Chapter 4

Jim found the time he spent on the USS Republic to be fleeting. He enjoyed every minute of it despite being unable to see most of the ship. Most of the decks required some level of security clearance which he didn't have. It also didn't help that he stood out very blatantly among the sea of Starfleet issued uniforms that the crew members wore, so he couldn't exactly sneak into one of more highly secured areas of the ship. He was particularly annoyed that he couldn't go into the bridge though.

The first morning on board the ship, he had been planning on sleeping in late. Frank never let him. Frank used to barrage into his room with a breath laced with ethanol and nicotine and a body which reeked of sex at the crack of dawn to force him and Sam to do their chores before school started. He had tried once to lock his bedroom door, but Frank had torn the door off the hinge and done almost equal damage to his arms. Sam had pulled Frank off in time.

It was a long time later before Frank let him fix the door. It was mostly because his mother was returning home.

Sam had called him a dummy and refused to talk to him for a week afterwards. Jim used to wonder if Sam thought that was the best punishment… silence. Jim wasn't stupid. He never made the same mistake twice.

Jim and Sam practically ran the Kirk farm before Sam ran away, and he crashed his dad's car. He hadn't even bothered to take one last look at the farm before he left. He wondered if Frank would run it to the ground now. Frank wasn't a farmer. That had obvious after the first harvest season. Jim sometimes contemplated how Frank and his mother happened. They were like two different people as dissimilar as night and day.

However, at 0600 the ensigns whose room he was sharing noisy woke up. They were all loud and rowdy. They were bragging to each other about who had the most important duty rooster for the day. It was obvious from their conversations that this was their first assignment, and they were all fresh out of the academy.

They didn't even seem particularly apologetic when they realized they had awakened him. He watched them bustle around the room throwing their sleeping garments on the floor before replacing them with their uniforms.

He had waited until after they all left the room before getting out bed. The sonic showers were strange and different. They lacked the smoothing feel of water. He had always been used to taking a shower which consisted of water. Riverside had never been low on water. It was one of the rainier parts of the world however he knew enough that water on starship was rare.

It had taken him awhile to find the mess hall. He vaguely remembered the lieutenant mentioning which deck it had been when they had taken the turbo lift the night before.

By the time he found the mess hall; it was mostly empty. There were only a few crew members huddled in the corner drinking what he surmised was coffee or hot tea. Most were reading their PADDs.

He was surprised that the mess hall contained not only food synthesizers which lined along the wall space but also an honest to goodness cook who made certain dishes to order. There was a large interactive board with the menu that flashed above the cooking station. There was a wide array of breakfast dishes. There were simple dishes like cereal and toast all the way to the more complicated dishes like omelets and breakfast burritos.

He had eaten his share of synthesized meals in Iowa. Frank and his mother never cooked. The choice was simple. He stepped forward. The cook, he was a jolly elder man. Jim could see streaks of white already appearing around his side burns. He had the bushiest eye brows that Jim had ever seen. The cook's eyes widened when he saw him. "What can Chef Roberto make for you, Child?" The man boomed out.

"Just cereal and bacon," Jim replied.

Chef Roberto shook his head sadly. He pulled out a pack of bacon from his ice cabinet. Each stripe looked so tender and red. "You haven't lived until you tried my scones or omelets. There are crew members on this ship who keep signing on for more trips just to taste my cooking, Child."

Jim laughed and agreed. "Okay."

It turned out Cook Roberto wasn't bragging. When Roberto handed him his tray of food, it really did look delicious. It tasted even better. He had never tasted such light fluffy scones or deliciously rich omelets before. Roberto had come over before he finished eating. He pulled out the chair across from him. He was grinning from eye to eye.

"How was it?" He asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

Jim gave the man a large thumb up. "It was really good," Jim gushed out.

Roberto laughed and patted him hard on the shoulder. His hand was warm and nearly twice the size of his shoulder. Roberto frowned. "You're just skin and bones, Child. Where are your parents? I'm going to give them a piece of my mind." Roberto chided. "You're too skinny, Child. A growing child needs some extra fat. It gives them a healthier tone." Roberto laughed and patted his own belly. He really did remind Jim of Santa Claus.

Jim's face reddened. In Riverside, everyone knew, and never asked. His mother had shielded him from the media when the paparazzi had first shown up on the farm to do their annual interviews on the Kelvin. However, a constantly depressed Federation hero's widow didn't make for a good story. They eventually stopped trying and just started to make up their own stories to over glorify his father's legacy. He remembered being particularly upset by an article about some woman who was bragging about raising 'George Kirk's love child'. Sam had called him a dummy when Jim showed it to him.

"They aren't here," he muttered under his breath.

He saw Roberto's face turn almost scandalous at his reply. He didn't make any further remarks about it. Instead Roberto told Jim some stories about the funniest moments about life on a starship. He had a long luxurious career as a cook, but he couldn't see himself retiring anytime soon. It wasn't until later that Jim noticed that his portions were larger than most of the crew members.

Besides listening to Roberto's stories, he always came over to talk when he wasn't busy making food, Jim spent the remaining time either in the front observation room reading one of his PADDs or exercising in the recreation halls. There was a large assortment of equipment from many different species. Jim only recognized the human and Vulcan gear.

However every time he was reading; a plate of treats courtesy of Chef Roberto would mysteriously appear at some point while he was engrossed in his book. There were simpler desserts like cookies to more intricate desserts like cakes or parfait.

It caused off-duty officers to constantly wander by. He would always offer them some of his treats. Sometimes they accepted and would sit down on the couch across from him. They would ask if he was a passenger in route to Tarsus, and he would nod. Sometimes that was all they would say and then leave soon afterwards. Other times they would tell him about their job on the Republic. He met doctors, engineers, yeomen, security officers, weapon's control operators, science officers and linguistics. The linguistics loved to talk, and some even offered to teach him some rudimentary Vulcan.

If they stayed long enough, they would notice the PADD in his hands and ask what he was reading. He watched their eyes widen when he told them it was Moby Dick. This was the third time he was reading the timeless novel. He noticed that most of the crew members shared that same reaction when he told them.

One lieutenant had laughed when he told him. "The old language is way over my head. I can understand engineering manuals but give me old school literature it's as foreign to me as Klingon is."

"It's poetic." He tried to explain the captain's obsession with finding the whale. Jim loved reading about whales. They were always described as being majestic beings of the sea. It was a shame they had become extinct a long time ago.

The lieutenant laughed and patted his knee. They shared a glass of Viridian apple juice before he left for duty.

It was late in the afternoon when the USS Republic finally entered Tarsus' orbit. Jim was alone on the forward observation deck when Tarsus came into view. He was curled up in one of couches reading a novel from his PADD. He had a nice, large assortment of pastries and juices spread out on the table before him.

The captain made a ship wide announcement that they had entered orbit. Jim pressed his face against the transparent aluminum window. He was not impressed by what he was greeted by. Tarsus was a yellow planet. It seemed to be not even a quarter the size of Earth. The USS Republic seemed to tower over it.

He didn't realize just how yellow Tarsus was until the shuttle touched down on the ground. They didn't allow the civilians to use the transporters. Jim guessed it was because they didn't want to store their imprints in the computer systems.

Tarsus was land of endless sand and nothingness. He should have known considering the universe seemed to love shitting on him. He wondered if it was Frank who had shown his mother the pamphlet. Fuck. Frank was probably laughing now about sending Jim to a fucking desert wasteland. There was sand in every direction. Jim couldn't see anything but a sea of yellow. It wasn't that he was expecting rolling, green fields and blue oceans. It was just that he wasn't used to an endless expanse of sand.

There were tiny adobe huts in the distance. He guessed that was where he was going to be living in. An official ushered him into a makeshift tent. There was already long never ending lines of colonists inside. Most looked hot and equally miserable. The air was stuffy inside the tent. It felt like recycled air. There was barely a breeze. He wondered if they knew what they had agreed to. He wondered if any of them had been sent here by a mother who was just too sad or too tired to deal with her child's problems.

Most of the colonists were composed of family units. There were mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles and grandparents. It was everything he didn't have. Some of the younglings noticed him. He watched as they pulled at their parents' pants legs. He watched their doting parents bend down. He watched their eyes travel towards him. He shifted his bags and looked away. He tried to blend in with the family in front of him.

He shifted on the balls of his heels. The little boy in front of him looked back at him. He looked to be six-years-old. He remembered being six. Life was simpler back then. The little boy waved at him. "Hi." The boy smiled.

Jim waved back. There was no point in making enemies already. He would probably make many soon anyways. He was good at attracting enemies. "Hi."

Before either one could say anything else, the boy's mother tugged on the boy's arm. She was pretty and young. He remembered when his own mother had looked so young. She had aged fast. The boy tried to pull away but to no avail. The family disappeared into the sea of other families. Jim wondered if he would ever see him again. He moved to a small corner of the tent. There were less people there. He set his bags down on the ground before sitting down in the sand. It was something he was going to have to use to coarse sand. It seemed some things were always constants. He pulled out a PADD to pass the time.

As the hours past, old, decrepit robots rolled past. Most were carrying trays containing finger foods and biodegradable cups containing water. They looked to be the hundred-year-old models like most things here. It matched everything else. Tarsus IV was a fucking hell hole. Jim was amazed that Starfleet had even managed to collect eight thousands colonists to leave wherever the fuck they had come from to settle here. Jim couldn't manage the amount of credit chips that must have been exchanged. Why would anyone bother settling in such a backwater colony? Most importantly how much had Frank made in sending him here?

It was almost night fall when he was finally processed. The personnel at the table looked bored and tired. There was one of those decrepit robots next to him. Its whole 'body' section appeared to be a computer console. Jim had heard about these types of models before. They had been popular in the distant past when humans wanted their computers with them at all times and before the advancements of PADDs that made everything compact and powerful: instant computing at one's finger tips.

The official grabbed his arm a little too roughly. The employee was stabbing him in the arm with a syringe to extract a blood sample before he could even protest. "Fuck," he hissed as he pulled his arm back. "Can't you warn a person?" Hell, was it even normal to take blood samples of colonists?

The officer decidedly did not answer. He instead placed the vial in a small machine that was on the table. The machine beeped. The officer blinked at whatever he saw appear on the screen. Fuck. They didn't fucking just run his genetic code did they? His genes were fucking hybrid of male and female genes.

Just as Jim was about to comment, the officer slid a PADD thru the machine. It must have downloaded the information into the PADD, which he then handed to him.

Before Jim could even look at it, he was already being waved through. As he was leaving, he saw the officer write something on his PADD. They didn't even bother to ask for his name. He left through the back of the tent. The tent was almost empty by then.

He sat down on a makeshift pile of logs. The first entry in his PADD detailed his living arrangements. He let out a loud whistle. His mother hadn't been joking when she told him that he would be staying with Starfleet officers. One was a botanist, and the other was a social scientist.

There was a map with the location of his foster family's assigned house.

Jim sighed. He threw his bags over his shoulders and made the long walk down the rows of near identical adobe houses. On closer inspection, he noticed that many of the houses had small pots of flowers and bushes on the window ledges and along the pathways to the front door. It seemed to be almost the only source of color in this endlessly yellow land.

The adobe house, which was assigned to his foster family, was located at the intersection of many dirt pavements. The roads all traveled far into the distance. Jim wondered where they all went. He sighed before knocking.

He heard footsteps coming from the inside. The door opened revealing a young, brunette woman. She was dressed in a light spring dress with an apron tied around her waist. There was flour stains on it. She seemed to have been baking.

"You must be the child assigned to us." Jim saw the confusion in her eyes. He obviously wasn't what she had been expecting. He wondered what his mother had said when she 'volunteered' him for Tarsus.

Jim nodded. He handed her the PADD. She looked at it. The frown lines above her eyes became thicker. "Thomas," she shouted.

He heard a large curse followed by something shattering. It sounded heavy. They both cringed. Moment later a young man appeared. The couple seemed to be roughly the same age. She handed him the PADD. "We were expecting a boy," he stated simply before thrusting the PADD back into Jim's hands.

Jim blinked and looked down.

There was a fuzzy picture of an infant on the PADD. He was almost positive it wasn't even him. Besides that, the information was mostly empty minus his hair color, eye color and gender. The word 'female' was circled for gender.

Fucking hell! It reeked of Frank's doing. Frank probably had been planning on sending him away for a long time. He should have questioned how everything had come together so easily. He wondered if Sam would have come with him had he not run away. Frank probably would have come up with a way to send them both here even if he hadn't crashed the car and gotten arrested. He just never saw Frank as a hacker. He didn't seem bright enough. He probably paid something to do it for him.

He knew he should march back to the processing center and get it corrected. However, gender in this era was just a word more than anything else. There were many different alien species that didn't fit into the human gender differentiation.

Frank was probably laughing now. Maybe he could just fucking choke to death.

However Jim had always been resourceful, Tarsus was a new beginning. Thanks to fucking Frank, nobody here knew anything about him. Hell, his fucking file was blank. Thanks to his mother, the media never knew what he even looked like.

He could start new here, and it wasn't like he was planning on staying long. Tarsus was starting to feel more and more like Riverside. Fuck it! Tarsus was a hellhole. There was no way he was going to stay here. He was definitely to hitch a ride on any cruiser that would pass by in the future. Besides, he really didn't want to explain why he was bleeding from places he shouldn't be.

"Sorry." The woman said. She glared at her husband before turning around and smiling at him. "What's your name child?" She asked kindly.

"Jane…" The name slipped from his lips. He had seen it tattooed on Big Joe's arm back at that the penitentiary. "Jane Davis."