Ending B . . .
Five Years Later . . .
“It’s a fine ship, Beverly,” Evan Downing said. “My first posting was on an Excelsior class ship.”
Dr. Crusher stood beside him and looked at his reflection in the portal. “I authorized a complete overhaul with all the latest equipment, including holocoms, before I assigned myself to be it’s captain.”
He smiled. “Five years behind a desk make you realize how much you missed living on a ship?”
“In a way.” She linked her arm through his and looked past his reflection to her medical ship. “I remembered why it was I lasted only a year the first time I came to StarMed. Politics. I just wasn’t cut out to be a politician. That’s half the job. Some people can take it in stride and become very good at it. I did for a while, but I don’t thrive on it. When it gets tiresome, it’s time to go back to something you know you were good at doing.”
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
The distress call from the Montana two days later sent a ripple of shock through the space lanes around Starbase 97. Most of the ships that had seen the launch of the Pasteur were still in the area. The number of ships answering the call was large.
The ships were exploding section by section as the safety doors and bulkheads gave way. The Montana hit atmosphere and began to glow. The Romulan ship, even as it fell toward the planet, found the power somewhere to move laterally and it began to gain distance away from the Federation ship.
The Montana, more ball of flame than a spaceship, lashed out with a tractor beam and caught the fleeing warship and halted it long enough to bring it into contact with the planet’s atmosphere. Both ships were now fireballs sinking toward the surface.
Q waited as patiently as he could while the young Bajoran considered his options. If he accepted Q’s offer, he would set into motion events that would change the way of life in this valley for the next ten thousand years and, possibly, for many more thousands beyond then. If he didn’t - well, nothing would change and time would continue as it had before Q’s arrival. Q was counting on the young fellow to not be that stupid.
All of a sudden Q was aware of a sense of foreboding creeping through his humanoid form and he looked sharply at the young Bajoran. No. No, that wasn’t it. The easily manipulated dolt was starting to smile at him. It was something else then... It was...Evan?!
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Q shouted and vanished.
The crowd of Bajorans who were gathered around their young leader cried out in fear and surprise.
Michael Downing held the battered form of his brother in his arms and waited for the smoke and the heat to take them both. They had brought the warship down. The Enterprise and the science vessels were safe. There was nothing now but to hope unconsciousness came before the fire.
Q appeared on the destroyed bridge and a second later the Montana was gone, but the Romulan warship continued it’s fall through the atmosphere of the gas giant. No one aboard the other ships seemed to notice a ship seemingly appeared out of nowhere beside the science vessels to give them aid. To them, it had always been there. All knowledge of a second dying ship above the planet had vanished.
Aboard the Enterprise, Commander Worf said, “The warship skimmed too close to the upper atmosphere, Captain. There was enough drag to halt it’s progress and pull it down.”
“Can we get a tractor beam on it and pull it out?”
“No, sir. They are falling too fast.”
For the next several minutes the death of the great warship was observed in silence.
An alert warbled. The young navigator turned her head slightly and spoke over her shoulder. “It’s the Montana, sir. Captain Downing.”
“On screen,” Picard said with a nod.
The last moments of the warship vanished from the forward view screen, and the image of the young captain of theMontana, Michael Downing, appeared in it’s place.
“Yes, Captain?” Picard said.
“We have all of the injured scientists aboard our ship and we have stabilized the orbits of both damaged vessels. Unless you need us for something here, we’ll transport the wounded to Starbase 97. The Pulaski facility has sent us word they can handle all we beamed off the science ships.”
“Then do so with all haste. Thank you for your assistance, Captain Downing.”
Michael Downing nodded once and his image vanished from the screen.
The warship had broken up and disappeared. Cloudy contrails from it’s debris scored the atmosphere of the planet like clawmarks.
Q looked down at the two boys sleeping peacefully on small, identically fitted beds in a room filled with bits and pieces important to boys of eight. The one closest to him stirred and shifted his position, muttering something as he dreamed.
“Don’t think I saved you up there because I like you,” Q told him in a low voice. “I happen to have a boy of my own and I think I know how Mommy dearest and Captain Sr. would have felt watching you disappear from their lives forever. ‘Hero Son Saves Parents at Cost of Own Life.’ Oh, give me a break! I didn’t raise you to be that noble! Where did that come from? Didn’t anything I taught you sink into that human brain of yours?” He shook his head slowly as if with great pity for the poor boy.
“Well, we’re going to do this all over again. Only this time you’re going to have more of your mother’s influence. There is no place for Picard nobility in Vash’s life.” He paused and leaned down closer to the boy. “And this time, I’m not taking you to the Continuum.”
Q leaned back against the edge of the desk across the room from the small bed and folded his arms across his chest. He smirked and tossed his head haughtily. “I’m not taking you to the Continuum, no matter what you say or do or threaten.”
Nine year old Evan Downing squinted his eyes at the being he liked to call Cucumber or Cuke, and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay.”
He went to the bed and flopped onto it on his stomach. He shifted his position until he was on his back with his head and shoulders hanging off the edge, looking at Q upside down. He crossed one leg over the other, ankle at knee.
“So now I know it’s ‘cause I’m right,” he said, raising his arms and letting them hang over the edge, too. “You’re all smelly, slimy green gas bubbles who would make us normal beings puke cukes if we smelled you!” He screwed up his face and pinched his nostrils shut with one hand. “Blech! No wonder!”
No sooner had he spoken the last word than he and Q both vanished from the bedroom.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Vash smiled down at the face of her ten year old son and for the millionth time was grateful he looked so like her father. He was smiling back.
“That was brilliant, Evan!” she told him and placed both hands on the sides of his face and gave him a little squeeze. “Hiding the eggs in the rock garden was a stroke of genius. But how could you be anything less than brilliant? You’re my son after all!”
He raised his eyebrows and widened his smile. She never could resist this look. “How brilliant?” he asked. “Brilliant enough for a trip to Earth to see Michael and Sam and Frannie and Angel and Ten?”
Vash sighed and looked into his eyes. “You miss your brothers and sisters, don’t you?”
He nodded. He hoped she didn’t have to ask about the Downings, his former foster parents. He missed them, too, but he didn’t want to say it aloud and hurt her feelings.
She nodded. “Yes. It was brilliant enough to spend a couple of weeks on Earth. While you’re visiting the Downings, I’ll arrange an auction for the eggs in Paris!”
Vash paused in the doorway of the house where the Downings had raised her son from the age of two until he was nine. A place he still thought of as home. He had never said as much to her in the year they had been reunited and traveling together, but she knew. She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned down to kiss his forehead. “I love you very much, Ev. I’ll see you in two weeks.” She winked. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Evan frowned. “But, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, Mom! That doesn’t leave me with much except sleeping and eating.” A smile tugged at his mouth at the look on her face.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Get! Go on! We’ll see about that fresh mouth of yours when I get back.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Stop right there, young man. I told you to take a couple of days to visit your brother. I didn’t say you could disappear for a week. Where were you?”
At twelve, Evan was a tall boy, almost her height, and so good looking it made her feel exhilarated the way people looked at him so appreciatively. With an elaborate roll of his eyes and shoulders, he sank into a chair and looped one leg over the arm. “Don’t get mad! Michael and I went to Montana for the anniversary celebration of the warp drive.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You get all arley when I talk about spaceships and Starfleet. We didn’t know there was going to be a shuttle tour to the Mars shipyards until we got there. We told the Downings we were going. They would have told you if you asked them.”
“Evan Downing, sometimes I could throttle you! You should have told me yourself.”
Head down, the boy looked at her, moving just his eyes. “There’s more.”
Vash felt every muscle in her body sag. She put one hand on her hip and brushed her hair away from her face with the other. “Tell me.”
“We took a Starfleet Academy tour, too. We signed up to take the academy exams when we’re old enough.” Expecting an argument, he remained with lowered eyes, until the silence made him raise his head. His mother was looking at the ceiling, past the ceiling, as if she could see the stars from where she stood. After a while, she gave him a resigned look.
“Come on. Help me fix something to eat so we can talk. There is something very important you have to know.”
Michael Downing left the public transporter station near his home and was surprised to see Evan waiting for him.
“Got something to tell you,” Evan said and nodded down the street toward the house. “I’ll walk part way with you, but I won’t go in.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“My mom and I are going away for a while. There’s an important dig, a huge excavation going to start at the edge of explored space. It’s going to take years of work and my mom is going to be a part of the lead team. We might not get back to Earth for a long time, Michael. Mom is sending a message to the Downings, they’ll probably suss out, so I wanted to tell you personally. I want you to promise me something. No matter what, even if I’m not there, promise me you’ll never give up joining Starfleet. Promise me you’ll go to the academy.”
Michael frowned. “What do you mean, 'if you’re not there?' We’re the same age. We’ll be able to go together. That’s what we planned.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I’m never going to forget about it. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m going to the Academy, too. Even if a lot of years pass, Michael, it won’t stop us, will it? Even if I’m not here to go with you, we’re going to meet again up there.” He raised his arm and pointed at the sky. “Right?”
The boys stopped walking and turned to face one another. Michael, realizing what his brother was trying to tell him, looked at him with great sadness. “Yeah. Course we are. We’re brothers.”
Evan grinned and clapped both hands on Michael’s shoulders. “I’ll try to get back before then, if I can, but I can’t promise. If I know I can count on seeing you again, up there, serving on a starship someday, it’ll be enough.”
His brother’s nod was barely perceptible, and Evan’s smile faded. “See you when I see you,” he said quietly, and turned and ran for the transporter station.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As beautiful as he thought his mother was and as much as he loved and respected her, there were times when he felt like throttling her! Fourteen year old Evan Downing looked across the marketplace for a few moments longer, watching her talk to a very familiar and horridly overdressed native male, and then he reluctantly returned his attention back to the task at hand. He looked at the list he was holding and waved it at the Anjellian transferring items from a hovering cart into the shuttle’s cargo hold.
“Wait! Wait! What was that you just threw inside?” He leaned into the portal and dragged back a small package. The universal translator he wore behind his ear, civilian model, not the more sophisticated ones used by Starfleet, was barely able to interpret the being’s rapid fire answer.
“I am paying attention,” Evan retorted. “That’s how I know you put that box on my ship while you thought my attention wasn’t on you!”
After a few more minutes of insulting one another, the supplies were aboard the small shuttle craft and the merchant who’d delivered them was driving away and muttering loudly about paranoid and suspicious offworlders.
Evan closed and sealed the small portal and turned around to look over the crowd. Vash was walking toward him, a bundle of material in her arms, but her attention was on the data pad she was holding. She was up to something and didn’t want him to know.
“Hey,” she called to him when she was nearing their small craft. “I finished my business and,” she indicated the bolt of fabric in her arms, “even found a bonus while I was at it. Ever seen a shade of blue that gorgeous?”
It was just a diversionary tactic he was becoming all too familiar with. The fabric would end up forgotten in one of the storage holds aboard the yacht. Evan turned on the illegal scrambler his mother had rigged to their translators.
“Won’t work, Mom. I saw you talking to Q, and I caught the merchant trying to sneak a box on the ship with the supplies.”
Vash eyed her son with no trace of guilt. He was teenager now and too smart and . . . and . . . honest! . . . for his own good. Or her own good. “You’re getting to be a pain in the . . . neck. And how in the world did you know that was Q?”
“I just know when he’s around, and don’t try to change the subject. What are we smuggling this time?” He stopped to let her board the shuttle first.
“We’re not smuggling anything, honey. We’re delivering a package to the Anjellian science station in the seventh planet. The merchant has a daughter working there. We just beam it down as we fly past. She’s expecting it.”
I’ll bet. Evan climbed into the shuttle behind her and closed and sealed the port behind them. He said nothing. All right. If she wanted him to believe that, he would.
Settling herself in the pilot’s seat, Vash started the engines and waited for the telltales to indicate readiness for liftoff. She took all of Evan’s silence she could take. “Q knows of a dig site not far from here where he thinks we can pick up some artifacts to sell at the exposition on Lineaa. You’ve grown three inches and lost some weight. He thinks I’m starving you.”
Evan, tossing the bolt of material into the tiny cargo hold, had to chuckle. “Are we going?”
“Do you want to?
“You know I don’t trust him, Mom. He got us into a lot of trouble after we left Earth.”
Speaking of the devil . . .
“It all worked out fine for the both of you in the end,” Q said, popping into existence in the co-pilot’s seat as Evan turned it toward himself and was preparing to get into it. “I don’t know why you’re still crying over that. It toughened you. Made you a man.” He inclined his head toward Vash. “And you, a boring mother.”
“Get out of my chair!” the boy growled and grabbed Q by the front of his shirt. He yanked him to his feet and gave him a push that sent the surprised entity passing through the com panel of the shuttle and onto the landing ring outside.
Vash struggled to keep her surprise from showing and raised the shuttle slowly from the ground. Q, now on his feet, shouting something and glaring at them, disappeared from view as the craft climbed above the building tops on all sides of the landing pad.
She looked at her son. “Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you do that.”
Q watched the departing shuttle with a mix of humanoid emotions. “How does he do that?!”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In his incorporeal state, Q hovered above Starbase 97 and observed with fascination and irritation as the Enterprise matched its orbit to that of the space station and seemed to hang beside it. Nearby, the Cochise stood placidly, stopping at the starbase on its way back to Earth after exploratory wandering throughout the quadrant. And at a docking arm on the far side of the station, the Nottingham, the private yacht belonging to Vash and her son, was secured inconspicuously among other small civilian craft having business with the starbase.
Q knew he would be irritated if he could feel emotions, because he hadn’t known this was going to happen. Why hadn’t he? He could have set these events into motion and made it look as coincidental as it really was. All of the notable players in the life of young Evan Downing were converging upon the exact same point on the galaxy, and only Vash and himself knew of the connections between them.
And Q couldn’t do a damn thing about it! Punishment for taking Evan to view the Continuum, was to remain in his unbodied, natural state for an unspecified length of time. Which was to say until his fellow Q remembered they were punishing him and decided to release him. He had no idea how much time had passed as measured by the somatic beings inhabiting the craft below him, and it mattered much to him as he watched a golden opportunity to harass Vash slide past in what amounted to slow motion for a being of his abilities. What havoc he could be wreaking! How much fun he might be having right now, finding out how far Vash was willing to go to keep her son away from Picard and any possible meeting between the two.
It was not to be, however. With no way to enter the space station, all he could do was watch the ships from afar.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jean Luc Picard kept his attention on the young captain opposite him and listened as he began to speak.
“I had a brother, Evan. We were the same age. You see, my adoptive parents were caring for him, keeping him out of harms way because his mother assured them his life was in danger from enemies of his father. They had him for a year and discovered they enjoyed being parents. Unable to have children of their own , they decided to adopt siblings for him while he was in their care. They knew he would be leaving them eventually because his mother visited him regularly and made it quite clear she would come for him when the dangers were clear. They adopted me when I was 3 and I found myself going into a family where I had a brother the same age as me. Evan and I became very close, very fast. All he ever knew about his father was that he was a Starfleet officer, so from an early age it was Evan’s plan to join Starfleet and be an officer like his father. I decided to do the same. We were the same age, we could attend the academy together and maybe even serve aboard the same ship eventually. I would be the ship’s doctor, he would be the captain.
“When he turned 9, his mother came for him. She was elated. His father’s enemy had died in prison, and Evan was safe. He left with her, but she knew he was attached to the Downing family, and she brought him back several times a year to visit us. He was full of stories of his travels with his mother to unbelievable places in the galaxy, We became more determined than ever to become Starfleet officers and explore the galaxy together.
“When we were 12, I got an unexpected visit from Evan. He told me he and his mother would be going away for a long time. You see, she was an archaeologist and she had been hired to help supervise a tremendous find on the edge of explored space and it would be years before they could make it back to Earth again. He made me promise to never forget our dream of joining Starfleet. He said he might not be able to attend the academy with me, but wherever he was he would join Starfleet and we would meet again out here, as officers serving aboard great ships. I promised I wouldn’t forget, and I never saw him again.
“Needless to say I kept my promise and I began my career with the hope that I would one day run into Evan as a fellow officer. I never did, so I began looking for information about him, and I found nothing. I cultivated friendships for the express purpose of getting people to look into classified files and other types of information stores denied to me. He never joined Starfleet. He never even tried to get in, as far as I can discover. Next I tried to find information on the big discovery made the year we were 12, and discovered there were several, but none of them were as he described the one his mother was supposedly going to be supervising. It was then I started searching for his mother. I never knew her name, but I had holos of her from my childhood. Her and Evan.
“When I loaded her image into the Starfleet database and searched for a match, I got hit after hit, mostly red flagged files about her. I discovered her name was Vash, and she was indeed an archaeologist. I also discovered she was wanted for questioning in the disappearances of numerous artifacts from countless archaeological digs all over the galaxy - including within the Gamma Quadrant. Funny thing about it, they all begin within the last ten to fifteen years. Before that she was a studious academician on Earth. In fact her birthdates, there are several different years mentioned, all make her too young to be the Vash I remember meeting over twenty years ago. Plus . . .
“The thing is, nowhere in any of her biographies or other files does it mention that she ever had a son named Evan Downing, or any close family at all. She is described as childless, family unknown.”
Picard frowned. “The Vash I know has never given any indication she has a grown son, nor any other family member in her life.”
“Computer, put me in touch with Captain Michael Downing on a private channel. Pipe it in here to my personal com. “ (Long pause.) “Captain Downing! I hope you believe in fate, or coincidence, because the woman we were talking about earlier, Vash, is aboard this station at this very minute.”
“Vash is here? How do you know?”
“I was accessing some files from the Pulaski medical facility, with her permission, of course, and she mentioned a mutual acquaintance was visiting the station. Seems Vash is here for a yearly medical check-up.”
Picard and Downing arrived separately on the promenade above the beautifully designed entryway to the Pulaski Medical Center. Picard was looking over the rail at the entry doors when he heard running footsteps approach and stop next to him.”
“Is she still inside?”
“I haven’t seen her leave.”
At the same time, they spoke, “There!”
Not knowing she was being watched, Vash strolled out of the center’s spacious lobby and walked along the path between the trees and flowerbeds as if she was in a hurry to get somewhere.
“Come. Before we lose sight of her.”
The two rushed to the escalators and hurried down the up side. They came to the lower level ahead of Vash, who was just leaving the parklike arrangement in front of the facility. The two men were almost face to face with her before she noticed them. All three froze in their tracks. It was clear that Vash recognized Michael Downing.
They might have stared at one another forever, if the sound of running footsteps hadn’t caught their attention. Vash instinctively turned a little to her left and the men looked beyond her. A teenaged boy, tall and thin as young teens often were, was running along the path toward them, his long hair bouncing up and down and obscuring his face.
“Mom!” he called. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
Reaching Vash’s side, he stopped and held one hand out to her to show her something, and with the other hand he swept his sun-lightened brown hair away from his face. “Dr. Pulaski gave me a chip of my medical history to carry with me. She said I was old enough to start carrying one of my own.”
“Rene?”
“Evan?”
Two softly toned male voices drew the boy’s attention away from his mother.
Two men in Starfleet uniforms, red for command, were standing a few feet away and staring at him.
The boys eyes widened as he recognized the older of the men from the holonet, but his mouth dropped when he looked at the younger man.
“Michael?” he said. A large smile spread across his face and suddenly, he ran forward to throw his arms around the startled man. “You did it! You did it! You made it out here!” He laughed. “I told you we’d meet up again out here!”
Captain Downing stared at the boy’s face. “Evan? How . . .? How can this be?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Hah! Long story!”
Footnote: Little bits of conversation and situations occur to me all the time. If I like them once they are on paper I'll probably add to this list of scenes from time to time.
I wasn't planning to write a sequel to the original story but as I posted the chapters I got an idea for one. It's just an idea so far, and since I have two "Earth 2" stories and a "No Guarantees" sequel to finish, it will probably remain just an idea for a while.
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