The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [183]
The letter explained why Halloway hadn’t taken command of the EnterpriseD, as had been offered to him by Admiral Satie. Jean-Luc skimmed through the long document until he found the part that had stuck with him.
You are chosen to take over the ship, by Admiral Satie’s expressed wish. Far be it from me to object; after all, it was I who let her down. I could have taken the ship out there, beyond the fringes of known space, and yet I know, deep down inside me, that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it even half as much as you are bound to do. As I have said before, I am an engineer at heart, always have been, and the prospect of leaving my work at the yards behind for years, perhaps even decades, of exploration in deep space left me cold, I’m sorry to say. It’s an important job and a great one, I am sure, but it is not my job. It’s an honor to have been considered as the captain of the Enterprise, but I know that it’s an honor reserved for someone like you. If there is anything being an engineer has taught me, it’s that there is always a best tool for any job—and that for any tool there is always a perfect job. I know what my perfect job is. It is not command.
The other part of the reason I chose to disappoint Admiral Satie that way was my desire to be with my family. From the beginning, my wife made it very clear that she would not go into space with me, no matter how long I was gone. The Enterprise would’ve been big enough for the crew’s families to accompany them on their first mission, but that wasn’t enough of an incentive for my wife, Solveig. She is a public works manager, and there is little call for such a person on a starship in the depths of space. As important as my work in Starfleet has been to me, my wife and my children are more important, they are my everything, so I said good-bye to the Enterprise and all the people on board, knowing full well that I stood a very good chance of never seeing either of them again in my life.
When he had first read the letter, some fifteen years ago, Jean-Luc had had great difficulty believing it. At the time, Jean-Luc had wondered if the man was merely a coward. He’d heard of the accident with the torpedo launcher that had killed twelve engineers during construction. Had the man lost his nerve for space travel? Did the unknown frighten him so much? Back then, Jean-Luc had almost considered him a failure as a Starfleet officer.
And to be so tied to family! Jean-Luc had basically destroyed his relationship with his father for the sake of Starfleet and outer space, and his relationship with his brother Robert had not fared much better. When he’d first met Will, he’d told him, “I’m not a family man,” and that had most certainly been true. For most of his life, Jean-Luc had maintained a careful distance from family ties. Viewed through that lens fifteen years ago, Halloway’s stated reasons had seemed flimsy at best.
He had reread the letter only once since that first time, and as on that occasion, he was struck by the foolishness of his younger self—this time, even more so. Estranged from his family, of course he’d thought he could do without it. But time had proved the thoughts of that younger, more arrogant man untrue. There had been the encounter with the Ressikan probe, where Jean-Luc had lived the life of a man named Kamin for thirty-five years in less than half an hour. There he had married and had two children—not to mention one grandchild—and though he had been glad to return to his own life, the part of the experience that had always stayed with him was the joy he had felt at seeing “his” two children grow from infanthood to maturity, together with the sadness that he had never been able to experience all that firsthand.
Not to mention that without his brother, he doubted he could have ever pulled through the ordeal the Borg collective had put him through, when they had assimilated him and turned him into Locutus. Robert had watched over him afterward, helping him regain his confidence in himself and