Rising Son

by S. D. Perry

  Jake was obviously disappointed with the news, but visibly faring much better with it than he had the night before. “It’s okay. Really. I hope you know how grateful I am already, for all you’ve done.” He sighed, smiled resignedly. “And I also hope you’ll let me do something as long as I’m here. I’d hate to just take up space.”

  Dez had been waiting for just such a declaration. As Brad, Neane, and Aris filed into the conference room, he and Jake started after them—and thinking about what would come next, Dez found himself hit with a particular kind of excitement he’d first known at Jake’s age, a thrill that he’d spent most of his adult life working to recreate…he could still remember that time so clearly, leaving home to meet new people, to see new places, adventure, romance, intrigue…danger. Above all, that sense that anything was possible, that there were no certainties.

  I didn’t know to appreciate the magic of it then, I was too busy trying to survive. I didn’t know that it would pass. There’d been no one to help him, to tell him that he was only young once, that those feelings needed to be treasured.

  It didn’t have to be that way for Jake.

  “Actually, I was thinking you might be interested in helping out with this Drang situation,” he said, smiling widely as they followed the others into the meeting, reading in Jake’s gaze exactly what he hoped to see. That glitter of excitement suggested that there’d be no room for dwelling on false prophecies or broken ships, for worrying about who he was supposed to be, what he should be feeling or thinking. And if he could get Jake involved enough, maybe there’d be no time for hurting, either, over a father who’d left his son behind.

  5

  FEG HAD FORGOTTEN the estimate list—and since he’d left it in the accounting office and not in his and Triv’s private rooms, the Ferengi agreed to let Pifko run for it…and Coamis agreed to keep time. Pif was elated. He liked to run, but running for a reason…he loved running for a reason, and being on the clock made it even better. Just because it was instinctual, genetic heritage, that didn’t make it any less enjoyable.

  Of course, Pif made it back to the conference room before the majority of the crew had even shown up. The entire trip, dashing to the office, tucking the Ferengi padd under his collar and tearing back, took less than two minutes. Even at a brisk run, any of the ship’s humanoids would have taken a minimum of six to cross and recross an entire deck. He knew, he’d bet Coamis once, had even let Coamis pick the long-legged Facity to run it. Sure enough, Pif took less than half the time, as wagered. Of all the things he was good at, he was best at running.

  Now, estimate list placed neatly on the table, Pif sprawled on the raised bench at the table’s end reserved for himself and Stessie and caught his breath, waiting for the crew to finish assembling. When Dez and Jake showed, Dez called Coamis over to meet the human, and stood by while the two younger men talked quietly and the last crew members straggled in. There were several low conversations going on, creating a soft sound backdrop that was pleasing to the ear. Pif lounged, watching the curious glances at Dez, noting the interest in Jake from the handful who hadn’t yet met him.

  “I gave him the ship’s tour this morning,” Pif told Lema, sitting next to him. “He’s a nice young man, quiet, not too pushy…I really feel that Dez has finally started to appreciate my interpersonal skills, my way with people. The best tour guides in the quadrant are Aarruris, you know.”

  Lema exuded a nondescript pleasantness, the Friagloim equivalent of polite bemusement, effectively killing a promising conversation. Strange species, Friagloim. Pif liked Stess—everyone liked Stess—but the rest of Stessie was sometimes hard to talk to. More than once, Pif had received the distinct impression that Stessie wasn’t truly interested in what he was saying, though he supposed it was possible he was reading her wrong. Probable, even…Aarruris had excellent senses and were certainly a compassionate species, but were not known for any sort of empathic ability.

  Prees, as usual, was the last to arrive, and as she hurried into the room, Dez sent Coamis back to his seat, then moved to stand at the head of the table with Jake at his side. Prees muttered an apology as she sat down, pushing wayward strands of blond hair away from her long, thickly lined face. The engineer was always elbow deep in something or other, always showing up late, smudged and mussed. Pif thought she was beautiful. Sadly, she seemed to have a thing for the Appliance Worm (as Pif privately thought of Srral), a nonstarter relationship if ever there was one.

  Dez nodded at the screen cube on the table, acknowledging that Facity was tuned in, and then cleared his throat. The room quieted and stilled.

  “Srral, you with us?” Dez asked. “I’d like to get started.”

  Srral’s sexless voice spilled out of the wall comm. “I’m here, Dez.”

  The captain nodded. “Good. Before we get into ship’s business, I’d like to formally introduce our guest—this is Jake Sisko, from the Alpha Quadrant. Jake will be traveling with us for a while. So…”

  Dez nodded at Glessin, directly to his left, who stayed sitting. The Cardassian nodded back, no trace of warmth in his face. Glessin had never been anything but polite to Pif, to anyone on board, but Pif felt wary around him and knew that some of the others did, too. He was extremely…controlled; it was hard to fathom that he and Pif were of an age, just old enough to look back over ten years of adult life. Glessin seemed much, much older. Pif knew that the Cardassian had been involved in some sort of Dominion conflict years earlier, before the Quadrant War, but it wasn’t something he ever talked about. Though for that matter, there wasn’t anything he ever talked about, or at least not to Pif.

  “You remember Allo Glessin, our medic,” Dez said. “Glessin is also quite proficient in recognizing and dealing with biological artifacts, living and dead….”

  Pif sat up straighter. It seemed that Dez was going to give out job accounts along with the introductions. Pif wasn’t shocked, he’d witnessed the captain’s friendliness toward the boy, though he was startled, and could tell that he wasn’t the only one. They’d had passengers before, of course, consultants, people they’d been hired to escort, the occasional random traveler—but for any of those people, “medic” would have been description enough. It seemed that the captain had decided Jake was trustworthy, and on very short notice.

  “…and next to him are our art researchers and appraisers, Fajgin and Itriuma. Fajgin specializes in paint, sculpture, and forcefield, while Itriuma’s expertise runs to mixed media.” The mated Wadi couple both touched their triangled fingers to their foreheads, a traditional Wadi greeting. Smiling, Jake did the same, earning nods and glances of approval from several others at the table. As Pifko had already ascertained—and well before anyone else on the Even—the boy had manners.

  “Feg and Triv, I believe you met this morning,” Dez continued. “Next to Triv is Aslylgof, weapons and historical weapons research.”

  Aslylgof nodded at Jake, his thick, graying beard briefly creasing with a smile. Aslylgof was part human, Pif thought, though he wasn’t positive; like Glessin, Aslylgof mostly kept to himself…though while Glessin was distant and removed, in Aslylgof’s case, Pif suspected it was because the pudgy humanoid thought more of his own company than anyone else’s. His expertise was unmatched, which was probably why his rather pretentious personality was generally tolerated. He looked human, except for the lack of ears and eyelids. And he had those bone patches on his arms and legs…. Actually, now that Pif thought about it, maybehe didn’t look all that human. The beard covered a lot.

  “—and you met Stess and Lema last night…here are Aris, Le, and Kin. Stessie works recon and communications during retrievals, and usually takes point. She’s also…she’s a defense expert, I suppose one might say; she’s certainly defended me on more than one occasion.”

  All of Stessie shifted happily along the bench, radiating pleasure…as did Pif, because it was his turn.

  “Pifko, besides being the Even Odds’s best tour guide, is our all-around thr
ill-seeking risk taker and general athlete. If something dangerous needs to be done, Pif not only wants to do it, he’ll get it done faster than anyone else.”

  Pif couldn’t help it. His tail wagged, two quick thumps against Lema’s velvety side. Flushing, he tucked it, ignoring the soft laughter of his crewmates. They all thought it was “cute,” which clashed with his carefully maintained, witty but easygoing demeanor.

  “Ha ha,” he muttered, but with no real malice. If he was cute, he was cute.

  “Brad-ahk’la is our jewelry appraiser specializing in rare stones,” Dez went on. “And also handles ship security, when the need arises.”

  Jake smiled at the immense Brad. “We also met earlier, hello.”

  “Hello,” Brad rumbled, and Pif swore he could see the deep green of a blush on her chiseled cheeks. He sighed, surprised she didn’t giggle. Brad was still a young woman, and could be extremely girly at times.

  “And next to Brad is our archeologist, whom you’ve met…” Coamis, who was part Wadi, part unknown-to-Pif, nodded rather seriously at Jake. The crew was still getting used to the new archeologist; he’d only been aboard for five or six months, taking over for the well-liked YimMa, who had retired last year. Pif liked Coamis all right, but also thought he could stand to relax a bit. His sense of humor, while inoffensive, didn’t extend to cover himself.

  “…and Pri’ak, who works with Srral and Prees in engineering…”

  The short, squat Merdosian tapped his nose, smiling with see-through teeth. Jake politely tapped his nose in turn.

  “…Prees, our chief engineer…and finally Neane Tee, our general data researcher. Everyone has their specialty, but if you want to find out about anything anywhere, talk to Neane.”

  Neane, a middle-aged Hissidolan, had spent a year in the Alpha Quadrant right before the big conflict, coming to work on the Even soon after. She stood and extended her far right hand. Jake reached out with his right and they clasped hands for a second, then let go. Presumably an Alpha thing; Pif had seen hand touching before, but never so brief.

  “So, if no one objects, I’ve asked Jake to join our meeting today…and our future Drang discussions, as well,” Dez said, taking his seat at the head of the table. He motioned for Jake to take the chair next to his, where Facity usually sat. “As I said, he’ll be with us for a while, and has graciously volunteered to take on the responsibilities of a crew member. Jake has some background in geology and archeology; he recently spent some time on a field expedition, uncovering and cataloguing religious artifacts, so…so, if things work out over the next two weeks, maybe we’ll be able to persuade him to join the Drang crew.”

  The announcement was met with silence and stares. Two weeks before Drang, and Dez wanted someone new—not just new, but an outsider—on the team? Pif looked around at the others, saw the same uncertain surprise that he felt, saw the Ferengi brothers frowning, saw that Aslylgof and Facity were both about to speak up—

  —and Jake beat them to it. “Well, that’s if things work out, and everyone agrees,” he said, shooting his own startled look at Dez before turning his appealing half smile outward. “I mean, I’m perfectly willing to do whatever I can, but you’re the experts.”

  The statement was sincere, not an effort at flattery, and everyone in the room knew it, could feel it. Pif sensed the sudden Dez-inspired tension dissipate, or at least dwindle considerably…and thought that the human’s estimation had just gone up, because he had stated what they were all thinking, in a way that wasn’t challenging to Dez’s authority. Dez was their captain and friend, the Even Odds was his ship, but he had made less than sound resolutions in the past, on more than one occasion. No one expected him to be perfect; he was a fortune hunter like the rest of them, and there was a certain reckless streak that went with the territory…but it did mean that his sudden “inspired” decisions sometimes deserved some extra consideration.

  Like the Veltan Sex Idol run last year, when he decided to pilot that land hopper himself, instead of waiting for Facity, and crashed it into the dropship. We barely escaped. Or the time he tried cleaning those antique Akada chairs with chemical water, melted off the top layer of finish and lost the client…those chairs took eight days of negotiation, cost almost a hundred paegs and not a few favors. There’s that story about the girl he was trying to impress with the Tirges dagger…or that fake codebreaker key he bought… Pif could think of a half-dozen more without really thinking. Everyone on board made mistakes, but Dez was famous for his, because…well, because he was captain. And fortunately for all of them, his successes far out numbered his missteps.

  On the cube, Facity was smiling slightly, and though her response was ostensibly to Jake’s comment, it was plainly aimed at Dez. “I’m sure we’ll all keep that in mind; we can walk that path when we come to it. For now, let’s concentrate on preparation, there’s still a lot to do before we get there…” Her smile widened into sarcasm. “…and I know you’ve all been working like beings deranged to be ready for this meeting.”

  Pif smiled, along with several of the others. The researchers had been researching; the rest of them had taken a few days off, officially recovering from the last job, which had been yet another uncomplicated salvage. (Since the end of the war, it felt like they’d done about a hundred million of them. Five, at least.) Pif, for one, had been lounging heavily for almost a week straight.

  “Neane, you have the current inventory comp?” Facity asked.

  The researcher nodded, picking up a reader as the crew refocused, shifting their attention to what they were all hoping would be an extremely lucrative mission. They had been hired to retrieve only one item, the Yaron Oracle, which had been taken only three months before—but with as much as the Drang had stolen over the last several years, there were hundreds of pieces the Even could profit from during the core retrieval. Assuming they could find them. The actual tunnel maps they had to work with were collectives, pieced together from a number of sources, some unsubstantiated. The retrieval team wouldn’t know how accurate they were until they actually got there.

  As Neane read off the updated list, Pif found his attention wandering back to Dez’s new protégé and to Dez himself, both listening intently…and Pif saw the look that Dez had on his face when he glanced at the human boy, a look that no one else caught, and suddenly understood things a little differently. It had been only a few years since Pif had seen the same look on his own sire’s face, proud and hopeful, when he’d told him about being hired to run.

  Pif decided it was sweet, and then wondered if he could get anyone to bet as to whether or not Jake would end up on the Drang retrieval team. That look was inside information; Jake might not know it yet, but it had taken less than a day for him to become a crew member of the Even Odds.

  Day 2, night. I’m tired but don’t feel like sleeping yet, my brain is too full. After two-plus months of B’hala, quietly whisking dust off of kejelious fragments, I think I’m on sensory overload.

  So much has happened in the last twenty-six hours, I feel…contradictory, I guess. I know there’s a better word, but it’s not coming to me…conflicted. A duality. Everything is hyperreal, but it’s still hard for me to believe that this is my life right now, if that makes sense. I mean, I got a tour of the Even today, which was amazing—part of the ship, the Wa, is like nothing I’ve ever even heard of before—and I sat in on a covert mission plan meeting, and visited the main lab, where they’ve got this incredible living artifact collection, things I could hardly believe…and I felt there, I felt whole in each moment…but I also kept having to think, “This is actually happening to me, this is my experience.” I kept thinking that, and everything still felt so strange, so unreal…. I don’t know, I don’t even know if I’m making sense. Maybe this weird reality/unreality conflict is because I’m not supposed to be here at all, or maybe it’s because I’m in the Gamma Quadrant—not just away from home but very, very far away. Anyway, I feel…I feel uncertain.

  Now that t
hat’s all cleared up (!), I asked Dez about Drang, and no luck. The way he describes it, we’re headed to a planet of aggressive, fanatical xenophobes—to steal from them, no less (though I think I like Dez’s word better, they’re retrieving ). I still want to go home, but…for now, at least, I’m stuck here.

  Not that I’m saying that’s such a terrible thing. Beyond that whole lucky-to-be-alive thing, I’m incredibly grateful I didn’t get picked up by a rogue Jem’Hadar ship or something…and past that, the Even Odds’s crew is interesting, intelligent, and generally friendly (okay, I barely know them, I’m talking about first impressions), not to mention unique. I met the rest of the crew at the mission meeting, and there was a kind of group lunch afterward—and everyone I talked to was just so different, culturally and physiologically. It was like a Wa of species. For instance, Pri’ak (or Priock, and I should just give up on worrying about spelling right now) is from the planet Merdosa, where there’s a superstition about a liar’s tongue turning colors…so Merdosians have clear teeth implanted, early in childhood. Pri’ak says it’s one of those beliefs with no real basis in fact, but it’s become a kind of cultural habit, so everyone does it. Neane Tee, she’s a Hissidolan—apparently, only the females have four arms; the males have six, and are only about half as tall. Pifko’s people are born in litters of up to fourteen, though between two and eight is considered average—and on Stessie’s homeworld, each individual has three, four, or five parts, no more or less.

  Srral is really unusual. It’s the creation of an extremely technologically advanced people called the Himh (this I found out from Prees, by the way; Srral wasn’t around for lunch). Srral and its kind are an engineered species, designed to live and work inside these vast, complex network systems that cover much of the surface of the Himh world. The species doesn’t have a name (I guess they just call themselves “Himh workers”) but Srral named itself, after a sound it said it liked, of superheated plasma flow heard through a single thickness of conduit wall. Crazy, eh? Anyway, they were invented not only to effect repairs, but to improve on whatever they found…and since the Himh gave them free will—they made them to be assistants, not servants—a few of them, like Srral, decided to leave the homeworld to look for new challenges. Apparently, it wandered around for some time before ending up on the Even Odds, purely by accident; it was in one of Dez’s system upgrades, a trifiltered sensor array console. After it had been introduced to the ship—which Prees says is internally very curious—it decided to stay.