A Family Affair

Posted on 21 Oct 2014 @ 11:53pm by Senior Chief Petty Officer Keval zh'Erinov & Commander Norvi Stace

1,392 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84 - Internal Corridor, Deck 33
Timeline: MD04 1400hrs

ON:

Well things had taken an interesting turn with Cyrin. As usual Keval had overreached, become pushy at the first hint of attraction. It was pretty silly he knew, but such things were all too common now. He just needed some time away from everyone. Lounges, restaurants holosuites were all better off avoided.

He needed to think and he did his best thinking when he was alone. It would be hard trying to find a place to be alone on a Space Station, but he could just go wandering about, so that is what he did. With no real destination in mind and dressed in a pair of white pants and a blue shirt that was almost the color of his skin, he left the ship and began exploring the station.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw him. No, that couldn't possibly be him. My expensive sources haven't even remotely hinted that he would be in this sector. He paused for a moment, drink in hand still and over the crystalline rim of the glass spied his pray. He sank back slowly into the shadow of his chair and took out his personal device. Quickly checking, he verified his suspicions. That is him! Fuck the bastard! And the bloody swines that have let me down... if you want something doing, do it yourself!

The man inched forward, deposited his credits into the bar and then took to his feet. The Ferengi will have to wait. This can't. Not now.

He shadowed the Andorian for ten minutes, keeping a distance away so he wouldn't be seen. His time in the penal colony had made him a quick study. It wasn't what the Federation made it out to be: All open air and light duties. Serving your time for the benefit of the people. It was cruel, it was heartless and most of all it was degrading. He'd spent the first month fending off the persistent advances of Cardassian that seemed to have a taste for human males. But after he broke his nose and three vertebrates, the Cardassian seemed to back off. It wasn't a particularly pleasant lesson to learn for a business man who dealt in underhand deals and soft technology. But he realised that if he didn't want to be supper, he had to be the one eating it.

From around the darkened corner in the corridor just ahead, he jutted out to greet his backstabbing son.

"Well, well, well," Ben Graysan sneered through his gritted teeth. "What do we have here? A treacherous son finding someone else's life to ruin?"


Keval stopped at once as he heard the voice. The voice of the man he had once loved. The commanding baritone of a voice. It was the last voice he expected to hear, the last one he wanted to hear.

He turned towards his adopted father, both antenna stiff and rigid. "I didn't ruin anyone's life I simply told the truth. Like you taught me to do when I was young before you lost sight of it."

"I never lost sight of the fact that you were young, boy!" came his thundering reply, knowing full well what his son meant. "I BROUGHT YOU UP WITH LOYALTY!" He bellowed so loud that the door across from them opened and a Bajoran head popped out to see what the fuss was. Graysan sneered back with a glare so fierce and they promptly shot back inside. "I suggest we go somewhere more private. And before you ask, that's not a suggestion!" He gripped his son's elbow and hurried down the corridor in a fashion that befitted a man with his toddler son. They rounded a corner and then disappeared into a observation room that was vacant. Ben took out his device again and then sealed the doors with it.

"What I did, I did for you! For us and your mother! And this is how you repay me! If it wasn't the penal colony it would have been an early grave the way you have behaved!"

"The way I behaved? You mean when I put what I wanted to do on hold to become your Chief Technical Officer? I wanted to paint, to act, to use my art to change things. To be my own man. Instead I kowtowed to you and your wants.

So don't patronize me by telling me who you did it for. You didn't do it for your family. You did it for yourself."

"If you were more invested in how I shaped the family, how I shaped the company that provided for you and for the Federation, rather than dicking about with paintbrushes in your room, then you'd understand how cut-throat the business is! But you weren't invested. You didn't care. You had your head in the clouds and didn't want to know anything about what real life is. About what this has done to your mother! And after everything she has done for you!"

Ben's hand shook with rage. Biting the hand that fed you was the ultimate sin. And Keval had not only bit but ripped it off and swallowed it instead.

Keval's face burned a deep blue, his own anger rising, "If you want discuss sacrifice and who was invested, I'm glad to have that little conversation, but you seem to forget that you committed a crime here. You were using your technology, our technology to spy on people and blackmail them.

I just reported it. It was a jury that convicted you.

With clenched teeth, Ben leant in and grabbed the Andorian by the scruff of his collar. As he spoke, he almost hissed, spitting out through his mouth. "It was you that convicted me, son! You! And I will never forgive you for that. I don't even know why we took you in. You should have been left to rot with your parents."

The operations officer turned an even deeper shade of blue. "Take your hands off of me you bastard, before I decide to hurt you."

With a great shove, Ben planted his closed fist, Keval's scrunched up top still in hand, right into his pectoral plane, pushing him back and off balance. Ben took a step forward and sneered over him: Not with delight or satisfaction but with true and unadulterated loathing. He glared at him for a second and then spat on him. "Hurt me? I'm going to ruin you, son. Ruin you! You make a lot of friends inside incarceration. And you're going to meet them very soon, so I'd sleep with one eye open while you're on this station."

Keval was not often given to rage, but he had put up with so much growing up and even more since that time. At one time he had loved and admired his father, but that had been when he was very little. Even during the time that his father had tried to enforce his dream on him instead of the one that he wanted to follow, he had at least respected him, even if he didn't like him much.

But finding out what his father had become, who he had become changed that. Now he despised the man he'd called father once. He got a hold of himself however, knowing if he let the rage take over, he would likely kill the human. And then there was the threat, a threat he took very seriously.

He wiped the spittle from his face after regaining his balance and with more confidence than he felt said, "Take your best shot Ben, your best shot. And just to make this official, I'll change my last name, to the one my parents gave me."

Ben turned on his heel and headed for the door, pressing the device in his pocket to unlock it as he neared it. As he turned into the corridor outside, he squinted through the corner of his eye. "I was going to insist upon it," came his final, heartless line as he disappeared past the frame of the door and down the corridor to plan his next move.

OFF:


A joint post by

Ben Graysan
PNPC Norvi Stace
CPO Keval zh'Erinov's Father

&

CPO Keval zh'Erinov
Operations
PNPC Jared Nicholas
USSGalileo

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