“Hello?  Hello, is anyone there?” said the voice, crackling over the commlink.  Prime Minister Den, clearly worried, looked up to Ministers Parma and Kiv.  Parma fidgeted with his watch, pretending not to notice Den, while Kiv paced about the small, dimly lit room.  Two soldiers, both wearing elaborate headsets, sat by the commlink, waiting for orders.  Other soldiers and government officials hovered outside the doorway, a mix of nervous energy, dread, and caffeine.  No one really wanted to be there.  Not again.
“Minister Den?  Sir, what should I say?” said the soldier closest to the mic.
Den crossed his arms and glanced over to Kiv.  “Well?” he said, somewhat accusingly.  “What should he say?” 
“How would I know?”  She thrust out a finger at Den and Parma.  “One of you should be taking the call.  I’m just the lowly Minister of Trade.” 
“Hello?  Can Anyone hear me?  We detected your signals.  We know you are there.  Hello?” said the voice from the commlink.
Den motioned for the soldier closest to the mic to put his hand over it.  The soldier complied but looked quizzically back at Den.
Parma strode over, pointing to the mic.  “Covering the mic with his hand isn’t going to stop them from detecting our radio waves and related chatter!  We’ve got a planet full of satellites and signals.”
“Won’t it stop them from hearing us here in the room?” Den whisper-screamed at him.
Kiv nudged the soldier aside and flipped a switch on the console.  “That’s what the mute button is for, Conqueror.” 
Visibly offended, Den got in Kiv’s face, pointing at her.  “None of that was my fault!”
“Try telling that to the victims,” said Parma, dryly.   Murmurings could be heard from outside the room.  Two people tried to enter but one of the soldiers motioned for them to stay out.
“Enough of this,”  said Kiv, who quickly grabbed Den by the arm and pushed him toward the microphone. 
“Hey!”
Parma saw what she was doing and immediately assisted.  They motioned for the soldier to get out of the chair, and then all three of them forcibly sat Den down into it.  The soldier handed him his headset.  Den stared at the mic, then bolted upright and tried heading for the door.  The other soldier stopped him, and soon all four sat him back as he struggled and formed a tight box around him.  The light fixture overhead swayed back and forth from the fray, then gradually stopped.  Den glanced down nervously.
“Hello?” said the voice again.  “Can anyone hear me?”
Kiv nudged Den’s shoulder.
“Stop touching me!” said Den.  He leaned forward.  “Um, hello there!” he said, in an overly cheery voice.  “Greetings! Heh-heh, what can we do for you?”
“Hello!” said the voice over the commlink. They could hear he was not alone, as spontaneous cheering seemed to break out on his side.  “Sssh!” said the voice, before continuing.  “This is quite the occasion! Greetings from planet Halcitar and the citizens of the United National Alliance!”  More cheering, followed by another quick shushing. “I am President Amilcar Delgado.  It is my genuine pleasure to meet you.  I have other world leaders on the line, too.  To whom do we have the pleasure of speaking with this fine morning?”
Den, sweating far more than he should be on a Tuesday, looked up at Parma, then Kiv.  Parma motioned that he had no idea what to do or say.  Kiv rolled her eyes and just pointed to the mic.  Den looked back down at it, adjusting his collar and slicking back his hair even though the conversation was audio-only.  “Um, yes!  Heh-heh. Well, good.  This is the Prime Minister of… our world.  I am here with my two senior Ministers.  Heh-heh.”  He paused and then quickly tried to get up again but was immediately sat down by the two soldiers.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my friend – a genuine pleasure!” More cheering could be heard from the commlink.  “You are the first contact our world has had with any alien civilization in hundreds of cycles,” he said, proudly.  “I personally have been waiting for this moment for my entire life.  What did you say your name was again?”
“Just… Prime Minister is fine, really.  Everyone pretty much calls me that here.  Heck, most folks just call me, ah… ‘Prime’, even.  Heh-heh.  Prime.  Prime-o.  Whatever works.”  A collective groan rolled through anyone within earshot of Den.  Kiv face-palmed.
“Seriously, my friend,” said Delgado.  “What is your name, sir?”
“Heh-heh.  My name?  Yes.  Well… it’s, it’s Den.”
Dead silence, followed by some murmuring.
“Uh, still there?  My, ah… friend?” said Den.  Parma and Kiv exchanged glances, as did the two soldiers.  One of the soldiers shook his head to someone in the doorway.
They could hear Delgado clear his throat, then heard whispering.  Finally, he got back on the line.  “Did you say your name was ‘Den’?”  The festive, beaming tone was long gone.
“Well, ah… yes.  Barabbas Den.  Heh.  That’s me.  At your, ah, service.”
“Barabbas.  Den.”
“Um, yes.  You can call me, um, Barry if you’d like,” he said, shooting a glance over to Kiv, who cringed.
“Any relation to Lucias Den?”
Parma, Kiv, and the two soldiers gestured to Den not to answer.  Den tried to follow their gestures but was confused by one or more of them.  Not knowing what else to do, he leaned closer to the mic and slowly said “A distant relative, I’m told. Very distant. Heh-heh.”  Another groan rippled through the room, followed by various cursing noises. Arguing could be heard in the background on the commlink.
“Abominable Lord Lucias Den, the God-Conqueror of Sorrows?  He Who Feeds From Our Tears??” said Delgado, bitterly.
“That was the title he used back then, yes.”
“High Executioner of the nine continents?!”
“Afraid so…”
“Baby Enslaver of the Borothian Coast?!”
“Well, I don’t know about…”
“Family-Flayer of the Fedonian Region?!”
“I haven’t heard that one but I suppose it could…”
“And your first name: Barrabas.  I assume you are named after the Black Prince Barrabas, Terror of the Salucian Sea and Grand Violator of Livestock?”
“Now that’s just an outright lie.  The last recorded rank we have for him was ‘Junior Violator’.  I’m told promotions were very hard to come by back then…”
“Who else have you got there with you?!” said Delgado, above the shouting and rising noise coming from his side.  “Wait, let me guess – Parma and Kiv, right?!”
Parma and Kiv shot quick glances at each other.  Den looked up at them then back at the mic, nervously.
“Well, actually, funny story…”
“Seriously?!  You’ve really got Parma and Kiv there, too?!” spat Delgado.
“Again, it was a very long time ago – hundreds of cycles.  We barely even have records from back then.  Why, Minister Parma…”
“I can’t believe this!  Parma and Kiv!  The twins!  The Demon-Ghouls of Maltha!  How can the three of you actually be in charge, after all these years?  How is that possible?”
“Well, it’s really sort of a family thing.  We inherited…”
“The Unholy Trinity! The Triumvirate of Despair!”
“We really can’t be held responsible for things our distant ancestors might have done.”
“Might have done?!  Might have?!  They took everything our planet had – strip-mined it for generations and left us a toxic wasteland!  Parma and Kivs’ ancestors slaughtered over 1.4 billion people!  Your ancestor single-handedly murdered 40 million!  He held ‘after dinner garrotting tutorials’, for Fek’s sake!”
“Right, well, they certainly weren’t very nice people – not the type you’d want to spend time with or anything.  We freely admit that.  Yes.”
“‘Not the type you’d want to spend time with’?!  Are you insane?  Wait – why have you come back?  We can defend ourselves now, you know.  We’re not just a bunch of primitives with swords anymore!”
Den leaned forward, absentmindedly running his fingers through his thinning hair.  After doing so, he noticed something displeasing on his hand, wiped it on the soldier next to him, and then continued.  “Look,” he said, exasperated, “we didn’t ‘come back’ in any true sense of the word.  Ours is a Rogue Planet – it doesn’t orbit any individual star.  Where it goes, we go by default.  It’s not like we can steer it or anything.  We’ve never been able to control where it goes or why it stays in any given location.  We’ve been trying to understand it for 1000 cycles but our scientists are at a loss.  All we can determine is roughly how long we’ll be somewhere.  Our ancestors calculated they’d be in your area for approximately 183 cycles.  They clearly made some poor choices during that time.”
“Poor choices?!  Genocide is ‘poor choice’?!”
“Well, no of course not.  Look, those were different times.  Why, the only thing I’ve ever conquered is the back nine at the club, and even then I had a mulligan or two if you know what I mean.  Heh-heh.”
“You’re comparing genocide to golf?” said Delgado.
Kiv bent down and motioned to speak into the mic.  “President Delgado?” she said.  “Minister Kiv here.  It’s a pleasure to meet you.  I want to assure you that we are nothing like our evil, appalling ancestors.  I deeply, deeply apologize for their actions, from the bottom of my heart.  I am hopeful that we can leave the past where it belongs – in the past.  It is our goal, my goal, to start fresh and learn from each other from here on, to move forward together as equals, arm in arm, as a bright beacon of hope…”
“In a new dawn,” said Delgado, cutting her off.  “Unbelievable.  That’s the same speech your ancestor gave my ancestor during the start of a supposed armistice, right before your scheming brother used mass drivers to fling asteroids at our children’s hospitals from space.  You just can’t help yourselves, can you? It’s too deeply encoded in each of you.”
“Wait, was that the same one?  I – I didn’t mean…”
“Sit down!” said Parma, moving to the front.  He grabbed the mic away from his sister, elbowing Den and the soldiers out of the way.  “Listen, Delgado!” he said, pointing at the mic.  “We don’t want any trouble.  We don’t like this any more than you do.  We can just not talk to each other, okay? Don’t make us come over there.”
“And… there it is,” said Delgado, who they could hear was also talking with others on his side.  “It doesn’t matter if it’s 300 cycles or just 1.  Still the same old Parma: arrogant, vicious, bullying.  You can’t help it.  It’s in your DNA.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Parma, white-knuckling the mic. “Look, we did the math.  We’ll probably only be here a few cycles this time, at most.  We’ll keep to ourselves.  Then you’ll never see us again.”
“Never?”
“Not for another thousand cycles, maybe more.”
“Well then,” said Delgado, matter-of-factly, still having sidebar conversations with others on his side. “It sounds like we need to get to work.  Goodbye.”
With that, the commlink clicked off, leaving everyone staring at a dead mic.  From the room behind them, a red light started flashing.  Sirens went off from somewhere outside.  People argued and shouted.  A young radiotech burst into the room, panicked, shouting “INCOMING!”
Parma and Kiv slowly turned. 
Den stood up.  “And… there it is,” he said to no one in particular, straightening his tie as the room behind him erupted.