Money makes the world go round, but I'm not making any with this story. And
I don't own seaQuest or the characters. So there.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine... (Think Elijah Wood in Forever Young). Yes, that's right, I'm talking about you: Teresa, Mar, ano, PhoenixTears80, pari106 and sara. May your marshmallows be forever fluffy.
Pro Patria Mori
Chapter 10
Robert groaned, his head in his hands. Krieg put an arm around his shoulders.
"Come on, Robbie," he said soothingly. "You're taking this way too hard."
"I blew it," Robert said shaking his head. "I had him yesterday, and I blew it. I should have showed him the implant then, instead of giving him time to recover."
Krieg tried to get his young friend to look at him. Although they had been through the Academy at the same time, Ben was a few years older than Robert; he had drifted for a while before signing up. Robert had never drifted in his life. Never been allowed to drift, Ben corrected himself mentally.
"Hey," Krieg said, "he's not going anywhere. Sooner or later he'll open up to you."
"You haven't seen him, Ben. You haven't talked to him. It's like there's no- one there. It's like talking to a wall."
Ben was worried. He knew Robert hadn't been sleeping well, and to take on a job this demanding so soon after a traumatic experience, not to mention head injury... "Maybe you should let someone else take over," he said softly.
Robert sat bolt upright. "No!" he yelled, then his voice softened. "My father will think I'm a failure. I'm not giving up. No way."
Krieg sighed. Sometimes he thought Robert's fear of his old man's disapproval bordered on psychosis. Sure, the captain was a little stern, but there was no question that he loved his son – at least, not to anyone else.
"OK then," he said finally. "Maybe you're going about this the wrong way. You're trying to shock him into hating the Alliance, but he's not going to believe you about what they did to him and his parents. You're the enemy. And he's sixteen – remember what it was like? He's going to be stubborn as hell. You've got to become a friend. And I'm damn sure the poor kid needs one."
Robert eyed him. "What do you mean?"
"Do you remember what it was like being sixteen?" Krieg asked. "Come on, it's less long ago for you than it is for me. All we had to worry about was chasing girls and trying to get served in bars." Robert gave him a look. Krieg shrugged. "Well, maybe that was just me. But this kid's a commander in the navy, Robert! No matter how low quality that navy might be, it still means he must have been in it for a while. And he's sixteen! He doesn't know anything else. His parents died before he could remember them." Krieg paused, and looked hard at Robert. "Tell me the truth, there was a reason you took this assignment other than proving yourself to your dad, wasn't there?"
Robert looked suspicious, then sighed. "Yeah," he said, clasping his hands between his knees. "It sounds crazy, but..." he trailed off.
Krieg grinned. "Crazy is my life. Fire away."
Robert smiled at him gratefully. "It's like, we're two of a kind," he said falteringly. "I felt it when I first saw him. Like, I could have been him, in another life. Or he could have been me," he added, quietly.
"There but for the grace of God," Krieg said reflectively.
"Kind of. But I felt it most strongly when he was unconscious. When he's awake he's just... scary."
Krieg regarded him seriously. "I'll tell you one thing, Robert," he said, "I'll bet he's more scared of you than you are of him."
"So what do you think they're going to do to him?" asked Ortiz, shovelling a forkful of salad into his mouth.
"What do you mean, 'they'?" O'Neill asked.
"You know," Ortiz leaned in conspiratorially. "Section Seven," he whispered.
"What makes you think they'll want him?" Krieg asked. He hadn't heard anything about the prisoner being taken off the boat. He hoped Robert would get a chance to get something out of him before they did.
"Oh, come on Ben," Ortiz grinned. Ben couldn't help but grin back. The young Cuban's easy manner made him impossible not to like, and although they had only been on board ship a week or two, he had already made friends with half the crew. "He knows the secrets of the ghost ship! Of course they're going to want him."
Crocker, sitting down at the table, overheard the last remark and spat reflexively on the floor. All the senior officers at the table turned and stared at him in disgust.
"Force of habit," he said apologetically.
"I know what you mean," Tim O'Neill said, adjusting his spectacles. "The whole thing makes me nervous."
"Everything makes you nervous, Tim," Miguel said cheerfully.
"That ship was pretty freaky," said Krieg, "but I've seen the kid, and he ain't no ghost. He's as real as you or me, and twice as ugly. Well, maybe not twice as ugly as you, Miguel..."
The Cuban shot him a withering stare. "All I'm saying," he continued, "is eventually they're going to come for him. I'm surprised they haven't already."
"Well I, for one, won't be sorry to see him leave," said O'Neill, shivering. "I've seen the pictures of him on the security camera...."
"Oh, yeah?" countered Krieg. "What did he look like, the devil?" He shook his head. "Come on, you guys! This is a kid we're talking about!" The other senior officers eyed him sceptically.
"OK guys, can the scuttlebutt," Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock sat down with a glass of water. "Need I remind you that this matter is classified?"
Krieg turned and grinned. "Aw, come on Katie," he wheedled, "can't you just tell us what you've been talking about in all those meetings with the captain?"
Hitchcock looked at him in disgust. "Lieutenant Krieg, it would be completely against my moral duty as an officer aboard this ship, not to mention my own personal code of ethics, to tell you that Captain Bridger has not informed UEO command about the prisoner." She stood up to go. "And if I hear one more word about the matter from any of you," she added sweetly, "I'll report you to the captain."
A stunned silence followed her departure from the table. Then Ortiz whistled.
"She's one hell of a woman."
Over the next few weeks, Robert Bridger visited Wolenczak every day. He called the young man 'Lucas' and kept him informed about events on the ship, describing the ship's executive crew in such detail that Wolenczak felt like he knew them personally. He told amusing anecdotes and described the border scuffles the ship became involved in. He confided his own personal feelings about many things, his hopes and dreams, his anxieties and his relationship with each member of the crew. His interlocutor remained expressionless and still as a statue throughout it all; he hadn't spoken since his outburst on the first day. Yet as time went on, Robert found that he had stopped finding this disconcerting. It was almost like keeping a diary: Robert was able to pour out his innermost thoughts without fear of ridicule. He found that he became more relaxed, and to his surprise he quickly began to make friends among the crew, although he had never found social relationships easy before.
He found, too, that he had stopped worrying about failing his father as far as Lucas was concerned. He had stopped seeing his visits as part of a project or a mission; he looked forward to them as he would visits to an old friend. Even when the seaQuest was engaged in under-sea dogfights, Robert always made sure he dropped in on Lucas at some point during the day, if only for a few minutes. When it was clear that the boy would not read the file on his father, Robert began to read sections of it out loud to him. During those times he felt the intensity of the gaze trained on him even though he could not see it. It didn't scare him any more though. He began to feel, oddly, as thought the only thing that scared him now was that Lucas would be taken away. And he was grateful to his father for not informing the UEO, though he knew that he had not done so merely because he wanted to find out about the 'ghost ship' personally. When his father asked him how the interrogation was going, he always said he was making progress.
To anyone who viewed the interrogation from outside – although Robert always made sure that no-one did – it would have seemed like nothing was being achieved. The prisoner showed no outward sign of interest or emotion. Yet Robert felt the cold emptiness in those eyes become warmer every day. Sometimes he would pace the room animatedly while telling a story, and would turn to find Lucas' eyes still on him, though he never moved his head. At those moments he would smile, and wonder if he imagined an answering flicker in the depths of that gaze.
Wolenczak lay on the hard bed in the brig, staring up at the ceiling. A slight shudder ran through the ship, and he wondered what was going on out there. Robert would tell him later, he knew. Robert had not come yet today, and he was eagerly anticipating the visit. Even the doctor had stopped coming more than once a week now. Last time she had come, Wolenczak had had to fight with every fibre of his being not to put his hand on her arm, to stop her from leaving.
He was more or less convinced now that he was not going to be tortured, and he was surprised at this. But the fact that they had succeeded, through starving him of stimuli, to make him look forward to Robert's daily visits had angered him deeply at first. After a while, though, he accepted it. You're playing right into their hands, came the voice in his head, but each day it was weaker, and the reprimands began to be delivered in his own voice, not Braithwaite's.
At first he had listened to Robert's monologue merely for something to distract his mind, but as time went on he grew to relish the young man's visits. He laughed inwardly when Robert told him about Krieg's latest scheme, commiserated in his heart when a crewman was killed, and, remembering the striking woman on the bridge, agreed silently when Robert spoke of his secret admiration for Commander Hitchcock. His interest in the military manoeuvres the ship was engaged in began to dwindle, and he found himself looking forward more and more to Robert's descriptions of the banal, everyday occurences on board: conversations in the mess, games of poker, movie nights in Krieg's cabin. He wondered what it must be like to fit in so well.
On one level, he knew he was just pathetically grateful for human contact. On another, he found he was growing increasingly fond of Robert, and admired the boy's persistence in returning day after day. He felt he knew the young man better than he had ever known anyone before, as a result of his emotional outpourings. And more than anything he looked forward to the times when Robert read to him from his father's file. At those times he listened greedily, treasuring every word. He knew intellectually that most of it was probably lies, but emotionally he didn't care. He had been so long in the dark, without a connection to his parents, and now one was being offered to him, and he found himself unable to reject it. He wondered if Robert would read to him today.
Robert opened the file. "Where were we?" he muttered, flipping through the pages. "Oh, yeah, here we are." He cleared his throat.
"During the spring of 2005, Dr. Wolenczak was working on the plans for an enormous undersea power-station, in which turbines would be driven by deep- ocean currents. If successful, the power station would have been capable of providing enough electricity to suit the needs of every person living on Earth, and then some.
In May 2005, Dr. Wolenczak disappeared, along with his wife and infant son, from their home in New Cape Quest. After a detailed investigation it was surmised that the family had been kidnapped. No organization claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, nor was any ransom note received."
Robert turned the page.
"In November 2005, the bodies of Lawrence and Cynthia Wolenczak were found on a beach in Florida. The condition of the bodies..." he stopped reading, a lump in his throat, and began to close the file. When he looked up he saw to his astonishment that Lucas was leaning forward, his mouth slightly open, a look of acute anxiety on his face. Robert stared at him, transfixed. And Lucas' lips moved.
"Tell me," he whispered.
For a moment Robert sat in stunned silence. Then he opened the file again, lowered his head and began to read.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine... (Think Elijah Wood in Forever Young). Yes, that's right, I'm talking about you: Teresa, Mar, ano, PhoenixTears80, pari106 and sara. May your marshmallows be forever fluffy.
Pro Patria Mori
Chapter 10
Robert groaned, his head in his hands. Krieg put an arm around his shoulders.
"Come on, Robbie," he said soothingly. "You're taking this way too hard."
"I blew it," Robert said shaking his head. "I had him yesterday, and I blew it. I should have showed him the implant then, instead of giving him time to recover."
Krieg tried to get his young friend to look at him. Although they had been through the Academy at the same time, Ben was a few years older than Robert; he had drifted for a while before signing up. Robert had never drifted in his life. Never been allowed to drift, Ben corrected himself mentally.
"Hey," Krieg said, "he's not going anywhere. Sooner or later he'll open up to you."
"You haven't seen him, Ben. You haven't talked to him. It's like there's no- one there. It's like talking to a wall."
Ben was worried. He knew Robert hadn't been sleeping well, and to take on a job this demanding so soon after a traumatic experience, not to mention head injury... "Maybe you should let someone else take over," he said softly.
Robert sat bolt upright. "No!" he yelled, then his voice softened. "My father will think I'm a failure. I'm not giving up. No way."
Krieg sighed. Sometimes he thought Robert's fear of his old man's disapproval bordered on psychosis. Sure, the captain was a little stern, but there was no question that he loved his son – at least, not to anyone else.
"OK then," he said finally. "Maybe you're going about this the wrong way. You're trying to shock him into hating the Alliance, but he's not going to believe you about what they did to him and his parents. You're the enemy. And he's sixteen – remember what it was like? He's going to be stubborn as hell. You've got to become a friend. And I'm damn sure the poor kid needs one."
Robert eyed him. "What do you mean?"
"Do you remember what it was like being sixteen?" Krieg asked. "Come on, it's less long ago for you than it is for me. All we had to worry about was chasing girls and trying to get served in bars." Robert gave him a look. Krieg shrugged. "Well, maybe that was just me. But this kid's a commander in the navy, Robert! No matter how low quality that navy might be, it still means he must have been in it for a while. And he's sixteen! He doesn't know anything else. His parents died before he could remember them." Krieg paused, and looked hard at Robert. "Tell me the truth, there was a reason you took this assignment other than proving yourself to your dad, wasn't there?"
Robert looked suspicious, then sighed. "Yeah," he said, clasping his hands between his knees. "It sounds crazy, but..." he trailed off.
Krieg grinned. "Crazy is my life. Fire away."
Robert smiled at him gratefully. "It's like, we're two of a kind," he said falteringly. "I felt it when I first saw him. Like, I could have been him, in another life. Or he could have been me," he added, quietly.
"There but for the grace of God," Krieg said reflectively.
"Kind of. But I felt it most strongly when he was unconscious. When he's awake he's just... scary."
Krieg regarded him seriously. "I'll tell you one thing, Robert," he said, "I'll bet he's more scared of you than you are of him."
"So what do you think they're going to do to him?" asked Ortiz, shovelling a forkful of salad into his mouth.
"What do you mean, 'they'?" O'Neill asked.
"You know," Ortiz leaned in conspiratorially. "Section Seven," he whispered.
"What makes you think they'll want him?" Krieg asked. He hadn't heard anything about the prisoner being taken off the boat. He hoped Robert would get a chance to get something out of him before they did.
"Oh, come on Ben," Ortiz grinned. Ben couldn't help but grin back. The young Cuban's easy manner made him impossible not to like, and although they had only been on board ship a week or two, he had already made friends with half the crew. "He knows the secrets of the ghost ship! Of course they're going to want him."
Crocker, sitting down at the table, overheard the last remark and spat reflexively on the floor. All the senior officers at the table turned and stared at him in disgust.
"Force of habit," he said apologetically.
"I know what you mean," Tim O'Neill said, adjusting his spectacles. "The whole thing makes me nervous."
"Everything makes you nervous, Tim," Miguel said cheerfully.
"That ship was pretty freaky," said Krieg, "but I've seen the kid, and he ain't no ghost. He's as real as you or me, and twice as ugly. Well, maybe not twice as ugly as you, Miguel..."
The Cuban shot him a withering stare. "All I'm saying," he continued, "is eventually they're going to come for him. I'm surprised they haven't already."
"Well I, for one, won't be sorry to see him leave," said O'Neill, shivering. "I've seen the pictures of him on the security camera...."
"Oh, yeah?" countered Krieg. "What did he look like, the devil?" He shook his head. "Come on, you guys! This is a kid we're talking about!" The other senior officers eyed him sceptically.
"OK guys, can the scuttlebutt," Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock sat down with a glass of water. "Need I remind you that this matter is classified?"
Krieg turned and grinned. "Aw, come on Katie," he wheedled, "can't you just tell us what you've been talking about in all those meetings with the captain?"
Hitchcock looked at him in disgust. "Lieutenant Krieg, it would be completely against my moral duty as an officer aboard this ship, not to mention my own personal code of ethics, to tell you that Captain Bridger has not informed UEO command about the prisoner." She stood up to go. "And if I hear one more word about the matter from any of you," she added sweetly, "I'll report you to the captain."
A stunned silence followed her departure from the table. Then Ortiz whistled.
"She's one hell of a woman."
Over the next few weeks, Robert Bridger visited Wolenczak every day. He called the young man 'Lucas' and kept him informed about events on the ship, describing the ship's executive crew in such detail that Wolenczak felt like he knew them personally. He told amusing anecdotes and described the border scuffles the ship became involved in. He confided his own personal feelings about many things, his hopes and dreams, his anxieties and his relationship with each member of the crew. His interlocutor remained expressionless and still as a statue throughout it all; he hadn't spoken since his outburst on the first day. Yet as time went on, Robert found that he had stopped finding this disconcerting. It was almost like keeping a diary: Robert was able to pour out his innermost thoughts without fear of ridicule. He found that he became more relaxed, and to his surprise he quickly began to make friends among the crew, although he had never found social relationships easy before.
He found, too, that he had stopped worrying about failing his father as far as Lucas was concerned. He had stopped seeing his visits as part of a project or a mission; he looked forward to them as he would visits to an old friend. Even when the seaQuest was engaged in under-sea dogfights, Robert always made sure he dropped in on Lucas at some point during the day, if only for a few minutes. When it was clear that the boy would not read the file on his father, Robert began to read sections of it out loud to him. During those times he felt the intensity of the gaze trained on him even though he could not see it. It didn't scare him any more though. He began to feel, oddly, as thought the only thing that scared him now was that Lucas would be taken away. And he was grateful to his father for not informing the UEO, though he knew that he had not done so merely because he wanted to find out about the 'ghost ship' personally. When his father asked him how the interrogation was going, he always said he was making progress.
To anyone who viewed the interrogation from outside – although Robert always made sure that no-one did – it would have seemed like nothing was being achieved. The prisoner showed no outward sign of interest or emotion. Yet Robert felt the cold emptiness in those eyes become warmer every day. Sometimes he would pace the room animatedly while telling a story, and would turn to find Lucas' eyes still on him, though he never moved his head. At those moments he would smile, and wonder if he imagined an answering flicker in the depths of that gaze.
Wolenczak lay on the hard bed in the brig, staring up at the ceiling. A slight shudder ran through the ship, and he wondered what was going on out there. Robert would tell him later, he knew. Robert had not come yet today, and he was eagerly anticipating the visit. Even the doctor had stopped coming more than once a week now. Last time she had come, Wolenczak had had to fight with every fibre of his being not to put his hand on her arm, to stop her from leaving.
He was more or less convinced now that he was not going to be tortured, and he was surprised at this. But the fact that they had succeeded, through starving him of stimuli, to make him look forward to Robert's daily visits had angered him deeply at first. After a while, though, he accepted it. You're playing right into their hands, came the voice in his head, but each day it was weaker, and the reprimands began to be delivered in his own voice, not Braithwaite's.
At first he had listened to Robert's monologue merely for something to distract his mind, but as time went on he grew to relish the young man's visits. He laughed inwardly when Robert told him about Krieg's latest scheme, commiserated in his heart when a crewman was killed, and, remembering the striking woman on the bridge, agreed silently when Robert spoke of his secret admiration for Commander Hitchcock. His interest in the military manoeuvres the ship was engaged in began to dwindle, and he found himself looking forward more and more to Robert's descriptions of the banal, everyday occurences on board: conversations in the mess, games of poker, movie nights in Krieg's cabin. He wondered what it must be like to fit in so well.
On one level, he knew he was just pathetically grateful for human contact. On another, he found he was growing increasingly fond of Robert, and admired the boy's persistence in returning day after day. He felt he knew the young man better than he had ever known anyone before, as a result of his emotional outpourings. And more than anything he looked forward to the times when Robert read to him from his father's file. At those times he listened greedily, treasuring every word. He knew intellectually that most of it was probably lies, but emotionally he didn't care. He had been so long in the dark, without a connection to his parents, and now one was being offered to him, and he found himself unable to reject it. He wondered if Robert would read to him today.
Robert opened the file. "Where were we?" he muttered, flipping through the pages. "Oh, yeah, here we are." He cleared his throat.
"During the spring of 2005, Dr. Wolenczak was working on the plans for an enormous undersea power-station, in which turbines would be driven by deep- ocean currents. If successful, the power station would have been capable of providing enough electricity to suit the needs of every person living on Earth, and then some.
In May 2005, Dr. Wolenczak disappeared, along with his wife and infant son, from their home in New Cape Quest. After a detailed investigation it was surmised that the family had been kidnapped. No organization claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, nor was any ransom note received."
Robert turned the page.
"In November 2005, the bodies of Lawrence and Cynthia Wolenczak were found on a beach in Florida. The condition of the bodies..." he stopped reading, a lump in his throat, and began to close the file. When he looked up he saw to his astonishment that Lucas was leaning forward, his mouth slightly open, a look of acute anxiety on his face. Robert stared at him, transfixed. And Lucas' lips moved.
"Tell me," he whispered.
For a moment Robert sat in stunned silence. Then he opened the file again, lowered his head and began to read.