Deny Thy Father

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Thank you, sir. Marc.” Will said. “You can call me Will.”

  “No thanks,” Marc Boylen responded with a smirk. “ ‘Ensign Babyface’ works for me.”

  They started Will’s tour at the starboard warp nacelle. “All right, Will,” Marc said when they arrived there. “This is where you’ll get to know your new home. U.S.S. Pegasus, NCC-53847. How much do you know about her?”

  “Oberth-class starship,” Will recited. “Primary assignments are science and exploration. Named for the flying horse.” Will paused. “That’s about it, I guess.”

  “That’s about all you need to know,” Marc told him, suddenly more serious than Will had seen him before. “Because a ship’s history, distinguished as it might be, doesn’t really have an impact on your life. What matters is where she goes from here, and what you can bring to it. What you care about is the ship’s future, not her past, and rightfully so.”

  “Makes sense,” Will observed.

  “Of course,” Marc went on, “it’s a lie, but then that might apply to anything I tell you, so you’ll have to stay on your toes. You need to know a lot more about the ship than that if you’re going to fly her. But most of what you need, you already know if you’ve flown starships before. The rest you can learn.” They walked along the length of the warp nacelle. “I don’t need to describe the propulsion system to you, do I? Or general starship construction?”

  “No, sir,” Will told him.

  “That’s good, because if I did, I’d get you booted off this ship so fast your head would spin.”

  “What’s your position again, Marc?” Will asked.

  “You don’t know because I didn’t tell you, Ensign Babyface. I’m a tactical officer.”

  “So you couldn’t actually boot me off the ship yourself.”

  “But I know the captain much better than you do,” Marc pointed out. “So watch your step.”

  “Yes, sir,” Will said with a chuckle.

  “Now, an Oberth-class ship has a pretty unique construction,” Marc continued, as if he hadn’t interrupted his own lecture for a gag. Will took what he said to be the truth, for the most part, since it agreed with what he knew about Oberth s. But he tried to stay alert for any lies. “The saucer section, which contains the bridge, is connected to the port and starboard warp nacelles. The warp nacelles are connected to the long engineering hull. But the saucer itself is not connected to the engineering hull, except via the nacelles.” He drew a diagram in the air to illustrate his point. The long, narrow engineering hull ran horizontally underneath the saucer section, and the large spar that stuck out behind the saucer, with the warp nacelles out to the sides holding the whole thing together.

  “But you can beam between the saucer and engineering,” Will speculated.

  “Of course, if you need to get there in a hurry. We don’t, right now, so we’re walking. You can also get there by turbolift, although because the lifts need to be shunted off to the nacelles before going down to the engineering hull, there is a momentary delay. It’s not long but it might seem long compared to turbolift operation on other ships.”

  They reached a narrow, steep passageway where they had to descend on ladders. “We’re inside the struts now,” Marc said. “There’s not much functionality here, except for connecting the various parts of the ship. It’s an interesting design, but you can see why it didn’t really catch on for other classes of ships.”

  He led Will through the engineering section, which looked much like every other engineering section Will had ever seen, and introduced Will to an assortment of engineering staff whose names he knew he wouldn’t remember until he’d met them all again a few times. That didn’t take long, and then they were climbing up, instead of traveling via turbolift, the port strut to the port warp nacelle. The ship, as far as Will could tell, was in excellent shape. If she’d had any problems or damage at any point, it had been thoroughly repaired and patched. When they finally made their way back to the saucer section, Marc showed Will the crew quarters, including his own berth. As a junior officer, Will had a single room, with a bed that tucked into the wall until a control panel was pressed and a washbasin hidden away beneath a shelf. The walls themselves were a soft pastel off-white, with blue-gray trim and accessories here and there. The replicator was built into the wall opposite the bed, and there was a tiny, curved worktable in one corner. Compared to his Academy quarters it was a little cramped, but it would serve his needs. A crew member had already dropped off his belongings, he saw.

  “Home sweet home,” he said as he looked at the room.

  “Until you get promoted, anyway,” Marc told him. “Then you get a place big enough to turn around in.”

  “Good incentive.”

  “You can personalize it to your heart’s content, though,” Marc assured him.

  “I don’t own much,” Will said, pointing to the duffel he had brought on board. “A couple of books, some uniforms, that’s about it.”

  “That’s good,” Marc said with a grin. “If you had any more, you’d have to borrow space from someone else who owned even less than you. And frankly, that person would just be pathetic.”

  Leaving his quarters behind, Will followed Marc around the saucer section. He saw the holodeck, the shuttle-bay, the transporter rooms, the observation lounge, and perhaps most importantly, he thought, suddenly realizing that it had been many hours since breakfast, the mess hall and lounge. In this area he also saw quite a few civilians walking around. As Marc had suggested, families were common on the ship, and he guessed that some of the people out of uniform were the spouses and children of the crew.

  “When are you supposed to be on duty?” Marc asked him as they watched the parade of humanity pass by.

  “Not until tomorrow morning,” Will said. “I was to report to the ship today, but my first shift is tomorrow.”

  “That’ll give you some time to get acclimated,” Marc said.

  “That’s what I was thinking too. When do we push off?” He had boarded the ship at Starbase 10, after shuttling there from San Francisco the day before.

  “Push off?” Marc echoed. “We’ve been under way for the last hour.” He swiveled and led Will back to the observation lounge, but this time he opened the door and they went inside. Will peered through the large windows and saw the starscape drifting past them.

  “Indeed we are under way,” he observed. “Smooth.”

  “Nothing’s second-rate on the Pegasus,” Marc told him. “Tomorrow morning it’ll be your turn to fly smooth. Think you can do it, Babyface?”

  Will swallowed once. He wouldn’t have been assigned the job if Starfleet hadn’t had faith in his abilities. Unless, he thought, Superintendent Vyrek just wants me far away from her.

  “I can do it.”

  Marc Boylen nodded. “That’s good. You keep thinking that way.” He drew back one of the chairs and sat down at the long, shiny table. “Have a seat, Ensign.”

  Will did as he was told. Marc looked serious again. Will had only known the man for a short time, but he knew these serious moments were rare and should be taken, well, seriously. He waited.

  “You’re going to be on this ship for a long time, Ensign Babyface,” Marc said. “Years. You ready for that? That’s the hardest part of the job, for some.”

  Will had given a great deal of thought to this aspect of the job. What was he leaving behind on Earth, though? He had no family, except a father who had abandoned not only him but also, apparently, his career and everyone who had depended on him. He had no girlfriend, and the few friends he had left that he felt close to were all scattered on their own postings. Of the class that had graduated with him, there were only two other cadets he knew who had wound up on the Pegasus with him, and neither were especially good friends.

  “I’m ready,” he said finally.

  “You won’t miss Earth?”

  “Sometimes, I guess. Not a lot.”

  “Where’d you live, before the Academy? I’m from Ve
rmont. Stowe. Not much skiing around here, except on the holodeck.”

  “Valdez, Alaska,” Will said. “So I guess we’re both used to plenty of snow.”

  “You ski?”

  “Cross-country,” Will said. “Downhill’s okay but it’s not really my thing.”

  “We’ll have to go out sometime,” Marc said. “What else are you going to miss? Got a lover?”

  Felicia’s face flashed through Will’s mind but he forced the image away. Ancient history. “No, not now.”

  “Family?”

  “No.”

  Marc scrutinized him. “You have a life at all, outside the Academy?”

  “I guess not much of one,” Will admitted. “I’m kind of career-oriented, I guess.”

  “You’ll do fine, then, on this ship. Just remember, there will be times when you’ll get homesick, no matter what kind of home you left behind. There’ll be times when you miss having terra firma under your feet. If it gets bad, you can talk to the ship’s counselor, or you can talk to me.”

  “What will you do about it?” Will challenged.

  “Laugh in your face,” Marc said. “Won’t do much for you, but it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.”

  “I appreciate that, Marc,” Will said, chuckling. “It’s nice to know you’re looking out for me.”

  “I’m a tactical officer,” Marc reminded him. “I look out for everyone. I’m only looking out for you because you’re such a rookie, and because I don’t want you to run us into anything when you’ve got the helm.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Will promised.

  Marc pushed back his chair and stood up, and Will did the same. “Think you can find your way back to your quarters?” Marc asked him.

  Will looked around, orienting himself. “I think so.”

  “Good. You know where the mess hall is, or you can eat replicator food in your quarters. I was you, I’d go to the mess hall so you can meet some more folks and start learning names. Show up on time for duty tomorrow—if there’s one thing Captain Pressman hates, it’s lateness. Watch out for Shinnareth Bestor. She’s the operations officer. Good at her job, but with a foul temper, especially in the mornings. She’s become addicted to coffee, I think.”

  Will tried to absorb all this. “Any other advice?”

  “Don’t run into anything. Don’t break the ship. You’ll be fine.” He turned and started to leave, but then stopped after a few steps and looked back over his shoulder. “And when you start having to shave every day, be sure you do. The captain also hates unkempt officers on his bridge.”

  Then Marc was gone, and Will was, for the first time, really alone on his new ship. His new home. It was big and strange and he knew virtually no one, and first thing in the morning strangers would be depending on his ability to do his job.

  But if there was one thing Will was confident about, it was that. He knew he could do the job.

  Chapter 31

  “I’ve known you a long time, Owen,” Kyle said. “You’ve always been straight with me. That’s why I’ve come to you now. No matter what’s going on, I can’t believe you’re involved.”

  Owen Paris looked at Kyle, his mouth still agape, eyes wide, and shook his head slowly. “You can’t believe?” he replied. “I can’t believe you’re standing there. It’s been two years, hasn’t it?”

  “A little more,” Kyle admitted. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before, Owen. I didn’t know who to trust. I was scared. Not in my right mind, I guess.”

  Owen turned his gaze toward the top of his desk. “I thought you were dead, Kyle. I think after a while, we all did.”

  “Not an entirely inappropriate conclusion, considering someone was trying awfully hard to kill me.”

  “So it seemed,” Owen said. “And then you vanished. What else were we to think? We tried to find you—Starfleet Security was knocking on doors and interviewing people all over the place. But you were simply gone. Where were you? Where have you been all this time?”

  “That’s not important now, Owen. It was a bad place, and I lost someone I cared about there. Tell you the truth, I’m still grieving for her. But I’m back now, and I want to get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, wondering who the next killer is. And I’d like for the rest of my life to last more than just a few days.”

  “We all would,” Owen assured him. “I know Starfleet investigated the attempts on your life, the ones we knew about, anyway, for a while. But they didn’t turn anything up, and then you were gone, so I think the investigation petered out after a while. No body, no evidence, no witnesses. It’s still an open file, I’m sure, but with nothing to go on, they had to give up the hunt at some point.”

  Kyle had contacted Owen’s office shortly after landing in San Francisco. He’d been nervous about approaching Starfleet Command, and after trying to think of a safe way to approach, had finally sent a message to Owen asking him to meet at the wharf. Kyle had arrived a little early, and the ten minutes or so he’d had to wait for Owen to show up had been anxious ones—hoping Owen, and he alone, had received the message and would comply. Now they stood on the wharf in gathering fog, looking out at the choppy gray water. “So if they’d like to get busy again, they’re welcome to. As for evidence, I don’t have any more than I did then. But now that I’ve returned, if the attempts start up again there’ll be plenty, I imagine.”

  “If the attempts start up again after this long, it means someone really holds a grudge,” Owen said. “You still don’t have any idea who it might be?”

  “Not a clue,” Kyle informed him. “Or rather, too many ideas. Anyone in my position has a lot of enemies. Anybody that has been beaten in combat thanks to my advice and strategies. Even other Starfleet personnel who might feel that they were ignored, or passed over, because of me. Sure, I’ve got enemies. I just don’t know who they are.”

  “I’ve got to bring security into this,” Owen told him. “I’ll help where I can, but it’s really not my bailiwick.”

  “I know that, Owen,” Kyle replied. “I didn’t come to you because I thought you could fix it. I came because you were the one person I was sure I could trust.”

  “What was the final straw?” Owen asked him. A hovercraft chugged by on the water before them, bristling with fishing rods. “Was there some incident, some attempt, that prompted you to go into hiding? Maybe they can start there.”

  Kyle had to think about it for a moment. So much had happened since then, it was sometimes hard to keep the sequence of events straight in his head. “After the last attack you know about, the bomb transported into my apartment? I was at Starfleet Command, in the infirmary. I ran into a friend, in the hallway, and went into a private room for a moment. While we were there, we heard some security officers outside claiming that they had an arrest warrant for me, and—”

  “An arrest warrant?” Owen exploded. He rubbed his smooth forehead vigorously. “How is that possible? What would you have been charged with?”

  Kyle shrugged. “Treason, according to Admiral Bonner’s source, right?”

  “That’s another investigation that seems to have stalled out,” Owen said. “Again, with you gone, it hardly seemed worth pursuing. I haven’t heard anything about it from Horace.”

  “I’d like my name cleared, Owen, if there’s genuinely a question about it.”

  “Bonner had a source,” Owen said, his tone dismissive. “His source seemed to have some pretty good information. But the conclusion—that you were somehow responsible for the Tholian attack—seemed exceedingly far-fetched to me.” Owen shook his head. “I guess I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d stayed away forever, considering all the crap you’ve got to put up with here.”

  Kyle nodded, reflecting. “I might have,” he answered. “If not for this woman I met. She was amazing, Owen. She would not accept injustice. Just wouldn’t put up with it. Taught me a thing or two, I can tell you. And after I lost
her, well, I guess I felt like I ought to carry on her ideals. I could have done it there, where I was—they have a fight on their hands, to be sure. But I realized that this is my home, and that what happened to me here is a form of injustice that I need to deal with before I’ll be any good to anyone else.”

  Owen examined him carefully. “So when you solve the situation here, are you going back there? Wherever there is.”

  Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I don’t plan to. But that could change. Plans, I’ve learned, are liquid. They adapt to fit the circumstances, or they’re worthless. More than that, really, because if you rely on a plan that can’t change you might as well have no plan at all.”

  Owen Paris chuckled. “Sounds like you’ve become a philosopher since you’ve been gone.”

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking. I don’t know if that’s philosophy, or a fool’s errand. But for a long time, I didn’t have much else to do. And then when things happened, they happened all at once. If a cat has nine lives, Owen, then I don’t know how many I’ve got, but I must be just about out of them.”

  “We’ll keep your return as quiet as we can, Kyle,” Owen promised him. “Some people will have to know, because, as I said, security is going to have to reopen the investigation. But you watch your step until we figure this thing out.”

  “I’ll watch my step,” Kyle said. “But I want to come back to work.”

  Owen looked at him like he’d gone insane. Maybe I have, Kyle thought. Maybe insane is the only way to counter insanity. “Back to work? Are you sure? Then it’ll be no secret that you’re back here.”

  “That’s right,” Kyle said. “If they’re going to come at me again, whoever they are, I want them to do it in the open. I want everyone to know I’m here. I want to flush them out. If my presence is a secret then any attacks on me will be a secret too. I want to force their hand, make them sweat a bit. They’ll play the cards I deal them this time, and not the other way around.”