No Surrender - Jeff Mariotte [3]
Gus had been different after that. Gold had always stayed in touch with him—he had been Bradford’s best man when he married Anita, and Bradford had stepped into a synagogue for his first time when Gold had wed the lovely Rabbi Rachel Gilman. Gold had become godfather to the Bradfords’ daughter Deborah, and the two families had often socialized and even traveled together. But learning of Jameson’s betrayal of his principles, and his forty-year concealment of his crimes, had turned Gus sour somehow. It was as if, having idolized the man so much, he couldn’t deal with the truth about him. That conversation twelve years ago, on hearing the news of Jameson’s death, had been the last time they’d spoken. All of Gold’s later attempts to contact him had been rebuffed. Gus had left Starfleet, even left Anita. The last Gold had heard, through the grapevine, he’d moved out of Federation space altogether.
Which meant it was perfectly plausible that he’d ended up in the Kursican system, Gold realized. He also realized that Scotty was looking at him questioningly. “Sorry,” he said. “A little reminiscence.”
“I understand, David. I’m sorry to have to spring this on you.”
“No, it’s not a problem,” Gold said.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Do you happen to know what he’s in for?”
“There’s a political movement, mostly centered around humans who settled on the planet Val’Jon, opposed to Kursican or the other planets in the system joining the Federation. Apparently they went beyond polite disagreement to violent action. Kursican authorities rounded up the ringleaders, and Bradford was one of them.”
“Well, that sounds right,” Gold said. “He went there to get away from the Federation, after all.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Don’t worry about me, Scotty,” Gold assured him. “I liked Gus Bradford once. But that was long ago, and there’s a lot of water under that particular bridge.”
“All right, then,” Scotty said. “There’s one more thing you ought to know, though.”
“What’s this, the other shoe?”
“More or less. Someone else is on the station—just went there to visit her father, according to Kursican authorities—arriving on the same shuttle as the Federation ambassador.”
“Not Deborah,” Gold said, remembering the brown-haired little girl who used to climb on his knee and beg for stories.
“Aye. Deborah. And her son Benjamin,” Scotty confirmed.
“Gus Bradford is a grandfather?”
“These things happen,” Scotty said. “You ought to know that better than most.”
Gold glanced at an array of images phasing in and out of visibility on his desk in random order. Family photos. Scotty was right, of course—Ruth, one of his many granddaughters, was about to provide him with the latest in an even larger number of great-grand-children. The only thing surprising about Bradford having a grandchild was that Gold hadn’t heard about it. “I suppose they do. No matter, Scotty. We’re on our way. We’ll keep the thing in space where it belongs, and we’ll rescue anyone on board that we can. Whether or not their name is Bradford.”
“I know you will, David. I just wanted you to be warned before you got into it.”
“I appreciate it, Scotty,” Gold said.
Scott signed off then. Gold immediately went to the bridge. Just now, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.
Commander Sonya Gomez and Lieutenant Commander Kieran Duffy studied the schematics of the Orbital Incarceration Platform that the Kursicans had—somewhat reluctantly, it seemed to Kieran—supplied them. They sat close together in the ship’s briefing room, knees touching. Every now and then one of them would take the other’s hand to point out something, and would hold that hand just a little longer than was absolutely necessary.
“It used to be a jumping-off station, early on,” Sonya was saying. “They had the hardest time launching anything big enough for serious exploration from the planetary surface. So all their early launches were from the platform.”
“Guess they didn’t have the right inspiration,” Kieran replied.
“What do you mean? Like what?”
He smiled at