Outcast

by Guerin Zand

  “You have got to be kidding me?” That was all I could say. There was a lot more I wanted to say, but where should I start.

  Maria seemed like she couldn’t understand my shock at the sight of all of this. “What? It’s not any bigger than the Captain’s suite. As a matter of fact, it’s the exact same square footage.”

  “There were supposed to be quarters here for the bridge crew, Maria. There was a reason why I put the bridge crew’s quarters close to the bridge, you know? The same reason the Captain’s quarters are close to the bridge. Now, where are their quarters?”

  “I just moved those quarters past the mess hall and galley. It’s not that far of a walk.” Maria really wasn’t getting the point. You don’t get your ideas for a starship design from fucking Better Homes & Gardens!

  “I might not have had such a problem with you designing your own ‘little’ suite if maybe you didn’t screw up the bridge design. Why couldn’t you put your suite somewhere else, like maybe the back end of this level? I mean it’s not too far of a walk, right?”

  You’re probably wondering what the point was of arguing with my daughter over this. It was already done, right? My point was, I really didn’t like Maria thinking she could make decisions for me without talking to me first. She was my daughter, and the last time I checked, it was supposed to work the other way around. It was obvious at this point my daughter had joined the Universal Guild of Women Bent on Destroying Guerin Zand. A group that thought fucking with me should be recognized as a legitimate inter-galactic female sport!

  Maria just rolled her eyes in response. “Well, I’m one of the bridge crew, Dad. Didn’t you just say the bridge crew should be close to the bridge?”

  I have to admit. That last statement made me a little proud. At least her monkey logic was improving.

  “What about your sister Gamma? Did she get a suite like this as well?”

  Maria rolled her head at me and gave me this look, like I was an idiot. “No. She got one of the oversized crew quarters like the rest of the crew.”

  “What do you think, Gamma? Wouldn’t you like a room like this?”

  “Yes, Papa. Please?”

  “See, Maria. Don’t you think you were being a little bit selfish just thinking about yourself?”

  “Me, selfish? What about your quarters?”

  “I’m the ship’s captain, Maria. There’s a difference. How are the rest of the bridge crew supposed to react to this? What am I going to say when they all want their own suites? I think the best thing to do, to avoid that sort of problem, is to give this suite to Gamma. We’ll put you in her room since you seem to think it’s adequate for one of my daughters. Besides, with a few changes, we could probably make room for Prima in here as well. She is Gamma’s nanny, after all. I mean, that was your decision, right? Or maybe we could make this a VIP suite for when we have important passengers, like Council members on board?”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Try me, daughter.”

  Maria’s previous smile turned into a pout. A look that remained on her face during the rest of the tour. As we continued the tour, we stopped in to check out Gamma’s room. It was painted pink, of course. There was a cutesy little girls bed in there with all sorts of shelves full of stuffed animals. It made me want to stick Maria in there even more. I could tell by the look on Maria’s face, she knew there was a good chance I was serious about giving Gamma her suite. That was good. Maybe she’d start behaving more like a daughter. If not?

  None of the crew quarters had windows. We’d have to use the external viewer mode to project the outside onto the walls if we wanted a view. Windows would have been impractical. There was a lot of wiring and other plumbing running inside the outer walls of these rooms. The blended wing body meant those walls were quite a distance from the outer hull as well.

  The rest of the tour went quickly since the majority of the interior was exactly like any other shuttle. The one big exception was the walls were not all painted that puke green color. The majority of the shuttle, except for Gamma’s pink room, was all painted a sort of sand brown with some light accents. It was a more comfortable look. Like the difference between a school bus and a luxury RV.

  I also had them increase the ceiling height on the crew level to 3 meters since the original shuttles made a six-foot-four human, such as myself, feel a little cramped. This cost a little cargo room on the third level but that was offset by the additional space added with the new nose cone and the elliptical body. The Zand class cruiser actually had a bit more cargo space than the original shuttles in the end. All the doorways were also increased in height throughout the ship.

  There was also a loading ramp on the lower aft of the ship. Since the cruisers were meant to land on planets, to disguise the Collective technology, we needed a ramp to embark and disembark. It also served for loading and unloading cargo when we landed on a planet. The ramp led into a large garage type area on the first level. Once we went operational, we would store a couple of cargo movers in there for our use. This also required them to add a large freight elevator to move cargo between the hold on the third level and this garage on the first level. Maybe we could park a few ATVs and/or dirt bikes in there as well. I’m sure we’d find a use for them. When we docked at one of the Collective main ships, or station spaceports, we could still load and unload directly through the cargo doors on the third level.

  The Collective shuttle docks in their port facilities were recessed, and the cargo bays were level with the crew decks in the ports. These recessed pits were large enough to accommodate our new cruisers even with their large wingspans. Down in the lower part of these recessed docks is where the maintenance crews worked. This kept the cargo and maintenance staffs from getting in each other’s way.

  Collective shuttles were really not meant to deliver cargo. Most of what they held in their cargo bays were the ship supplies. They’d use transport portals to move any cargo to a planet’s surface since they never had a reason to land a shuttle. They could land a shuttle, but as I had been told, there was no good reason to ever do that. We added a little more cargo space to our cruisers. Occasionally we would haul supplies and goods for trade. If we needed to transport a large amount of cargo we would be assigned a cargo ship for that purpose.

  After the tour of the Ryvius, we headed over to Steve’s new ship. It was more or less identical to the Ryvius. The lounge, bridge, and Captain’s suite were all the same. It had the three bridge crew quarters where Maria’s abomination was on my ship, and it didn’t have a pizza oven in the galley.

  Finally, we all headed up to the classroom where Milly and Diane went over the ship’s design in detail. They sent a copy of the owner’s manual to our personal nodes for us to review before the training started. It had all sorts of useful information, like how you shouldn’t stick your hands in the singularity that was at the heart of the ship’s power plant. Yawn, yawn…

  “Any questions?” Milly asked.

  “What about the blasters?”

  “Very funny, Guerin. The tubes and conduits are there as you asked. That’s it. I don’t want to hear any more about blasters!”

  “You can’t blame a guy for trying, Milly. Perhaps we can discuss it further over dinner? I promise I’ll have one of my better monkey arguments to help change your mind. If that doesn’t work, I’d consider offering you a few favors, favors I’d prefer not to go into detail about in front of my daughters.”

  “Dream on, monkey boy.”

  Milly invited all of us to her residence in the neighboring module for dinner that night. Her residence was just as fancy as Bob and Lori’s residence on their station. She was obviously doing well for herself. I endured a fancy vegan feast of sorts and acted like I enjoyed it. I knew she went vegan just to get a rise out of me. After dinner, and a few drinks, the rest of the crew made their excuses and made their way back to their quarters. Milly had asked me to stick around so we could talk for a bit alone. We took a seat on one of the c
ouches in the reception area in her residence. It was actually a rather large room for entertaining large groups of guests. It wasn’t the most intimate setting if you asked me.

  “So, are you happy with your new ship, Guerin?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Milly. I know you probably had to take some flak from the others over that.”

  “Not really. I used your argument to convince them. They all thought that, for once finally, you had a good idea. The fact the ships could be disguised as being from Earth did make sense. When I also brought up your thought on how we might be able to use Diane’s drive to cross universes, they agreed to the deal. By the way, Lori is getting a little annoyed that you haven’t been returning her messages. Would you please get in contact with her?”

  “You know that woman is crazy, don’t you?”

  “She’s not crazy, Guerin.”

  “What she wants me to do is going to cause a lot of problems, especially for me. I would think you’d want me to stay out of trouble, at least for a little while.”

  “What she wants you to do is important, and since when do you give two shits about causing us problems?”

  “How can you say that about me? I’m always just doing what you people ask me to do. That’s my point, you know? Whenever I do something you ask me to do, I end up taking a rash of shit from the powers that be.”

  “Like I said, it’s not like you really care. You’re just trying to be difficult for some reason. Please, for me, get in touch with Lori?”

  “Ok, but you’re going to owe me one.”

  “I just gave you two new ships, Guerin. I think it’s you that owe me.”

  “That’s not the way I see it, Milly. You gave me those ships so I could do something for you, not out of the kindness of your heart. Besides, even the Council agreed with my reasons. Isn’t that what you just said?”

  “Sometimes I don’t know why I even bother, Guerin. Speaking of which, how are things going? Have you had a chance to talk to Prima since we last talked?”

  “Well, of course, I have talked to her since then. I see her every day.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “I don’t understand you at all, Milly. You tell me you love me, and in the next breath, you’re trying to get me and Prima together. You don’t have to lie to me and manipulate me. I’m not going to huff off and stop doing my job if you're honest with me.”

  “Like you didn’t run off for the last few centuries?”

  “That was different. I had issues.”

  “You always have issues, Guerin, and I am honest with you. I just can’t seem to make you understand. It’s not like I haven’t tried.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Milly. I just don’t understand you. When you left Earth after our vacation, you were crying at the thought of not seeing me for a while. Now you’re pushing me away and trying to tell me how you still love me. You have to admit, from my perspective, that just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s why I want to share with you, Guerin, but you keep refusing.”

  “Fine. We can share if you want. Ok?”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes. Should we take our clothes off?”

  “Do you always have to be such a smartass?”

  “I’m not always a smartass, Milly. Sometimes I can be quite witty. Other times I can be funny, and, this is what I think is my strong point, sometimes I can be a real asshole.”

  Milly laughed at me. “I’m sorry. How could I ever forget you could be an asshole too.”

  We faced each other on the sofa, held hands and pressed our foreheads together lightly. As I’ve said before, I think this is the equivalent of the missionary position when it comes to sharing. I was kind of hoping she’d step it up a bit and show me something new. Oh well. Milly did whatever it was she did to start the little magical mystery tour of each other’s inner self. I’d never done this with anyone else, and for a second, before we got into it, I wondered if I could.

  It’s a little unsettling at first, having someone else rummaging around inside of your conscious self. I imagine it’s a bit like someone must feel who has multiple personalities. My initial thought was to break this link. It was uncomfortable. It felt like I was losing control, but then that feeling passed. The rush of her feelings overwhelmed me. I just let her take my thoughts in whatever direction she wanted.

  I could feel her sadness. All of this was hurting her so much, but I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t show me this without sharing. I understood what she was thinking. A lot of it I already knew. She was being tested just like I was by the Council. She had to show them that she wasn’t allowing her feelings for me sway her decisions. That’s why they had made her solely responsible for dealing with me at this point. It was time for humans to wean themselves from the Collective’s guidance, and she had to distance herself from me for that to happen. At least that’s how she felt.

  When she dug into my thoughts she realized I wasn’t angry with her. I was simply frustrated. She realized I came back because I wanted to move on. I wanted to put those things that had happened to me, Anna’s death and the rest, behind me. To me, that meant trying to get back the relationship we once had. What she was asking me to do made me wish I hadn’t come back at all. She then went deeper to see many of the things I had wanted to hide from her. My anger. The hatred I had that caused me to kill Heesa and continue to harass the Trogans. There was an ugly side of me and she wanted me to share that with her. I let her, even though I knew it was a mistake. I didn’t bother to look further into her past, that time while I was away. I didn’t want to know, and it didn’t matter to me.

  It was over in an instant. I guess the speed of thought was a lot faster than I realized. It seemed like a long time, but it was like we were simply caught up in a moment, frozen where time had no meaning. When it was over, I thought about saying some smartass thing like, “That’s it? What, a whole second maybe?” You know, making fun of her like she made fun of my last performance in bed. I decided not to. I’m not a total asshole.

  Milly was crying. I knew that was going to happen. I pulled her in close and just held her tight. Although I avoided my first reaction to make a smartass comment, I couldn’t stop myself from saying the wrong thing. I released my grip on her and backed off to wipe away her tears.

  “Was it worth it, Milly? Are we supposed to feel better now?”

  Yes, maybe I was a total asshole. Milly just cried even harder.

  “Stop crying, Milly. I’m sorry I said that. I just…”

  “No. I’m sorry, Guerin. You were right about not wanting to share those things with me. Everyone thought there was something else making you act up the way you had. Even I didn’t realize how badly you’ve been hurt by all of this. I should have. I mean, I should have realized how much you loved Anna. How much she meant to you. It’s not like you to love someone halfway, and I should have known that. I’m sorry.”

  “None of it is your fault, Milly. I know I blame the Bree, the Council, and the Collective a lot for those things. I only do it so you’ll back off. I don’t mean it. It just is what it is. I knew you’d blame yourself. That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to share that with you.”

  “Do you understand why I’m trying to put distance between us now? Do you understand it’s not because I don’t love you?”

  “The only thing I didn’t know was how sad it was making you. I know it’s hard for you to believe that this monkey can figure out things on his own, but I can. I knew why the Council put you in charge of me, and I know that they want us to stop relying on them. I knew what you were thinking, Milly. I did before we shared. I still don’t know why you think what you think. I guess even sharing can’t fix that.”

  “I know you want to try and be with me, Guerin, but you have to understand why that’s not possible with everyone looking over both of our shoulders. I don’t want to push you away, but I want you to be happy. I don’t care if it’s with
somebody else.”

  “I know, and I won’t try to change your mind anymore. I mean, I’ve tried everything except cutting the stupid out of your brain.”

  Milly chucked a bit and her tears slowed.

  “I’ll stop bothering you about it. I know you feel bad enough. I guess I’ll just go back to plan A.”

  “What’s plan A?”

  “You remember, don’t you. We’ll just let the future take care of itself. When I become emperor of the known universes, I’ll be back, and I’ll bitch slap reality into my way of thinking.”

  Milly smiled at me and gave me a sweet kiss. Our last kiss for a long time. “I always liked that plan.”

  I grinned as I twisted my head and shook it back and forth slightly. She always hated that plan. She thought it was the stupidest plan she ever heard, and she told me that on several occasions in the past. Who knows? Maybe I was making progress.

  Chapter 29

  The Reunion

  I was the lucky one who was chosen to take the Ryvius out on her maiden voyage. For the first simple test flight, I operated the ship in the normal shuttle mode. I departed the module, performed a short portal transition away from the station and then back. Then I docked the ship at the spaceport closest to the construction module. I was asked, ever so kindly, to not screw around. Steve took his cruiser, he had named it Voyager with some encouragement from Diane, and performed the same test flight. My second flight was to test the integration of Diane’s drive. Again I flew it alone and everything went well. I achieved the top speed of 1000 c and returned back to the spaceport. It wasn’t until the debrief that the engineering teams admitted they had never tested the drive and weren’t quite sure how the singularity, the heart of the ships power plant, would handle the transition to and from the pocket universe. In other words, they weren’t sure if it wouldn’t go boom. That’s why they had me use a portal to transition to an empty area of space for the test.