Author's note: I've decided to take a few liberties with the life of Robert April ie. pushing back his date of birth a little bit, adding a daughter to the crew of the Kelvin and expanding his involvement with the creation of the Enterprise. In the novel Final Frontier by Diane Carey, he was involved with the newly created and as yet unnamed Enterprise (which George Kirk named) and appeared to have had something to do with it's development.
Now on with the story...
Twenty five years before Ambassador Spock's visit to the newly commissioned Enterprise and a universe away, Captain Robau stood aboard his ship supervising the beginning stages of the USS Kelvin's mandatory overhaul. His mind wasn't on the ship as it should have been however, but on his former First Officer Commander Kirk who had requested a transfer to Starbase Security so he could spend more time with his growing family as Starbase personnel served in rotations of several months on and several months off duty rather than being away from home for up to several years as Starship crew did. As he'd thought about the young man who would be leaving him and the Kelvin behind for stabler and safer work, his mind drifted from his regret at letting his best officer go to the regret that he himself had never settled down.
On the planet below, Captain Robert April - a genial Englishman in his early forties with a fondness for cardigan sweaters and a medical condition that allowed him to wear one over his uniform - was currently pushing his pet project through the Starfleet Planning Commission's Starship Design branch while his vessel the USS Tiberius was being refitted at the spacedock in a berth next to that of the newly returned Kelvin. As he waited for his meeting for the Admiral in charge, he snorted as he read the missive that had been sent to him by his friend George who'd started out on his ship to which he'd been assigned as a bright young Ensign before eventually transferring to the Kelvin following a promotion. His dear friend now had a second child, a son who had been saddled with the name James Tiberius.
Whether the boy had been named after George's father, the Tiberius or both remained to be seen
April - who had been friends with Kirk since the brash young security officer had saved his life on an away mission - chuckled to himself as he continued to read the account of the boy's birth. It would seem that Captain Robau had pulled some strings to have Winona brought home from the month-long Agricultural Science Symposium on Coltar IV that she had insisted upon attending despite being almost seven months pregnant at the time aboard the Kelvin rather than by her previously arranged transport. While aboard the Kelvin, Winona had started go into labor a month earlier than expected, but it was stopped by the timely intervention of the medical team who had carefully monitored both her and the baby the entire way back to Earth. It was what had happened a week later however that caused Captain April to laugh. Apparently the instant the Kirks had gotten home, Winona had tripped over one of the pigs that belonged to the Kirk family farm which had somehow gotten loose and ended up in the walkway leading up to the house and went into labor again. There had been no medical team to stop it this time and her child was delivered by a frazzled George Kirk and the emergency response team that arrived rather late in the process in front of the Kirk farmhouse.
Refolding the printout of the letter he'd received from the overjoyed George Kirk who was telling everyone he knew about the birth of his son, he jauntily walked towards yet another planning meeting that would bring his dream Starship - the one he'd referred to as if no other vessel deserved that moniker - one step closer to fruition. After the meeting, he would be having dinner with his little Beatrice, who wasn't so little anymore. Now aged nineteen, the child he had carelessly fathered during a one night stand while he was on shoreleave back during his wild youth had blown through Starfleet Academy and been posted to the Kelvin under his best and dearest friend earlier this year.
Straightening his sweater in order to give himself a moment to prepare for what lay ahead, he followed the receptionist into the conference room knowing full well that he would be walking out with a headache. It and every other headache he would suffer during the struggle with Starfleet's bureaucrats would be worth it to see his Starship sailing across the galaxy in a few short years however...
Twenty-five years before Ambassador Spock's tour of the Enterprise and many light years away in a universe that had been created when a massive Ship called the Narada had come through an anomaly that had been created in the future of the other universe, the body of a young engineer who would have joined the Constitution Project's design team a year later had he lived floated amongst the debris of the USS Kelvin while a shuttle from the Starfleet Recovery Team approached in its grim task of gathering up the mortal remains of the destroyed ship and the remaining bits of the dead amongst its crew. Only a few bodies or parts of which - those of crewmembers that had been sucked out through breaches in the hull - could be recovered. Those that had died aboard the Kelvin when it had collided with the Narada - including that of Captain Kirk - had been incinerated and were unrecoverable.
Back on Earth, Captain Robert April sat through the memorial service for those who died aboard the USS Kelvin, his eyes red and rimmed with tears. In a matter of minutes he had lost his dearest friend and his cherished daughter Beatrice who had joined Starfleet in order to follow in the footsteps of a father she knew only through letters and the occasional visit. He had received a message that morning shortly before he'd left for the service that some of her remains had been found.
She should have been back yesterday. She should have been back yesterday, and they should have been eating dinner together this evening as they had planned. And George...He and George should have been laughing together over the early birth of his son who most definitely should not have been born aboard one of the Kelvin's shuttlecraft, starfleet regulations notwithstanding.
After the memorial service, April found he had nothing to do as the planning meeting for his Starship had been postponed so everyone could attend the memorial. Though working tended to help him get through things when he was emotionally overwhelmed, he decided to stay away from his office since he couldn't bear to look at the printout of his dream upon which George had scrawled "Good luck with your enterprise". Instead, he went home where he ended up having a date with a bottle and an argument over the Comm with Beatrice's mother Alice over where Beatrice's remains would be buried. He wanted her in Coventry where he and several generations of the April family stretching back to the Eighteenth Century had been born, and she wanted her buried in her family plot in California. After about an hour of bickering back and forth, he ended up angrily suggesting that since there was more than one piece of her they could do both, before he slammed his fist down onto the disconnect button and ended the call.
Following the vicious argument with Beatrice's mother with whom he'd never gotten along, he spent the rest of the night ignoring all incoming calls while steadily getting drunker and drunker. After emptying a couple of bottles in an attempt to switch his blood with alcohol, he ended up passing out around dawn, not caring that he had puked on his carpet during the night or that he was laying in said vomit.
Edited 2-17-13
