Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [123]
“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