by Guerin Zand
“That would be nice, Roger, but we don’t have the people to either run such a mining operation or operate a plant that big.”
“I agree, Guerin, but at some point, hopefully we will. The entire personnel issue still has to be worked out. I was thinking about bringing David Nordman over to help out with that. He did a really good job of getting the Trinix office up and running, and he’s been coordinating all the activities among the various Ranger outposts.”
“That sounds fine, but do you have someone to replace him in his current role?”
“Yes. I had suggested Sheila Dawson, his assistant, but David wants to bring her along. He said his second in charge, Mark Palmer, was up to the task, so that’s the current plan. Before you say anything, yes, we know we are going to have to shift some other people around in their current assignments to make it all work. We were thinking we could start recruiting from the list of Ranger candidates that decided to take other positions in the Collective. They might also be able to recruit a few Collective members they know to join them as well.”
“It sounds like you have it all under control.” I guess the tone I used sort of gave away my mood.
“What’s with you, Guerin?” Katie asked. “It’s not like you really want to be involved with all the boring details.”
“I know, but I sort of like this place the way it is. I kind of started to think of it as a place where I could hide out and get away from everything. Now, with all of these plans, it’s probably not really going to be that for much longer. Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s something more to my visit to Earth than I’ve been told. You know how I hate Julie’s little surprises.”
“It wasn’t Julie’s idea that you go to Earth. Nancy requested you.”
“Sure, Maria, but you know as well as I do, Julie is behind everything in some way or another.”
“Now you’re just being paranoid, Dad.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I really don’t understand why everyone thinks I’m paranoid when I’m usually right.”
“Ok, I’ll bite, Guerin.” Roger paused to take a sip of his coffee and then grinned. “What do you think she’s up to this time.”
“I haven’t got a clue, which is probably what makes me even more paranoid I guess. You have to agree though, sending me to Earth for a simple security issue seems a bit much. Let’s not forget her giving us this planet, access to their technology, building our ships, and sending a construction ship here. Am I the only one here who gets a really bad feeling when Julie is being nice? And she’s been way to nice. Whatever it is she’s up to, I’m sure I’m not going to like it.”
Everyone there thought that was funny, even Gamma and Alpha, and they all had a good laugh. Ok, all the other stunts Julie had pulled over the years seemed funny and made for some good stories, but that’s because I was usually the one that was the target of her bullshit. I wished that just once, someone else was Julie’s target, so I could have a good laugh myself.
“Everyone knows that Julie is not one to let me go unpunished for one of my stunts, and I got her good with my little visit to Taes. All this being nice to me is just her setting me up for the big fuck job to come. Call me paranoid if you will, but are any of you willing to wager I’m wrong?”
The dining room fell silent.
◆◆◆
We had just dropped Prima, Gamma, and Alpha off and were heading out of the controlled space around Milly’s station. We got clearance from the station control to engage our portal drive and Mia opened the door to Earth.
When we emerged on the other side, I knew something was wrong immediately. We were not anywhere near Earth, or any other part of the Terran system. It was obvious from just looking out at the space around us. My sphincter puckered as I realized that I was about to be fucked.
“What happened, Mia? Where’s Earth?”
“I don’t know, Guerin. All systems are reporting nominal, yet we’re several parsecs from where the portal should have brought us. My only conclusion is that something outside of our own ship affected the portal mechanics or—”
“Someone hijacked our portal?”
“That, or we entered another portal opened by someone else as we exited.”
Well, whatever happened, it was something only a race as advanced as the Collective races could have pulled off. We hadn’t enabled the star drive before transiting the portal. We didn’t have any reason to hide ourselves, or so I had thought. I immediately interfaced with the ship controls to activate the drive, but nothing happened.
“There is a large ship a little over a half-million kilometers directly ahead of us, Guerin.” Phoebe brought the view up in front of me from her station. “And they are…no, we are heading directly towards them.”
I tried to use the ship’s normal space drive to stop the Deviant from closing on the unknown ship, but once again the ship appeared not to respond to my commands.
“Why are the ship controls offline. I am getting nothing from the star drive or the gravity engines. I can’t stop us from closing on that ship.”
“It appears we are in some sort of nullification field. The controls are sending the commands to the engines, but the ship’s main power plant is not responding to any requests from the ship’s drives. The power output is at the minimum required to maintain containment and basic ship services. It is like the ship has been put into shutdown mode, like what happens when we dock with a Collective ship or station.”
“Fucking Julie!” Oh yea, boys and girls. It was time to grab your tube of Vaseline. “Do we have anything on this ship were heading towards?”
“We have no records of a ship of this type. It is massive though. It appears to be over one thousand kilometers in diameter with a maximum height in the center of about one hundred kilometers.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Phoebe just looked at me with a dumb expression. I didn’t have time to explain. “What else?”
“Its shape matches that of what you call a Bree main ship, but it’s almost ten times the size of the one you know as the Earth ship. From the records available, I can’t find any known Bree ship that comes close to this in size.”
“What about other ships in the area?”
“There are no other ships in the area,” Mia responded. “There does appear to be almost a thousand smaller ships in what I assume are the ships docking bays. Several appear to be identical to the Bree shuttles. The energy emissions of the main ship appear similar in characteristic to the Bree main ships, just at much higher levels.”
“So, it is a Bree design?”
“That seems a logical assumption.”
“Then they must be using the same method to auto-pilot our ship that the Bree use to bring us in for docking. Disable the auto-pilot control link.”
“I did, as soon as we suspected the ship to be of Bree design. We’re still being pulled in by some other force. I am reading some gravitational disturbances emanating from that ship that appear to be what is pulling us towards them.”
“A fucking tractor beam! How come they get a tractor beam and I don’t?” The two ladies gave me a strange look. “Never mind. Figure out how to override whatever it is that’s stopping our engines from getting power. If that ship is a Bree design, they have to be using something we can counter. Keep the star drive offline, perhaps they don’t know about that and it could be an ace in our back pocket.”
“And what if we can’t counter the effect, Guerin?”
“Then I guess we’re going to be docking with that ship. If that happens, I need you two to stay onboard and keep working the problem. If we’re lucky, they won’t detect the two of you as anything more than some unusual machinery. You two take your stations and try not to move. Hopefully that will help you to avoid being detected.”
“What are you going to do, Guerin?” Phoebe asked.
“I’m going to take a nap. I’m probably going to need to be rested up for when I meet our new friends.”
◆◆◆
Phoebe called me over the ships comm system to wake me up several hours later. “Guerin, it appears we will be docking with the unknown ship shortly.”
“Thanks, Phoebe. I’ll be on the bridge in a few minutes.”
I decided to take a quick shower and change into some clean clothes before joining my crewmates. I hadn’t brought a lot with me since it was only supposed to be a short trip. The Deviant did have the ability to make clothing, but its manufacturing capabilities were very limited, and it would have taken too much time. I went with my standard t-shirt, cargo shorts, flip-flops, bathrobe, and gun belt with my trusty 45. The 45 probably wasn’t going to be of much help, but in situations like this I felt naked without it. This was the first time in all of my space travels that a race had used superior technology to waylay one of my ships. I wasn’t going to go down like some pussy.
I entered the bridge to see we were already in the unknown ship’s spaceport. The Deviant was being guided to a docking area where a few people were standing around. A greeting party, obviously, since the rest of the spaceport seemed void of any other activity at the time. I assumed these people generally left this ship in a specific area for a long stay, just like the Bree did with their main ships. While actually traveling, the ship’s normal everyday port activities would be put on hold.
“Any progress on figuring out how they are controlling our ship’s functions?”
“We’re still working the issue, Guerin, but Phoebe and I think that they may have bypassed the auto-control main system link when they found that was not working. Instead, they may have linked to the individual controllers on the ship’s systems directly.”
“What do you mean?”
“The auto-control system has an external link used to give the spaceport controllers an override to the bridge controls. The auto-control unit takes the commands from the external link and translates them. Then it sends the appropriate internal control signals to perform whatever maneuver is being commanded.”
“So, they hacked our internal system links?”
“That’s what we think. We could reconfigure all of the ship’s systems to change the command protocols to be more secure, but that will take time. There are a lot of systems involved. That means we have to reconfigure all the bridge interfaces as well.”
“How long do you think that would take, Mia?”
“Several hours at least. Even if we do that, there is no guarantee they won’t be able to hack those new protocols eventually. We may only get one shot at it before they figure out what happened and how to counter it.”
“Do it. I’ll take one shot if that’s all we can get. It’s better than sitting around with our thumbs up our asses.” Both girls gave me that dumb fembot look. At least they didn’t twist back and forth, waving their arms up and down, while saying, “It does not compute.”
Once the ship was docked, I proceeded to secure all the outer access hatches using a manual lockout. I was going to exit via the loading ramp. Once I was out, I would secure the door from the outside, then Phoebe would engage the manual locks to prevent anyone from entering the ship other than me. I was sure that these aliens could probably cut into the ship, but hopefully the girls would have worked out the system problems before they got to that point.
I didn’t have a good plan, but I did have a plan. If I could keep these aliens busy long enough for the girls to finish getting control of the ship’s systems, then hopefully they could make a clean getaway using the star drive and go for help. At least they could let the others know what happened. Engaging the star drive inside of the spaceport was risky, I mean, no one had ever been stupid enough to try that. Hopefully, it was most risky to those outside of the ship, and not too risky for the ship and its crew. Phoebe and Mia argued that leaving me was counter to their directive to protect me. I explained that the only hope we had was to get help, so it was there only way to protect me. Besides, it might not work, and we could all end up dead. In that case, it really wouldn’t matter.
As I walked down the loading ramp at the rear of the ship I saw three human-looking males standing there waiting. They were dressed in what I could only describe as some sort of monk’s cassock in a God-awful shade of fuchsia. It reminded me a lot of some of the robes worn by the Catholic clergy back on Earth. I sure hoped there weren’t any nuns around. I reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped on to the deck of the spaceport. I signaled over my internal comm link for the ramp to close. As I did that, it occurred to me that our friends could probably hack that link as well. I sent a message over the comm link to Mia to change the command protocols to the entire ship, and not just those used by the auto control system. I’d feel like a real idiot if the girls plan worked, only to have the bathroom systems hacked and have the ship flooded with unprocessed sewage. To avoid them spoofing our private comm network, we had worked out a protocol to verify our identities.
One of the monks approached me and said, “Our leader is waiting for you. If you would follow us.”
“Sure. Take me to your leader.” I know, I know, but I just couldn’t resist saying that.
While this giant ship was very similar to the Bree main ships, the size of it required us to use a transport pad to take us to the center of the spaceport. There we entered a car that reminded me of those used in the tube systems on one of the Bree stations. Again, the size of this ship dictated an entirely different layout than what I was familiar with on the Earth ship. Each side of the ship, the upper and lower halves if you want to think of it that way, were divided into what appeared to be about twenty different levels. The tube system was just a smaller version of the massive systems used on the Bree Dyson spheres. The layout of the ship was more like one of those stations, and not one of their main ships. I guess it made sense. It was obvious I was dealing with some faction of Bree that I’d never heard of. That really didn’t surprise me. The Bree normally didn’t provide information that you didn’t specifically ask for.
It took us a while to reach our destination. My companions weren’t very talkative, and I figured I wouldn’t waste my breath on the underlings. I was saving all my good material for the big muckety-muck anyways. As I could have guessed, the big dog lived at the top of this little city in a very elaborate penthouse. It made Julie’s digs look pretty common in comparison. Whatever Bree faction this was, they were still apparently a bunch of arrogant fucks. The three stooges left me in a large room. It must have been a reception hall or something. They said their leader would be with me shortly. Just like a Bree to make me wait after all of the bullshit they put me through.
A few minutes later, a tall man entered the room. He was dressed in a rather colorful cassock, it reminded me a bit of a dashiki with its colorful and elaborate design. He had long grey hair tied back, get ready for this, in a fucking man-bun, and he wore this large gold medallion on a chain around his neck. He looked like a cross between Jerry Garcia and that rapper from the old twentieth-century rap group Public Enemy, Flavor Flav. In other words, what I saw was truly disturbing. This group must have departed from the Bree evolutionary tree at some point. I got the feeling I was dealing with the ones that might have lived in a trailer park, or the equivalent of Europe, or possibly even both. In simple terms, space-trash.
“Guerin Zand. It's about time we met. I’ve been hearing so much about you. My name is Roland, and I am the leader of this society.”
“Society?”
“Yes. As you may have guessed, our origins are the same as the ones you know as the Bree. They refer to us as Cousins. Well, at least that is what the Bree term roughly translates to in your native language. Perhaps you have heard of us?”
“Can’t say that I have, Roland, but that’s not all that unusual. There are a few cousins in my family tree we don’t talk about either.”
“That must be that sense of humor I’ve heard so much about. You are an interesting species, I’ll give you that. Not very intelligent, but interesting none the less.”
Why did this guy remind me so much of Julie, I wondered? It had to be the arrogant tone and the insults. At that moment I received a message from Mia telling me a Bree shuttle, or a shuttle identical to those used by the Bree, had just docked in the spaceport. I ignored that for the time being. I was busy working on an insult of my own.
“Whatever, Shaggy.” Ok, all I could come up with was a Scooby-Do reference which he obviously didn’t get. It would give him something to look up later.
“Where are my manners? Would you like some refreshment?”
Two scantily clad and truly hot young space babes entered the room. They were each carrying a tray, one with beverages, and the other had some snacks to nosh on. Roland motioned me over to a small table and we both had a seat. I took a sip of my drink. It was some third-rate hooch, nothing to write home about. It did have a bit of a kick, at least it had that going for it. The little snacks tasted like vegemite spread on a flatbread. Truly disgusting. Luckily the drink tasted worse and I was able to use it to wash the taste of the snack away. The fact that the big leader was drinking and eating the same thing as I was really didn’t say much about this society. I was going to have to cut this trip short if I could.
“I’m sorry to be one to eat and run, Roland, but if we’re all done here, I need to get back to more important matters.”
“But, Guerin, you’ve just got here. We have so much to discuss. I couldn’t possibly let you leave just yet.”
“Ok, Swami, I’ve been trying to be nice about this, but I don’t appreciate being abducted. It’s not my first time, and I’m just not really into the whole alien abduction bit. If you don’t mind, I’ll be returning to my ship and leaving now.”
“But I do mind.”
I checked with my crew, and they were still working the problem. I was going to have to stall for more time. That probably wasn’t going to be a problem.
“I wasn’t really asking your permission. If you have something on your mind, then spit it out. I don’t really have the time for this frivolity.”