STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2355-2357 - Deny Thy Father

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Come up, then,” S’K’lee told him. “I will expect you shortly.” There was a barely audible click as she broke the connection. Like most of the other systems on this ship, communications seemed to be operated with fairly ancient technology. Kyle wouldn’t have been too surprised to look underneath the Morning Star and see a couple of sets of wheels there for landings.

  But the door opened when he worked the complicated opening mechanism, so he stepped into the dim, utilitarian corridor and tried to remember where the bridge was. He had only a vague mental image of the ship’s layout, even after all his days on board. The ship didn’t seem to have anywhere near the clean lines of the Starfleet vessels he was used to, but instead it was bulky, almost boxy, with a massive, squared-off bow, tapering slightly toward the stern. He’d been told that she could move fast when she needed to but he had a hard time believing it.

  The bridge, he knew, was in a separate dome section that jutted out from the top, not far back from the bow, breaking the line of the ship like an afterthought. Which meant that Kyle had to work his way in that direction. Assuming the artificial gravity was standard, the ladders would take him up. If, however, that assumption was wrong, he might be going in entirely the wrong direction.

  But he was in luck. The ship’s gravity was indeed Earth-like, and what felt like up to him was indeed up. After several minutes of searching he found what must have been the topmost deck, and then he ran across one of the more humanoid crew members in the corridor, a female with sleek fur like a panther’s, black spots underneath. “I’m looking for the bridge,” he said. “Captain S’K’lee invited me up.”

  She looked at him for a moment as if surprised he could speak at all, then tilted her head toward the ceiling and wandered away. He wasn’t sure if she was indicating that he should continue going up, or if it was some form of shrug. At any rate, he was back on his own again, and he roamed through the corridor until he heard a familiar voice behind him.

  “Mr. Barrow,” John Abbott boomed jovially.

  “Mr. Abbott,” Kyle said. “I’m looking for the bridge.”

  “S’K’lee must be having a party,” John said. “She’s asked me up as well.”

  “I’ve been curious,” Kyle said. “Have you ever seen S’K’lee pilot the ship?”

  “Of course, many times,” Abbott replied.

  “How does she do it?” Kyle wondered. “You know, being blind.”

  “That, my friend, is something she’ll have to explain to you. It’s beyond me. Just follow me, and all will be revealed.”

  He led Kyle up the corridor he’d been walking down, then fiddled with a gearlike contraption on the wall that Kyle would have had no idea how to use. With a soft hiss, a panel slid open, revealing a wide staircase—its stairs short and close together, like the ship’s ladder rungs—leading up to a large, domed space that Kyle knew must be the bridge.

  “Guests on the bridge,” Abbott shouted when they were halfway up. Kyle was just able to see crew members, mostly Kreel’n of course, moving about the bridge or working at various stations. The control panels he could see looked much as they had on other starships he’d visited, if a little more primitive. The walls and ceiling of the dome were all transparent and the spacescape beyond was quite beautiful.

  Captain S’K’lee spun around in her chair, which was positioned in the dead center of the round room. “Welcome,” she squeaked.

  “Captain,” John said before Kyle could even open his mouth. “Mr. Barrow here doesn’t believe you can fly this bucket.”

  Kyle shot the man an angry glance. “That’s not precisely the way I put it,” he explained quickly. “I just asked how you could pilot, since, as I understand it, ships’ captains voluntarily undergo surgical blinding.”

  S’K’lee made her laughing noise again, long and loud. “Visiting a museum once, when I was much younger, I put on a special helmet that reputedly approximated the visual acuity of humans,” she said when she had brought her laughter under control. “I was astonished that you even think you can see. By our standards, you’re quite blind yourself, even at your optimum.”

  She could be right, he supposed. With six eyes ringing half their heads, at the very least a Kreel’n’s field of vision would be much greater. And he supposed there could be advantages to depth perception, possibly making them more adept at judging distances, and maybe better able to shift from close to distant focus.

  “Even so,” he said. “At least I can look out the viewscreen and see what’s ahead of me.” John Abbott, he noted, stood by silently, occasionally nodding to himself. He’d heard all this before.

  “Your way of seeing—even our way—just gets in the way when doing complicated flying,” S’K’lee said. “My ship’s instruments tell me everything I need to know. In a tricky situation, the momentary gap between perception and response could be fatal, if I relied on my vision. But when I rely on the ship’s perceptions and responses, the possibility of error is all but eliminated. Seeing would only endanger the ship and crew, making me more likely to trust my own senses instead of my instruments, if they should be at odds. Hence, the blinding procedure.”

  “Still,” Kyle said. “If the ship’s crew can see, it must be a bit harrowing to them when you’re at the helm in a tight spot.”

  S’K’lee fixed some of her dead black eyes on him as if she were looking at him. “They trust,” she said simply. “They trust.”

  Kyle glanced about at the ship’s officers, going about their routines now. They looked capable enough, and he’d had no problems with S’K’lee’s flying when they left the space station. And certainly in his years, he’d encountered much stranger things. “Thank you,” he said. “For the explanation.”

  “I’m afraid I have something else to explain to you,” S’K’lee said. Kyle was no expert, but the tone of her scratchy, squealy voice seemed to have changed a little. He couldn’t make out what this change might signify, though.

  “What is it?”

  “You can’t see it,” S’K’lee said with a grimace that Kyle took to be a smile, “because it’s beneath us just now. But we’ve been hailed by a Starfleet ship—the LaSalle, I believe its captain said it was.”

  Kyle felt his heart slam against his ribcage like a wild beast vying for release. Suddenly dizzy, he reached for the nearest control podium and held on for support. Hoping no one had noticed, he glanced over at John Abbott, who still watched S’K’lee, apparently unconcerned.

  “Hailed?” Kyle managed to croak out. “Why?”

  “According to its captain, we’re harboring a fugitive,” S’K’lee said. “I, of course, told them we were doing no such thing and invited them to beam aboard and search us if they chose.”

  “And their response?” John asked.

  “They’ll have a security squad here in ten minutes,” S’K’lee replied. “I stalled them for a while, but I thought it best to warn you both. Just in case.”

  “I’m sure it’s some kind of mistake,” John said.

  “Of course,” S’K’lee agreed.

  “I’ll return to my cabin, then.”

  “As you wish,” S’K’lee told him. “And you, Mr. Barrow?”

  “I ... uh, I’ll do the same,” Kyle said. He felt like his world was turning upside down, like the temporary sense of security he had enjoyed had been suddenly shattered. In a blurry haze, he followed John Abbott off the bridge and down a succession of ladders. Finally, John looked back at him, as if surprised to see that he was still there.

  “You passed your deck a while back, Barrow,” he said abruptly. He seemed a bit winded now, though Kyle thought that might have been because he’d been hurrying down ladders barely wide enough for his bulk.

  “Oh,” Kyle said dumbly. “I ... I guess I lost count.”

  “Got you a bit nervous?” John asked with a grin.

  “Well, you know. The idea that there might be a fugitive on the ship, it’s a little frightening.”

  John touched his c
hin and nodded. “It certainly is,” he said.

  “I guess I should go back up then. To my own cabin,” Kyle said.

  “I suppose. When this is all over, we’ll have a drink and laugh about it.”

  “It’s a deal,” Kyle agreed. He climbed back up to his own deck and found his own cramped quarters. But should I bother going in? he wondered, half-panicked. Should I run? To where? Surely they’ve already scanned the ship, they know there are only two human passengers aboard. If I ran, all I could do would be to get myself lost, but I couldn’t hide from them for long.

  He sat down on the edge of his bed, breathing deeply and trying to calm his fears. The captain hadn’t specified that the fugitive was human, had she? Starfleet might have any number of reasons for seeking out anyone on board such a big vessel. And at least he hadn’t begun having Tholian flashbacks again, he realized with some satisfaction. There was that much to be grateful for.

  But he couldn’t shake the certainty that they had come for him. He was still sitting there, trying not to think about what the Starfleet Security team might have in store for him, when there was a knock at the door to his room. “Come in,” he said, and the door hissed open.

  Two uniformed security officers, one an average-sized human female and the other a yellow-skinned being so tall he had to stoop his shoulders to avoid hitting his massive, shaggy head against the passageway’s ceiling, peered at him through the open door but didn’t enter. “Mr. Barrow?” the human woman asked.

  “That’s right,” Kyle said.

  “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  “That depends,” he answered, plastering a quick grin on his face to defuse the defensiveness of his response. “What about?”

  “Did you know the man who called himself John Abbott?”

  Kyle picked up on the past tense reference right away. “What do you mean, ‘did’ I? Of course I know him.”

  “How well?”

  “Has something happened to him?” Kyle demanded.

  The shaggy yellow creature spoke for the first time, his voice deep and rumbling with menace. “Please just answer our questions, Mr. Barrow. It’ll be easier on everyone.”

  The woman flicked her eyes toward her partner, and Kyle got the impression that their working styles were not always in smooth confluence. “I’m afraid that Mr. Abbott took his own life,” she explained, sounding sympathetic. “When he heard we had come for him.”

  “Took his own life? Why?” Kyle asked, already forgetting the tall one’s warning.

  The woman blew out a sigh. “How well did you know him?” she asked again.

  “Just casually,” Kyle replied. “We were the only humans on the ship. We had a few drinks together, had a chat from time to time. I didn’t know him before we met during the trip, and wouldn’t consider him a friend. But I’m sorry to hear that he’s dead. Was he in some kind of trouble?”

  “You could say that,” the tall yellow officer said. “Abbott was a killer. In his cargo, we’ve found parts belonging to at least a dozen different bodies. But the captain of this ship says that a couple of her crew members have gone missing in recent weeks, and now she’s worried that he might have been continuing his spree on board.”

  “You don’t mind if we have a look around in here?” the woman asked. Her tricorder had already appeared in her hand.

  Kyle stepped away from the door to let them in. The yellow alien had to bend over uncomfortably far to fit beneath the low jamb, ducking like a palm tree in a hurricane, or a snow-laden fir. “Not at all,” he said, his mind racing to determine if there were anything in the room that might point to his real identity. As long as they didn’t try to access his padd, he thought he’d be okay.

  Both officers ran their tricorders across the room—scanning for body parts, Kyle guessed, though he couldn’t be sure if any of their outlandish story had even been true. When they were finished they locked eyes and shared a shrug.

  “You’re not making this up?” Kyle asked. “About Abbott and the bodies?”

  “It’s not our job to tell spooky stories,” the yellow one said. “Abbott wouldn’t have told you any, would he? Maybe let on where he stashed his newest victims?”

  Kyle shook his head grimly. “This is the first I’ve heard of anything like that,” he said. “He seemed like a nice enough fellow to me.”

  “That’s what they always say about the worst ones,” the woman told her companion. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Barrow. Sorry to disturb you. Enjoy the rest of your trip.”

  They both stepped from the room, the tall one scrunching himself down again to get out, and the door closed behind them. In the wake of their visit, Kyle found himself at once astonished and terrified. He had known that Abbott was a phony name, of course, but had thought maybe the man was a smuggler or something. Certainly nothing as sinister as a killer.

  As he sat back down on the bed, he realized that the other thing Abbott had been was the only other human being he had spoken with on the Morning Star. Now there was no one on the ship but the crew, mostly Kreel’n, who had shown no indication of wanting to interact with him at all.

  You wanted to be left alone, he told himself. Congratulations. It doesn’t get much more alone than this.

  Where is he?

  He’s everywhere. He’s nowhere.

  What does that mean?

  No one has seen him. There have been no records of his showing up anyplace—he hasn’t been home, he hasn’t been to his office, he hasn’t been near Headquarters. But his padd’s GPS shows that he’s everyplace from Venus to Taipei to Taurus II. Every reading comes from someplace different. It’s as if he’s completely vanished.

  That’s impossible!

  Exactly my point. We’ve lost him, or he’s lost himself. Either way ...

  But ... but I want him! I want to see him squirm, see him suffer. I want him crushed! There’s a high price that needs to be paid, and Kyle Riker is the one to pay it!

  I’m not resting ... I won’t rest, until he’s found. And punished.

  Yes, punished ...

  PART TWO

  FEBRUARY-MAY 2356

  Chapter 15

  The sun set late on Hazimot, which was one of many reasons why Kyle liked it there. Eighteen hours of sunlight in a row reminded him of the Alaskan summer, that golden time of year when you remembered why you put up with Alaskan winters. Of course, Hazimot was hotter than Alaska, even Valdez in midsummer. It had its sun, technically a star known as Iamme IV, and then it had a secondary sun, Myetra, much farther away but still near enough to cast light and some warmth down on Hazimot’s arid surface. The conflicting gravitational fields gave all the system’s planets skewed orbits, and there were long winters on Hazimot that were much colder than Alaska’s. But the next one wouldn’t come around for about twelve earth years, and Kyle didn’t plan to stay that long.

  Kyle was walking home from work through the twilight streets of Cozzen, one of the largest cities in the nation of Cyre, with Clantis, a Cyrian coworker. The day had been long and wearying and as Kyle walked he felt a heaviness of limbs and a weariness of muscle that left him at once tired, sore, and satisfied. Clantis, taller than him and broad, with a deep chest and massive shoulders that made him well suited to hard physical labor, had skin the color and texture of hammered copper. The months on Hazimot had bronzed Kyle’s as well, but he figured he’d never achieve the look that Clantis had.

  When they reached the intersection where Kyle went one way and Clantis another, the Cyrian regarded Kyle with a bemused expression and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you still live in that hole,” he said. “You make enough, don’t you, to get a real place? In a neighborhood where you don’t have to fear for your life every day?”

  Kyle shrugged. He had always had a facility for languages, and Cyrian had been easy for him to learn. “I guess it just suits me.”

  “Suits the vermin who get into your food and bedding,” Clantis argued. “Not you. You’re
a smart guy, a hard worker. You could do better, easy.”

  Clantis’s own home was a low, domed house in a neighborhood of similar structures, all built in the shadow of one of the great walls that surrounded Cozzen. It had seven rooms and was technologically current. Kyle, on the other hand, still lived in the place he’d found upon first arriving in Cozzen, so many months before. His building was half a dozen stories tall, one of many in its cramped district, a warren of narrow streets and abandoned buildings turned squatters’ hovels. Kyle shared his building with a changing cast of characters, twenty or so at any given time. But rent was free and, more important, no one asked difficult questions there or pried into one another’s private affairs. Hazimot had a fairly substantial human population, and the natives were humanoid enough that blending in was easy.

  “I suppose,” Kyle said, noncommittal. “But I’m happy, so why worry about it?”

  “Happy?” Clantis echoed. The two had grown fairly close, working side by side on the interminable public redevelopment projects that were so common in the city, and walking home together most days. Close enough, Kyle thought, that he seems to be taking my life choices personally now.

  That’s not good. Next thing, he might start wondering about my past.

  “I don’t see how you can claim to be happy,” Clantis continued. “Living down there with the dregs, the losers and maggots that feed on society’s droppings.”

  “It’s not quite that bad,” Kyle said with a chuckle. “Like you say, I’m a smart guy. I wouldn’t put up with it if it was as bad as you describe.”

  “Everyone has their own standards,” Clantis admitted.

  “Exactly. I’ll see you tomorrow, Clantis.”

  “See you then, Joe.”

  Kyle tossed off a casual wave and headed into the neighborhood called The End, because it had, once upon a time, been at the end of a long road that connected several of Cyre’s cities. The name had stuck, and now had quite different connotations. Kyle’s own name had not passed his lips since he left the Morning Star to live here; instead he had called himself Joe Brady, because it was a bland name with absolutely no resonance for him. Except for the fact that he was a mass murderer, Kyle had been a little sorry that John Abbott hadn’t lived longer—while it had lasted, their relationship had been an educational one.