by Guerin Zand
“The pardon is what the Chendek ambassador wants to talk to her about. If you’ll arrange the meeting, we’ll guarantee her freedom to leave. She needs to work things out with her own government first. If she wants to remain as a member of your crew afterward, she can.”
“I’ll talk to her, Julie, but I can’t guarantee she’ll want to meet with the ambassador.”
“That’s all we’re asking.”
The rest of the lunch went fairly well. Julie and I stopped talking for the most part, and I just listened to the other conversations at the table. Gamma loved her chocolate milk. On the way out I grabbed her another one for later on that day. We all took a walk through the green area and just enjoyed the afternoon.
We let Gamma run loose. She found some other children playing and joined them for a while. She seemed like a normal child, but I was still worried. I know that Stella had concerns, and I agreed with her. How could a child raised in a lab be normal? The only issue I had seen so far was her constant need to be held. I didn’t think of that as a problem. I thought she was just making up for the lack of attention in her past. Normal children are constantly held when they are babies and they become more independent with time. Gamma had missed out on that, so perhaps she was just going through that phase at a later age.
Julie and Milly took off to do their own things while the rest of my “family” headed back up to my newly refurbished quarters. Gamma kept asking if she could have her chocolate milk and I got her to agree to take a nap first. The chocolate milk would be waiting for her when she woke up. I sat with Gamma in her bed until she finally closed her eyes and fell asleep. I told her one of the stories I made up for Maria when she was about Gamma’s age.
I left Gamma sleeping and went out to talk to Maria and Prima for a bit. I explained I had a date with Milly that night and I wanted to make sure one of them would be there to watch Gamma. They both said they had no plans, so they’d probably both stay in for the night. I made it a point to give them feeding instructions for Gamma. She was to have a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup for dinner. It was programmed under a list of favorites I made up for her on the replicator in our kitchen. I gave Maria a suspicious look and made sure she knew I would be checking with Gamma later. I made it clear she’d better not try and feed her a salad or some other vegan fair.
Finally, I headed down to the Vengeance to talk with Senri. I found her in her quarters having a drink while she watched some video flick. She turned it off when I entered the room. God only knows what she really found entertaining.
“The Chendek ambassador wants to meet with you, Senri.”
“To arrest me and take me back home?”
“No. Julie assured me you would not be detained or anything. You just need to talk to the ambassador about your pardon. I can go with you if you want.”
“I can manage on my own, Guerin, but thanks anyway. When am I supposed to meet the ambassador?”
“I guess that’s up to you. You can let me know when it’s good for you and I’ll contact Julie to arrange the meeting.”
“Tell them I will meet with the ambassador tomorrow morning around 10AM, if that’s convenient.”
“Ok.” I just stood there for a moment. I needed to talk to her about our future plans, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.
“Is there more bad news, Guerin?”
“I don’t know that it’s bad news but...”
“Go ahead, spit it out. You’ve already ruined my day.”
“It’s about our future plans. I’m not really sure exactly what my plans are right now. They want me to stick around here for a bit, and, well, I have Gamma to think about now. I’d like you to stay on with me and continue to help with the Vengeance. I’d understand if you wanted to move on. I can take you wherever you want to go.”
“How long are you planning to stay on this ship, Guerin?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t want to be here any more than you probably do, but I can’t just take Gamma out and go back to raiding Trogan ships. They also have something else they want me to do.” I told Senri about the explorer project that they wanted me to head up with Steve. She seemed about as enthused by the idea as I had been earlier. I also told her how I wanted to spend some time on Earth, so Gamma could get to know her home planet. Now, Senri seemed to like that idea. The thought of Senri loose on Earth sort of scared me. She had caused enough problems with her one encounter with a human male.
“I guess no matter what though, I need to recruit a new crew for the Vengeance. Replacing you would be a real pain in my ass though. No matter what, I have a lot of work for you if you want to stick it out. I’m sure we’ll find a way to make a profit.”
“What do you have in mind, Guerin?”
“First we need to recruit a semi-permanent crew. I think we need at least 6 new crew and I’d like them to be mostly men. I mean, with you, Maria, Prima, and Gamma, the men to women ratio would just drive me batshit crazy. I was thinking we’d look over some of Steve’s marines, and the other volunteers, to see what choices we have available.”
Senri smiled. “That sounds like fun.”
“Don’t even start. We want functioning crew members. That marine friend of yours is on an extended leave while he recovers from your attention.”
“So, a girl can’t even have a little fun anymore?”
“We’ll see. For now, we just need to get a crew trained. You can always take a little trip to have ‘fun’.”
“Ok.”
“If this explorer thing takes off, we are going to have to train pilots and more crews.”
“What for?”
“Think about it, Senri. The best way for them to make connections would be for us to start our own cargo business. I’m sure I can wrangle these aliens into supplying us enough ships to get started. We are going to need to train crews to pilot and navigate these ships. Other recruits would set up businesses on some of the unaligned worlds that would handle the land-based duties for this new cargo service.”
“And what sort of cargo would we be hauling, Guerin?”
“Well, I guess we could maybe come up with a few ideas, right?” I gave Senri a smile and I could tell she knew what I was thinking. “We could maybe even set up a used Trogan cargo ship dealership on the side as well. Who knows?”
“At least you haven’t gone totally native.”
“Never, Senri. You know me better than that. What do you say?”
“Let me talk to this ambassador and then I’ll let you know.”
“Great. Then...”
“Whoa! I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
“Oh, come on. You talk to the ambassador and then I’ll get you set up with some decent digs on the station. There’s no reason for you to stay on the ship anymore.”
“Alright. If I get that pardon, then we have a deal.”
“Don’t worry about the pardon. I’ve already sort of let them know they need to take care of that if they want my help. If there are any problems, I’ll find someone to complain to until I get my way. Just don’t act all excited about any of this. We need to milk it for whatever we can get out of them. I still want to try and see if we can maybe trade off this ship for something a little more stylish.”
We were both laughing our best pirate laughs as I left Senri on the Vengeance. I sent a comm message to Julie to set up the meeting between Senri and the Chendek ambassador. It wasn’t as hard to do as I thought it would be, but still, it was going to get me some more brownie points with the Bree. I headed up to my quarters to get showered and dressed for my date with Milly.
Milly and I went up to the restaurant on top of the city on our side of the ship, the day side. This was the restaurant where Milly and I had our first date so many years ago. Luckily the menu had improved since then and I was able to get a non-vegan meal. I had a nice grilled salmon filet to offset the vegetables that came with it. Milly had her favorite vegan dish she had made me eat on that first date. If she wasn’t
so damn cute, that would have been our last date after that meal!
As we left the restaurant, we tried to decide if we would go to my place or hers. This was a real dilemma and I almost suggested we should go to the Vengeance instead. It would have been nice if they had some cheap motels on this big ship for this sort of occasion. If we went to Milly’s it meant we were going to Julie’s penthouse, and we’d most probably run into Julie. My place would mean we’d have to deal with my “family”. I decided my family would be less likely to spoil the mood.
Before we made our way to my place, I had to make a stop back at medical for another scan. We met Julie there and it only took a few minutes. According to Julie, the anomaly appeared to be getting smaller. I called it a temporal anomaly, but Julie said that wasn’t an accurate description. She didn’t have a name for it, but she insisted that it wasn’t a temporal anomaly. I asked if she didn’t know what it was, then how could she rule out a temporal anomaly. She just gave me a condescending look like I was a moron or something. If it only appears when I’m in a temporal stasis field than it seems to me it’s some sort of temporal anomaly.
We left the medical center and arrived at my quarters to find the girls in the kitchen. Gamma was an absolute mess, and the reason was obvious when I saw the half empty bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of her. I simply shook my head.
“You two are planning on cleaning this up I suppose?”
“Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll clean it up. We were just going to give Gamma a bath and put her to bed.”
“You filled her full of sugar and you expect her to go to sleep?”
“Do you think we’re stupid, Dad?”
That was one of those rhetorical questions I assumed. I simply raised an eyebrow in response.
“It’s not real sugar. She’ll be fine. What are you two up to?”
“Milly and I were going to study some star charts and talk about starship navigation.”
“Really?” Maria seemed not to believe me. “So you do think we’re stupid?”
I almost responded to that when Gamma jumped in. “I want Papa to sing me the Moonbeam song.” Papa was the name Gamma had settled on using for me.
“After your bath and you get in bed, I’ll come and sing for you, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Come on, Milly. Let’s get us a drink. It’s going to be a long night.”
Prima and Maria hauled Gamma off for her bath and Milly and I retired to the bar for a nice Manhattan. Milly liked Manhattans and it was a favorite of mine as well. As we waited for Gamma to finish her bath we talked about odds and ends. I told her about my discussion with Senri and how I really hadn’t decided on what I was going to do. I did promise to visit her at the station she was assigned to. Then we got into an argument about how stupid their alpha-numeric designations for their ships and stations were, in my opinion.
“The alpha-numeric designations give the location of the ships or stations, Guerin. We don’t just make up these numbers at random.”
“I don’t care. My point is that I don’t need to remember that giant series of mumble jumble any more than I need to remember the latitude and longitude of any city on Earth. I just need to remember the simple name of the city. Let’s say I go onto a computer and tell it to bring up a satellite view of Titusville, Florida, for example. The computer will figure out the latitude and longitude and then pick the latest satellite view and show it to me. Even if the satellite view was interactive and I called up that city to view. The computer would calculate the latitude, longitude, closest satellite, and the proper orientation of the satellite to give me the view I wanted. Why in God’s name would I want to remember all that information instead of the simple city name?”
“You just don’t get it.”
“No. You just don’t want to admit I’m right! Let’s call the station you live on Milly’s station. Now, even though the station is a permanent fixture, it still is moving in space, right? So this giant string of nonsense you use should change all the time to give the right location. But it doesn’t, does it?”
“Like I said, you simply don’t get it. The position is relative to...”
“What? Other shit that moves? Look, if I call it Milly’s station, then the navigation computer can translate that to whatever string of nonsense the computer prefers, and not bother me with all that crap. Senri did this for all the stations and ships in the Vengeance navigation system and we don’t have any problem finding our way around.”
“Well, sure, and you translate speeds to Warp numbers, which I might add is total bullshit, and you classify planets and stellar bodies using some more of your made-up bullshit.”
“Ok, Milly. Now you’ve gone a little too far. Warp speeds are not bullshit! The fact is, you’re just jealous that we have imaginations and you don’t. We can boil down complex Bree bullshit to simple understandable terms. You’d come up with nice names for shit if you had an ounce of imagination.”
“And if you humans had the brain capacity Gojorian snipflounder you wouldn’t have any problem remembering the CORRECT designations for stuff.”
“Well, I might be insulted if I knew what a fucking Gojorian snipflounder was! Maybe if you tell me the actual alpha-numeric designation of that species I might get it!”
Maria entered the living room and asked, “What the hell are you two arguing about?”
“Starship navigation,” I responded.
“You’re serious? You really are talking about navigation?”
“Why would I lie about something like that?”
“You bring a woman back to your place to discuss navigation? That’s kind of lame, Dad.”
“We’re going to have sex too. Now, would you explain to this crazy alien female how badly their designations for planets, ships, and stations SUCK!”
“Whatever, Dad. Gamma is waiting for you to sing for her. And if you had any ideas about getting laid tonight, you can probably forget that now.”
“It’s nice to know that you still have my back, daughter.” I was being sarcastic just in case you might be confused by that last response.
I went to sing to Gamma and Milly came along with me. At first, I teased Gamma a bit. I pretended to have forgotten the words to the song. She started helping me to remember and then I thanked her for the help. I didn’t make it halfway through the song before Gamma’s eyes closed and she was off to dreamland. I tucked her in, and Milly and I headed back to my bedroom.
Approximately thirty seconds later:
“Seriously? What was that? You’re done?”
“Yea. What’s wrong.”
“I don’t know, Guerin. I was expecting a little more than 1.2 seconds of effort on your part.”
“It wasn’t 1.2 seconds, Milly. It was at least 30 seconds.”
“You can’t count the time it took you to get undressed, Guerin.”
“Oh, ok, well, it still was more than 1.2 seconds. I’d say it was more like 5 seconds.”
“In your dreams. It was 1.2 seconds.”
“What the fuck, Milly. Do you have a stopwatch hidden somewhere?”
“So, that’s it?”
“What do you want, Milly. I mean, sometimes it happens.”
“Does it happen often?”
“Well, not really. I mean the last time it did I think I was like 16.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s that temporal anomaly in my brain messing with my timing.”
“So, you’re saying that it lasted a lot longer in your mind?”
“No! I would never come up with such a lame excuse.” I might have though if she hadn’t already thought of it herself. It was obvious she wouldn’t have bought it. “It’s probably something Julie did to me in the medical center.”
“You think Julie caused your little misfire?”
“Well, probably. You know how she likes to mess around with my sexual functions. It’s not like it would be the first time. It’s exactly the sort of childish prank s
he’d pull.”
“So, maybe we should ask her. I can give her a call right now.”
“NO! I mean, I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing her little stunt succeeded.”
“Oh, of course not. So what are we going to do now? Argue about navigation some more?”
“No. We could sleep.”
“I’m not even slightly tired, Guerin. Are you?”
I was, but I thought it best not to say so. “No, not really.”
“Well, I guess we could talk and catch up on things. We have plenty of time. We should be able to cover the last few hundred years.”
“You need to ease up a bit, Milly. I’m sorry you’re weren’t satisfied with my performance, but I don’t need you giving me shit about it all night.”
“Oh relax, Guerin. I’m just teasing you. You need to lighten up a bit.”
“Whatever.”
“So, tell me about you and Lihwa Zhu. You’ve never mentioned her before, and she was not mentioned in any of your books. Why did she write a note to you in her diary?”
“Well, that’s a long story.”
“We have plenty of time.” Milly gave me her best smart-ass smile. I just groaned. I figured I had to do something to change the subject, so I started to tell her the story of Lihwa Zhu.
Chapter 20
Lihwa
I first met Lihwa in Seoul, South Korea. This was before I met Anna, and before Diane came to work for New Future Technologies. It was May in the year 2018.
We had started manufacturing our new carbon nanotube materials in the States and the demand was greater than our current manufacturing partners could handle. To satisfy the demand, we were searching for partners to help in other parts of the world. At the time, we were looking at partnering with a few companies in South Korea. Roger had pushed for this to satisfy some political agenda that didn’t really concern me. I trusted Roger and I had no problem with the decision.
