Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [114]
Will was momentarily lost in the noise and chaos. He had no one to seek out, and his friends had all vanished toward the back of the big room. But as he turned in a slow circle, he saw Dennis Haynes, face flushed, walking nearby.
Hoping that maybe his former friend had cooled off a bit, Will stopped him. “Hey, Dennis, congratulations,” he said with all sincerity.
“Thanks,” Dennis said. He faced Will but there was no hint of a smile on his ruddy face. “Heard you were at the top of the class.”
“Eighth,” Will corrected. Kul Tun Osir had been first. “Not all the way.”
“You know where I finished, Will?” Dennis asked. He made it sound like a challenge.
“I really don’t,” Will admitted.
“Dead last,” Dennis told him. “That’s quite an accomplishment, isn’t it? Nobody was able to do worse than me. When it comes to being bad, I’m the best.” He glared at Will, who simply watched him, straight-faced.
“You may have finished last,” Will said finally. “But you still finished. You’re here, the same as the rest of us.”
“I sure am,” Dennis said. “I’m here, and I did it by myself. No help from you, obviously, and none from anyone else either. Just my own efforts, my own two hands, and my own barely adequate brain.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Dennis,” Will said. “On yourself and everyone else.”
“If you’d been in my shoes, you wouldn’t necessarily think that,” Dennis shot back. “But, luckily for you and Starfleet, you didn’t have to find out.”
“I’m sure your contribution to Starfleet will be an important one,” Will suggested.
“Maybe if I was going into Starfleet,” Dennis said. “But I’m not.”
“But… you graduated from the Academy!” Will was dumfounded. “Even if you don’t want to join Starfleet-and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t-you kind of have to now, don’t you?”
“You’d think so, huh?” Dennis asked. “But it turns out there’s a kind of special dispensation for cases like mine. It’s possible to do just well enough to make it through the Academy but still bad enough that they won’t make you enlist if you choose not to. They don’t really want me, any more than I want them.”
People were streaming around them now, graduates and family members alike, and Dennis had raised his voice to the point that people cast sidelong glances at them and tried to give them wide berth.
“I guess I just don’t understand,” Will said. “I thought the whole reason you put yourself through this was that you wanted to be in Starfleet.”
Finally, Dennis smiled. “I thought that too,” he said. “But you know what happened, Will? I met you.”
“Me?”
“You, Will. I think you’ll have a brilliant Starfleet career. You’ll be some big hotshot senior officer, probably a captain someday, or an admiral. And that’s exactly why I want nothing to do with Starfleet. Because the system rewards people who are willing to turn their backs on their friends, who will sacrifice friendships for advancement and accomplishment. You’ll thrive in that kind of atmosphere, Riker. But I want no part of it. I’m going home, back to the farm. At least there when you’re up to your ankles in manure, you know where you really stand.”
Will felt anger overtake him. “I feel like I want to say I’m sorry you feel that way, Dennis,” he said. “But really, I’m not. Whatever problems you think you have with Starfleet you really have with yourself. How you did in school is no one’s fault but your own. You can’t blame anyone else for that. You could have asked for help at any point, and you could have accepted help when it was offered. You could have pulled your own weight like the rest of us did. You chose not to, well, those are the choices you make. But then don’t go trying to blame others, or the ‘system,’ for your shortcomings. As Dr. McCoy might have said, that dog don’t hunt.”
Dennis shot Will a look of anger much like the one he’d left him with the night he’d demanded help. “Leave it to you to kiss up even when you don’t have to, Riker,” he said. “McCoy can’t