation that we were going to take the planet. Releasing him before we carried out our plan would have just made our job harder.
Chapter 12
Stealing Desterio
The fembots informed me that the cloaking system for Desterio would be ready by the end of the current week. Still, the rest of my family had not returned from Milly’s station, so the Ryvius and her crew would have to leave without them. The job of deploying this system was more than we could handle with our one ship. We were going to need the Discovery and three of our cargo ships to transport the platforms into Trogan space. During the deployment of the platforms, the cargo ships would be vulnerable, and it was going to be up to the Ryvius and Discovery to keep them safe. Once the platforms were deployed, we could engage the cloak while our two cruisers deployed the network of over two hundred sensors to monitor the interior and exterior of the cloaked region of space. We needed the exterior sensors to provide an early warning of any ships that may be approaching Desterio. The interior sensors would not be able to accurately monitor the outer region through the effects of the warped space that cloaked the planet.
While the manufacturing facility was finishing the construction of the system, I called in the Discovery and had it escort the three cargo ships into the Vaj system. As soon as all the ships were assembled in the staging area I had designated in the spaceport, the labor bots began preparing the ships to deploy the system and then they began loading the different components. We couldn’t just drop the sensors out of the back of our ships, so the bots assembled a deployment system that was tied into the ship’s navigation control logic. It would pilot the ships while automatically deploying the sensors in the correct locations.
Deploying the platforms was going to be, for the most part, a manual operation. This meant we had to walk the cargo crews through the mission until they all knew their parts in the operation. The cargo teams in charge of deploying the platforms were going to have to perform EVA missions to get the task done. We could use our gravity drives to toss asteroids around, sure, but that didn’t require a lot of precision. The fact that these super-smart aliens hadn’t ever heard of a tractor beam came as no surprise to me. I found them lacking in many ways. Placement of the platforms had to be precise, and there would be some assembly required. The main body of the platform would fit easily in the cargo ships, but the deployed platform had large collector and reflector panels. That made it impossible to fit the fully assembled platforms in any ship we had access to. Assembly of a platform would take almost an hour. We were going to deploy all three platforms simultaneously to limit the time the cargo ships would be exposed. Before we sent them in though, the Discovery would portal in to take a quick look around. I assigned a fembot to each ship to help synchronize our efforts and help oversee the system deployment.
One morning I was going to the staging area to check on the loading efforts. As I approached the area I heard Keith Abbott, the Discovery’s cargo master, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Fuck you, you fucking automated twat!”
He was directing his anger at Sabrina, the fembot I had assigned to his ship. It took me a while to reach the two of them. The whole time Keith continued to curse at the fembot, and most if it made no sense. He just seemed to be chaining together every piece of filthy language he’d ever learned in a somewhat random fashion. I won’t bother to spell it all out for you, that’s what
your imagination is for.
“Keith, enough!” Even my crusty old sensibilities were offended by some of the words he’d been using. “What seems to be the problem here?”
Keith looked at me and pointed at Sabrina. “This whore of a toaster is telling me I can’t load these packages the way I want to. She’s trying to tell me that she’s in charge of loading and deploying the cargo on MY ship!”
Ok, I guess I should probably tell you that Keith was British. An ex-SAS officer back in his Earth-dwelling days. Now, I usually try and avoid stereotyping groups of people, but the British are an exception. They had to be one of the most annoying and arrogant species in the universe, even rivaling the Bree. I know what you’re thinking. “Aren’t the French just as arrogant?” The answer is yes, but they’re not quite as annoying, well, unless you count the way they smell. I refused to have a Brit on my crew. Besides the annoying and arrogant bit, their food, for the most part, sucked.
Now I wasn’t the only one who had these opinions about the Brits. Quite a few of the Collective races agreed with me on this subject. For centuries the Collective visitors to Earth would go out of their way to fuck with the British. They loved pulling crazy pranks on them like making crop circles with some of the most intricate patterns ever seen. The best prank of all, the one that still kept them all in stitches, was that Stonehenge prank. Still to this day the Brits argue about its true meaning and significance.
I’ll let you all in on a little secret, just don’t tell any of your British friends. Stonehenge has no more significance than a sandcastle built by a bunch of kids on a beach. That’s because in essence, that’s what it was. A few families decided to take their children down to an isolated area in the British countryside, to teach them the basics of using Collective gravity technology in construction. I mean, look at it. It’s a collection of large rock blocks arranged in a circle. For Pete’s sake! Any parent has seen their child build something very similar with a set of toy building blocks. For some reason, only the Brits could never see the similarity. As the children grew older, they moved on to Egypt and built the pyramids, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.