Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [50]
Mark Johnson prepared for the onslaught of Irish setter.
Sure enough, Molly leapt up at him as soon as the door slid open, front paws on his chest, barking enthusiastically, and generally treating Mark’s arrival home as an event worthy of commemorating with several licks of his chin.
Giving her a big scritch behind the ears, Mark smiled. Molly’s ritual greeting was about the only thing that got a smile out of him these days.
When Molly finally calmed down enough to get back on all fours, he entered the house. Molly ran circles around him as he stepped into the living room, dropping his duffel bag unceremoniously on the red wool rug that took up most of the living-room floor. There were items in the bag from work that he knew he had to deal with, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to do so.
He looked up at the display on the wall that showed the date and time. Eleven months. Today is the eleven-month anniversary. In one month, it’ll be a year.
The couch sat in the room, staring at him dolefully-which was, Mark thought, a neat trick for a piece of furniture.
That was the couch he was sitting on the last time he talked to Kath.
“Mark, you’ve got to take her home with you.” Kath’s face was pleading with him at the news that Molly was pregnant.
Unable to resist teasing her, Mark protested. “With me? I just got the rugs cleaned.”
“She’s with child! I can’t leave her in a kennel while I’m- “
“Is this another love-me-love-my-dog demand?” It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, after all….
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly.
He shook his head. “How could I ever refuse you?”
“Thanks, honey.” And she meant it, he could tell.
“When do you leave?”
“As soon as I approve these system status reports.”
Ah, the exciting life of a starship captain. “All right, I won’t bother you anymore.”
At that, she looked up and put her hand to the viewer, as if trying to touch his face. “Hey. You never bother me-except the way I love to be bothered. Understand?”
He smirked. “Aye, Captain.”
“See you in a few weeks. Oh, and Mark? Go by my house and pick up the doggie bed. She’ll be more comfortable.”
He let the other shoe drop. “I already did. An hour ago.”
That was the last he’d heard from her.
Mark’s eyes went over to the doggie bed in question, looking like nothing but a huge wicker basket with a flannel blanket covered in Irish setter hair draped over it. But Molly loved it.
The couch was also where he was sitting when he got a message two days later from Deep Space 9, the very same space station where Voyager had been docked. A dark-skinned man with close-cropped hair and a serious demeanor appeared on the screen. He wore a Starfleet uniform just like Kath’s, except he had only three pips. If he remembered right, that meant he was a commander.
“Mr. Johnson, my name is Benjamin Sisko. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Sisko told him that Voyager had apparently disappeared in the Badlands-just like the ship they were going to the Badlands to find-and that search-and-rescue operations were under way, and any number of other things that Mark could no longer remember. Mark did recall that Sisko was very kind and full of empathy, so much so that