Deja Vu

by Guerin Zand

  Prima pushed me towards the ramp and ran back to the facility to join Ye-jun. I boarded the Ryvius where the rest of the crew was already waiting, plus four of the fembots I had summoned as well. The fembots could communicate with each other without the lag that there would be between humans over the comm channels. I was going to use them to coordinate the various ship actions once we got to Desterio. Ginger and Mary Ann were already onboard the Deviant. I’d send two over to Discovery to synchronize all ship actions when we met up with them. I immediately started barking orders.

  “Maria, Kelly, and Gamma are on a Trogan planet and we’ve lost contact with them. We’re going to get them back.” I didn’t mention Trixy. I knew that psycho-bitch couldn’t be trusted. I was sure she was the cause of this emergency. “Huilang, Tatsuya, go to the bridge and take Sabrina and Kate with you.” Sabrina and Kate were two of the fembots I had brought along. Huilang was a trained navigator and Tatsuya Sasaki was the only fully qualified pilot we had available besides myself. “Get us to this planet Desterio now!” I looked around at the remaining crew. “The rest of you get ready for action. Full battle suits and enough firepower to lay waste to a city, because we will if we have to.” I looked over to James Weaver, the third-ranking security officer after Kelly and Ye-jun. “James, you’re in charge. Get in touch with Steve on the Discovery and coordinate with his team. We’ll meet up with the Discovery when we arrive at Desterio.”

  As the team hurried to the muster area to suit up, the Ryvius was already leaving Hell. The bridge crew didn’t spare the horses, and before the team had even reached their equipment, we had transitioned through a portal and were docking up with the Deviant. As soon as we docked I boarded the Deviant to get a personal update. Senri came over to greet me.

  “What the fuck were you thinking, Senri, letting them go down to the surface?” I was more than a little pissed at Senri. She should have known better. “I sent you with them so they might have an adult to stop them from doing something this stupid!”

  Senri looked at me with this stupid smirk on her face. “Oh. I wondered why you sent me,” she said in a sarcastic tone. I returned her look with a fairly threatening look of my own. “I’m sorry, Guerin. It’s just, well, you know how Maria can be. I had no idea what she was doing until after she did it.”

  I was angry as hell, but I was trying to calm down. Us getting into an argument over who’s fault this was, wasn’t going to help. Just then Steve walked in.

  “What do you need from us, Guerin?” Steve seemed as calm as could be. I wished I could have been so in control.

  “First, I’m sending Jennifer and Mia, two of our fembots, over to your ship.” I contacted the two over our comms to report to the bridge on the Discovery. “They can communicate and react faster then we can. Hopefully, that will give us an edge.” Steve nodded in approval. I looked over to Senri. “Senri, tell us exactly what happened, and what is the current situation.”

  “Well, let’s start with the current situation.” I nodded for her to continue. She brought up a layout of the area on a viewer showing us where our crew was on the planet surface. She pointed to a large building that looked like a hangar or warehouse. It had a large footprint, thirty thousand square feet or more. “The girls are in this building. Mary Ann was just able to establish intermittent comms to the team down there, and they’re alright. They’re hold up in an area over in this corner of the building.” Senri pointed to their location.

  “So, why haven’t they portalled out of there?” I asked.

  “The building is shielded and we can’t open a portal in there. It looks similar to the shielding you guys ran into when you visited the Lodge back on Earth.” The Lodge was one of Froshjen’s way stations in his transporter network. We had investigated that on one of our first missions on Earth a long time ago. At the time not even the comms the Collective had given us would penetrate that shielding.

  “But you’ve gotten through the shielding with comms?”

  “Intermittently. Mary Ann has worked out some algorithm, sort of like what you’d call frequency hopping, but at the quantum level. She got through long enough to upload the algorithm to the teams comms, but still, it’s not foolproof. Comms are still going up and down as the shielding seems to be adapting to whatever Mary Ann is doing. Our sensors are useless as far as seeing what the actual situation is inside of the building.”

  “Why can’t we get them out of there and open a portal outside of the building?”

  “Because, right now Mary Ann is doing all she can to keep the troops outside at bay. This little ship can’t open a portal and deal with the number of troops out there at the same time. It just isn’t powerful enough.”

  Ginger interrupted. “We have combined our efforts with the Discovery and Ryvius now. We have enough power to open a few portals without a problem, but the team is not able to move from their current safe space. They’re holding the security team inside the warehouse back, but there are over twenty enemy troops inside with them keeping them pinned down.”

  “Is your squad ready, Steve?” I asked knowing already what his answer would be. He nodded to signal what I had assumed was true. “Good, then let’s get ready to go down there. I want your team to secure the outside of the building and cover the portal when we bring the team out. My team will breach the building here.” I pointed to the closest point on the exterior of the building to where the girls were held up. “We’ll go in and bring them out.” I looked around at both teams. “If it moves, and it ain’t one of us, kill it. Don’t take any chances. Understood?” Everyone acknowledge the order.

  We both went back to our own ships to meet our teams in the transport rooms. Within a minute we were all on Desterio and moving into action. Steve deployed his men to cover my team as we breached the building. It was quiet outside for the moment. The fembots had coordinated the ships immobilization fields to drop any human or Trogan within a one-mile radius of the building. Before we transported down, they had used the fields to suppress any troops in the area where we were going to open a portal. A few of Steve’s team went around the area securing anyone that was caught in those immobilization fields before we arrived. When we were down there, we couldn’t use the fields too close to our own teams. Luckily, the shielding around the building had made our team inside safe from the effects of the immobilization fields. That allowed our girls to do a good job suppressing the enemy before we arrived.

  Sam Davis, normally a cargo handler on the Ryvius, was carrying the breaching tool. It was a disintegrator ray of sorts. It would disassemble the molecules of any matter the ray touched into free atoms. Now you probably think I finally found that perfect raygun, but you’d be wrong. First, it had a limited range of ten meters. Yea, some weenie from one of those metric countries had designed it. The other problem was, the “little” raygun with its powerpack weighed well over five-hundred pounds. Only a person in one of our battle suits could carry it, and even then it wasn’t easy to wield. Since we were still not allowed to use Collective technology to build weapons, we had to rely on good old-fashioned Terran know how. The powerplant was essentially a small fission reactor. It basically shot its load in under ten minutes, and yes, it was designed by a man. Good for breaching walls, terrible for combat.

  We were through the exterior wall in under thirty seconds, and then the team immediately came under fire. The team’s suits would simply deflect the rays from the pathetic little Trogan zappers at the range we were at. Even close in, they wouldn’t stop one of our team in a suit. It might slow them down at best. I followed the team in, using them for cover, since I hadn’t bothered to suit up. I probably should have, but I was in a hurry and I wasn’t as well trained in the suits as the rest of my crew, all of whom were former marines. In response to the enemy fire, the team unleashed a firestorm of heavy metal in their direction. This suppressed the enemy fire as we made our way to the area where the girls were pinned down.

  When we got there, I couldn’t believe what I
saw. Gamma was holding this big honking raygun that I’d never seen before in my life. She was firing up at the enemy positions. The enemy was in position above our team, on a walkway going around the upper level of the building. Gamma had the biggest smile you could imagine on her face. “Take that you mother fuckers!” My little daughter screamed out as she continued to fire.

  “What the fuck is that weapon, Gamma, and where did you get it?” What can I say? It was the first thing that popped out of my mouth. I wasn’t at all prepared for what I was seeing.

  “It’s the AMCE Bug-zapper 5000, Papa.” I cocked my head sideways in disbelief. “Ok, that’s not it’s real name, but the Bree name isn’t as cool. Mary Ann gave it to me to protect myself when we go out exploring. It will knock down a fucking wooly mammoth according to her.” Gamma just continued to smile that big smile of hers.

  “Watch your language, young lady.”

  “Sorry, Papa.”

  I looked over at Kelly. “I wonder where she learned to talk that way, Kelly?”

  “Not fucking sure, sir.” She smiled at me as she ducked back down under the metal crates they were using for cover.

  I knelt down next to Gamma to take cover as well. The rest of my team was spreading out, finding better vantage points from where they could return fire. They were laying waste to anything moving on the upper level. They had released small bug-sized drones inside the building to get an eye on the opposition. According to James Weaver, they had already taken out at least half of the twenty-some-odd enemy troops inside. The rest were gathering around a room where they appeared to be protecting a VIP. At least that was what James assumed they were doing. The drones indicated that there were three Trogans in the room they seemed to be guarding.

  “Let’s go, Maria.” I indicated the way we had come and I started to get up.

  “Not yet, Dad. We’re not done here.”

  Ok, this was not how one is suppose to respond to their rescuer. I crouched down, staying under cover while I made my way over to Maria. “Listen here, little lady. You’re already dead meat for getting your sister into this mess, and we don’t have time to go into the whole fact that you were not even supposed to leave the ship.”

  “Relax, Dad.” Maria interrupted what was going to be one of my better rants. “We got this. It’s all part of my plan.”

  “Your plan? What fucking plan? You’re—”

  “Yes, my plan.” The look I gave her said it all. If we lived through this, I was going to kill her. “Trixy fucked us, sure, but I figured she would.” As bullets and bug zappers continued to fly, Maria continued explaining her great plan. “We sent her down to make contact with one of her family on her suggestion. She said it was clear, and we should come down, there was something we should see. We had noticed the shielded building while doing our initial scans. We figured we’d take a look and see what they were hiding.”

  “And you were stupid enough to fall for that?” I asked.

  “You missed, asswipe!” Gamma screamed as she stood back up after a bolt from the enemy knicked the crate she was taking cover behind. She unleashed another mega pulse from her weapon back in the direction that last shot had come from, and then crouched back down. She noticed I was watching her and she gave me a big old smile. I just shook my head. This was definitely a problem with reality and I was trying to cope.

  Maria continued. “What good is a trap if you don’t spring it, right?” I had no answer at that point. “Anyways, once we figured out that Heesa was here, I—”

  “Fucking Heesa is here?” I asked.

  “Duh? Why do you think we're down here?” I truly didn’t know, so I just shrugged my shoulders. “We’re going to bag that shitbird.”

  I’d heard enough. “No you aren’t, young lady. You and Kelly are going to take your little sister out of here. I’ll take care of Heesa with the rest of the team.”

  “But you already killed Heesa once, Dad!” I really wished I had been wearing my ruby red slippers so I could just click my heels together and bring an end to this bizarro reality.

  “I’m not aware of any limit on the number of Heesas one person is allowed to kill, darling.”

  “I’m not going to kill him, Dad. We’re going to capture him.”

  “Maybe I’m missing something, Maria.” Gamma screamed out another vulgarity as she took another shot at the enemy positions. I tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. “You came down here totally outnumbered and got yourself pinned down. That doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.”

  “I knew Ginger would call you the minute we lost contact, Dad, and you’d send in the troops. I bet Roger is on his way here now with an entire battalion.”

  “He’s waiting back on Earth for my call.” Maria cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. She obviously thought I had overreacted. I didn’t.

  “See, I knew you’d back us up. It’s all part of my plan.” Why was I even bothering talking to her. It was Déjà vu all over again.

  I contacted Steve and let him know what the hold up was. The part that the comms couldn’t transmit was the chuckle Steve was having at my expanse. “We’ve got you covered out here, Guerin. The girls seem to have the opposition suppressed fairly effectively. You need any help in there?”

  I guess it was too much to expect Steve to take my side in all of this. I simply responded, “Thanks, but no. We should be able to handle this.”

  Next I contacted Ginger. “Ginger, can you disable the Torgan’s weapons in this building?”

  “No, Guerin. We can barely get our comms to work through the shielding. Even if we could, we’re a little busy up here.”

  “What’s happening up there, Ginger?” I hadn’t even thought about what might be happening onboard the ships with all that was going on around me.

  “There are ships inbound. We’re intercepting them, and sending them to the edge of Trogan space, using the Ryvius and Discovery to generate portals.”

  “How many ships?” Now I was concerned. The last thing we needed was a small army landing down on the planet.

  “There are one hundred or so at last count, Guerin.” It was Jackie answering me this time. It sounded like she was calling the shots up there and using the fembots to coordinate the ship’s resources. “Don’t worry. We can handle what we can see, but don’t take to long down there. Who knows how many more they can send.”

  I turned back to Maria. “I’m sending the team in first, Maria. They’ll take out the opposition and secure Heesa and the room. Do you understand?” I sent the command over the comms for the team to take out the resistance and secure Heesa. Maria looked over at Kelly. “I told you he would ruin all of our fun!” Kelly just laughed in response until she saw the look I gave her.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Oh, you will be Kelly. You can trust me on that!”

  In a little less than five minutes, the team had taken out the opposition and had secured Heesa in the office. They cuffed the little fucking troll and brought him down to where I was waiting with my daughters and Kelly.

  Heesa sneered, “Guerin Zand. Still the Collectives little hand puppet I see.”

  “Whatever, Heesa. I must say, I never thought I’d have to see your ugly little face again. I kind of like the people I’ve killed to stay dead.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” he responded with stupid little grin.

  Gamma jabbed her ACME Bug-zapper 5000 into Heesa’s back which caused him to let out a little grunt. “Get moving, shithead!”

  “Sweet kid. One of yours I presume, Guerin?”

  I ignored his little comment, grabbed the back of his collar, and gave him a shove forward. “You heard the little lady. Move it.”

  Chapter 9

  Adversaries and Allies

  We all returned to our ships. I had the team secure Heesa in the Ryvius’ brig for the time being. Both of my daughters retreated to the Deviant to avoid the tongue lashing they both knew was coming. It would only buy them a short reprieve. I
recalled the two fembots from the Discovery and thanked Steve for his help. He tried to hold back his laughter at the whole situation. We contacted Roger to let him know we had the situation in hand and thanked him for his support. I’m sure Steve was going to fill him in as soon as he had the chance. I ordered the Deviant straight back to Hell, but they ignored me and went shopping anyways before returning to the planet. I mean, what the fuck, right? I suppose since the apocalypse didn’t happen, there was no good reason the girls should cancel their shopping trip.

  Now I just had to figure out what I was going to do with Heesa. For the time being, I was keeping the Ryvius and the Discovery in orbit around Desterio until we figured out our next step. When I asked the girls why they had wanted to capture Heesa, they said it was for me. They thought I’d appreciate it if they brought me back a souvenir from their trip. Of course, that was total bullshit and I knew it. Then Maria started bitching about how I ruined all of that and tried to make it seem like I was somehow the one who’d just fucked everything up. This was a common tactic of my eldest daughter from way back, so I wasn’t buying that either. When we all got back to Hell there would be a reckoning for the crew of the Deviant.

  Having no idea what to do with the little fucking troll, other than tossing him out into the void of space, I decided to grab a bottle of Pappy’s and a couple of glasses. I figured before I killed him this time, I’d show him the proper way to treat a guest. Sabrina and Kate were standing guard outside of the quarters we had locked Heesa in. The door opened as I approached it, and I walked into the room. I headed over to the table, placed the whiskey and glasses down, and took a seat.

  I started pouring myself a drink and looked over at Heesa. “Care for a drink?”

  Heesa took the seat across the table from me. I poured him a glass and pushed it in his direction. He took a sip and said, “Kentucky Bourbon. We don’t see too much of this inside of the empire.”