Sarah appeared from a side passage, arms crossed over her chest. She approached them but kept a distance from Riordan, staring defiantly at him. “I already know.”
“I should have put you on that ship,” Riordan admonished.
“How did you even… why did you?” She asked Glori as she took a seat at the small table.
“As standard procedure, I scan all my patients and record their genetic profile. I set up a cross-reference. These results came back matching you… to him.”
Riordan sighed. He didn’t bother looking at the screen.
“Is that why you asked to stay?” he asked Sarah. “They would have found you a safe place to live. You would have gotten a proper education. There are dozens of programs to help disaster survivors. I have some pretty good contacts. You’d have a chance at a decent life.”
“What’s a decent life? I would have ended up at a residency school till 18, trained for an occupation the 'State' thought I would be good at. What happens then, I live the rest of my life in poverty, a good little ‘Subject’ dutifully toiling for the enrichment of my ‘betters’,” she asked, tapping the tattoo burned into her left temple. “We all know as soon as I got out, if I didn’t run away first, I'd be right back to doing what I do best, wheeling and dealing on the fringes of polite society. Why waste time?" She replied with a shrug.
“I suppose an explanation is in order?” he asked, setting an unlabeled bottle of amber fluid and three small heavy glasses on the rec room table. He ignored the sharp glance Glori shot at him. He took a seat and poured a few fingers of liquid into each glass before placing one in front of each of the ladies.
“That would be a start,” Sarah said, sipped the contents of her glass with an appreciative grimace. Glori frowned, ever the doctor.
"Oh, chill out, G. It's just one drink. Don't you think she deserves it after the day she had? Anyway," he said continuing the story. "Tar, Tarold, your father, was my best friend and biggest rival. We met in the academy and would go back and forth for 'First Stick,' the highest GPA. We parted ways when we graduated but we would occasionally see each other on layovers between runs. Tar let me know there was a fleet pilot position available, so I put in for a transfer and arrived at my new duty station about 6 months before I ran into your mom.
"That was my last year in the fleet. She was a coms tech. I was late for a training flight and ran into her, literally, outside the commissary and knocked her groceries out of her hands." He downed the Scotch and poured another. "It was worth it!"
Sarah sipped from her glass.
"We exchanged information and went on our first date a few days later. Your mom was a wonderful person. She had this smile... I'd forget how to talk, it was so bright." He glanced off into the corner of the room for a moment. Clearing his throat, he continued.
"Your mother was near the end of her tour and would transfer to her new assignment in the hinterlands of the Occupied Territories, near her home system. She was excited to be going home, but also didn't want to break off our relationship. We compromised. We'd get married so we could stay together, and I would actively look for a position near her home system and request a transfer."
Riordan let out a shuddering sigh and downed his third scotch. She sipped lightly at hers. He leaned toward her. "We loved each other very. Your mom was my everything. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. We planned on starting a family. I’d serve out the rest of my 20, retire, maybe start a short-haul transport business. The Galactic Dream! We never got the chance.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"Fate has a way of... of frelling you right in the stražnjica when your at your happiest, ya know?" He leaned back in his chair, lost in thought for a few moments.
Sarah glanced at Glori, then at Riordan. "You're drunk."
"Hardly," he peered into his glass, swirling the amber fluid. "We were stationed at a large base on a very nice planet, Daphion. Tar needed me to sub in for him on my day off. Your mother was displeased. We would have to reschedule our vacation, but hey, flight hours looked good on evaluations, so I took it. She didn't come to see me off like she usually did. Looking back now, she was pregnant with you, so that might have explained why she was cranky.”
“They told me… this is nothing like what they told me, at all.” Sarah said angrily.
"There was an incident. It’s still highly classified, but in defense of your mom and Tar, they were told I was dead. They didn’t know until five years later, and by then they were married and you were a little kid.”
“How is that possible? What incident? Why didn’t they just…” Sarah was at a loss to finish. Her thoughts were racing. “...tell me?”
“Your parents didn’t want to confuse you. Your mom went through it after the incident. All she was told is that there was a catastrophic FTL failure. The Algernon, the ship, was able to get to a safe distance and then… ceased to exist. All hands lost. There was a funeral. There were hundreds of funerals. She grieved, healed and moved on. She found a good man, a good father!
“How are you alive?”
“I’m going to head down to the command deck, this should be between you two,” Glori said, leaving her glass untouched. She glanced back at them for a moment before exiting the rec deck.
“The engine failure was more of a malfunction. While everyone assumed the ship lost, instead of smearing our atoms evenly across the face of the known universe… we just… lost time. Trust me, everyone was surprised when the Algernon dropped out of hyperspace on the other side of the Galactic cluster.
“We weren’t unscathed. I spent a long time in the hospital recovering from serious injuries. The ship was wrecked beyond repair and a lot of people died, but a lot lived. The government played it off like it was a secret long term mission and we all returned heroes, The official story.
Sarah took a larger sip of her drink. “So when you got back, you contacted my mom, right? What did she say? How did she take it?”
Silence dominated the room for a few moments.
“How would anyone take it? ‘Hey, remember that guy you had a kid with and almost married, but he died? Well, he’s alive now!’ she didn’t take it well at all. She refused to see me, or even communicate with me. It took a lot of effort but eventually Tar met with me. For your own good, they didn’t want you to know about me. They thought it would cause psychological harm of some sort. I reluctantly agreed. They had a great life. You were safe and happy. Your mom was working a civilian job and Tar was still a pilot. He showed me pictures and vids. You were so happy, and your mom was happy, as happy as I had hoped to make her.
“I was dealing with my injuries, my own grief. Almost no time had passed for me. I woke up in a hospital and my fiance was married to another man and the child I knew nothing about was almost five years old. Who was I to force my way back into your lives? How selfish would that have been? You and your mother had moved on and found happiness. I did my best to move on, too."
Sarah drained her whiskey and slammed the glass hard on the table. “Well, that was... revealing? Enlightening?” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “So you just, forgot about us, moved on!” she said, getting to her feet.
"I already explained, it wasn't like that." he retorted. "We did what we thought was best, as your parents, with the situation we found ourselves in."
"Whatever," she said, turning her back and leaving the rec room.
Riordan entered the command deck a few minutes later. "Where's Sarah?"
"She went to her quarters to clean it up. She said, anyway. How did it go?" Gloria asked without looking up from her read out panels.
"About as well as can be expected. She survived an attack, father popped back into her life, treated injured survivors, saw dead people... How are you holding up?"
"Probably not much better, to be honest. No messages or any sign from Jaisen, but the networks are at full capacity right now, it's chaos."