“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.”